Family History
My parents grew up on the East Coast.
I don't know a lot about my mother. She was from a very wealthy family. My mother's father, my grandfather Ben, was an amazing person, deserves more than belongs in this section.
His family has a castle in Maine in a town named after them. I have gone to some family reunions there, but never really felt like part of the family, partly because my parents rejected their upbringing to some extent, partly because my mother died when I was young, and partly because my mother's sister and brother seem to have been somewhat antisocial.
My mother's mother, Elizabeth, went by Tana. After Ben divorced her, she married someone else, who died, and then married Charlie Bird. I would go to her house in Mancehster, Massacheusettes, for a week or two during summers when my family made the trip East from California. She and Charlie had an estate in Ireland, which I visited once when I lived in Ireland.
Tana always seemed a little stern, but she was also generous, for example sending money every Christmas. On top of whatever she got from Ben in the divorce, she had inherited significant wealth from the Merril family that had apparently been involved in timber harvesting.
My father was named after his father, so he was John Phelps West Junior. He went by Jay, an homage to our common ancestor John Jay Phelps, who I think is actually this guy:
I thought I had heard that John Jay Phelps was the first person to circumnavigate the globe in a boat that he personally owned, but I haven't found anything to confirm this. My father did some research on this and related topics, but I have never reviewed it.
I should probably mention here that my family history probably makes it sound like I was born into significant wealth, but that's actually quite misleading. My family has a history of making a fortune in one generation and squandering it in greed the next. I did inherit some family trusts, but not a lot of cash or anything else. I would say I somehow grew up relatively poor in California but with occasional access to a rich lifestyle, such as ski trips and flights to family homes in Cape Cod and Manchester by the Sea in Massacheusettes. I've been much more successful on my own.
Technically, I am John Phelps West III, and my older son is John Phelps West - without the IV because the III always felt somewhat pretentious to me and caused problems for computer systems.
My father's family lived in New Jersey, I think in or near Hoboken, and spent summers in Cape Cod, Massacheusetts, in a family home named Malabara that has since been torn down. Supposedly, his first words were something like "Mom, there's a horse in the yard chasing Nancy", where Nancy was the oldest of his sisters. He had two other sisters, Betsy and Wendy, and a brother named Davenport, AKA Davey.
Nancy ended up in California, so we spent some time together, but I never really spent much time with the others except when they happened to be in Cape Cod during my family's visits. My father sailed, read a lot of books, and went to Exeter and Princeton for a degree in English litterature. He "married up" into the "blue bloods".
My father's father was a mechanical engineer that worked for Johnson and Johnson. Before he died, I was able to send him a copy of my other book about the software products of a company in which I was a partner, with an inscription something like "from one engineer to another, for when you need help falling asleep" (software developer sometimes call themselves engineers).
One family story is that this grandfather was someohow involved in the design of the metal cans for the Bandaids product. They were well-off, but not filthy rich. Semi-related fun fact: In grade school, I knew a girl with an ancestor that supposedly invented Scotch tape. Her family was apparently relatively wealthy.
Before my parents got married, they had a daughter, which they gave up for adoption. I've never looked for her or advertised myself. I don't know her name (I think I heard maybe Anne), whether she knew she was adopted, or even whether she's alive.
My dad was a radar operator on a ship during the American conflict in Southeast Asia. Suppsedly, the family somehow learned that he would be drafted, so he signed up to join the Navy.
My older brother Tim appeared in October of 1971, when my parents were living in a house in Sonoma, I think on Walnut Drive. Supposedly, my mother wouldn't let my father name him John, but she obviously lost this battle when it came to their second son, me. I think they were living in that home when I was born in April of 1973, but I have no memory of that house except for a vague recolection of a photograph of my parents and probably Tim in front of it.
Some time after I was born, my parents moved to 123 Series Drive in Sonoma.
My parents had my brother Adrian in 1975. His name is Adrian because they had expected a girl and decided on the name before his birth, but also possibly after Hadrian's Wall, which somehow resonated in my father's mind.