Alice L. Priest was a genealogist during the early part of last century. She was a life member of the New England Historic Genealogical Society and her obituary appears in the Register at 109:65-66. Her gravestone is here.
She was an authority on the Priest family name. One can only imagine that she knew that Degory Priest was on the Mayflower. She also knew that he had only two daughters, one of whom married a Coombs and the other a Pratt. One Pratt granddaughter married a Swan. With the confluence of Swan and Priest, I imagine Alice was very excited to find in her mother's Caldwell ancestry, Elizabeth (Swan) Caldwell, who happens to be the sister of my ancestress Margaret (Swan) Learned. Alice then researched and published two rather lengthy treatises on the Swan and Russell families during the 1930s. The parents of Elizabeth and Margaret were William and Mary (Russell) Swan. I'm guessing she was surprised to find out that despite their very English sounding names (Russell and Swan), that William and Mary's parents were all immigrants from Ireland in the 1718 exodus from that country. She expertly tracked John Swan and Robert Russell from Stow, Mass. were they both first appear in records about 1730 to Lunenburg, Mass. and then up to New Hampshire. Not many people realize there was such a large immigration to New England from Ireland, specifically northern Ireland at that time. However, I have several ancestors in addition to the Russells and Swans that fit the bill: the Archibalds, Thompsons, and Robinsons, all immigrated in the early 18th century and almost immediately started marrying into the established puritans already here.
In any case, a genealogical blogger asked a week or so ago, what genealogist living or dead would you like to meet. After careful consideration, I would definitely like to have met Alice Priest.
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