Winds & Bloodlines

Recipient of the Texas State Genealogical Society's 2023 Grand Prize across all writing categories, Winds & Bloodlines: Our People, Our Stories is a novel treatment of family legacy and historical analysis. Civil, economic, and religious unrest establish the causes behind the Morse and Brogdon family migrations out of Europe and into the Americas with significant sidebars devoted to the Lanier musical dynasty of the English Renaissance, the spectral unrest of New Haven's ill-fated Tuttles, the Bollings and Scotts of Virginia plantations, and other related families.

Drawing from primary documents, letters, oral histories, secondary sources, and personal memorabilia, major themes with broader implications for the regional histories of New England, the Antebellum South, and Texas emerge. Heartbreak and hope, love and hate, escape and homecoming intertwine in divergent narratives. An attempt is made to gather official records, conflicting memories, and DNA evidence into a coherent record.

This work includes a reference key, surname listings, and genealogical connections. Its flagship chapter chronicles the pioneer and Civil War experiences of the Fishers and Boldings of Mississippi, followed by the Morse family's Texas saga. Readers will encounter haunting tales of violence, material culture analysis, an oral history of the 1953 Waco tornado, and philosophical reflections on family history's role in reclaiming humanity's intrinsic identity. A family pictorial gallery and index conclude the volume.