User:Abburke
|
My name is Adrian Benjamin Burke, my grandmother Dorothy May Spring Mayer is a descendant of John Whitney of Watertown, Mass. Genealogy first piqued my interest as a boy when mother would take me to my grandmother's house on the Mayer farm in Attica, Wyoming County, New York. From the front porch we could see at night the brilliant lights of the Attica Prison in the valley below, part of which had been built on former Spring family farms.
In one of the bedrooms there was a book mixed in with other books and magazines - the first time I saw it I wasn't really old enough to read it and somethign about it made me ask my grandmother what it was. She said it contained her family history but neither she nor my mother ever read it to me. Many years later when I was home from college, (I graduated from The American University of Paris with a degree in International Affairs) my grandmother turned the book over to me. It contained her paternal Spring line starting with her father going back to John Spring of Watertown, Mass.
Several years passed and I found myself working for an investment bank while waiting to start law school. My job was simple and afforded me some free time which I used to search the web - I had always wanted to learn more about my family history and thanks to the burgeoning genealogical websites I got in touch with a Spring cousin whom I had never met but who was in fact the wife of my mother's first cousin! She was a genealogist as was her sister and brother in law. I became addicted to online genealogical research from then on.
It has been about six years now and I have published two articles on my Spring family's Mayflower lines in the Mayflower Quarterly, and one article on the Irish ancestry of my paternal grandfather the journalist Richard J. Burke in the Irish Genealogist, the principle organ of the Irish Genealogical Society in London, England. I joined the Society of Mayflower Descendants, The Military Society of the War of 1812, the Society of the War of 1812, the United States Military Order of Foreign Wars and in 2002 was installed as a squire in the Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus, the senior Dynastic Order of the Royal House of Savoy. In 2004 my mother Beverly Jeanette Mayer Burke was knighted by Prince Victor Emmanuel of Savoy and installed as a Dame of the Order of Merit of Savoy. I served on the board of directors of the New York Mayflower Society for 4 terms before retiring from that position, my mother was the secretary for the Buffalo chapter.
Having traced my Irish ancestry back to the parents of every immigrant and hitting the brick wall of Irish genealogy that just about all Irish-Americans eventually face, and having traced my maternal grandmother's American ancestry back to immigrants for almost all her possible lines, my remaining personal interests are my Sicilian ancestry pre-immigration and the few Colonial New England immigrants of gentry families for whom possible noble/royal descents remain to be discovered. In addition, I am trying to trace the Brewer of Westchester family, the Davis of New York City family, and a few other 18th century upstate New York families.
I got involved with the Whitney Research Group after reading online Robert Ward's presentation at the 2004 Whitney Family Reunion. I was well aware of the disputed ancestry of John Whitney of Watertown but until my correspondance with Robert was not aware that anyone was seriously working on his paternal line. This past fall when I realized that the Whitney and Clifford Manor Manuscripts mentioned during Robert's presentation had not been studied I set about getting a copy of the catalog which details abstracts of every document contained in the massive collection. In addition I have been working on the Chaundler family descendants of Anne (Whitney) Robage - a collateral line to John Whitney of Watertown.
Adrian Benjamin Burke, Esq. of New York City
www.adrianburke.com
