CLOSE one-name study

OK, I've taken up the challenge: the Guild of One-Name Studies has challenged its members to commit to producing ten blog posts within 3 months in 2020.  If you look back at the list of my previous blogs, you'll see that's a massive increase in activity!   Over the years that I've been studying the surname CLOSE (and variants, including CLOSS) I have collected data on over 27,000 individuals, so there's no shortage of material.   To start things off, let's look at today's date: 16th December - 345 years ago today, on 16th December 1674, a certain Thomas CLOSE was born in what is now Fairfield, Connecticut, USA (although of course it wasn't the USA then!), the third of ten children.  His father, also Thomas (c1637-1709), had been brought across the Atlantic from Grinton, Yorkshire, England by his  father, known as Goodman John CLOSE (c1600 - 1653). Although the CLOSE surname appears to have died out among the descendants of Thomas b 1674, it has c

Congratulations to Glenn Close for picking up the best actress award at today's Screen Actors Guild ceremony for her role in The Wife.   Glenn is descended from the Fairfield, Connecticut line of CLOSEs, her 9th great-grandfather being Goodman John CLOSE, born about 1600, who emigrated from Swaledale, Yorkshire around 1640.   I like to regard her as a VERY distant cousin, since I also have Swaledale ancestry:my 3rd great-grandfather James CLOSE (born about 1754) originated from there. Although I haven't been able to establish a direct line to a common ancestor, through the wonders of Y-DNA testing it has been established that at least two male descendants of Goodman John CLOSE from different branches in the USA are a close (geddit?) match with two male descendants of 'my' James CLOSE, also from different branches. There's a common CLOSE ancestor back there somewhere - but will we ever find him?