Thompson Family History

I’m not sure when this whole ancestry thing became an obsession. I probably should have realized I’d gone too far when my own children, my own wife, got sick and tired of hearing me tell dinner-table stories about my ancestors. I still can’t understand why they aren’t interested — aren’t these their relatives too? Maybe the [...]

Marie Gingras Pickering lived her life, warts and all, under the harsh magnifying glass of the San Francisco society pages, judging by the countless references made to her and her family in newspaper accounts during the early 1900s. A cursory search reveals that she hosted countless bridge and tea parties, always with elaborate flower decorations; served as a patroness of a [...]

In the early 1880s, Frederick Manthano Pickering set out to make his fortune. He traveled more than 3000 miles by covered wagon from his hometown of Portland, Maine, all the way across the country to San Francisco. Two years later, he sent for his childhood sweetheart, Marie Gingras. Marie’s route was more circuitous, but equally daring. Taking her Hope Chest, which remains [...]

Julius Kruttschnitt, Jr., and his wife, Marie Rose Pickering, married six months ahead of plan, much to the dismay of Pickering’s mother, according to a September 25, 1907 article from the San Francisco Call. Apparently, the ceremony at the Pickering household, was pulled together so quickly that Kruttschnitt’s parents didn’t  even attend. He’s quoted in the paper as having no idea [...]