In a message dated 4/6/10 1:04:22 PM, [email protected] writes:
> I'd be interested in your New England background. Where, and does it mea > an early American family? > > It does and it doesn't. I was adopted. My adoptive mother was born Lena Allen in South Hamilton, MA, and she said one of her ancestors was Ethan Ellen, he of Vermont's "Green Mountain Boys" in Revolutionary times. Since Ethan Allen came from Connecticut, I had doubts about Lena's claim, but I have no confirming documents one way or the other. I was born Michael Griffin in Boston, to an unmarried Irish immigrant from Galway. My blood father was also an Irish immigrant from Tuam, a town just north of Galway town. My blood mother had a cousin who was a Jesuit priest; except for him I was the first on either side of the family to go to college. Lena, her husband and I moved to Stamford Connecticut when I was eight. Except for my time away in college and grad school, and two years in the army, that's where I lived till I moved to New York at 27. In sum, I can boast of no distinguished ancestry -- in New England or anywhere else. But I have remained a loyal Boston Red Sox fan all my life.
