With contributions from Doug, Sylvia and any other willing McLain
Spot the Dog (by Neal McLain)
Poor “Spot” (or “Spottie Ringtail”) as we sometimes called her. I often think of her. During WWII our family was living at Aberdeen Proving Ground (APG) in Maryland. Our dad, Stuart Mclain, was a Major in the U.S. Army. I don’t know his job was but it was important to the war effort. He must…
1918 Flu Pandemic
In 1918 Leigh McLain was at University in Carnegie Tech in Pittsburg when the Flu Pandemic struck. This is a picture of one his friend in a Pandemic tent on the campus at Carnegie. Note how far away the tent is from Leigh who took the photograph. They were probably socially distancing just like today.…
The Elliots from Leicester, New York
This is the Elliot side of the family picking hops and it was presumably taken in 1895 in Leicester, New York where Mary Helena hailed from. The man on the far left (with the impressive beard, is almost certainly John Elliot (1835-1915) and it is possible that the woman second from the right is Sophia…
Mama’s don’t let your babies grow up to be Fultons
Trying to reconstruct a McLain family tree before the 1860s is pretty impossible. Not only are the records pre-1860 not easy to locate but this task is made even more difficult by the fact that every McLain descendent of the first guy who made it to the USofA wanted to name one of their kids…
Henry’s boys
Why is this website called Henry’s boys? Well we had to start somewhere and Henry McLain is the ancestor the oldest of us can just about remember. Henry was born in the USA in Michigan right after the Civil War in 1866 and lived until 1942. He Mary Helena Elliot in 1894 and they had…
Doug’s Utopia
My ideal world would tax land, not buildings; reduce extreme wealth and poverty; and moderate climate and population problems with zero-carbon nuclear power. Here’s an article about climate collapse. It’s an excellent article but it doesn’t propose practical solutions. It asks for change of our mindsets but how to do that in our hard-headed world?…
Climate Change
Climate warming is happening faster than I ever thought it would. Carbon emissions are not slowing, the glaciers and ice caps are melting, permafrost areas are releasing more methane, and air temperatures are becoming lethal. I don’t see how we can stop the warming but we can slow it by burning less fossil fuels, electrifying…
McLain family
This is a new website that we – Doug and Sylvia – have made to keep track of all of the McLain family history we have found in old suitcases. Doug came up with the title, Henry McLain was Doug’s grandfather and Mary Helena Elliot McLain was his grandmother. Henry and Mary had four sons…
McLain family tree
Here is the McLain family tree, we think. We’ve stuck with the people that made it to the USA and have ignored our forefathers. The majority of them seemed to show up in New York or New England from County Antrim in Northern Ireland. They seem like suitably dour folks, non-drinkers and pretty conservative. Hopefully…
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Henry's boys 