Academic

Across the Generations

By Alfred Brophy

Long-time (and close) followers of the faculty lounge may recall that one of my great interests is families across several generations -- the Winthrops, the Pynchons, the Adamses,Francis Daniel Pastorius to ... Jaco Pastorius, and Theodore Dwight Sedgwick to Kyra Sedgwick.  

Recently I've been re-reading an address by Henry D. Gilpin to the Philomathean Society at the University of Pennsylvania -- sorry, book.google hasn't gotten to it yet.  I'm relying on a photocopy I made nearly twenty years back.  (But you can read James Biddle's fourth of July, 1838, speech to Gettysburg College students.)  All this reminds me of the Gilpin house at the Brandywine Battlefield State Park (see illustration above right).  We used to think that LaFayette stayed at the time of the battle.  But there's been some re-thinking of that claim of late.

So that led to me wonder.  Gilpin's not the most common name -- I bet he's related somehow to the Gideon Gilpin of Brandywine Battlefield park fame.  I'm still not quite sure of the relationship, but -- get this -- there are some Gilpin family papers on the rare book room at UNC (they come from the branch of the family that moved to Baltimore in the early nineteenth century).  The great part for me is that one of the later Gilpins became the chair of Baltimore's yacht club.

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on May 28, 2010 (boomark / email).