Ancestors and Descendants of Adams and Mann and Others

  The most Interesting facts about the Colby Family I began a research project to investigate the Colby family genealogy in order to find out more information about a particularly sad event in their family history.   The drowning death of Nathaniel Colby (1774-1823) left me searching for answers about the incident.   I wanted to learn more about what had happened and the circumstances which caused him to lose his life.   But in order to figure out the key individuals involved in this tragedy, I found it necessary to do a deep dive into the family history in order to identify all the family members involved.   This led me into a Eureka moment where I was able to find out all the information about the disaster from the published sources available in October 1823.   That story itself is a fascinating, yet melancholy bit of history which I will tell you about soon.             This research enabled me ...

  John Cator Brown was the only son of John Abigail Browne and his wife Thirza Cator.   He was born in Norwich, Norfolk, England on November 4, 1875. Just after celebrating his 5 th birthday, John’s father died suddenly and his mother was forced to move in with her widowed brother Benjamin and his 7 children still living at home in Repps- cum-Bastwick, a small village and a parish in Norfolk, near the town of Acle in Norfolk County. By the time he was 16, John was working as a servant in the home of Philip Todd in Gorleston in the County of Suffolk as a general dealer’s assistant.   In 1901, John was working as a milk vendor and in 1911, at the age of 35, he was working as an exhibitor/deck hand on board a former convict ship named S uccess .   (See more about this Exhibition ship in the footnote below.) FAMILY LIFE             John Cator Brown married Elsie Louisa Beckett in the small parish church of Bel...