"Looser edges" is a very good way to describe it ... and them. They all tended to be loose cannons, contrarians, and/or difficult people, not high-powered disciplined thinkers and practitioners, and some of them were downright frivolous in their approach to life in general and occultism in particular. It shouldn't be too surprising that they got out of New England as soon it was practical to do so, and headed for the newer, anything-goes regions around Chicago and San Francisco.

As for feeling wistful, such a family as mine looks rosier from afar than it actually was close-up. Many of my ancestors down through all the generations were dysfunctional, traumatized, scarred and crippled survivors. Henley's famous poem Invictus captures something of what it seems to have been like for us.

This may be why we turned away from mainstream ways of dealing with harsh reality and tried to gain some degree of independent mastery over our own lives by using unsanctioned means. And we may have had a measure of luck, too, helping us survive against all odds for so many centuries.