It runs from the first modern humans walking out of Africa, through the forests of Anglo-Saxon England, across the Atlantic to Woburn, Massachusetts in 1637, and down without a break to the Tidds of today. Here is the whole story, written to be read aloud at a family table.
It runs from the first modern humans walking out of Africa, through the forests of Anglo-Saxon England, across the Atlantic to Woburn, Massachusetts in 1637, and down without a break to three children named Alice, Miles & Mason. Here is the whole story, written to be read aloud at a family table.
The name Tidd is pre-8th-century Old English. A tid-man was the keeper of a tithing, a group of ten households. The deep paternal line runs through haplogroup R1b, the signature of Bronze-Age Britain, carried by more than 70% of English men today.
In 1637, John Tidd, a tailor from Hertfordshire, sailed from the Isle of Wight and helped found Woburn, Massachusetts. He served as a sergeant of the town's training band well before there was a United States to defend.
At dawn on April 19, 1775, John Tidd of the direct line stood in Captain Parker's company at the opening fight of the Revolution. Among the last to leave the Common, he was ridden down by a British officer, struck with a sword, robbed, and left for dead. He lived. See his place in the line →
The bloodlines include a man hanged for plotting to overthrow the British Cabinet (1820), one of John Brown's Harpers Ferry raiders, a three-star Navy admiral who fathered two more flag officers, and Paul Roscher, who flew a B-17 over Germany.
Only about 1 in 1.6 million people on Earth carry the surname, yet you'll find Tidds in 20 countries. Three-quarters live in the Americas; the rest cluster in England, Canada and Australia. Watch the map breathe over four centuries.
A Lexington family letter of 1840 survives, written on stationery printed with the anti-slavery emblem “Am I Not a Man and a Brother?” Inside, R. M. Tidd counts the neighbours who voted the abolitionist Liberty ticket, notes a lecture by the famous Rev. Samuel J. May, and mentions the “Antislavery Library” a relative carried west.
Read the whole letter in the Archive →Grandpa John, Grandma Paula and Dad Jon each had their DNA sequenced. Put side by side, their results resolve a mystery in Jon's own data, reveal a longevity gene that survived every generation, and mark one variant that all three carry, and that every one of the kids is guaranteed to inherit.
Open the family genome →Fourteen generations, one continuous line of inheritance, genetic and otherwise. Walk it name by name →
The direct bloodline itself: fourteen generations name by name, each with its headstone, deed, letter or book page as proof.
Walk the line → IOut of Africa, into England, across the ocean, over the Alleghenies. A hundred thousand years mapped as one journey.
Follow the path → IIFounders, conspirators, abolitionist raiders, admirals and airmen, quoted in their own words.
The founder of the line, Sgt. John Tidd of Woburn, in his own century's words.
Meet them → IIIA world map and a U.S. map that play. Watch the family spread and concentrate from the 1600s to now.
Press play → IVThree generations of real DNA, longevity genes, the traits the kids will carry, and one resolved mystery.
Read the code → VReal photographs from a 2010 pilgrimage: 1696 gravestones, the Tidd House, Tidd Avenue, an 1840 abolitionist letter, a schoolmaster's town tribute, and deeds and receipts going back to 1729, all flattened and transcribed.
Open the album → VIEvery book, record and archive, with links, descriptions, conflicts flagged, and the best reads starred.
Check the record → ✦Best read top to bottom, like a story. Begin 100,000 years ago and end at the dinner table.
Begin →