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Ancestor   Listen
noun
Ancestor  n.  
1.
One from whom a person is descended, whether on the father's or mother's side, at any distance of time; a progenitor; a fore father.
2.
(Biol.) An earlier type; a progenitor; as, this fossil animal is regarded as the ancestor of the horse.
3.
(Law) One from whom an estate has descended; the correlative of heir.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Ancestor" Quotes from Famous Books



... Margaret in his twenty-fourth year, and by this time they would have begun to rear a promising family. For he was the offspring of tradition; and the seeds of that strange flower, which some adventurous ancestor had strewn in his soul, could not have broken through the compact soil in which he had grown. If he had never felt the charm of the unknown, he would have remained satisfied to accept convention for romance; ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow

... variously spelt, have been used indifferently by father and son of the same family for more than three hundred years, and are so used at the present day.[1] The late Mr. Tazewell thought that his name was originally spelt Tazouille, and that the ancestor emigrated from France to England before the revocation of the edict of Nantes, and I leaned to this opinion on another occasion; but, apart from the absence of all evidence to sustain this opinion, ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby

... to say that I had told you, without mentioning that it was in a severely abridged form. He'd want to start back in the eighteenth century, and tell you all about that discreditable and unreconstructed Tory ancestor of mine who, when he was exiled from Ashley, is said to have carried off part of the town documents with him to Canada. Whether he did or not (Mr. Bayweather has a theory, I believe, that he buried them in a copper kettle on Peg-Top Hill), the fact remains that an important part of the records ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... regard for every member of the family, yet without compare Sir Conolly, commonly called, for short, amongst his friends, Sir Condy Rackrent, was ever my great favourite, and, indeed, the most universally beloved man I had ever seen or heard of, not excepting his great ancestor Sir Patrick, to whose memory he, amongst other instances of generosity, erected a handsome marble stone in the church of Castle Rackrent, setting forth in large letters his age, birth, parentage, and many other ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... Washington was connected with as many as forty different things, they came to the very convenient conclusion that he was really come to ask of Congress compensation for extraordinary services rendered the government by his dead ancestor, (living ones he had none,) during the war of 1812, such being very common at this day. And as nothing could be more fatal to a claim before Congress than the fact that it was founded in honesty, the lobby screw would swear by ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"

... in, And bade him follow: so indeed he did. The torrent roar'd, and we did buffet it With lusty sinews, throwing it aside And stemming it with hearts of controversy; But ere we could arrive the point proposed, Caesar cried, "Help me, Cassius, or I sink! I, as Aeneas, our great ancestor, Did from the flames of Troy upon his shoulder The old Anchises bear, so from the waves of Tiber Did I the tired Caesar: and this man Is now become a god; and Cassius is A wretched creature, and must bend his body, If ...
— Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]

... had also prevailed, aided by the whites, in the conflict with his father, the hapless but noble Miantonimoh. Fate had now decreed, that the same evil star, which had governed the destinies of the ancestor, should extend its influence to the ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper

... often surrounded by a broad belt or mark of virgin forest. It consisted of a clearing like those of the American backwoods, where a single family or kindred had made its home, and preserved its separate independence intact. Each of these families was known by the name of its real or supposed ancestor, the patronymic being formed by the addition of the syllable ing. Thus the descendants of AElla would be called AEllings, and their ham or stockade would be known as AEllingaham, or in modern form Allingham. So the tun or enclosure of the Culmings would be Culmingatun, similarly ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen

... Your revered ancestor, my boy, according to the Bhils, has a tiger of his own—a saddle-tiger that he rides round the country whenever he feels inclined. I don't call it decent in an ex-Collector's ghost; but that is what the Southern Bhils believe. Even our men, ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling

... animals; he was the teacher who first instructed men in the arts of fishing and hunting; he imparted to the Algonkins the mysteries of their religious rites; he taught them picture writing and the interpretation of dreams; nay, far more than that, he was the original ancestor, not only of their nation, but of the whole race of man, and, in fact, was none other than the primal Creator himself, who fashioned the earth and gave life to all ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton

... Virginia's history lived William Randolph, of Turkey Island (a plantation some 15 or 20 miles from the city of Richmond, near the scene of the terrific battle of Malvern Hill). He was the ancestor of all of that name in Virginia, and from him was descended in direct line Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, and Robert E. Lee; the last-named the father of our departed friend. How could he have manifested in his life less patriotism, justice, ...
— Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of William H. F. Lee (A Representative from Virginia) • Various

... see the unhappy Lady Cullumpton, the most famous of all the Exwood ghosts," said Mrs. Dole; "my ancestor, you know, Sir Gervase Cullumpton, murdered his young bride in a fit of jealousy while they were on a visit to Exwood. He strangled her in the stables with a stirrup leather, just after they had come in from riding, and she is ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki

... answered. 'Impressions fade, and the intellect fails to accept them. But I do not think that is my motive. We know that a wicked deed was done by our ancestor, and we hardly have the right to pray, "Remember not the sins of our forefathers," unless, now that we know the crime, we attempt what ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge

... less food they roused from their lethargy. Then it was that they became savage, snapping creatures, with no more affection for man than has the wild wolf, which was their ancestor. Long Tom Ham declared that Skipper Zeb's dogs were the most "oncivil team of ...
— Left on the Labrador - A Tale of Adventure Down North • Dillon Wallace

... the off-shoot from patriarchal tradition to be the origin of pagan worship; referring also to the first formation of cities, and of one immense kingdom, by the descendants of Ham (accursed by his prophetic ancestor), by whom an empire was first established; to Nimrod's deification; to the preservation in the priesthood of future political power; to the fact that after his death they would and might thereby perpetuate ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield

... us a most hearty reception, introducing their little girl, who is the latest-born descendant of Grotius, and showing us various household relics of their great ancestor, including cups, glasses, and the like. Mr. De Groot also gave me some curious information regarding him which I did not before possess; and, among other things, told me that when Grotius's body was transferred, shortly after his death, from Rostock to Delft, the coffin containing it was stoned ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White

... that the old enemy has a grip on me. He pinches, he pinches. He'll get at my vitals one of these days, no doubt. And I've not even the satisfaction of having got my gout in an honourable way. If it had come to me from a fine old three-bottle ancestor! But I, who never had a grandfather, and hardly tasted wine till I was thirty years old—why, I feel ashamed to call myself gouty. Sit down, my wife's at church. Strange thing that people still go to church—but they do, you know. Force of habit, force ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing

... brown, contains a kernel with magical possibilities. Within this kernel, closely packed and safely cradled, lies the embryo oak. So small and so insignificant is this nut, that one may travel for months over land and sea, with the possible ancestor of a half-dozen future oak-forests snugly tucked away in some inside pocket. This, too, without ever once receiving a demand from the lynx-eyed custom officials, for the payment of either import or ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson

... society loses a worker and gains a dependent. Every taxpayer of the community must contribute to the support which he is unable to provide for himself. He watches other children romp and play and laugh; but he neither romps, nor plays, nor laughs. He is inert. Some ancestor chained him to the rock, and the vultures of disease and unhappiness are feeding at his vitals. He asks for bread, and they give him a stone; he asks for life, and they give him a living death; he asks for a heaven ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson

... branched off in 1487, long before the creation, and have nothing to do with the entail; the first of their line coming from old Sir Michael Wychecombe, Kt. and Sheriff of Devonshire, by his second wife Margery; while we are derived from the same male ancestor, through Wycherly, the only son by Joan, the first wife. Wycherly, and Michael, the son of Michael and Margery, were of the half-blood, as respects each other, and could not be heirs of blood. What was true of the ancestors ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper

... and all the books of laws, and the commentaries collected by Colebrooke. You would of course have mentioned this in your account if anything of the sort had existed in the tenth book. But even the Pitris, the fathers, are not mentioned, but it passes on straight to Yama the first ancestor. Haug, too, has discovered nothing; if you know anything about it, communicate it to me in the course of May, for my second volume goes to press on the 1st June. I shall read it aloud to George and Miss Wynn here, between the 25th ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... chamberlain, Billali, conducted us back to our camp. As we went he discoursed to me of these Amahagger, of whom it seemed he was himself a developed specimen, one who threw back, perhaps tens of generations, to some superior ancestor who lived before they became debased. In substance he told me that they were a wild and lawless lot who lived amongst ruins or in caves, or some of them in swamp dwellings, in small separate communities, each governed by its petty headman who was generally a priest ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... who followed him. Then came the long and vigorous reign of Hsan (B.C. 827 to 782), when we may suppose that the ancient custom of collecting the poems was revived. After him all was in the main decadence and confusion. It was probably in the latter part of his reign that King-kho, an ancestor of Confucius, obtained from the Grand Music-Master at the court of Ku twelve of the sacrificial odes of the previous dynasty, as will be related under the Sacrificial Odes of Shang, with ...
— The Shih King • James Legge

... old age, was flat and stale; used up to the very dregs; every shilling in the national purse had been squeezed out, by Pompadour and Du Barri and such brilliant ministers of state. He had found out the vanity of pleasure, as his ancestor had discovered the vanity of glory: indeed, it was high time that he should die. And die he did; and round his tomb, as round that of his grandfather before him, the starving people sang a dreadful chorus of curses, which ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various

... of the brain and secondary automatism! It must be so—Haeckel, thou reasonest well. But when the "old Injun" and my High- Dutch ancestor are upon me, I reason not at all, and then I see visions and dream dreams, and it always comes true, without ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... put yours on the other. I mean no disrespect to the ancestor who wore this suit, but we are short of the harmless, necessary hat-rack, so I put my topper on the antique helmet, and thrust the umbrella (if I have one) in behind here, and down one of his legs. Since I came in possession, a very crafty-looking dealer from ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr

... without God, in any proper sense of the word, but none without ghosts. And the Fetishism, Ancestor-worship, Hero-worship, and Demonology of primitive savages, are all, I believe, different manners of expression of their belief in ghosts, and of the anthropomorphic interpretation of out-of-the-way events, which is its concomitant. Witchcraft ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley

... don't get on to your ancestor worship," cried Harry, impatiently. "Anyway, Ranald's ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor

... anchor-watch, for never in all his life, he said, had he seen so many thieves together at one time, and so few honest men. All of those same thieves and the other few presently set sail across the channel; and, odd to say, to this day there are men who proudly claim that a very far back ancestor of theirs "came over with William the Conqueror." But perhaps they have made themselves believe that that particular person was ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True

... fortieth anniversary of the founding of your grandfather's college? You must be very proud of your illustrious ancestor. ...
— Plays • Susan Glaspell

... of Ariston was staying behind in Sparta and bringing charges against Cleomenes, he also being king of the Spartans but of the inferior house; which however is inferior in no other way (for it is descended from the same ancestor), but the house of Eurysthenes has always been honoured more, apparently because he ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus

... on the other, at any great length to consider the influences which produced the kind of tale he wrote would have more relevance, but would, if pursued in similar cases elsewhere, lengthen the book enormously. Two main ancestor or progenitor forces, as they may be called, though both were of very recent date and one actually contemporary, may be specified. The one was the newborn fancy for fairy-tales, and Eastern tales in particular. The other was the now ingrained disposition towards ironic ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... for that matter; though not, I may own to you, of pure descent. I come from Aranjuez, where a Scottish ancestor, whose name I bear, settled and married soon after the ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... ganaman, in the same languages, signifying to beget; thus implying in each an immediate common descent of the members of a gens. A gens, therefore, is a body of consanguinei descended from the same common ancestor, distinguished by a gentile name, and bound together by affinities of blood. It includes a moiety only of such descendants. Where descent is in the female line, as it was universally in the archaic period, the gens is composed of a supposed female ancestor ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan

... it could not fall, but that it would stay until the Day of Judgment, because it was in the room above that the wicked Count Albert sat watching the flames destroy the great castle and his imprisoned guests, and where he finally hung himself in a suit of armor that had belonged to his mediaeval ancestor, the first Count Kropfsberg. ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram

... spirit of the age, left Carlisle, and finally settled in Berkeley county, Va., where he purchased a large farm, and spent the remainder of his days. His son James had twelve children, seven sons and five daughters. One of his daughters, Rachel, married Joseph Vance, of Virginia, the ancestor of ex-Governor Vance, of Ohio, and other descendants. He gave Vance a farm of three hundred acres as an inducement to settle near him. Vance accepted the gift, and soon afterward removed to the farm; but Indian troubles ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter

... thing! The house is on fire!" And then yielding to laughter as they ran for buckets. Mrs Brindley, in particular, laughed now; she gazed at the table-cloth and laughed almost silently to herself; though it appeared that their joint forgetfulness might result in temporary estrangement from a venerable ancestor who was also, birthdays being duly observed, a continual fount ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett

... the sense of making a discovery, that his primeval ancestor is not easily suppressed. The oldest voice in the world is just the one that never ceases to speak. If anybody could have silenced its imperative echoes, it should have been Heyst's father, with his contemptuous, inflexible negation of all ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad

... honorable monument in the great fane of Christendom over the remains of the enemy of his dynasty, Charles Edward, the invader of England and victor in the rout at Preston Pans—Upon whose head the king's ancestor but one reign removed has set a price—is it probable that the grandchildren of General Grant will pursue with rancor, or slur by sour neglect, ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville

... the folk that thou demandedst of me this dower?" "Allah advance in honour the Commander of the Faithful," answered she; "verily thy hand-maid is of the seed of Kisra Anushirwan; but the shifts of time and tide brought me down and low down." Replied he, "They relate that thine ancestor, the Chosroe, wronged his lieges with mighty sore wronging;"[FN98] and she rejoined, "Wherefor and because of such tyranny over the folk hath his seed come to beg their bread at the highway-heads." Quoth he, "They also make mention of him that ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... her friend told her. Augusta Wishart, at six and twenty, had been one of those magnificent Canadian women who are most at home in the open; she could have carried Gifford Maturinout of the wilderness on her back. She was five feet seven, modelled in proportion, endowed by some Celtic ancestor with that dark chestnut hair which, because of its abundance, she wore braided and caught up in a heavy knot behind her head. Tanned by the northern sun, kneeling upright in a canoe, she might at a little distance have been ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... one-third of the real and the personal estate. If there are no lineal descendants, but collateral heirs, the survivor takes one-half of the entire estate. If there are no lineal descendants, father, mother, brother, sister, child of such brother or sister, brother of the half-blood or lineal ancestor, the survivor receives two-thirds of the estate and the other third goes to the next of kin. If there is no kin, the survivor ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... in the hearts of the Natchez. In my first ancestor a long line of the first of hunters, chiefs, and warriors of the race of their Suns had been born to them with beards on their chins. What chase was ever unsuccessful over which they presided? When they spoke in the council ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... their physical conformation, or their moral qualities. This name became the patronymic of the burgher family which each established as soon as he obtained his freedom. Sellers of linen thread were called in Flanders, "mulquiniers"; and that no doubt was the trade of the particular ancestor of the old valet who passed from a state of serfdom to one of burgher dignity, until some unknown misfortune had again reduced his present descendant to the condition of a serf, with the addition of wages. The whole history of Flanders and its linen-trade was epitomized in ...
— The Alkahest • Honore de Balzac

... well-nigh beside himself, "What! my son mixed up in the plots of Pugatchef! Just God! what have I lived to see! The Tzarina grants him life, but does that make it easier for me to bear? It is not the execution which is horrible. My ancestor perished on the scaffold for conscience sake,[71] my father fell with the martyrs Volynski and Khuchtchoff,[72] but that a 'boyar' should forswear his oath—that he should join with robbers, rascals, convicted felons, revolted slaves! Shame for ...
— The Daughter of the Commandant • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin

... to the very door-sill. Within she saw a huge, raftered hall hung with antlers and guns and saddles, pelts, fox-brushes. There was a stuffed bloodhound, the ancestor perhaps of Jove and Juno. A horse's head protruded from the wall, nostrils dilated, glassy eyes starting from the sockets, as if the poor creature were still running his last ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly

... and inhabiting a magnificent palace, the honourable boon of his country, would have joyfully availed himself of the opportunity thus afforded by the presence of a man certainly not inferior to his own heroic ancestor, so near as even at Oxford, and politely requested the honour of entertaining such a guest. This, however, had not been done; and Lord Nelson, with his friends, put up at an inn in Woodstock; from whence ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison

... handed over to the State, proved himself so extremely distasteful to the clergy that they arrested him, crucified him and burned his dead body (A.D. 1155). Peter de Bruys, who objected to infant baptism, and may be called the ancestor of the Baptists, was burnt A.D. 1130. Many other reformers shared the same fate, and one large sect must here be noted. Peter Waldus, its founder, was a merchant of Lyons, who (A.D. 1160) employed a priest to translate the Gospels for him, together with other portions of the Bible. Studying ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant

... abroad in the land," said Pak Chung Chang, sadly. "But it shall be as you wish, so long as my ancient and very-much-to-be-respected ancestor's nose abide in ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London

... about the name. He felt very grateful to her for her kindness. He hoped the book had shown him the writing of his ancestor, but he did not know. His parents died when he was a little boy, and if he had any relatives alive, they were unknown to him. He should be glad to believe that the Herrnhuter was his grandfather or great-grandfather. But they must not ask him to run the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various

... hapanton Karon, eis ho suniasi thusantes te kai bouleusamenoi.] This city was properly called Chus-Or, and built in memory of the same person; as the city Chusora, called also [118]Cerchusora, in Egypt. It was undoubtedly founded by some of the same family, who in aftertimes worshipped their chief ancestor; as the Sidonians and Syrians did likewise. For this we have the testimony of Sanchoniathon; who, having mentioned the various benefits bestowed upon mankind by Chrusaor, says, at the conclusion, [119][Greek: ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant

... Seligman their clans have for totems the lion, the elephant, the crocodile, the hippopotamus, the fox, and the hyena, as well as certain birds which infest and damage the corn, some plants and trees, and such things as rain, fire, etc. "Each clan speaks of its totem as its ancestor, and refrains (as a rule) from injuring or eating it." (1) The members of the Crocodile clan call themselves "brothers of the crocodile." The tribes of Bechuana-land have a very similar list of totem-names—the ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter

... lies and dreams? I shall say to the saint, when I am challenged, that the proof of my conversion to veracity is engraven in his own soul. Do you not remember, you spotless one, how you used to steal and lie and cheat and rob? Oh, not with your own hand, of course! It was your remote ancestor who lived by plunder, and was honored for the blood upon his hairy hands. By and by he discovered that cunning was more effective than violence, and less troublesome. Still later he became convinced that the greatest cunning was virtue, and made him ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin

... historic inhabitants of the land we have described were called by the Romans Greeks, but they called themselves Hellenes, from their fabled ancestor Hellen. ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... St. Domingo the coffin was conveyed to the bay of Ocoa and there transferred to the ship San Lorenzo. It was accompanied by a portrait of Columbus, sent from Spain by the duke of Veraguas, to be suspended close by the place where the remains of his illustrious ancestor should ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving

... without the promised heir. God had promised that He would bless all the nations of the earth through him, and yet He did not give him a son. Abraham's faith almost staggered a number of times. Ishmael was born, but God set aside the son of the bondwoman, for he was not to be the ancestor of the Son of God. God was setting Abram apart simply that He might prepare the way for His own Son, and now, at last, a messenger comes down from heaven to Hebron, and tells Abraham in his old age that ...
— Men of the Bible • Dwight Moody

... I could read, I had free access to an excellent medical library, the gloom of which was brightened by a few shelves of theological works, bequeathed to the family by some orthodox ancestor, and tempered by a volume or two of Blackstone; but outside of these, which were emphatically not the stuff my dreams were made of, I can only remember a certain little walnut bookcase hanging on the wall ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... Mr. Churchill, though a non-combatant, displayed the courage of his stock, and cheered the men in the work of rescuing the wounded and the bodies of the dead, crying, 'Come on, men!' with all the courage that his father showed in political warfare or his great ancestor on the fields of Blenheim or Malplaquet. When the engine steamed off, Mr. Churchill remained behind to help. Every one will hope that he ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke

... wherefore, O snake, hast thou taken Bhimasena? By obtaining which, or by knowing what wilt thou receive satisfaction, O snake, and what food shall I give thee? And how mayst thou free him.' The serpent said, 'O sinless one, I was thy ancestor, the son of Ayu and fifth in descent from the Moon. And I was a king celebrated under the name of Nahusha. And by sacrifices and asceticism and study of the Vedas and self-restraint and prowess I had acquired a permanent dominion over the three worlds. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... I says, 'What is it but a dream? Fu Shan,' I says, 'this here life's a shadow!' Then that forsaken, conceited, blank heathen, he says one of his ancestors discovered the same three thousand years ago. But, he says, another ancestor, pretty near as distinguished, he discovered that, if you put enough curry on your rice, it gives things an appearance of reality. Which, says he, they discovered the uselessness of things in Asia so long ago they've forgot when, and then they ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton

... over the black and white squares. Sometimes an uncle or aunt lives over again in a nephew or niece, as if the knight's move were repeated on the squares of human individuality. It is not impossible, then, that some of the qualities we mark in Emerson may have come from the remote ancestor whose name figures with distinction in the early ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... It need scarcely be said that the Eastern and Spanish ancestor of Bach's Chaconne was terpsichorean, and was unconnected with any kind of scientific ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart

... differ widely, but none of them designate the region now occupied as the place of their genesis. These people are socially divided into family groups called wingwu, the descendants of sisters, and groups of wingwu tracing descent from the same female ancestor, and having a common totem called myumu. Each of these totemic groups preserves a creation myth, carrying in its details special reference to themselves; but all of them claim a common origin in the interior of the earth, although the place of emergence to the surface is set in widely ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff

... future owners of them may be assured of so much wealth, whatever the value of the thing so settled may be,—but that the son or grandson or descendant may enjoy the satisfaction which is derived from saying, my father or my grandfather or my ancestor sat in that chair, or looked as he now looks in that picture, or was graced by wearing on his breast that very ornament which you now see lying beneath the glass. Crown jewels are heirlooms in the same way, as representing not the possession of the sovereign, but the time-honoured ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... to the memory of his uncle, he could not quite forgive him for having burnt the journals and letters of the James Wilson who had gifted Wilsthorpe with the maze and the temple. As to the circumstances of that ancestor's death and burial no tradition survived; but his will, which was almost the only record of him accessible, assigned an unusually generous legacy to a servant who ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James

... lime-kilns he had started even before he left, and the general store he intended to open when he returned to St. Saviour's. Not even his modesty was recognized; and, in his grand tour, no one was impressed by all that he was, except once. An ancestor, a grandmother of his, had come from the Basque country; and so down to St. Jean Pied de Port he went; for he came of a race who set great store by mothers and grandmothers. At St. Jean Pied de Port he was more at home. He was, in a sense, a foreigner among foreigners there, and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... oaks, worms, and flies, mites and elephants, infusoria and whales, tadpoles of to-day and venerable saurians, truffles and men, are all equally the lineal descendants of the same aboriginal common ancestor, perhaps of the nucleated cell of some primaeval fungus, which alone possessed the distinguishing honour of being the "one primordial form into which life was first breathed by the Creator "—this, to say the least of it, is no common discovery—no very expected conclusion. But we are ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... Sade, in his Memoires pour la vie de Petrarque (1767), affirmed, on the strength of documentary evidence, that the Laura of the sonnets, born de Noves, was the wife of his ancestor, Hugo de Sade, and the mother of a large family. "Gibbon," says Hobhouse (note viii.), "called the abbe's memoirs a 'labour of love' (see Decline and Fall, chap. lxx. note 1), and followed him with confidence and delight;" but the poet James Beattie (in a letter to the Duchess of ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... special ability in any other particular that such ability could be imparted to their children, but in the light of the above facts, this appears to be impossible. Of course, if such ability is a slumbering, inborn trait of either parent, or of some immediate ancestor, ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall

... like the Norman Conquest. That couple have no ancestors. They are not descendants. Yet they were the descendants of ancestors, and the expression that So-and-So was the founder of his house means not that he is the Adam of his family, but that he is the particular ancestor from whom it is desirable to start, or perhaps the earliest ancestor of which there is a record. But genealogical tables exhibit a deeper prejudice. Unless the female line happens to be especially remarkable descent ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann

... lions and tigers. Species, Felis domesticus. I start taking notes: "'The first civilized people to keep cats were the Egyptians, thirteen centuries before Christ.... Fifty million years earlier the ancestor of the cat family roamed the earth, and he is the ancestor of all present-day carnivores. The Oligocene cats, thirty million years ago, were already highly specialized, and the habits and physical characteristics of cats have been fixed ...
— It's like this, cat • Emily Neville

... marvellous matter. Behold—you say—the lion fleeing from the lamb, the wolf trembling before the kid, and the leopard fearful of the hare. Be not deceived. Nature will not suffer such miracles to happen. Julius Caesar, our mighty ancestor—whom, maybe, you despise in your heart—conquered the land of Britain, taking tribute thereof, and this you have paid until now. From other islands also, neighbours of this, it was our custom to receive truage. These in your ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace

... did not represent the ancestral gods, the lares and penates, since she was not descended from them. In death as in life she counted only as a part of her husband. Greek, Roman and Hindu law, all derived from ancestor worship, agreed in considering the wife ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard

... dashing and daring cavalier of his time; but if his bearing was that of a young hero of fiction, his deeds were those of an accomplished and disciplined modern soldier. He was born at New Rumley in Harrison County, of a Hessian ancestor who had come over to fight for King George against the country which Custer lived and died to serve, and he inherited from him the blue German eyes, and the yellow German hair which he loved to wear long, and flying about his neck in his gallant charges. But otherwise ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells

... judges, honour him with their approbation. Had you been thoroughly acquainted with me, Madam, you could not have touched my darling heart-chord more sweetly, than by noticing my attempts to celebrate your illustrious ancestor, the saviour ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... the note: "Ruddington near Nottingham (it is four miles south of the town) is the place whence the Flinders came;" and he ascertained that an ancestor was Robert ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott

... One of these called at the Castle of Schwedt, one day; found Prince Eugen of Wurtemberg there (nearly recovered of his Kunersdorf wounds), who is a Son-in-law of the House, married to a Daughter of Schwedt;—ancestor of the now Russian Czars too, had anybody then known it. Him these Cossacks carried off with them, a march or two; then, taking his bond for a certain ransom, let him go. Bond and bondholder being soon after captured by the Prussians, Eugen paid no ransom; so that to us his adventure is without moment, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... Paris and its eyes fixed on the boundless country. As a matter of course, I came back to his picture. "Oh, Monsieur Courajod," said I, "what talent you showed! If you only knew how much we all admire you. You are one of our illustrious men; you'll remain the ancestor of us all." But his lips began to tremble again; he looked at me with an air of terror-stricken stupidity; I am sure he would not have waved me back with a more imploring gesture if I had unearthed under his very eyes the corpse of some forgotten comrade of his youth. He kept chewing ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola

... Paullus (consul B.C. 50) restored the basilica built by his ancestor M. AEmilius Lepidus in B.C. 179, and appears to have added largely to it, or even built a ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... King of England. No one beholding the proud bearing of the new monarch would have supposed that his family emblem, the lowly broom-plant (Planta genista), from which came the name Plantagenet, had been adopted by an ancestor of Richard's in token of humility. For, in very truth, the Plantagenets were an arrogant race, and Richard was the proudest ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene

... private affairs compels them to offer proof of your descent from any crowned head to whom you may have taken a fancy. One correspondent assured me only this month that he had papers in his possession showing beyond a doubt that I might claim a certain King McDougal of Scotland for an ancestor. I have misgivings, however, as to the quality of the royal blood in my veins, for the same correspondent was equally confident six months ago that my people came in direct line from Charlemagne. As I have no desire to “corner” the market in kings, ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory

... title nor estates of the Marquess Francisco descended to his illegitimate offspring. But in the third generation, in the reign of Philip the Fourth, the title was revived in favor of Don Juan Hernando Pizarro, who, out of gratitude for the services of his ancestor, was created Marquess of the Conquest, Marques de la Conquista, with a liberal pension from government. His descendants, bearing the same title of nobility, are still to be found, it is said, at Truxillo, in the ancient province of Estremadura, the original birthplace ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott

... French call a very "bad little quarter of an hour," and the storm had left its trace on her pale brow and delicate features. They bore, nevertheless, that firm, resolute expression which Maud must have inherited from some iron-hearted ancestor. There was the same stem clash of the jaw, the same hard, determined frown in this, their lovely descendant, that confronted Plantagenet and his mailed legions on the plains by Stirling, that stiffened under the wan moonlight on Culloden ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville

... Walter Scott, in his Marmion, has immortalized. The Scotch commanders, Lenox and Argyle, both perished, as well as the valiant King James himself. There is scarcely an illustrious Scotch family who had not an ancestor slain on that fatal day, September 9, 1513. But the victory was dearly bought, and Surrey, the English general, afterwards Duke of Norfolk, was unable to pursue ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord

... the Southern leaders throws light upon Calhoun's principle. Than Robert E. Lee, what general has been more idolized by those who knew him best? His first ancestor in America was a cavalier who left England rather than endure the tyranny of Charles II. The son of "Light Horse Harry" of Revolutionary fame, he loved the Union. Educated at West Point, he left the institution ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis

... comes into the world provided with a great number of impressions upon it. Some of these are quite obscure, some few are distinct. Each ancestor has added his own to those previously existing. Among these impressions, finally, the useless ones must soon be obliterated by those that are useful. On the other hand, deep impressions will, like wounds, leave behind scars, ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer

... took my leave. It is here reputed the highest favour, to give one a garment that has been worn by a prince, or that has merely been laid on their shoulders. The cloak now given me might have answered well for an actor who had to represent the character of his ancestor, Tamerlane, on the stage, but was to me of no importance. On my way out, I was followed by his porters and waiters, begging in a most shameless manner, so that I half paid the value of the cloak before I could get out from ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr

... I, "shone over the grave of some ancestor of mine; back, back in the unmirrored past, some father of some father of mine. He is gone, like a fly. He is dust. I may be lying on his grave. Soon, like a fly, I, too, shall be dead, gone, turned into dust. But the star will still shine on. Small as that father's ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough

... Our great ancestor, Joe Miller, has recorded, in his "Booke of Jestes," an epitaph written upon an amateur corn-cutter, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 5, 1841 • Various

... Charles, or Louis, who successively sat upon his throne—princes, whose only historic individuality consists in these insipid appellations—had not the sense to comprehend, far less to develop, the plans of their ancestor. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... Captain Harper was an ancestor of Mrs. Mary G. Powell, author of The History of Old Alexandria. She tells of his patriotic action in procuring ammunition from Philadelphia for the independent companies of Prince William and Fairfax Counties: "Eight casks of powder, drums and colors for ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore

... was busily engaged in proving, or in endeavoring to prove, to Miss Stewart, that she was the only person for whom he cared at all, and consequently he was swearing for her an affection similar to that which his ancestor Henry IV. had entertained for Gabrielle. Unfortunately for Charles II. he had hit upon an unlucky day, upon a day when Miss Stewart had taken it into her head to make him jealous, and therefore, instead of being touched by his offer, as ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... onslaught. The haughty princess in her tower had not longed for the prince, but the prince had arrived, not to her rescue, but to the taming of her. And alas! the prince, whom she fondly thought her lover, was no more lover of her than of the picture of her female ancestor on ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens

... Both the Junii and Antonii could claim as an ancestor Augustus' sister Octavia; and the Junii were also connected with M. Junius Silanus, Augustus' great-great-grandson, whom Nero had put out ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus

... Antony, "that's a portrait of old Killian Vander Spiegel, once a burgomaster of Amsterdam, who, on some popular troubles, abandoned Holland and came over to the province during the government of Peter Stuyvesant. He was my ancestor by the mother's side, and an old miserly curmudgeon he was. When the English took possession of New-Amsterdam in 1664, he retired into the country. He fell into a melancholy, apprehending that his wealth would be taken from him ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving

... places. On the right hand, a little before we come to the town, we pass at a small distance the famous fortress, so it was then, of Basing, being a house belonging then to the Marquis of Winchester, the great ancestor of the present family of ...
— From London to Land's End - and Two Letters from the "Journey through England by a Gentleman" • Daniel Defoe

... Colonel Clinch, with a sudden outbreak of the antique gallantry of some remote Huguenot ancestor. "My friend, Judge Hale, must be a regular Roman citizen to leave such a family and such a house at the call of public duty. ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte

... that mad race, my ancestor struck his forehead against an enormous branch which split his skull; and he fell dead on the ground, while his frightened horse took himself off, disappearing in the gloom which ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... thus: "Hardriding Dick is not an epithet referring to horsemanship, but means Richard Ridley of Hardriding, the seat of another family of that name, which, in the time of Charles I., was sold on account of expenses incurred by the loyalty of the proprietor, the immediate ancestor of Sir Matthew Ridley. Will o' the Wa' seems to be William Ridley of Walltown, so called from its situation on the great Roman wall. Thirlwall Castle, whence the clan of Thirlwalls derived their name, is situated on the small river of Tippell, near the western boundary of ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton

... that day the glad little Robins have lived as that first one promised, close by the homes of men, and have done all they could to cheer us and make us happy. For they remember how, once upon a time, their ancestor ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown

... and Tribes.%—All the families living in such a house traced descent from a common female ancestor, and formed a clan. Each clan had its own name,—usually that of some animal, as the Wolf, the Bear, or the Turtle,—its own sachem or civil magistrate, and its own war chiefs, and owned all the food and all the property, except weapons and ornaments, in common. ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster

... away—leave this Europe, this place which has so many sad recollections for you. Begin a new life in a new world. My good lord often talked of visiting that land in Virginia which King Charles gave us—gave his ancestor. Frank will give us that. No man there will ask if there is a blot on my name, or inquire in the ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... appears to smell as sweetly under the shorter as the longer name, so that we shall not enter into any Criticism condemnatory of the change. This chapel is the successor, in a direct line, of the first building ever erected in the Orchard. Its ancestor was placed on precisely the same spot, in 1831. Those who raised it seceded from the Wesleyan community, in sympathy with the individuals who retired from the "old body" at Leeds, in 1828, and who adopted the name of "Protestant Methodists." ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus

... what awe we first read in the "Almanach des Gourmands," that a certain sauce piquante was so fine that with it a man would eat his own mother? This was only twenty years ago; yet all of us, now, are helping a high-bred gentleman, trading, on a gigantic scale, in the bones of his great ancestor. What sublimity of peddling! ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various

... and reforming prisons, had succeeded to the headship of a house agents' business in Kensington. (For, the family fortunes having been dissipated, Gilbert's great-grandfather had become first a coal merchant and then a house agent.) A few of the letters between this ancestor and his son remain and they are interesting, confirming Gilbert's description in the Autobiography of his grandfather's feeling that he himself was something of a landmark in Kensington and that the family business was honourable ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... whether, and where, any diary or private memoranda are known to exist of Adam Loftus, who was Archbishop of Dublin nearly forty years, from 1567 to 1605, Lord Chancellor of Ireland, and the first Provost of Trinity College, Dublin. He was an ancestor of the Viscount Loftus, and of the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 75, April 5, 1851 • Various

... urging, he only drank one glass of the peach-honey, but thanks to a jovial ancestor of whom he had never heard, but of some of whose sins (in accordance with the ancient law) he bore the marks in his temperament, he was peculiarly susceptible to the influences of strong drink, and as he drained the glass at a gulp, a new freedom seemed to ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard

... people of Cho-Sen are fanatical ancestor-worshippers, and that old pirate of a booty-lusting Dutchman, with his four cunies, in far Kyong-ju, did no less a thing than raid the tombs of the gold-coffined, long-buried kings of ancient Silla. The work was done in the night, and for the rest of the night they travelled ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London

... the same position in another point of view, I calculated also that every individual now living must have had for his ancestor every parent in Britain living in the year 1125, the age of Henry the First, taking the population of that period at 8,000,000. Thus, as every individual must have had a father and a mother, or two progenitors, each of whom had a father and a mother, or four progenitors, each generation would double ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips

... born, and JOHN BETTES who certainly was. To the former is attributed the large whole-length portrait at Hampton Court of Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, in a suit of bright red. Another portrait of Howard belongs to the Duke of Norfolk, having been presented to his ancestor by Sir Robert Walpole. Both were exhibited at the Tudor Exhibition in 1892. Streetes was painter to King Edward VI., and according to Stype he was paid fifty marks, in 1551, "for recompense of ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies

... The first ancestor of the line of whom we have knowledge was Samuel Lincoln, of Norwich, England, who came to Hingham, Massachusetts, in 1638, and died there. He left a son, Mordecai, whose son, of the same name,—and it is a name which persists in ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay

... every heir and tenant of any customary lands of the said manor may sell his inheritance during the life of the widow of his ancestor, who enjoys such ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge

... the court at Hastinapur, more than twenty-five centuries ago, Karna, the reputed son of a Charioteer, had challenged the supremacy of Prince Arjuna. To this challenge Arjuna had returned a scornful answer; a prince could not cross swords with one who could claim no nobility of descent. "I am my own ancestor," replied Karna, and this perhaps the earliest assertion of the right of man to choose and determine his own destiny. In the realm of knowledge also the great achievements have been won only by men with determined purpose and without ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose

... Ketterick, Bishop of St. David's, few of the other names have any interest beyond the walls of Florence." As, however, you are at present within the walls of Florence, you may perhaps condescend to take some interest in this ancestor or relation of the Galileo whom Florence indeed left to be externally interesting, and would not allow to enter ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin

... for sure that he was a relative of mine," said the captain. "It was more than two centuries ago; but if he were not, I wish he had been. It would be an honor to have him for an ancestor. Adelante!" ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... differences in the areas of the skull associated with the groups of muscles with which this study is concerned, implies a similarity in the patterns of musculature between the two groups. Romer and Price suggest that Haptodus, although too late in time to be an actual ancestor, shows "all the common features of the Dimetrodon group on the one hand and the therapsids on the other." The adductors of the jaw of Dimetrodon were probably little changed from those of the Haptodontinae and represent a ...
— The Adductor Muscles of the Jaw In Some Primitive Reptiles • Richard C. Fox

... adored a deity who resembled Ceres, to whom they commended their fields and offered their fruits. They worshiped another petty deity who resembled Mars, in order to gain his protection in their battles. They believed in the humalagar [i.e., soul of an ancestor] (as we said of the Charaghas)—whom they summoned in their sicknesses by means of their priestesses. The priestesses placed a leaf of a certain kind of palm upon the head of the sick man, and prayed that it [i.e., the soul] would come to sit there, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various

... engagements, and led, they say, so Christian a life, that some chroniclers have placed him on the list of saints. He was killed in 807, in a battle against Gerold, duke of Suabia, and his tomb is still to be seen at Ratisbonne. Several families of Germany hold him for their ancestor; and some French genealogists have, without solid ground, discovered in him the grandfather of Robert the Strong, great-grandfather of Hugh Capet. However that may be, after making peace with Wittikind, Charlemagne had still, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... suffering heirs of dead and forgotten Fisher. They came up from Florida with a rush—a great tidal wave of Fishers freighted with the same old musty documents about the same in immortal corn-fields of their ancestor. They straight-way got an act passed transferring the Fisher matter from the dull Auditor to the ingenious Floyd. What did Floyd do? He said, "IT WAS PROVED that the Indians destroyed everything they could before the troops entered in pursuit." ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... parent of Ursula, when he was not created himself. He was not a parent. A slip of living flesh had been transmitted through him, but the spirit had not come from him. The spirit had not come from any ancestor, it had come out of the unknown. A child is the child of the mystery, or ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... official, but his wife and daughter and a customer. Possibly the good looks of the stranger had something to do with it. Jackson Potter was a singularly handsome young fellow, with one of those ideal faces and figures sometimes seen in Western frontier villages, attributable to no ancestor, but evolved possibly from novels and books devoured by ancestresses in the long solitary winter evenings of their lonely cabins on the frontier. A beardless, classical head, covered by short flocculent blonde curls, poised ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte

... good things and then won't listen to advice, you might as well stop wasting your breath on him, because there is something radically wrong with him. Probably his grandfather had dyspepsia. And a dyspeptic ancestor is worse for a boy than predestination, ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... was born in Wigtonshire, in Scotland. Her father, Sir William Maxwell of Monreith (anciently Mureith), represented one of the numerous families who branched off from the original stock—Herbert of Caerlaverock, first Lord Maxwell, the ancestor of the famous Earl of Nithsdale, whose countess, Winifred, played so noble a part when her husband was in prison during the Jacobite insurrection. From this honourable house descended, in our time, ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson

... very small Capacity, is highly superior in human Society to him who with the greatest Talents is cold and languid in his Affections. But, alas! why do I make a difficulty in speaking of my worthy Ancestor's Failings? His little Absurdities and Incapacity for the Conversation of the politest Men are dead with him, and his greater Qualities are even now useful to him. I know not whether by naming those Disabilities I do not enhance his Merit, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... risen. A remarkable transformation had come over the man, —he was reminiscent, at that moment, of some Covenanter ancestor going into battle. And his voice ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... piece together the narrative of the preceding pages. Saunders was reluctant to draw any conclusions. At one time he thought that the fingered beast had been animated by the spirit of Sigismund Borlsover, a sinister eighteenth-century ancestor, who, according to legend, built and worshipped in the ugly pagan temple that overlooked the lake. At another time Saunders believed the spirit to belong to a man whom Eustace had once employed as a laboratory assistant, "a black-haired spiteful little brute," he said, "who ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various

... The common ancestor of the present Guernsey family of the name of Brock was William Brock, Esq., a native of the island, who died in the year 1776, and was the grandfather of the subject of this volume. He had three sons and one daughter, who became connected by marriage with some of the principal and most ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper

... that my ancestor, Barnim, the second of the name, was murdered, out of revenge, in this very spot by one of his vassals, named Vidante von Muckerwitze. For this aforesaid ancestor had sent him into Poland under some pretence, in order the better to accomplish his designs ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold

... of the Endeavour is in the British Museum. Mr. R.M. Hudson of Sunderland possesses Cook's own log, not autograph however, presented by Cook to Sir Hugh Palliser, the ancestor of ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook

... great confusion of all the races of the world in which Arabian mullahs, Chinese scholars, Japanese bonzes, Tibetan lamas and Hindu pundits should all be preaching fatalism and {viii} predestination, ancestor-worship and devotion to a deified sovereign, pessimism and deliverance through annihilation—a confusion in which all those priests should erect temples of exotic architecture in our cities and celebrate their disparate rites therein. Such a dream, which the future may perhaps ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont

... eager to make of Miss Tilney; but so active were her thoughts, that when these inquiries were answered, she was hardly more assured than before, of Northanger Abbey having been a richly endowed convent at the time of the Reformation, of its having fallen into the hands of an ancestor of the Tilneys on its dissolution, of a large portion of the ancient building still making a part of the present dwelling although the rest was decayed, or of its standing low in a valley, sheltered from the north and east by ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... daughter like shilling fashion-plates, and having his portrait taken in precisely the same attitude as that assumed by the Duke of Wrigglesbury when his Grace sat to the same photographer! It was delicious to hear him bragging of his pilgrim ancestor,—while in the same breath he would blandly sneer at certain "poor gentry" who could trace back their lineage to Coeur de Lion! But because the Erringtons were rich as well as titled persons, Van Clupp and his belongings bent ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... have an interesting face—though one may continue saying, Pity that the eyes are not a little wider apart! He dresses tastefully; the best English style. A portrait by a master hand might hand him down to generations as an ancestor to be proud of. But with passion and with courage, and a bent for snatching at the lion's own, does he not look foredoomed to an early close? Her imagination called up a portrait of Elizabeth's Earl of Essex to set beside him; and without thinking that the two were fraternally alike, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... bequest of her excellent ancestor Eugenie showed much devotion, and her uncle had often said that the tree should some day belong to her. The greater was her disappointment then, when, during her absence in the preceding spring, the leaves of the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... menage. You must know that every inhabitant in former days received a surname, which has become to-day the regular name of the family; for it was difficult to distinguish one's self among the cross-breedings of the Mahes and the Floches. Rouget assuredly had an ancestor of fiery blood. As for Fouasse and Tupain, they were called thus without knowing why, many surnames having lost all rational meaning in course of time. Well, old Francoise, a wanton of eighty years who lived forever, had had Fouasse by a Mahe, then becoming a widow, she remarried ...
— The Fete At Coqueville - 1907 • Emile Zola

... his domestic arrangements he was the very figure of a bachelor. His slimsy silver spoon, dented with toothmarks of an ancestor who had died in a delirium, was laid evenly by his plate. The hand lamps on the shelf wore speckled brown-paper bags inverted over their chimneys. A portrait of a man playing the violin hung out, in massive gilt, over the table, like a ship's figurehead projecting over a wharf's ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... same prize, with each primed for a death-struggle by the memories of fearful wrongs. It is useless to argue which race gave the first cause for retaliation; it had been give and take between them for many years. Nor should our children's children, because of any tendency toward ancestor-worship, be allowed to believe that the whites were invincible and slaughtered more natives than they ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter

... conscientious obligation which the then Government could no doubt bequeath, may ask themselves how long a democratically governed country would tolerate corruption or ineptitude in the public service on the ground that the monopolist worker of them had inherited a franchise from an ancestor who had known how to exploit the public necessities. The virtual expropriation of the Irish landlords, which was in progress in the United Kingdom, may have been right or it may have been wrong; it is ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead

... English evolutionist, gives this imaginary picture of our supposed ancestor: "We may not unjustifiably picture him to ourselves as a tall and hairy creature, more or less erect, but with a slouching gait, black faced and whiskered, with prominent, prognathous muzza, and large, pointed canine teeth, those of each jaw fitted into an interspace in the opposite row. These ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various

... am the Sacrifice! I am the Prayer! I am the Funeral-Cake set for the dead! I am the healing herb! I am the ghee, The Mantra, and the flame, and that which burns! I am-of all this boundless Universe- The Father, Mother, Ancestor, and Guard! The end of Learning! That which purifies In lustral water! I am OM! I am Rig-Veda, Sama-Veda, Yajur-Ved; The Way, the Fosterer, the Lord, the Judge, The Witness; the Abode, the Refuge-House, The Friend, the Fountain and the Sea of Life ...
— The Bhagavad-Gita • Sir Edwin Arnold

... as natural that one of the race of that Clisthenes who had expelled the Pisistratides, and popularized the constitution, should embrace the more liberal side, as that a Russell should follow out in one age the principles for which his ancestor perished in another. So do our forefathers become sponsors for ourselves. The mother of Pericles was the descendant of Clisthenes; and though Xanthippus himself was of the same party as Aristides, we may ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Maori name for the Creator of man, and thence taken to represent an ancestor. The Maoris made large wooden images to represent their Tiki, and gave the name of Tiki to these images. Later they were made in miniature in greenstone (q.v.), and used as ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... Villa's on the South edge of the Island, by the Broken Cliffs. Most of it is three hundred years old, but the cow-stables, where our first ancestor lived, must be a hundred years older. Oh, quite that, because the founder of our family had his land given him by Agricola at the Settlement. It's not a bad little place for its size. In spring-time violets ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling

... to the better opinion of Mr Brass, and more particularly to the authority of his Great Ancestor, it may be doubted, with humility, whether the elevating principle laid down by the latter gentleman, and acted upon by his descendant, is always a prudent one, or attended in practice with the desired results. This ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... well wore out the night, When gallant Sir Robert, to finish the fight, Turn'd o'er in one bumper a bottle of red, And swore 'twas the way that their ancestor did. ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... understood about 1880. If to be studied and admired is to be understood, the prediction has been fulfilled. Taine pronounced him the greatest psychologist of the century; M. Zola, doing violence to facts, claimed him as a literary ancestor; M. Bourget discovered in him the author of a nineteenth-century Bible and a founder of cosmopolitanism in letters. During his lifetime Beyle was isolated, and had a pride in isolation. Born at Grenoble in 1783, he had learnt, during an unhappy childhood, to conceal ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden

... the first left two sons; our ancestor, the eldest, and one younger, who removed into the colony of New Jersey, and whose descendants still exist. The survivors of us two might go there in quest of our heir, in the long run. But do not forget I come before ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper

... rules that govern the game seem to be the same in all three places—you've got to be a descendant to belong, and the farther you descend the harder you belong. The only difference is that, in Europe, the ancestor who made money enough so that his family could descend, has been dead so long that they have forgotten his shop; in New York he's so recent that they can only pretend to have forgotten it; but in Chicago they can't lose it because the ancestor is hustling on the ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer

... Iceland in the last quarter of the ninth century brought with than the language then spoken throughout the whole of Scandinavia. This ancestor of the modern Scandinavian tongues has been preserved in Iceland so little changed that every Icelander still understands, without the aid of explanatory commentaries, the oldest preserved prose written ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various

... dignity of our ancestors, and to maintain your own. I call upon the spirit and humanity of my country, to vindicate the national character. I invoke the genius of the constitution! From the tapestry that adorns these walls, the immortal ancestor of this noble lord frowns with indignation at the disgrace of his country. In vain did he defend the liberty, and establish the religion of Britain, against the tyranny of Rome, if these worse than popish cruelties, and inquisitorial ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... six-fingered persons. At any rate no one can doubt that it might at any time be wiped out by such marriages, though even when apparently wiped out, sporadic cases might be expected to occur: what the breeders call "throws-back," when they see an animal which resembles some ancestor further back in the line of descent than its actual progenitors. Certainly the most remarkable instance of the reliance which we have come to feel respecting this matter of inheritance is that which was afforded by a recent case of disputed paternity interesting on both sides ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle

... dedicated her first novel, O Pioneers!, to the memory of Sarah Orne Jewett, she pointed out a link of natural piety binding her to a literary ancestor now rarely credited with descendants so robust. The link holds even yet in respect to the clear outlines and fresh colors and simple devices of Miss Cather's art; in respect to the body and range of her work it never really held. The thin, fine gentility which Miss Jewett celebrates ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren

... order, yet I was, by the endeavour, a better and a happier man than I should have been if I had not attempted it. It may be well that my posterity should be informed that to this little artifice, with the blessing of God, their ancestor owed the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... it not at least equally marvellous that the Ts'in Annals should not mention it in 650 B.C., when M. Chavannes supposes it took place, whilst they do so mention it under 984 B.C., when he thinks it did not take place? All accounts agree that the ancestor of Ts'in (named) was there with the Emperor as charioteer; he was, as we have seen, equally ancestor of Chao, and the Chao Annals of Sz-ma Ts'ien say exactly ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker

... added to her disguise. The blackness of her hair was equally unconnected with Northern dreams of beautiful maidens. "Dark-haired women, like slaves, black and bad," was the proverb of the Danish camps. Some fair-tressed ancestor back in the past must have qualified his blood from the veins of an Irish captive; in no other way could one account for those locks, and for her eyes that were of the grayish blue of ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz

... and capering at the strange scene, the glitter, and the joy. At last there were no more,—there was only the memorandum on a bit of parchment, telling the story of the sealing of the bags by the old Tory ancestor in troublous times, and their destined ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... enclosure, then a goodly-sized audience room, and next the temple proper. The three walls of this room (as I remember them) were fitted up like an immense cabinet, with rows of drawers, each supposed to contain some document relating to that particular ancestor. There was one upright vacant space which the guide said would be filled when that branch ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck

... disgrace, nor lost his haughtiness; for when the new chief-justice sent to purchase his Collar of SS., Coke returned for answer, that "he would not part with it, but leave it to his posterity, that they might one day know they had a chief-justice to their ancestor."[343] ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... near the word Emausae comes to the E. African Mwezi; and perhaps more odd that "the elders of U-nya-Mwezi ('the Land of the Moon') declare that their patriarchal ancestor became after death the first Tree, and afforded shade to his children and descendants. According to the Arabs the people still perform pilgrimage to a holy tree, and believe that the penalty of sacrilege in cutting off a twig would be visited ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... a god must have been derived from a practice that was already well known. And the power of adopting children was exercised by the Babylonians up to the last. It has been suggested that it was due to ancestor-worship, and the desire to prevent the customary offerings from being discontinued through the extinction of the family. But for this there is no evidence. Indeed, it is questionable whether there was any worship of ancestors in Babylonia ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce

... so richly dowered with beauty and gold should have a world of lovers in her train is not to be wondered at. For five years she retained her new freedom, and then yielded to the wooing of William Aubrey de Vere, ninth Duke of St Albans (whose remote ancestor was Nell Gwynn, the Drury Lane orange-girl and actress), who made a Duchess of her one June day ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall

... Evening mild, nor silent Night With this her solemn Bird, nor walk by Moon, Or glittering Starr-light without thee is sweet. But wherfore all night long shine these, for whom This glorious sight, when sleep hath shut all eyes? To whom our general Ancestor repli'd. Daughter of God and Man, accomplisht Eve, 660 Those have thir course to finish, round the Earth, By morrow Eevning, and from Land to Land In order, though to Nations yet unborn, Ministring light prepar'd, they set and rise; Least total darkness should by Night regaine Her old possession, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... laughingly—into the mysteries of monosyllables, the pretty boy and the fair young mother made a delightful picture. De Montaigne was reading the Essays of his celebrated namesake, in whom he boasted, I know not with what justice, to claim an ancestor. From time to time he looked from the page to take a glance at the progress of his heir, and keep up with the march of intellect. But he did not interfere with the maternal lecture; he was wise enough to know that there is a kind of sympathy between a child and a mother, which is worth all ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton



Words linked to "Ancestor" :   descendant, forefather, father, forbear, ancestral, ancestress, relative, sire, ascendent, ascendant



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