As more and more people are entered into the rolls of Titus genealogy, some interesting connections emerge. Already mentioned is the induction of James Dewey Watson, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, into the Titus “hall of fame.” Some go back various distances in time, and a few are our contemporaries. All share a Titus heritage. A few are outlined below. Others are waiting to be discovered.
Stephen Joseph Harper. b. Apr. 30, 1959.
Stephen Harper was born on April 30, 1959 at Toronto, York County, Ontario. On January 23, 2006 he was leader of the newly-formed Conservative Party of Canada when they won the 39th Canadian Federal election. He was sworn in as Prime Minister of Canada on February 6, 2006. Below is his descendancy from Robert Titus.
1. Robert Titus. b. 1600. m. Hannah Carter
2. John Titus. b. 1627. m. Rachel _____
3. John Titus. b. 1650. m. Sarah Millard.
4. John Titus. b. 1678. m. Hannah _____.
5. John Titus. b. 1703. m. Alithea Titus.
6. Amy Titus. m. J. Edward Coy.
7. Edward Coy. b. 1768. m. Jannet A. Murray.
8. Mary Coy. b. 1809. m. John Estabrooks.
9. Mary J. Estabrooks. b. 1824. m. George W. Coy.
10. George W. Coy. b. 1861. m. Josephine R. Jones.
11. Lena F. Coy. b. 1904. m. Harris C. Harper.
12. Joseph H. Harper. m. Margaret Johnston.
13. Stephen J. Harper. b. 1959. m. Laureen Teskey.
Jonathan Trumbull Howe. b. 1935.
Jonathan Howe is a retired four-star Admiral of the United States Navy. He was the Deputy National Security advisor in the first Bush Administration. He also had been the Special Representative for Somalia to the United Nations from 1993 to 1994.
His father, Hamilton Wilcox Howe had also been an Admiral in the US Navy. He had received the Navy Cross for his actions on the night of 13 to 14 April, 1942 in command of the USS Roper, when the destroyer sank the German U-boat U-85, the first sinking of a German submarine off the United States coast during World War II. Below is their descendancy from Robert Titus.
1. Robert Titus. b. ca. 1600. m. Hannah Carter.
2. Content Titus. b. Mar. 28, 1643. m. Elizabeth Moore.
3. SilasTitus. m. Sarah Hunt.
4. Ephraim Titus. m. Mary Armitage.
5. Ruth Titus. b. Jul. 28, 1728. m. William Phillips.
6. Sarah Phillips. b. Aug. 16, 1763. m. Joseph Davis.
7. Charles Davis. b. Jun. 14, 1798. m. Susan McJomsey.
8. Mary Davis. b. May 16, 1837. m. George Wentworth Howe.
9. Charles Davis Howe. b. Feb. 2, 1874. m. Gussie Leigh Wilcox.
10. Hamilton Wilcox Howe. b. Jan. 16, 1904.
11. Jonathan Trumbull Howe. b. 1935. m. Harriet Mangrum.
Silas Wright Titus. b. Jan. 8, 1849. d. Jan. 7, 1922.
The following summary of the career of Silas Wright Titus appears in Wikipedia:
“Silas Wright Titus was born on January 18, 1849 in Syracuse, New York. He was the son of Col. Silas Titus of Syracuse and grandson of Thomas McCarthy (Syracuse politician). He was named for a friend of his father’s, Silas Wright, a US Senator, Governor of New York, and a member of Andrew Jackson’s cabinet. He was educated in the Syracuse schools and developed an interest in Civil Engineering. When he was 20 years old he worked with the engineering force in the construction of the New Orleans, Mobile and Texas Railroad.
About 1884 he moved to Southwestern Texas to begin studying underground water supplies. He helped to develop and construct 125 groundwater wells in the vicinity of San Angelo, Texas. He subsequently invented a method for locating and procuring groundwater by means of drilling and pumping. He was granted seven patents on lifting water by air. He moved back to New York in about 1896.
In the early 1900s the New York City water supply began to experience severe water shortages. Up until that time the majority of the city’s water came from reservoirs and well north of the city. Droughts had threatened the supply to the city. Around 1892 the borough of Brooklyn drilled several wells near the town of Jameco, Long Island. The city engineers operated the wells for several years. With the best machinery available they were only able to produce 500,000 gallons per day. The city was about to abandon the wells at Jameco when Titus offered to run the plant. He was allowed to run the plant under a contract with machinery he invented and patented. Soon the wells were producing 8,000,000 gallons per day.
From 1906 to January 1909 the city regularly paid Titus under the terms of his contract. However, in 1909 the city began to hold up payments. When the city continued to hold payments, Titus shut down his water pumps which supplied over 10% of Brooklyn’s entire water supply. On the night of Oct. 28, 1909, twenty men from the water department went out to the pumping station to seize the plant and machinery. Titus met them there and told them that “somebody was going to get hurt” if they put their hands on any of his property.
The following obituary appeared in the New York Times on Jan. 10, 1922:
Silas Wright Titus, ‘Water Wizard,’ Dead
“Silas Wright Titus, often called the “Water Wizard,” who located the underground water supply of Long Island that provides millions of gallons a day in Brooklyn, died Saturday of arteriosclerosis at the home of his daughter, Mrs. Walter D. Murnane, 243 Sixth Avenue, Brooklyn.
Mr. Titus was born in 1849 at Syracuse, New York, a grandson of Thomas McCarthy, that city’s first mayor. As a young man, he showed remarkable skill in discovering underground water and in building wells and plants for its utilization. He carried out successful projects in nearly every State in the Union and patented seven devices for raising water by air. Finding Brooklyn in difficulties for lack of water, he contracted to produce 10,000,000 gallons a day, found the water as he predicted, built a plant at Jamaica and sold it to the city for $337,000. He is said never to have failed to find water when he went hunting for it.”
He is buried in St. John’s Cemetery in New York. Below is his descendancy:
1. Robert Titus. b. ca. 1600. m. Hannah Carter.
2. Abiel Titus. b. Mar. 17, 1641. m. Rebecca Scudder.
3. Abiel Titus. b. Mar. 15, 1679. m. Mary _____.
4. Abiel Titus. b. ca. 1703. m. Elizabeth Wood.
5. Silas Titus. b. Sep. 24, 1741. m. Sarah Reynolds.
6. Stephen Titus. b. Jul. 8, 1772. m. Sarah Starr.
7. Silas Titus. b. May 31, 1811. m. Eliza McCarthy.
8. Silas Wright Titus. b. Jan. 8, 1849. m. Mary Louise Collins.
Mazo de la Roche. b. Jan. 15, 1879. d. Jul. 12, 1961.
The following biography from Wikipedia
“Mazo de la Roche was the only child of William Roche, a salesman, and Alberta (Lundy) Roche. She was a lonely child and the family moved frequently during her childhood due to the ill health of her mother and her father’s many jobs. She became an avid reader and developed her own fictional world that she called “The Play” in which she created imaginary scenes and characters. She wrote her first short story at the age of nine.
De la Roche had her first story published in 1902 in Munsey’s Magazine but did not begin her writing career in earnest until after the death of her father. Her first two novels, Possession (1923) and Delight (1926), were romantic novels and earned her little in income or recognition.
Her third novel, Jalna was submitted to the American magazine Atlantic Monthly, winning a $10,000 award. Its victory and subsequent publication in 1927 brought de la Roche fame and fortune at the age of 48.
Her books became best-sellers and she wrote 16 novels in the series known as the Jalna series or the Whiteoak Chronicles. The series tells the story of one hundred years of the Whiteoak family covering from 1854 to 1954. The novels were not written in sequential order, however, and each can be read as an independent story.
It is interesting to note the similarities and differences in the experiences of the Whiteoak family and de la Roche’s. While the lives and successes of the Whiteoaks rise and fall, there remained for them the steadiness of the family manor, known as Jalna. The Jalna series has sold more than eleven million copies in 193 English and 92 foreign editions. In 1935, the film Jalna, based on the novel, was released by RKO Radio Pictures and, in 1972, a CBC television series was produced based on the series.
Mazo de la Roche is buried near the grave of Stephen Leacock at St. George’s Anglican Church, at Sibbald Point, near Sutton, Ontario.”
Here is her descent in the Titus family:
1. Robert Titus. b. 1600. m. Hannah Carter.
2. Edmond Titus. b. 1630. m. Martha Washburn.
3. Peter Titus. b. Aug. 24, 1674. m. Martha Jackson.
4. James Titus. b. 1700. m. Jane Seaman.
5. Richard Titus. b. Apr. 29, 1725. m. Mary Smith.
6. Augustine Titus. b. Apr. 21, 1747. m. Waite Hall.
7. Mary Titus. b. Jun. 5, 1768. m. Hugh L. Willson.
8. Hiram Robinson Willson. b. Dec. 4, 1799. m. Caroline P. McLeod.
9. Louisa Willson. b. Nov. 8, 1831. m. Daniel Ambrose Lundy.
10. Alberta Lundy. b. Apr. 10, 1854. m. William Richmond Roche.
11. Mazo de la Roche. b. Jan. 15, 1879.
John Hoyer Updike. Mar. 18, 1932 to Jan. 29, 2009.
John Updike, a literary genius, won just about every award available for writers in the English language during his lifetime. The following is taken from his biography:
“Updike attended Harvard University, where he majored in English, and led the staff of the Harvard Lampoon. He met his first wife while she was an undergraduate at Radcliffe, and the two were married in 1953.
He graduated with an A.B., summa cum laude, the following year, and he took a one-year Knox fellowship to study painting at Oxford University’s Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Arts. While in England, he was offered a position at the New Yorker, and in 1955, Updike returned to the United States, settling with his family in Manhattan. However, New York was not a suitable atmosphere for Updike’s writing and after two years with the New Yorker, he moved to Ipswich, Essex Co, Massachusetts to find an environment more conducive to his work. His first volume of poetry, The Carpentered Hen and Other Tame Creatures, was published the following year.
He wrote full time and continued to contribute to the New Yorker on a freelance basis. In 1964, he visited Russia (former USSR), as part of a cultural exchange program. Updike has received every major American writing award. He won the American Academy and National Institute of Arts and Letters, Richard and Hilda Rosenthal Foundation Award in 1960 for his first novel The Poorhouse Fair. For The Centaur, he received the National Book Award in 1963 and the Prix Medicis Etanger in 1966. In 1966 he also won the O. Henry Award for the short story “The Bulgarian Poetess”.
He was given an American Book Award nomination for Too Far to Go in 1980 and the following year he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Rabbit is Rich. The book also received the American Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1982. In 1984 he won the National Book Critics Circle award for criticism and the Medal of Honor for Literature from the National Arts Club in New York. He won the National Book Critics Circle award again in 1986 for Roger’s Version and a PEN/Malamud Memorial Prize and a PEN/Faulkner Award in 1988 for excellence in short story writing. He received a Pulitzer Prize and another National Book Critics Circle Award in 1990 for Rabbit at Rest, and in 1995 he was given the Howells Medal from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.” The following is his descendancy in the English Titus line:
1. Robert Titus. b. ca. 1600. m. Hannah Carter.
2. Content Titus. b. Mar. 28, 1643. m. Elizabeth Moore.
3. John Titus. d. 1761. m. Rebecca _____.
4. Joseph Titus. b. 1721. m. Pelatiah Moore.
5. Benjamin Titus. b. Mar. 22, 1770. m. Anna Lee.
6. Nathaniel H. Titus. b. Jun. 22, 1808. m. Emeline Johnson.
7.Mary Elizabeth Titus. b. Aug. 25, 1839. m. Archibald Updike.
8. Hartley Titus Updike. b. Oct. 9, 1860. m. Virginia Emily Blackwood.
9. Wesley Russell Updike. b. Feb. 22, 1900. m. Linda Grace Hoyer.
10. John Hoyer Updike. b. Mar. 18, 1932.
John Arthur Carradine. b. Dec. 8, 1936.
John Arthur Carradine was a well-known actor and producer, performing under the name of David Carradine. His best-known series is “Kung Fu: The Legend Continues.” His biography reads in part: “David Carradine is the eldest son of legendary character actor John Carradine and now presides over an acting family that includes brothers Keith Carradine, Robert Carradine and Michael Bowen as well as his daughter Kansas Carradine and nieces Ever Carradine and Martha Plimpton. He was born in Hollywood and educated at San Francisco State College, where he studied music theory and composition. It was while writing music for the Drama Department’s annual revues that he discovered his own passion for the stage, joining a Shakespearean repertory company and learning his craft on his feet. After a two-year stint in the army, he found work in New York as a commercial artist and later found fame on Broadway in “The Deputy” and “The Royal Hunt of the Sun” opposite Christopher Plummer. With that experience he returned to Hollywood, landing the short-lived TV series “Shane” (1966) before being tapped to star opposite Barbara Hershey in Martin Scorsese’s first Hollywood film, Boxcar Bertha (1972). The iconic “Kung Fu” (1972) followed, catapulting Carradine to superstardom for the next three years, until he left the series to pursue his film career. He died on Jun. 3, 2009.
Below is David Carradine’s Titus connection, descending from Robert Titus of the English line:
1. Robert Titus. b. ca. 1600. m. Hannah Carter.
2. Edmond Titus. b. 1630. m. Martha Washburn.
3. Peter Titus. b. Aug. 24, 1674. m. Martha Jackson.
4. James Titus. b. 1700. m. Jane Seaman.
5. Israel Titus. b. ca. 1738. m. Sarah Germond.
6. Elizabeth Titus. b. Jun. 17, 1763. m. Stephen Bull.
7. Mary Bull. b. Nov. 23, 1791. m. Benjamin Richmond.
8. Killian V. Richmond. b. 1810. m. Emily Culver.
9. Horace Richmond. b. 1847. m. Winifred Ryan.
10. Genevieve Winifred Richmond. m. William Reed Carradine.
11. Raymond Reed Carradine. b. Feb. 5, 1906. d. Nov. 27, 1988.
12. John Arthur Carradine. b. Dec. 8, 1936.
Brigham Young. b. Jun. 1, 1801. d. Aug. 29, 1877.
Brigham Young was President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (the Mormons) from 1844 to 1877. For a relatively unbiased history of Latter Day Saints, see “Some Family” in the Bookshelf section. Mary Van Cott was his 26th wife. Below is Mary’s Titus decendancy:
1. Robert Titus. b. ca. 1600. m. Hannah Carter.
2. Edmond Titus. b. 1630. m. Martha Washburn.
3. John Titus. b. Apr. 29, 1672. d. Mar. 4, 1750. m. Sarah Willis.
4. Jacob Titus. b. Jul. 1, 1703. d. Aug., 1792. m. Margaret Gorman.
5. Timothy Titus. b. Oct. 7, 1726. d. May 2, 1802. m. Charity Locee.
6. Maude Jemima Titus. b. Dec. 23, 1754. d. Dec. 13, 1831. m. Johannes Van Cott.
7. Locee Van Cott. b. Nov. 14, 1789. d. Sep. 29, 1824. m. Lovina Pratt.
8. John Van Cott. b. Sep. 7, 1814. d. Feb. 18, 1883. m. Lucy Lavinia Sackett.
9. Mary Van Cott. b. Feb. 2, 1844. d. Jan. 5, 1884. m. Brigham Young
Charles N. Dresser. b. Feb. 24, 1800. d. Mar. 25, 1865.
Charles N. Dresser was the minister who married Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd. He was descended from the English Titus line through Robert Titus’s son, John. The following account of the wedding was taken from the Abraham Lincoln Research Site. http://home.att.net/~rjnorton/Lincoln49.html
“Neither Mary nor Abraham wanted a big wedding. The couple wanted a small, quiet ceremony. Their preference was to have the marriage performed at the home of Reverend Charles N. Dresser, an Episcopal minister. Reverend Dresser owned the home that the Lincolns later purchased in 1844.
Sometime before the wedding, Abraham visited Chatterton’s jewelry shop located on the west side of the square in Springfield. He ordered a gold wedding ring. Mary and Abraham had agreed that the words “Love is Eternal” were to be engraved therein.
On the morning of Thursday, November 3, 1842, Abraham dropped by Reverend Dresser’s home. The Dresser family was still at breakfast when Abraham announced, “I want to get hitched tonight.” Reverend Dresser agreed to the arrangement.
After leaving the Dresser residence, Abraham happened to meet Ninian Edwards in the street. He told Mr. Edwards of the plans for the marriage. Mr. Edwards replied, “No, I am Mary’s guardian and if she is married at all it must be from my house.” When Elizabeth Edwards was informed of the plans, it was decided that the marriage would be delayed by one day as the Episcopal sewing society was meeting at the Edwards’ home that night and the supper had already been ordered.
Thus, Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd were married at the Edwards’ home on Friday evening, November 4, 1842. About 30 relatives and friends, all hastily invited, attended the ceremony which was conducted by Reverend Dresser who was wearing canonical robes. Mary wore a lovely white muslin dress. She wore neither a veil nor flowers in her hair. Mary’s bridesmaids were Julia M. Jayne (in 1843 she married Lyman Trumbull who later became a U.S. Senator), Anna Caesaria Rodney, and Miss Elizabeth Todd.
Abraham’s best man was James Harvey Matheny, 24, who was a close friend and worked at the circuit court office in Springfield. Matheny was asked by Lincoln to be best man on the day of the wedding! Reverend Dresser used “The Form of Solemnization of Matrimony” from a book entitled The Book of Common Prayer According to the Use of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States (Philadelphia, Carey & Hart, 1836).”
Below is Charles N. Dresser’s Titus line of descent:
1. Robert Titus. b. ca. 1600. m. Hannah Carter.
2. John Titus. b. Dec. 18, 1627. d. Apr. 16, 1690.
3. Mary Titus. b. Mar. 17, 1665. m. Richard Bowen.
4. Thomas Bowen. b. Aug. 20, 1689. d. Jul. 17, 1774. m. Sarah Hunt.
5. Hulda Bowen. b. Feb. 16, 1712. d. Jun. 11, 1792. m. Comfort Carpenter.
6. Orinda Sessions Carpenter. b. Mar. 13, 1738. d. Feb. 13, 1805. m. Nathan Dresser.
7. Nathan Dresser. b. Aug. 20, 1769. d. May 13, 1820. m. Rebecca Leffingwell.
8. Charles N. Dresser. b. Feb. 24, 1800. d. Mar. 25, 1865. m. Louisa Walker Withers.
Edward Marshall. b. 1710.
The connection of Edward Marshall to the Dutch Titus family is distant to say the least; he being the grandfather of a Titus wife. In addition, he never came close to earning his way into the Titus hall of fame. He is listed here because he was a player in an interesting, and perhaps infamous, event in American history, the “Walking Purchase” that took place in Pennsylvania in 1737.
According to the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, “…it was a land swindle perpetrated by Pennsylvania authorities on the Delaware Indians, who had been the tribe most friendly to William Penn when he founded the colony in the previous century. Colonial authorities claimed to have found a lost treaty, of 1686, ceding a tract of Delaware tribal land between the fork of the Delaware and Lehigh rivers that extended as far as a man could walk in one and one half days, about 40 miles.” Wikipedia further states that: “The legal veracity of this document is greatly debated today and it is now generally believed that at best it was an unsigned, unratified treaty and at worst an outright forgery.”
In any event, apparently the Delaware Indian tribe, the Lenape, believing the treaty to be authentic, and assuming that the distance involved was about 40 miles, agreed to honour it.
However, James Logan, the Pennsylvanian provincial secretary, instead of playing according to the intent of the treaty, hired the three fastest runners in the colony, Edward Marshall (the subject of our interest), Solomon Jennings and James Yeates. They proceeded to run a relay on previously prepared trails within the stipuated timeframe, with the result that the colony acquired over one million acres of land, “equivalent to the size of the State of Rhode Island,” in the process. Below is the tenuous Titus connection.
1. Titus Syrach De Vries. b. in Holland. d. 1688. m. Jannetje Nyssen.
2. Teunis Titus. b. ca. 1677. m. Mary Barre.
3. Francis Titus. b. 1712. d. May 14, 1784. m. Mary Clark.
4. Francis Titus. b. ca. 1735. d. Dec. 20, 1800. m. Jean Fagen.
5. William Titus. m. Fronica Keeler.
6. Jacob Titus. b. May. 8, 1808. m. Elizabeth George, daughter of Jacob and Hannah. Hannah George was the granddaughter of Edward Marshall, the famous walker and Indian fighter who made the famous day and a half walk from Wrightstown to the Blue Mountains in 1737, which defined the boundaries of the “Walking Purchase.”
Kenneth R. Carpenter. b. Aug. 21, 1900. d. Oct. 16, 1984.
Kenneth Carpenter became well-known as the announcer for Bing Crosby during Crosby’s hosting of the Kraft Music Hall radio program starting in 1936 and continuing for many years.
Wikipedia includes the following comments on Carpenter’s career: “Carpenter moved to Hollywood in 1929, one year after resolving to move there after listening to radio legend Graham McNamee call the Rose Bowl. Not long afterward, he became a staff announcer for KFI radio. As part of that job, Carpenter announced USC and UCLA football games for the Pacific Coast and the NBC radio networks from 1932 until 1935. In 1935, Carpenter announced the Rose Bowl for NBC radio. Carpenter became the color man for Bill Stern for all NBC-originated radio programming from Los Angeles from 1938 until 1942, which included the Rose Bowl. “Those Rose Bowl games were a big break for me, as they made me known to clients and advertising agencies in the East, so I had a jump on other local men when the big commercial shows started originating in L.A. in the mid-1930s,” Carpenter later said. In 1936, Carpenter became (Bing) Crosby’s announcer after Crosby began hosting the Kraft Music Hall radio variety program. Carpenter continued to announce for Crosby on various programs for the next 27 years. Crosby famously once called Carpenter “the man with the golden voice.” Carpenter also was known for ringing the chimes on many of Crosby’s shows.”
Here is the Titus connection.
1. Robert Titus. b. ca. 1600. m. Hannah Carter.
2. John Titus. b. Dec. 18, 1627. d. Apr. 16, 1690
3. Joseph Titus. b. Mar. 17, 1665. m. Martha Palmer.
4. Joseph Titus. b. Nov. 12, 1688. d. Jun. 4, 1756. m. Jane _____.
5. Althea Titus. b. May 29, 1714. m. Isaiah Carpenter.
6. John Carpenter. b. Dec. 16, 1740. m. Hannah Record.
7. John Carpenter. b. ca. 1786. d. Jan. 29, 1861. m. Lucena Thompson.
8. Charles Carpenter. b. Oct. 20, 1827. d. Mar. 1, 1883. m. Harriet Bennett.
9. Barlow G. Carpenter. b. Sep., 1870. m. Clara Louise _____.
10. Kenneth R. Carpenter. b. Aug. 21, 1900. d. Oct. 16, 1984.
Helena Rubinstein b. Dec. 25, 1870. d. Apr. 1, 1965.
The following appeared in the New York Times in a letter to the editor by Ludwig Lewiston of Waltham, MA on Feb. 12, 1952. “Few men of his period deserved more of literature and learning than my old friend Edward W. Titus, who passed away on the morning of January 27 at the age of 82. From the middle twenties until the middle thirties his elegant office and his shop filled with his magnificent bibliographical treasures at 4, Rue Delambre, in Montparnasse, was a meeting place where one encountered personalities as varied as Paul Valery and Ernest Hemingway. Here he established his publishing enterprise “At the Sign of the Black Manikin” and became the first publisher of accessable editions of the present writer’s “The Case of Mr. Crump,” of Lawrence’s “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” of distinguished translations of Rimbaud, Schnitzler, Beaudelaire, of exquisitely beautiful editions of briefer works by younger contemporaries, both American and French.” Edward William Titus, son of Leo, was born Jul. 25, 1870 in Podgorze, Poland, a district of Krakow.
He became the husband of Helena Rubinstein, whose company, Helena Rubinstein, Inc., became one of the world’s largest cosmetic firms, which competed with another of the great companies in the industry, that of Elizabeth Arden. The company had been started by Mrs. Rubenstein in the early 1900s in Australia and was prospering when the American operations were sold to Lehman Brothers in 1928 for $7.3 million. With the North American economy leading up to the great depression, this was indeed an enormous amount of money. Mrs. Rubinstein eventually became disenchanted with the way that the company was being managed and commenced to buy back the shares. It finally became part of the Colgate Palmolive empire.
Helena and Edward had married in 1908 in London and had two sons, Roy Valentine Titus (1909-1989) and Horace Titus (1912-1958). They were divorced in 1937 and she subsequently married Prince Artchil Gourielli-Tchkonia (1895-1955), who was said to belong to Georgian royalty.
Edward Titus is described by Wikipedia as “an American journalist” but nothing is known about his ancestry or the circumstances behind the opening of his bookshop in Paris.