This extraordinary piece is both one of the originating points of my research for Lineage and also one of the most surprising things I found in my last rounds of research for the book. How can it be both? Well, to start there are two versions of this family tree, located across the ocean from one another.
I had just added a tidbit about the extended Lloyd family earlier this year, after a remarkable trip to Stenton, the Logan family home. The woman whose material I featured, Sally Norris Dickinson, was the daughter of Mary Norris Dickinson, who appears as the last generation on this family tree created by her grandfather, Isaac Norris. But I have been writing about this Quaker family for much longer. In fact the first book I worked on about them was published in 1997! I co-edited the commonplace book of women’s writings gathered by one of the cousins on this family tree, Milcah Martha Hill Moore. And the first essay I wrote about the family’s genealogical work was published in 2015. And I’ve written another extended piece that will appear in an edited volume in 2026! To be fair, it’s a big family, and lots to think and write about.
But to get to this piece specifically. The Llloyds were Welsh Quakers, and one branch of the family migrated to Pennsylvania with the founding of the colony. That Pennsylvania family grew and children and grandchildren migrated again (including to New Jersey, Maryland, and Madeira) and married into other colonial connections (including in the Caribbean). Amidst all of this migration, and some of the family members prospering both politically and financially (and becoming invested in slavery), there was constant exchange of genealogical information. This family tree was one piece of that exchange. Isaac Norris sent versions of it to at least two family members in Britain, both at the Library of the Society of Friends, and there is a later, similar version in Philadelphia at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. I’m delighted to have this piece on the cover of Lineage for all these reasons–my own research journey, the expansive history this family allows us to see, and the metaphor it provides.