Lucy Ann Sutton had a long line of descendants, and my children stand at the very end of that line. Hundreds might claim membership in the clan she began with her husband, Thomas Osgood Bradley, though it's unlikely more than a few would. Every time someone asks about the portrait of Lucy Ann, penciled in Buenos Aires in 1888 and now hanging on my dining room wall in Charlottesville, Virginia, I am pulled back to her story. The date is familiar, etched in my mind for the last two and a half years—it’s the same year the Piccirilli family arrived in New York. If I were to remove myself from the story, there would be no connection between Lucy Ann Sutton and the Piccirilli Brothers. The only link, if there is one, is this: I descend from a woman who died in Buenos Aires the same year the Piccirilli came to America.
In Le Mot Just, a film I made almost twenty years ago, Hector Tizon said humans have been moving and migrating from one corner of the world to the next since the beginning of time. He suggested that, most likely, we all come from somewhere else. This arbitrary connection between Lucy Ann and the Piccirilli is a reflection of that idea.
Lucy Ann Sutton was born in Portland, Maine, in 1804, possibly making her part of the second generation of free Americans. Her father was Richard Sutton, her mother, Lucy Lord. After marrying Thomas Osgood Bradley on June 23, 1827, she migrated to Buenos Aires. Calvin Coolidge was president of the United States then, and the United Provinces of the River Plate were struggling to find their place among the concert of newly independent nations of the Southern Hemisphere. I suspect Lucy Ann’s father sailed south to secure the Monroe Doctrine. In fact, these are more than mere suspicions.
Lucy Ann and Thomas Osgood had nine children, all born in what would soon be known as the Republic of Argentina. One of the boys, Richard, is also my ancestor, and I have his portrait too, hanging next to that of his mother, father, and grandparents. I can’t say Richard looks at all like me. Buenos Aires was (and still is) a melting pot, where his English blood mixed in ways that were both predictable and surprising. According to my latest DNA test, I’m 24% English; the rest is scattered across the map, with the largest share—54%—coming from the Eastern European Jews brought into the mix by my mother’s ancestors.
Lucy Ann and her husband were as Anglican as their peers, but in Buenos Aires, converting to the Roman creed was part of the process of becoming a resident in the former Spanish colony. She died on December 4, 1888, surrounded by her children and grandchildren in Buenos Aires. By then, the Piccirilli had settled into their new home on East 55th Street, with a foothold firmly planted on this side of the Atlantic.
I insist, there is no connection between Lucy Ann Sutton and the Piccirilli Brothers—unless, of course, serendipity counts as a valid argument.
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