Three Doves Press · forthcoming
We Are Doves
Four Centuries of the Collver–Culver Family
Nine Collvers, one page.
In 1636 a wheelwright named Edward Colver signed the town covenant at Dedham, Massachusetts. His descendant in the thirteenth generation has set out to test everything the family ever said about itself. We Are Doves follows one family, spelled Colver, Culver, and Collver by turns, across four centuries and three countries: Rogerene dissenters whipped at New London for their faith, a house divided by the American Revolution, a Presbyterian minister indicted for sedition who walked his family north to Upper Canada, the Loyalist settlement of Norfolk County, and the return to Michigan. It is a narrative family history built from the records, with the documents reproduced in facsimile and the family’s legends weighed against the evidence, kindly and exactly.
In this book
- Four centuries and three countries, from the Dedham covenant of 1636 to Bay County, Michigan, and the name itself, culver, Old English for a dove
- Rogerene dissenters at New London and the Colverite migration to Schooley’s Mountain
- A family on both sides of the Revolution, the Loyalist walk north in 1794, and the War of 1812 in Norfolk County
- Family legends tested against the evidence, with the method shown
- A corrected descending register in the New England style, a graded Revolutionary service roster, and Y-DNA and autosomal results read against the paper trail
- 68 illustrations, many of them documents in facsimile; full notes and a bibliography in Chicago style; a guide to the archives behind the book; index
About the author
Albert B. Collver III, Ph.D., is a pastor of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. He is a descendant of the Reverend Jabez Collver — the thirteenth generation from Edward Colver, the wheelwright who put his name to the Dedham covenant — and, as the one who kept asking the questions, the present keeper of the family’s record. We Are Doves is the work of some thirty years of that asking. He and his wife, Terra, and their children, Christopher and Kaitlyn, currently live in St. Louis, Missouri; he serves a congregation across the river at Troy, Illinois, and together they breed versatile bench English Springer Spaniels under the name Three Doves — the family’s oldest word, as it happens, kept as a kennel sign. The name has meant the same thing since before the Conquest, and it keeps coming home whether anyone plans it or not.
Sample and press kit
- Sample pages (PDF)
- Cover, high resolution (JPEG, 1800 × 2700 px)
- Sell sheet (PDF) (0.6 MB)
- Review copies and interview requests: genealogy@collver.biz
The companion blog and the A House Divided podcast: history.collver.biz.