Welcome to Branches! A couple of years ago I started researching my family tree after receiving unsolicited email from two different genealogy sites. I was not expecting to find any useful information but figured I'd search each site's databases anyway. I was shocked to find family trees for both sides of my family posted online. A few days later I found the HeritageQuest Online U.S. census database at the Aurora library.
I began searching the census at random because I did not know my great or great-great grandparents' names. I knew I was named after a great aunt on the Heaslett side and that I had the same middle name as my Grandpa, George Heaslett. On the 1920 census I found George, his parents (Lynn & Shirley) and his maternal grandparents (George & Anna) living on the west side of Chicago. Until I found him on in the census, I did not know George's father's first name was Lynn. I discovered that the woman I am named for is Laura Heaslett Counsell, Lynn's half-sister.
I continued searching and found my paternal grandmother, her parents and her maternal grandparents on the northwest side of the city, living in the very house I grew up in.
"I'm hooked now!" I went back in and looked for my husband's grandparents on both sides. I found them! Later that evening at home, I located my maternal great-great and great-great-great-grandparents in Wisconsin and my paternal great-great grandparents in Buffalo, NY.
The portraits on this page are my maternal relatives from England. I am descended from John Hazlitt.
He was a miniature portrait artist. His younger sister Peggy kept a journal about the family's journey to America in 1783. (the most recent edition was printed in 1967 by the University of Kansas Press). His little brother William made his living as a writer. He is well known for his outspoken essays on a wide variety of subjects and his criticisms of Shakespeare's plays. Their parents, Rev. William and Grace (Loftus) Hazlitt are pictured on the right.
The Reverend founded the first Unitarian church in Boston before the family returned to their native England in 1787.