ROOTS & BRANCHES

I came to the conclusion, much to my horror, that I never appear to have mentioned my long-time friend and old journalism colleague Edward Mason “Ted” Anthony IV in the “Roots & Branches” column.

Which is a shame on so many levels since even back when he was a somewhat wet-behind-the-ears police reporter for The Patriot-News in Harrisburg, PA, and I was a trending-toward-curmudgeon copy editor at the same paper, Anthony told me he had researched his family history to an immigrant ancestor, the supposed Portuguese sea captain Manoel Antonio (A pirate? How that would add to family lore!).

That was then. The reality now is that Anthony has worked his way up to a high-level post in the Associated Press and in his spare time has a delightful Substack blog that he calls “Unsorted but Significant” with many interesting outtakes from his life as well as events he has covered as a journalist.

In a recent post, Anthony celebrated the 200^th anniversary of the original Edward Mason Anthony’s birth in 1826 with a post headlined “Go Fourth and Multiply” (I think my copy editor’s headline skills rubbed off on him!).

Much of the post consisted of a letter to the original Edward, addressed in typical Ted fashion to the Ohio cemetery in which his original namesake reposes.

All along in his dialogue with his ancestor (who isn’t his great-grandfather as I originally supposed since there was a generation that skipped the name), Anthony has visuals of documents and family photos that complement his writing.

He has a full-family photo with more than a dozen people from 1897, just a few years after the original Edward Mason Anthony died, as well as the only photo he has of the “original” namesake.

He shows the family’s U.S. Census enumeration in 1880 from what was then Rockport, Ohio (which Anthony notes with a journalist’s—and genealogist’s!—penchant for accuracy is now North Olmstead).

There’s a photo of the man he calls “Edwardus Interruptus,” the original Edward’s son Hubert Mason Anthony.

And he peppers his letter with sage references to Thornton Wilder’s Our Town.

He also asks his ancestor poignant questions with unknowable answers, such as his life in the Civil War with two brothers serving and why he did not.

There is so much good writing in “Go Fourth and Multiply” that I’m hoping many “Roots & Branches” readers go to look it up, and I don’t want to steal too much of the thunder from Anthony’s prose, but I’ll give one more reveal: There is an Edward Mason Anthony V, currently making a name for himself in the Nashville music world.

Anthony’s name for his Substack comes from a file folder he found going through his late linguist father’s voluminous files, a tender nod to a well-organized man who lived into his 90s.

You can see and subscribe to Anthony’s Substack at the URL, https://unsortedbutsignificant.substack.com/