Ancestors and Family Stories

   Week 8: Power - John Willard The year was 1692. The place was Salem Village, Massachusetts Bay Colony. A 7th great granduncle of mine, John Willard (1657-1692), was a deputy constable charged by the magistrates of the local court to arrest several women charged with witchcraft. After arresting the first few women, John became convinced that they were not guilty. He remained true to his convictions and told the court he would not arrest anyone else charged with witchcraft. The court answered by stating it was obvious he had fallen under the influence of these devil-possessed women, and charged him with witchcraft.     John Willard had married Margaret Wilkins in 1687. She was a third generation member of the large, influential Wilkins family in Salem Village. The Wilkins family did not approve of Margaret marrying this “outsider” from 40 miles away in Groton, Massachusetts. When John was charged Margaret’s grandfather, Bray Wilkins (1611-1702), not only ref...

  Week 7: Unusual Source - Ella Rossow Besch Can you imagine taking a 3,000 mile journey by car in 1940? One of the most unusual sources I've been fortunate to have is a copy of an 80-year-old letter written by my wife's Great Grandmother, Ella Rossow Besch. It narrates in great detail a car trip she and her husband, John Julius Besch, took in the summer of 1940 from Eatonville, Washington to North Dakota and Minnesota. This letter provides a feel for what it must have been like. There was no Interstate Highway system, there were still some sandy/dirt roads. The best roads were hardtop and only two lanes wide. There were no modern motels, just little collections of cabins here and there for them to stay overnight. They drove 10-12 hours a day beginning at 4 am and stopping by late afternoon. But Great Grandma's descriptions of things she saw provided us more of that feel. She, as a farm girl, commented on how good or poor crops and livestock looked along the way. S...

  Week 6: Valentine - Esther A. Howland While researching my family tree for this Valentine blog post, I came upon an ancestor I knew nothing about. I found Esther Allen Howland (1828-1904) to be a distant cousin of mine, a fellow descendant of Mayflower passengers John Howland and Elizabeth Tilley, and to have a fascinating tie-in with Valentine’s Day. Esther Howland was born in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1828 and graduated from Mount Holyoke College at the young age of 19 in 1847.   Her father, Southworth A. Howland (1801-1882), owned and operated S.A. Howland and Sons, the largest book and stationary store in Worcester. A business associate of Esther’s father sent her a Valentine made of colorful paper, real lace and ribbons. England and France produced all the Valentines that were imported by and sold in America between 1800 and 1850. They were very expensive and cost far more than the average American could pay. Esther apparently loved the card but after...

   Week 5: In The Kitchen - Cook Family   “In The kitchen” was a stumbling block for me. I grew up in the era when family women did all of the cooking. If I went to the kitchen as a boy I was told to move on because I was under foot. So although I have no first-hand kitchen experience, I have had the extreme good fortune of being fed by many amazing family cooks. Therefore, while wrestling with this topic I was still stuck until I finally reread Amy’s suggestion, “…how about an ancestor named Kitchen or Cook(e)?” I met my wife, Tara, in 2009 and we married in 2010. Tara’s grandfather, Roy (1909-1987) was her family’s genealogist and did a great deal of work on her family tree during the 1960s and 70s when research was still done the old fashioned way: oral history, letter writing, family bibles, old photographs, library visits and telephone calls. Tara had known her whole life that her ancestry went all the way back to the 1620 arrival of the Mayflower, and two pass...