I'm related to who?

Penelope was quite a lady. I wouldn't care if I were related to a witch. Considering where your family is from, probably not burned, that seemed to be something more often heard of in the northern parts of Europe.

@LadyDuck I knew France, wasn't aware of Italy or Switzerland. Still, its the 21st century now.

@ElicBxn You are misinformed, witches were burned also in France, in the north part of Italy and Switzerland.

I hear that a relative back in the early days was a state senator in Pennsylvania, but I don't know for sure. Robert Service wrote a poem about someone who shares my last name. I didn't know what people were asking me about, so I had to go find out.

@ElicBxn It's nice to know where we really come from and who are our ancestors, but I only know our close relatives.

@toniganzon Since my mother grew up less than 50 miles from where Penelope settled, her family had a somewhat better idea of her family history.

She was one of the early settlers in New Jersey. She was also attacked, scalped and partially disemboweled by the natives. She hid in a tree for, they say, 3 days and finally decided to take a chance. The old native who was with the younger one, who had been with the people who had killed her first husband and injured her, asked if she could speak English. When he heard she could, took her back to the village and healed her. It is said that he remained friends with her the rest of his life, including warning her of an attack so the settlers were saved. She was headed from the Netherlands to New Amsterdam when the ship was blown off course and shipwrecked around Sandy Hook. She had remained behind because her first husband was sick when the rest of the people headed up to New Amsterdam. By the time she was rescued/escaped/whatever the English had taken New Amsterdam and renamed it New York.

@ElicBxn Thanks for the lesson.

That's cool, much closer related than I am to Johnny Depp or Rex Stout.

As I said, I knew about Rex Stout, but Johnny Depp was someone I didn't know about. Can you tell I'm a fan of Johnny Depp?

@ElicBxn H'e's a great actor!

I thought so. I thought so much that I had to share it here with you guys!

Thanks for this! I hadn't found it before. She's better known up in the parts of New Jersey that she settled in, but obviously with as many children as she had and all their decedents, they moved around.