While doing routine ancestry research on my own family tree one day, I discovered a rather significant family connection on my mother’s side with the Quaker tradition. In doing so I also came across the surname Milhous, which I knew to be the middle name of the only Quaker American president, and began to put two and two together.
My suspicions were correct, and Richard Milhous Nixon, 37th president of the United States, was my 6th cousin, twice-removed. The linkage from my standpoint is admittedly convoluted but stems from the Penrose side of the family and is shaped like a horseshoe to get to Nixon. My great-grandmother Mary Alma Carothers’ father was John William Carothers and his mother was Elizabeth Helen Christian (1825-1889). Elizabeth’s mother was a Wylie and going back a couple more generations we come to Samuel Wylie, who married Dinah Mickle Milhous in 1744 in Ireland and began the descent back down to the present day through Dinah’s brother and his descendants until we get to Hannah Milhous, who married Francis Anthony Nixon in 1908 and the rest, so to speak, is history.
This trail would be significant even without the Nixon connection for it highlights another aspect of the story of us, namely the strong family connection to the Quaker tradition. Both the Penrose and Bousmsan families can trace their roots to the early Quaker settlements in Pennsylvania. More on these developments will come in a different installment.
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