Showing posts with label Family. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Family. Show all posts
Friday, April 10, 2009
The History
My mom’s side of the family tree is pretty complicated and lately my mom’s aunt has been obsessed with gathering pictures and family history and what not. My mom has been sending her all the stuff she has from my grandpa, who died of emphysema before I was born.
I know all about my dad’s side of the family: They were all in the Holocaust and very few survived. They are all living in Israel or Germany now. But when it came to my mom’s side, I didn’t know much at all.
This is what I have learned: The family was incredibly rich because they OWNED Brooklyn. Yes, owned. There was this one picture of this lady in a really pretty dress with jewels all over it that my mom had and she told me they were super rich because they owned Brooklyn. I guess they sold it somewhere along the line. There is also a street in New York called Fleet Street, as in the demon barber of Fleet Street. Well, my families name was Fleet, which turned into Speir, which turned into Rounds, which is my mom’s maiden name. So there was a famous doctor in the family named Dr. Samuel Fleet Speir. I decided to Google him and this is what I found: SPEIR, Samuel Fleet, surgeon, born in Brooklyn, New York, 9 April, 1838. He was educated at the Brooklyn polytechnic institute and at the medical department of the University of the city of New York, where he was graduated in 1860, with three prizes. He also received the prize essay gold medal from the American medical association in 1864. After spending two years in study abroad, chiefly in Paris, he settled in his native city, where he still (1888) practices his profession. Dr. Speir has been connected with various hospitals and dispensaries, and during the civil war served under the United States sanitary commission, He has contributed to professional literature and is the inventor of a new method of arresting surgical hemorrhage by artery-constriction, for which he received a prize from the State medical society in 1871, and of a new method for the differential diagnosis of morbid growths, based on the examination of minute specimens.
Maybe I should have gone to medical school after all. I could have been a famous OB/GYN. How freaking insane is all that. I knew fame ran in the family. :)
I know all about my dad’s side of the family: They were all in the Holocaust and very few survived. They are all living in Israel or Germany now. But when it came to my mom’s side, I didn’t know much at all.
This is what I have learned: The family was incredibly rich because they OWNED Brooklyn. Yes, owned. There was this one picture of this lady in a really pretty dress with jewels all over it that my mom had and she told me they were super rich because they owned Brooklyn. I guess they sold it somewhere along the line. There is also a street in New York called Fleet Street, as in the demon barber of Fleet Street. Well, my families name was Fleet, which turned into Speir, which turned into Rounds, which is my mom’s maiden name. So there was a famous doctor in the family named Dr. Samuel Fleet Speir. I decided to Google him and this is what I found: SPEIR, Samuel Fleet, surgeon, born in Brooklyn, New York, 9 April, 1838. He was educated at the Brooklyn polytechnic institute and at the medical department of the University of the city of New York, where he was graduated in 1860, with three prizes. He also received the prize essay gold medal from the American medical association in 1864. After spending two years in study abroad, chiefly in Paris, he settled in his native city, where he still (1888) practices his profession. Dr. Speir has been connected with various hospitals and dispensaries, and during the civil war served under the United States sanitary commission, He has contributed to professional literature and is the inventor of a new method of arresting surgical hemorrhage by artery-constriction, for which he received a prize from the State medical society in 1871, and of a new method for the differential diagnosis of morbid growths, based on the examination of minute specimens.
Maybe I should have gone to medical school after all. I could have been a famous OB/GYN. How freaking insane is all that. I knew fame ran in the family. :)
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