Churbuck.com

The nice thing about Facebook has been the coalescing of random Churbucks around the FB group. “All Things Churbuckian” organized by Paula Churbuck. One of the Churbucks to come out of the woodwork was Frederick Churbuck, a young man from Colorado who pinged me in an email with a question about how were we related.

I have no idea — but shared my theory that some semi-literate ancestor in Southeastern Massachusetts (The Churbuck name seems to be concentrated in Middleboro, Wareham and the Upper Cape) messed up the first “B” in “Chubbuck”, didn’t close the bottom loop and left it open as an “R”. Hence Churbuck is a typo from Chubbuck, of which there is also a sizable population in the same aforementioned towns.

Frederick asked if I knew of the place where he spent his summers, a grand mansion on the seaside of Buzzard’s Bay with the name of “Windsway.”

I had not, but on Thanksgiving my daughter and I set out for Old Silver Beach in West Falmouth, and under dramatic lowering skies, saw off to the northwest a pretty impressive house on a peninsula. Just as Frederick described it.

Was it “Windsway?”

Here’s the picture I took.

Windsway?

Frederick says it is at the end of Wild Harbor Road, and indeed, this is the last stop on Wild Harbor Road.

Amazing. And no, I didn’t come from that branch of Churbuck. Apparently the best known of the Falmouth Churbucks is the painter Leander. Of the rest of that branch, I know very little. I wish I were retired and could indulge my geneological urges. Alas. I cannot.

Update: George Taylor sent in the following picture of Windsway in its heyday. I like it better this way, the way it was.

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