One of my great-grandmothers was an avid genealogist who set herself the goal of documenting her status as FFV (First Families of Virginia), DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution), and Daughters of the Confederacy. She achieved this "triple crown" and had all of her daughters formally enrolled in all three. My mother carried this rather lightly, explaining that our "first Virginian" was a ship's doctor who went on a drunken spree one night, just as his vessel's pilot, nervous about the direction of the wind, felt that they should set out to sea to avoid being stranded during the storm. The boat went off back to England, and my forebear woke up with a bad headache and growing realization that he now as a resident of "that gawd-fersaken shore they call Ver-jin-eye-yay," as an old song has it.
I have another yellowed paper that tries to work out a genealogy from a Captain Thomas Willett, who emigrated to the Plymouth Colony in 1629. Unfortunately, it seems incorrect, as there are good records in the Maryland Hall of Records that show that my Willett line tracks from an Edward Willett, who emigrated to the Western Shore of the Chesapeake Bay ca. 1690. His apprenticeship papers to a London pewterer still exist, as does his will, which left his pewterer's business to his elder son William. His son, William, Jr., moved to Kentucky in 1792, founding the distillery there that is the start of the Willett Family Estate rye whiskey and bourbon concern still in business.
I'm descended from a younger brother who evidently did not inherit either pewtering or whiskey-making as a skill, and so our family has been poor ever since.
But my brother did inherit "Willett" as his middle name.
