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From: R R Kyser <>
Subject: [WHITNEY-L] Joan Whitney wasn't
Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2004 14:37:01 -0600

I hope our Puritan forebears don't mind too much if I wish everyone a
most happy Shrovetide.

A few weeks ago I wrote about Joan Whitney, who wrote a number of
popular songs in the 1940s with her husband Alex Kramer. It turns out
she wasn't born a Whitney at all.

She was born Zoe Parenteau in Pittsburgh to (isn't this cute) Zoel
Parenteau, also a composer, and his wife Edith. I checked a few
generations of Edith's ancestry (sorry, her surname slips my mind),
which was mostly Welsh and Yorkshiremen of central Pennsylvania. There
were no Whitneys evident.

Zoel told the census he and his parents were born in Massachusetts, he
in 1883, so there is a chance of a Whitney link there. But the 1880
census says all adult Parenteaus (Parenteaux?) in Mass. that year were
born in Canada.

She may simply have used Whitney as a pen name.

Cheers,
Ron Kyser

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