This is the first of a series of regular Tuesday afternoon posts. In December they will be Monday afternoon posts since I am otherwise booked tomorrow and the two following Tuesdays are Christmas and New Year's Day.
As I’ve learned more about my ancestors I’ve also taken some time to follow the branches of the tree down, learning about their siblings’ descendants. I’ve come across some interesting stories; this is the first of a recurring series of diaries about distant cousins I never knew. I'm telling this story this week because I just saw the movie Lincoln, and because it ties into to next week's story, which is related to Christmas.
A year ago today I couldn’t go back past the mid-1800s on my family tree and, for three of my four grandparents’ ancestors, I couldn’t even go that far. As most of you know by now, earlier this year I discovered, to my surprise, that I have many, many New England Yankee ancestors dating back to the earliest days of Massachusetts and Connecticut in the 1600s. Particularly since I still live in Massachusetts, it’s been quite a thrill to visit local cemeteries, town halls, etc., in search of the traces they left behind.
This past spring I went to the Boston branch of the National Archives and saved to USB the Revolutionary War pension files for two of my great-great-great-great-grandfathers (4x). Both of them served from Massachusetts then moved to Vermont just after the Revolution, at a time when there were very few people in Vermont (there still aren’t all that many people in Vermont, but back then it was really empty). Looking at handwritten papers relating to direct ancestors who came seven generations before me was a strange experience.
It occurred to me, after a lady at the local historical society in Vermont told me she was descended from the same couple, that there must be many, many people descended from these folks seven or eight generations later, especially since they each had a large number of children. Out of curiosity I started to trace the branches down, getting pretty close to the present day. A few people contacted me, via ancestry.com, and asked how I was related. There were others that I contacted when I saw their trees had a brick wall I could break through. In the process I learned that the descendants of those two young Revolutionary War soldiers are spread all over this vast country, literally from northern Maine to San Diego, Miami to Alaska, and many places in between. This is strange to me because I live in Massachusetts and it apparently never occurred to my direct ancestors to leave the northeast.
In tracing the lines down I came across all sorts of human stories. Some of them are inspiring, some sad, some both. There were a lot of people who died far too soon, leaving young children behind. There were a lot of young children who died. A few in particular made an impression on me and I’d like to share them so these people might be remembered. Here is one of those stories, concerning quite distant relatives.
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