Ancestry

I'm not really one for genealogy, but sometimes a simple family tree is all you need to be able to make sense of a biography. Whenever Ray Bradbury is biographised [find out if that is a real word - Ed.], his biographers have a tendency to trace his family history back to two solid points:

• the first Bradbury to arrive in the Americas (Thomas Bradbury in 1634)
• Mary Bradbury, accused of witchcraft in Salem (in 1692)

Unfortunately, there are a good ten generations between Thomas, Mary and Ray; ten generations in which certain names get re-used: there are a lot of Hinkstons, Spauldings and Samuels in the family. I find it difficult to keep my head straight when a biographer is talking about "Samuel Bradbury" - do they mean Samuel IRVING Bradbury, Samuel HINKSTON Bradbury, Samuel Hinkston Bradbury JUNIOR, or one of several plain old Samuel Bradburys (no suffix, no middle name)?

Oddly, none of the biographers has thought to provide a family tree. Maybe they are as confused about all this as I am...

To resolve the problem, I had to draw up a family tree myself, based on information gleaned from various sources. Most helpful were The Bradbury Chronicles by Sam Weller and Red Planet, Flaming Phoenix, Green Town by Marvin E. Mengeling. I had to cross-check some information on full names and dates using www.rootsweb.ancestry.com, an excellent genealogy resource, although one which is prone to occasional error since, like Wikipedia, anyone can contribute to it.

No doubt there will be some real genealogists who will be unhappy that I haven't filled in every branch of the Bradbury family tree. My excuse is that I created this to help me make sense of the biographies I was reading. Uncles Bion, Inar and Lester seem to have been influential on Bradbury's life and art - so they are shown. Their spouses and offspring don't seem to have been so influential - so they are left out.

See for yourself: click the image below to reveal my attempt at the Bradbury family tree: