Regicide in the Family: Finding John Dixwell by Sarah Dixwell Brown (Monthly Educational Meetings)
I will describe my decades-long journey to discover all I could about not only my regicidal seven greats grandfather, but also the particular line of his descendants leading to me. The literal and metaphorical object holding the narrative together is John Dixwell’s key to Dover Castle which was passed down through eight generations to me, the ninth.
Sarah Dixwell Brown taught writing at Stanford University, Santa Clara University, Mount Holyoke College, and the Commonwealth Honors College at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She has published numerous personal essays in national and local publications. Her first book was prompted by her receiving a family heirloom, a key to Dover Castle that once belonged to her direct ancestor John Dixwell, a regicide of Charles I who escaped to New England in the 1660s.
