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Adoptive mother: Frances Phelps-Penry, née Phelps, 1895-1980. Born in Bonn, Germany, raised in Teaneck, NJ, United States, an Episcopalian.
Birth father: Raymond (Rajmund Mojzesz/Moses) Kanelba(um), 1897-1960. Born in Warsaw, Poland, a Jewish portrait painter.
Birth mother: Ninon Eugeny Georgina Lydia Gillaine Winch, formerly Sinden, née Trussart, a Belgian Catholic, 1910-1997, born in Gembloux, Belgium.
I was born James Francis Henry Sinden, Wednesday, February 2, 1944, London England. On adoption I became Alexander Francis Shackford Phelps-Penry.
(The identities of birth parents and the circumstances of adoptive mother remained largely unknown to me until following her death, when they were painstakingly acquired, as was much else.)
| The Evidence
A Washington Dinner
(An appreciation of Frances Phelps-Penry's maternal grandfather William Walter Phelps(1839-1894), corporation lawyer, Republican congressman, diplomat and jurist.)
Joseph Earl Sheffield
(A profile of Frances Phelps-Penry's maternal grandfather William Walter Phelps' father-in-law Joseph Earl Sheffield(1793-1882), cotton broker, railroad financier and, founder of the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale, philanthropist.)
A Spring Scandal
(A narrative of misappropriation of funds involving John Chester Eno, son of Amos Richards Eno, Manhattan developer and first cousin and former partner of John Jay Phelps, William Walter Phelps' father, while president of the Second National City Bank in 1884.)
Dynastic Visions
(Excerpt from the family memoir, Dear Gordon: Speaking of the Past.)
"One of Mrs. Penry's Boys"
(Frances had a habit of fostering male infants and passing them on as they entered childhood. They came to be known outside the family as "Mrs. Penry's boys." This is the story of one of them.)
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