Though of the past from no carved shrines, Canvas or deathless lyres we learn, Yet arbored streams and shadowy pines Are hung with legends wild and stern; In deep dark glen, on mountain side, Are graves whence stately pines have sprung, Naught telling how our fathers died Save faint Tradition’s faltering tongue. --_Adapted._ There is no reason to doubt that the progenitor of the Conant family in England and America came originally from Normandy, in 1066, as one of the followers of William the Conqueror. Frederick Odell Conant, of Portland, Maine, whose exhaustive work, “History and Genealogy of the Conant Family,” entitles him to be quoted as an authority, has arrived at this conclusion. Edward Nathaniel Conant, of Oakham, Rutland County, England, a member of the English branch, told the author, when visiting Lyndon Hall, in 1894, that he had seen the name Conan--from which Conant has been evolved--on a castle archway in Normandy. In 1896 the author met a Frenchman of the same name in Melbourne, Australia, who was, no doubt, a descendant of the branch of the family that remained in Normandy when the others came over with William to the conquest of England. There are several derivations given of the name Conant, many of which would establish it as of Celtic origin; and though a Conant came over to England with William, it would appear his ancestors had come originally from Cornwall and Devon to Brittany. The meaning of the name is almost as variously given as its origin, but it appears that the conclusion arrived at by the family historian and genealogist is that it is equivalent to the word in the Welsh, Irish, Saxon, Dutch, German and Swedish tongue, and also the Oriental, signifying chief or leader. Although the Conants probably returned to Normandy during the reigns of William and his sons, they finally settled at East Budleigh, in Devonshire. It is unnecessary here to trace the succeeding generations of the family, as we have to do only with the immediate connections of Roger Conant, known as the Pilgrim, who emigrated to the English Colonies in America in 1623, and from whom all the Conants in the United States and Canada are descended.