Pictured: Brenton Simons, Nancy Maulsby (Board Chairman, New England Historic Genealogical Society) and our distinguished honoree, David McCullough, at a dinner held by NEHGS in his honor on April 27, 2018, in Boston.
On the evening of Friday, April 27, 2018, the New England Historic Genealogical Society & American Ancestors honored an American legend, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author David McCullough with a gala Family History Benefit Dinner at the Fairmont Copley Hotel in Boston. Joining us to moderate a conversation with David about his fascinating life and career was another friend of NEHGS, the bestselling author, Stacy Schiff, and my colleague Ryan Woods, presented him with outr Lifetime Achievement Award. My role at the gala was to present David with a detailed family history prepared by our genealogists, in a team led by Chief Genealogist David Allen Lambert. I chose to focus on some of the "surprises" in his ancestry, including much New England ancestry and a double descent from Mayflower passenger Richard Warren, as well as unveiling his "Literary Family Tree," which included kinships to other great American authors, including his newfound cousins: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Emily Dickinson, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, among others. David was obviously surprised and thrilled with the family history!