My 5th grandfather Capt. Thomas Kennedy served in the Penn Flying Line made it to being a Capt. in the Revolutionary War. He was under William "the Irish Beauty" Stewart and then fought the rest of the war under General Mad Anthony Wayne. His group didn't retreat. His brother in law was Maj. James McFarlane who was killed by some Anglican Bastards who were trying to overtax side whiskey production during the Whiskey Rebellion. Those Revolutionary War guys were pipethumping hardcore sobs. Thomas and James went all the way up to Montreal to break a brother out of prison and fought with Indians the entire way. You go further than that and my family has lineage back to the Lords of Carrick with some heavy duty azzkicking and meanspirited lordship. One of them killed the fiance of Mary Queen of Scots and his bodyman by strangling them. The term holding your feet to the fire came from them when Archibald Kennedy forced Baltistan Castle and its lands from a fat abbot by holding the cleryman's feet to a fire while he signed over the deed to his land. I get back to the Lords of Galloway and Nial of Ninetails but we were lowland Scots. I can go with them back to Alfred the II.
The other line offers my Great Grandfather John Erickson who was a farmer immigrant from Sweden. He once held the outlaw Jesse James at bay with a pitchfork when Jesse came to rob his horse after the failed shoot out at the Northfield Bank. John had 10 children and they are spread across the country. His family was from Northern Sweden but spent some time in Germany as merchants.
The Wiswalls were English and came over before the Mayflower. They worked to establish the town of Newton Massachusetts and are buried in the Cambridge next to Harvard Yard.
