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Behind the Names

The book began with a gift. In 1984, Dr. Gober's mother, Linda Rose Pelton, gave her father a hand-assembled poster tracing his line eight generations back to England. Her father, Raymond, could no longer say much. He pointed at the names and cried.

Behind the Names follows three family lines to one marriage. The Peltons crossed from Essex, England, to Dorchester, Massachusetts, in the 1630s and spent three centuries moving north and west through Connecticut, Vermont, Upper Canada, and Michigan. The Greys farmed the hill country of northern Kentucky and crossed the river to Cincinnati. The Irwins worked as tradesmen in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, for more than a century before heading west. In 1949, Raymond Pelton married Gloria Grey in Comstock Park, Michigan.

The poster gave a name, a few dates, and a birthplace for each generation. This book goes behind those names: the places, the records, and the times each family lived through, along with the half of the family the poster left out.

Scheduled for release on Amazon in November 2027.