29 March 22

An interesting tangle in my ancestry: Today marks the birthday of Anne Mary Large Kester (1712-1756), who is one of my 6th-great grandmothers. She has that role TWICE, but explaining how that works is a little complicated but fun. She and her husband Hermanus Kester (1703-1780) had many children, including a pair named Samuel and Susannah. Meanwhile, in the same Quaker community around Hunterdon, New Jersey, Benjamin Webster and his wife Rachel Skinner Webster also had many children, including a pair named Samuel and Susannah. These pairs married each other, and it’s hard for me to imagine how they all kept their names straight. But anyway the S & S pair named Kester had a son named Benjamin, while the S & S pair named Webster had a son named Samuel (!). These two (some of my 4th-great grandfathers) had wives (separately) named Rachel Wilson and Rachael Hambleton, and then their children – who were four-way second cousins – named William Kester and Mary Webster – married and had a daughter named Rachel Kester, who became my mother’s great-grandmother. If you’re still reading this you are probably overwhelmed with all of the Samuels, Benjamins and Rachels in my genealogy! The very “Friendly” Quaker communities in New Jersey had a long string of intermarriages. The diagonal stripes on my tie symbolize trying to keep things straight despite all the different angles.