When I was very young, I never gave my surname, Loud, a second thought. That’s probably because I had never met or heard of any other Louds, other than the Louds in my small immediate family and in my small extended family. It was a small Loud world, after all.

That all changed when I entered kindergarten and Loud became fuel for playground taunts, things like “Loudy” or my all-time favorite, “Loudmouth Lemon-Lime!” Kids can be so… creative.

A few years into elementary school, Loud talk became the talk of the nation and, in my case, the classroom. Although I didn’t know a thing about it at the time, a new show, “An American Family,” had premiered on PBS. In the series, a California family agreed to have cameras record their lives, a chaotic and complex documentary of relationships, crises, and drama. More importantly, they were also named Loud!

“An American Family” was groundbreaking. It’s considered to be the first unscripted reality show… and it was also the first time I had “met” Louds beyond my familial tribe. Naturally, I had questions… Is this why my friends were asking me if I had been on television the night before? (That’s a big yes, because the Louds of California also had a son, older than me, named Kevin.) How many other Louds were out there? Since it’s an uncommon name, could we all be related?

The answer to those burning questions came along a few years later. That’s when C. Everett Loud, yet another Loud I had never heard of, contacted my father. He explained that he was compiling a genealogy of the Loud family and asked my father for basic information about his own family, as well as his parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents. All of this, said C. Everett Loud, would be added to his book, 300 Years of Louds in America, and his hope was for Louds to purchase it.

This was in the late ‘70s and, with some quick math, I realized that my ancestors had been here since before there was a United States. While my family, worried that it was a scam, didn’t purchase a copy of 300 Years, I reached out to C. Everett Loud. I was fascinated with what he had researched and learned. He kindly responded to my questions and sent me information on my immediate branch – and yes, he said, the California Louds and the New York Louds were different branches and leaves on a tree whose canopy stretched from coast to coast.

The first Louds, brothers Francis and Elias, left Port Glasgow, Scotland, and arrived in the New World in 1675. Elias remained in Canada, while Francis traveled south to what is now Maine. There, he married, had two daughters, and eventually moved to Massachusetts, where three sons were born. One of them was also named Francis.

This second Francis married Onner Prince, the great-great-granddaughter of William Brewster, who had arrived on the Mayflower and was a senior elder in the Plymouth colony. Francis and Onner Loud had 13 children, and this is where C. Everett Loud’s story – and my story – begins.

As a very young adolescent, the pages Mr. Loud had mailed me were mind-blowing. I went from being Loudmouth Lemon-Lime to being a small part of our nation’s story, a descendant of Pilgrims and colonists and, based on a timeline, revolutionaries. The Louds, a family with a strange surname, were as much a part of America as the Washingtons and Franklins, Hamiltons and Jeffersons. I was amazed.

I still am.

All of it reminded me of a book series I read for fun while in high school — the Bicentennial Series, by John Jakes. Recently, I found a copy of the first book, The Bastard, in a used bookstore and I’ve begun re-reading it. Mr. Jakes could certainly tell a tale.

A few years before COVID, I went on Amazon and found a copy of 300 Years of Louds in America for sale. Apparently, C. Everett Loud’s daughter had lots of copies of her father’s work. Every so often, she would sell one or two on Amazon. I just happened to be looking at the right time.

When the book arrived, my first task, naturally, was to trace my own lineage.

After finding my name — on page 453 — along with the information my father had provided C. Everett Loud all those years ago, I traveled through the book in reverse, to my grandfather, to my great-grandfather, to Louds I had never heard of – all the way back to William Brewster Loud, the 9th of Francis and Onner Loud’s 13 children.

I then took a moment to consider the scope of 300 Years. At 900+ pages and a chapter dedicated to each of the 13 children, it’s an enormous book. It’s also a testament to the dedication and research skills of C. Everett Loud, who conducted his work long before there were personal computers and the Internet. Mr. Loud did his research the old-fashioned way – writing letters, making phone calls, sitting in libraries, combing through historical societies, and crisscrossing the country to meet with Loud descendants to review family bibles, documents, and photographs.

During the COVID years, isolated at home, I wondered about the other stories hiding in the pages – and I began reading it and transcribing the data into an Ancestry family tree. Armed with a laptop and WiFi, I often found myself willingly jumping down rabbit holes in an attempt to update the genealogy – adding births and deaths and any Loud history — as best I could. In addition to resources found on Ancestry, I also relied on other sites, such as Google, Legacy, Find-A-Grave, Family Search, Fulton History, and Facebook.

I think C. Everett Loud would have been impressed with what technology could accomplish from the comfort of home.

I’ve had to take time away from the project, especially as life resumed post-COVID and other responsibilities moved to the top of each day’s to-do list. Whenever I returned to it, though, I have met so many interesting Louds and stories that illustrate our nation’s colorful and sometimes painful history – stories that I’d like to share here in future “Adventures in Ancestry” posts.

Whenever I pull the giant book from its place and open up my Ancestry page on my laptop, Joe will inevitably ask, “Why are you doing this? What’s the end result?”

I’m really not sure, because there’s no single answer. If I ever finish this family tree project, I’d like to be able to share it with other Louds – but I’m not sure how to do that. I’m also hoping to create my own aha moments, like the ones that happen on my favorite PBS show, “Finding Your Roots.”

More importantly, as our nation endures a chaotic present and unchartered future, I find myself reflecting back on the past, on the Loud lives that came before me, on the things they accomplished, on the history of their times, and on how all of that has reached me — one Loud among so many.

Of course, there’s more to me than my Loud side. There’s also my maternal heritage, one that begins in two Sicilian villages. Putting together that genealogy has been a bigger puzzle, especially because I don’t have a 900+ page book to give me a hand.

Naturally, there’s a story. It’s one that bubbles in my DNA – rather strongly – when I’m working in the garden, smelling fresh soil, or planting a seed – and I have a photo to prove it. Stay tuned.