This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Classification: Biography Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/TmQ.2ACIB/2215 Message Board Post: Chapter One of the book announced below discusses the history of the CURTIS family of Dorset VT. Zachariah CURTIS (1719-1805) was the grandfather of Polly CURTIS (1786-1864) who married Elisha PETTY (1780-1865), the grandfather of book’s central figure, McKendree Petty. Announcing the publication of a new family history, "McKENDREE: THE LIFE OF McKENDREE PETTY (1827-1887), Professor at the University of Vermont and Minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church, with Biographical Sketches of his Ancestors, Descendants, and other Kinfolk in New England, New York, and Beyond," by Edward H. Worthen, retired professor at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh. Researched for a decade and illustrated with over 150 portraits, photographs, and historical documents, this book recounts the history of several prominent New England and New York families, including ALLERTON, CHASE, CURTIS, CUSHMAN, PARMELEE, PETTY, SHUTE, TRUAX, WHITEHORN, and others. Woven through the account are key events in American history from the Mayflower voyage through the First World War, with special emphasis given to 19th-century movements in which McKendree Petty and those close to him participated, such as the abolition of slavery, the growth of higher education, a! nd the spread of Methodism. Includes an index, bibliography, and genealogical tables. 286 pages, 8.5 by 10 inches, hardbound, Smyth-sewn, with color plate section. --- Contents: Chapter One traces the ancestry of McKendree Petty from John PETTY and Ann CANNING of Springfield, Mass., through the families of his grandparents Elisha Petty, Polly CURTIS, Clark WHITEHORN, and Lucretia TEFFT, all citizens of Vermont. Chapter Two discusses the family history of McKendree Petty's wife, Eliza Jane TRUAX, the 4x great-granddaughter of New Amsterdam (New York City) settlers Philippe DU TRIEUX and Suzanne DU CHESNE. The centerpiece, Chapter Three, draws on McKendree Petty's extensive diaries as well as documents in the archives of the University of Vermont and the Troy Conference of the Methodist Church to tell the life story of the book's central figure, detailing his early years and education in Vermont, his legal training in Louisiana during slavery, his thirty-two-year career! as a professor of mathematics, and his concurrent service as a distin guished Methodist minister in and around Burlington, Vermont. Chapter Four treats at length the lives of his eight children and the families into which they married. Chapters Five and Six trace the ancestry of McKendree Petty's daughter-in-law Etta Chase PARMELEE, on her father's side the 5x great-granddaughter of Thomas CUSHMAN and the last Mayflower survivor Mary ALLERTON, on her mother's side the granddaughter of Methodist minister the Rev. John CHASE and Roxanna SHUTE of Champlain, New York. --- Limited edition, $39.95 US, post paid within the United States and Canada. For ordering information, please write to pettyw@comcast.net.