Nicolette (Slusser) Toussaint

Ancestors

Daughter of Richard Alan Slusser and Myra Dean Jean (Shields) Toussaint-Devine

Problems/Questions Profile manager: Nicolette Toussaint [send private message]

Nicolette's Brick Walls

Nicolette's Finished Profiles

Biography

A retired writer and current artist, Nicolette was born in Chicago in November of 1951 (nee Tani Nicolette Slusser), but moved to Colorado as an infant. She assumed that this was largely because her father, Richard Slusser, wanted to ski and climb mountains, but genealogical research later in life showed that she had deep Colorado roots of which she was unaware.

Nicolette (Slusser) Toussaint is a Coloradan.

Descendant of Rev. Peter Bulkeley, a Magna Carta gateway ancestor.

Descendant of Henry Bagwell, a qualifying Jamestown settler ancestor.

Descendant of Peter Presley, a qualifying Jamestown settler ancestor.

Descendant of PGM migrant Job Tyler.

Descendant of PGM migrant Rev. Peter Bulkeley.

Born as Tani Nicolette Slusser, she began using the name "Nicolette" in middle school, and she has been called by that name all her adult life. Google her as "Nicolette Toussaint" and you will find columns and stories written for the Denver Post, the San Francisco Examiner, the Glenwood Springs Post Independent and the Sopris Sun, as well as one fairly well-known essay called "Hearing the Sweetest Songs" which was published in Newsweek; it's in the memories section below. Nicolette's blog can be found at [1]

Genealogy in the Family

Nicolette's paternal aunt, Mary Eleanor Slusser Moxey, and great aunt, Helen Fitzena Downer, devoted their lifetimes to genealogy, extensively researching their Downer and Bulkeley roots. All their work was bequeathed to Nicolette, and she has added to that.

The Bulkeleys and Downers were easy to trace, but parts of paternal family legends remain elusive. Family lore has it that ancestor Lydia Wyatt Prettyman, third great-grandmother to Nicolette, was descended from "a governor of Virginia." If there's a grain of truth there, the path would not lead to Sir Francis Wyatt, Governor of Jamestown (not Virginia), but to his brother, Rev. Haute Wyatt, who was minister at Jamestown and "left issue" in the New World. So far, Lydia Wyatt's descent remains a mystery leading to colonial Delaware, where Nicolette has hit a brick wall. Nicolette has plenty of Wyatt DNA matches, but so far has no information past Lydia's father Sacker Wyatt, and no definitive connections to Haute's descendants.

However, Lydia Wyatt's husband, Thomas Jefferson Prettyman (Nicolette's third-great grandfather) did indeed trace back to Jamestown via colonial Delaware and a group of inter-related families (Prettyman, Burton, Waples) that moved in a group from Virginia to the Delmarva Peninsula of Delaware/Maryland.

Nicolette was suprised to find that both her mother's and her father's ancestors (Kuykendall, Teller and Remsen, respectively) lead back to pre-colonial Dutch settlers in New Amsterdam, before it was New York.

Nicolette's mother's family was largely a mystery until 2020, when Nicolette was able to confirm her mother's parentage (using both records and DNA), knocking some skeletons out of the closet in the process. Nicolette's mother, Myra Jean/Dean Shields Toussaint Slusser, was the daughter to Mamie Lucie Gowens, who is likely descended from one of the "twenty and odd" Africans kidnapped and brought to Jamestown aboard the White Lion in 1619, beginning slavery in Colonial America. (This ancestry has been confirmed multiple times by DNA matches in the GEDMatch Gowens cousins and ancestors group. The paper trail is sketchy, but the DNA matches are pretty definitive.)

A few of the stories Nicolette has written about her research are published on her website:

• Daughter of America: Secrets in the Blood: [2]
• Knocking Skeletons Out of the Family Closet (kidnapping of Myra Shields/Toussaint): [3]
• Mom on Patrol (Myra as early Colorado ski patroller): [4]
• The Long Shadow of World War I (About grandfather Thomas Harry Slusser, Sr.): [5]

The Resume Stuff

In case some researcher wants to know (though why, since I'm leaving "without issue" I wouldn't know), here's some factual info about me:

• Moved from birthplace, Chicago, to Denver as infant
• Attended Montview Elementary in Aurora, Colorado, 1-3 grade
• Parents divorced in 1960 following mother's attempted suicide; this led to fragmented childhood and lots of moves between 1960 and 1965
• Attended Grant Jr. High in Littleton then Kunsmiller Jr. High, Denver
• Attended both John F. Kennedy and East High in Denver (went to voluntary integration program at East, got high school diploma from East)
• Attended CU Denver and Boulder campuses, earned BA in English and BS in Journalism in 1974
• Graduated from Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, 1979, Master's Degree in publication design

• Graduate of the Colorado Outward Bound School in Marble, Colorado, summer of 1968 (first year women were admitted)

Traveled widely in Europe and Africa from 1974-6 with third husband. Moved to San Francisco, California in 1970 and lived there until 2010. From 2010-2022 (the time this was written), lived in Carbondale, Colorado, near Aspen. I moved to Longmont, Colorado, near Boulder, in 2023.

During my career, I worked as a fashion copywriter for the Spiegel Catalog, a travel writer for United Airline and as an ad agency copywriter for multiple San Francisco ad agencies, mostly working on travel and high-tech accounts. In 1987, I quit the ad business and went to work for nonprofits. The most notable of those was the Hewlett-Annenberg Challenge, also called the Bay Area School Reform Network (1990-2005).

For a couple years, I was the president of the San Francisco Chapter of NOW, the National Organization for Women. I also chaired their PR committee, and worked on issues of women's credit, equal pay, and reproductive rights.

In part because of my work with public schools, and in part because of my work for women's rights, I was honored by the Unitarian-Universalist (UU) Church of San Francisco with the Rheiner Award for Humanitarian Service.

Nicolette is a Unitarian Universalist

In the summer of 2023, I joined the Boukfer Valley Unitarian-Universalst Fellowship in Lafayette, Colorado.

My writing has been published in multiple places: the Denver Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, Newsweek, Education Week, the Glenwood Springs Post-Independent and the Sopris Sun.

In retirement, I have devoted myself to art, teaching at Colorado Mountain College, the Bookcliffs Center for the Arts and offering classes by Zoom and at local libraries. I have been elected to membership of the Western Colorado Watercolor society, and one of my paintings is on permanent display in the town hall of Carbondale, Colorado.

Research Notes

In case anyone wants to go digging, I was married four times. There are some horror stories to find; I spoke publicly at quite a few rallies against domestic violence so you can probably find some of that.

Current husband, Mason Ingram, has been my mate for more than 30 years.

He's the only one I'm owning up to. (You're welcome to go digging for the other three.)

Digital Afterlife

In the knowledge that we are all mortal, I hereby request that upon my death, all of my managed profiles of deceased persons including my own profile should be set to full open status. (Please add my year of death.)

I have no children, no descendants. As far as my mother's and maternal grandmother's family go, I am the end of the line. I have paid special attention to writing obituaries of people I have known who were at risk of being forgotten if I did not memorialize them: my parents, my step-father, my maternal grandparents, and great aunts and uncles who weren't known by current living members of my family.

I would welcome any descendant or cousin to become profile manager and continue this labor of love which my great-aunt, my aunt and I started so many decades ago.

Sources

• First-hand information. Entered by Nicolette Tani Nicolette Slusser at registration.