The Annotator
Still unidentified as of April 2026. A child of Le Roy Warren Swift (“Papa”) and a daughter of the Winter family (“Mama”). She sat down with 49 family photographs — some dating to the 1840s — and wrote labels in blue ink.
“My father Le Roy W. Swift.”
“My Mother’s mother. Elizabeth Arden.”
“Mama she was so pretty.”
Without her, the Winter-Swift photo collection is a box of anonymous faces. With her ink, it is a family archive spanning 170 years.
She is the founder of this project. We are still searching for her name. If you recognize her handwriting or know the children of Le Roy Warren Swift, please contact us through the form on our About page.
Thankful Jenkins (1776)
Daughter of James Jenkins (1735, DAR Patriot). Married Captain Nathaniel Swift (FamilySearch PID MF8H-YW2). This marriage connected the Jenkins line to the Swift line.
Through her mother’s side, the Jenkins family connects to the Green family (Rebecca Green, 1710) and through them to James Green (1640). Every Cincinnati application currently under research depends on Thankful Jenkins’s marriage.
She is not a hyphen between two men’s names. She is the bridge.
Rebecca Green (1710)
Daughter of Samuel Green, granddaughter of James Green (1640, FamilySearch PID LTVK-5Z4). Married John Jenkins (1709). Connected the Green line to the Jenkins line.
Four vacant Society of the Cincinnati seats exist because of the family she joined to the family she came from.
Mary Coffin Starbuck (1645–1717) — The Great Woman
Tristram Coffin’s granddaughter. Married Nathaniel Starbuck. The most powerful person on Nantucket — called “the Great Woman” by contemporaries.
Her conversion to Quakerism in 1702, after a visit by missionary John Richardson, converted the entire island. Quaker values shaped the whaling culture: equality between the sexes meant women ran businesses while men were at sea. Black sailors found work on whaling ships, some even as captains. The community operated with unusual egalitarianism for the era.
She created the social infrastructure that made the whaling economy possible. See the Nantucket founding page for the full story.
Herodias Long (c. 1623–1686)
One of the earliest women to publicly dissent from Massachusetts Bay religious authority. Publicly whipped in Weymouth and in Boston in the 1650s for preaching Quaker doctrine — an incident documented in contemporary Puritan court records. After the whippings, she settled in Rhode Island as part of the dissenting community that formed around Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson, where religious conscience was protected by charter.
Ancestor of John, Perry, and Patrick Long through the seventeenth-century Rhode Island settlement that anchors their maternal descent. A full spotlight page is planned; this entry is the current placeholder of record.
The Whaling Wives
When men left on two-to-four-year whaling voyages, the women ran the economy at home — managing households, finances, family businesses, and community institutions in their absence.
Anna Folger — Lucretia Mott’s mother — ran the family mercantile business, trading oils and candles in Boston. Nantucket women managed finances, raised children alone, ran shops, and held civic roles that would have been unthinkable in mainland Puritan communities.
The roofwalks on Nantucket houses — the “widow’s walks” — were where women watched for returning ships. Some watched for years. Some watched forever.
The whaling industry was built by the men who sailed and the women who stayed.
Lucretia Coffin Mott (1793–1880)
Born on Nantucket. Father: Captain Thomas Coffin (our Coffin line). Mother: Anna Folger (our Folger line). Benjamin Franklin’s cousin.
Quaker minister. Abolitionist. Co-organizer of the Seneca Falls Convention (1848). Co-author of the Declaration of Sentiments. President of the American Equal Rights Association. Her home was a stop on the Underground Railroad. Co-founded Swarthmore College.
Going on the back of the redesigned $10 bill.
The greatest American woman of the nineteenth century came from our two Nantucket families.
Abiah Folger (1667–1752)
Daughter of Peter Folger of Nantucket. Married Josiah Franklin, a Boston tallow chandler. Raised seventeen children. Her son Benjamin became the most famous American of his century.
We know her name because of her son. We should know her name because she raised him.
Elizabeth Arden (c. 1830s)
Surfaced in Session 43 from an ambrotype case held in the family archive, with a period handwritten label: “My Mother’s mother. Elizabeth Arden.”
Wife of Richmond C. Winter (1839–1912). The photograph shows a young woman in a snood with drop earrings, circa 1850s–1860s. Fall River / New Bedford area. Arden maiden-line research is ongoing — see the Warren & Arden page for current status.
She is documented in the family archive through an inherited ambrotype with a period ink label — primary evidence held in direct family possession.
Rachel Warren (c. 1840s)
Papa’s mother. Documented through an oval portrait by photographer Lotte Gützlaff, held in the family archive, with a period label identifying her as Leroy E. Swift’s wife and the annotator’s paternal grandmother. Her maiden name was preserved in her son’s middle name: Le Roy Warren Swift — corroborating evidence from a second independent source.
The Warren surname enters our line through Rachel T. Warren of Pennsylvania (b. 1843, FamilySearch PID M3PX-PV2), daughter of Isaac Warren (b. 1812 PA, d. 1885, PID G9LH-3SV). Whether this Isaac Warren line — dead-ending at b. 1812 PA in current records — connects to either the Mayflower Warren family of Plymouth or the Edward Warren / Margaret Arden line of Maryland remains open research. Pre-1812 Pennsylvania Warren records exist in the Pennsylvania State Archives and Quaker Monthly Meeting books (notably Menallen MM in Adams County), but are not yet documented in our archive. See Warren & Arden.