TL;DR: This classic and seemingly innocuous American car brand was—as I think is not hard to guess by now—created by the Salem Witches. My aim is not only to make the hidden connections plain, but to have them lead to places both interesting and unexpected.

Advisory: The state of the research at this point entails something of a change, in my judgment. I’m going to have to ask readers to “trust me, bro” a lot more, which is something I have always greatly resisted. Some might claim that’s because I’m running out of information, but quite the opposite is true. There is way too much information.

Up to now, I’ve tried to construct posts that were not only informative, but also engaging and entertaining. A big part of that was throwing in “everything but the kitchen sink”, where I could connect people and events that would be thought of as quite disparate in conventional terms.

The intended impression was to see that when traveling across this network of long-hidden connections, a few hops could bring you far across time and space, highlighting a structure that one never even guessed existed back when reading high-school history texts.

However, that informal methodology is—after the conspiracy theorist meme—like handling hundreds of pushpins and a mile of red string. Looping it all around in engaging and fascinating ways eventually leads to a big tangle that not even the looper (me) can easily navigate.

We have to trade amusement for organization, all in service of understanding. I’ll have to cut off the strings before we get to the really spicy stuff just two more pushpins away. If we hit upon someone called Rice, for example, think of it as running a single red string to a post-it on which is written: “The Rices: TBA (trust me, bro)”. We’ll see that protocol in the present discussion….

Oldsmobile was a familiar American brand throughout the 20th Century since its founding in 1897. It went defunct in 2004 but you may still see one now and again on the road or in driveways up on blocks.

Oldsmobile was acquired very quickly by General Motors in 1908. That was after a factory fire destroyed all but a single prototype car. We’ve discussed General Motors quite a bit, in posts on American car makers and earlier in a post on the Flint water crisis.

You might be thinking that’s all the connection we need make concerning Oldsmobile. We got the answer we were looking for, didn’t we? Yes, but you see, stopping at the answer you’re looking for is a fault that “They” employ all the time in disinformation efforts. They know you’ll chomp down on that juicy worm, but inside is a sharp piece of metal They’ll use to drag you around.

In this instance, inside that worm is… another juicy worm. In fact, there are several. They all concern the founder of Oldsmobile, Ransom E. Olds (1864-1950), and his genealogy.

Wikipedia tips us off by informing us Ransom’s mother was Sarah Whipple. Yes, a Salem Witch surname and distinctive enough, but we’ll take the time to submit all the receipts. What I want to point out now, however, is that there is no substitute for being able to notice these tiny red flags like the ones landscapers use flapping in the breeze. Gradually, though, one develops the eyes to see.

Being thus tipped, I went to the WikiTree page for Ransom Eli Olds and clicked on “Ancestors”. There were four names that caught my eye for investigation (again, no substitute). We’ll closely examine two of them, and for the other two I’m eventually going to hand you a “trust me, bro”.

Let’s begin with his mother, Sarah (Whipple) Olds (1824-1910). Click on her “Ancestors” tab. First, notice that Sarah had a 2g-grandmother named Sarah (Foster) Crosby (1709 - 1751). Is she one of those Fosters?

Delving into her genealogy a bit, I would say so. I can’t find the connection to any Fosters at the witch trials, but her relatives are chock full of Salem Witch names. She was born in Billerica, Massachusetts, which is 16mi east of Salem.

Sarah Olds also had a great-grandfather named Lieutenant Benjamin Whipple Sr. (1727-1806). I wanted to pause on him to note that he was another of many Salem Witch participants in the American Revolutionary War, making one really wonder how much of that history can be relied on. In any case, click his name then click on “Ancestors”.

Benjamin had a great-grandfather named Joseph Whipple (abt. 1640 - abt. 1708). It’s noted on that page that he was the “Joseph Whipple” directly involved in the Salem Witch Trials.

There were in fact three Whipples involved at Salem, and you can view the historical records for “John Whipple”, “Joseph Whipple”, and “Matthew Whipple”. They reused given names a lot in those days, so start at Joseph’s WikiTree page if you wish to try to find out exactly which John and Matthew they were talking about at Salem.

And really, you should take a look at those records. Not to put ideas in your head, but I think you’ll find it laughable nonsense and be as surprised as I am that anyone ever believed any of that event was real. BTW, as far as the accuracy and thoroughness of mainstream research, our familiar “list on Wikipedia” only includes Joseph under “Accusers” with a broken link to "(page does not exist)".

The Whipple line was damning enough but straightforward, so in a way I find this next line of investigation more interesting. Back on Ransom’s “Ancestors” tab, did you happen to notice the name of his paternal grandmother? She was born Mathilda Ford.

Do you think that’s a coincidence, given all this Salem Witch car stuff we’ve been talking about? It could be, sure, but you may not think so after you see where this Ford line goes. I’ve admitted before that Henry Ford can’t be connected to this line through any record I know of but, again, try to convince yourself that too is mere happenstance.

If you follow the paternal line for Matilda (Ford) Olds (1792-1844), you’ll arrive at Andrew Ford (bef. 1620 - 1693). He was the original immigrant, arriving first in Weymouth but settling in Hingham, Massachusetts.

Now, we just found out in the last post concerning boring car brands, that Hingham was where the forebear of both Packard automobiles and of tech giant Hewlett-Packard, Samuel Packard Sr. (abt. 1612 - 1684), settled. What a coinky-dink! You should note just how big a coinky-dink that really is. Samuel’s page contains the following note:

Daniel Cushing of Hingham, Massachusetts, a contemporary of Samuel's, made a list of all persons who came from Hingham and nearby towns in Norfolk, England and settled in Hingham in New England in 1633-1639. The list includes 206 persons…

Two hundred people? That’s a tiny damn bullseye we’re hitting at a range of 400 years. No one famous ever went to my high school in many decades. Okay, one guy, but you’d win a fricking prize if I showed you a photo and you could name him, or told you his name and you could say anything about him. (By the way, there’s one other guy I discovered in Hingham at that time and I think everyone on the planet has heard of his direct descendant. TBA!)

The one I want to talk about here, however, is fellow Hingham resident, Samuel Lincoln (1622-1690). Did you recall he was the progenitor of “Honest Abe”? In fact, he was the progenitor of the whole Lincoln family. The mainstream never mentions how many there were and what all they’ve been up to. Just the old “born in a log cabin” line, right?

Fertile Andrew Ford had a whole buttload of kids, twelve in number. His ninth was a daughter named Prudence (1663-1695). The plot thickens: she married a local boy named—are you ready?—Joseph Lincoln. But oh, the plot gets even thicker. Joseph’s father was Thomas Lincoln. The question we now must resolve is: which Thomas Lincoln of tiny Hingham MA?

The genealogical authorities claim in “Disambiguation Thomas Lincoln” that there were three Thomas Lincolns floating around Hingham in those days and a fourth in nearby Taunton, all unrelated to one another. Okaaaay.

Let me focus on two of them: Thomas Lincoln (abt. 1605 - 1691) "The Cooper" and Thomas Lincoln (bef. 1603 - abt. 1675) "The Weaver". I claim now that they are one and the same person, and that the genealogy has been purposely severed to obscure what I’m about to show you.

I mean, for starters, if there were two Tom Lincolns that went to your high school at the same time, you’d think that was pretty weird. But notice that for these Toms, their years of life are both hazy and nearly the same. “The Cooper” has no parents listed but does have a wife and children. “The Weaver” has parents but no wife or children, which would be extraordinarily unusual in those days. Need I go further or shall we just pencil in a big “equals sign” between them?

What They have done is sever this link: Prudence's father-in-law was “The Cooper”, and the brother of “The Weaver” is the aforementioned progenitor, Samuel Lincoln Sr. (bef. 1622 - 1690). If they are the same man, then we have the Fords marrying into the Lincolns.

Was that really worth hiding? The mere fact that They bothered doing it tells us so. Now to be fair, part of the documentary record that indicates they were two separate people can be found in “Early Settlers of Hingham, Massachusetts”. You can see that two Thomas Lincolnses received land grants, one in 1635 and the other in 1636. But remember, there was a third Thomas Lincoln in town and a fourth nearby, so I would mark this as weak counterevidence.

Back on Ransom’s “Ancestors”, we finally arrive at two others I wished to mention: his great-grandmother, Elizabeth Persis (Rice) Olds (1755-1815), and his 2g-grandmother, Sarah (Shaw) Ford (1724-abt. 1791).

Even if the little we’ve seen up to now is not sufficient to constitute guilt by association, I’ve researched far enough ahead to see that there’s a lot more association and a lot more guilt where that came from. That being said, it will be for future write-ups to state the cases for this Rice and this Shaw as Salem Witches, among others of those families.

Bonus1: Thomas Lincoln “The Cooper”, mentioned previously, is listed as being born in 1605 (uncertain) in tiny Beaminster, UK. And who does this connects us to?

The common ancestor of both Jack Parsons, the “Atomic Admiral” Deak Parsons, and many other Parsons of note, and who was the original immigrant to America of that line, was "Cornet" Joseph Parsons (c.1618-1683).

Cornet Joseph was born in the small village Great Torrington UK, which is over 60 mi from Beaminster, and so was his father. But dear old Dad lived and died in an even smaller village. He is thus known in genealogical records as William Parsons of Beaminster (1570-1625).

Nor was Dad just some guy. There are very provocative historical and genealogical records concerning two people both named William Parsons. But that’s a story for another day and, once again, you will have to “trust me, bro”.

Bonus2: Ransom E. Olds also founded the REO Motor Car Company in 1905. One of their cars was the REO Speed Wagon. Before you ask, yes, that’s where the band got its name. Oh noes! What does it mean?!

Just fun trivia and it means nothing at all, so far as I can tell. REO Speedwagon was very, very popular for no reason other than that their music was great. There was an energy, an optimism, a positivity that permeated their music—and the 70’s and 80’s as a whole—and which simply does not exist anymore. If you’ve never listened to their music, I suggest you start with:

REO Speedwagon - Roll with the Changes (Official Video) (Released 1978)

Please enjoy! Not like AI music slop at all, is it? Thanks for reading and see ya next time!