Ancestors and Family Stories

  Week 13: Music - Our Families Every family seems to have musically talented people. I vividly recall my cousin Joyce sitting at the piano playing show tunes in the early 1950s. She had a wonderful talent. Her teacher was a neighbor woman who was a graduate of the Julliard School of Music in New York City. How special that was! Joyce went on to take organ lessons when she was 50, and played for her church for many years. At 87, she still sits in to play on occasion. On my wife’s side of the family, her brother plays the piano and has directed the church choir. Her nephew Blake has his Bachelor of Arts in Music and makes his living as a pianist, vocalist and conductor.   I smile at all this musical talent because my mother tried to teach me the piano and then the violin at about age 5 or 6 but failed because of my lackadaisical approach to learning at that age. Later in grade school, I tried to learn the trumpet but fizzled on that instrument too. Of course, if I had the t...

  Week 12: Loss - Mary Baldwin Catlin The winter of February, 1704, was particularly cold in northwestern Massachusetts. Recent heavy snow covered the ground, and the rivers were frozen to a depth of three feet. The governor of New France in Montreal dispatched a force of 48 French officers and soldiers together with almost 300 Indians to raid the English colonial village of Deerfield. The villagers had been alerted to the possibility of trouble, and had taken precautions. The center of the village was surrounded by a strong wooden stockade. Deerfield had only 41 houses and a population of 268, and the local militia could muster 70 armed men. Deerfield was a subsistence farming community and provided no threat to French settlements 300 miles north along the Saint Lawrence River, but for geographic and political reasons, Deerfield was an easy target. One of the French objectives was to capture the Reverend John Williams, a Harvard graduate, who had the social standing to be u...

Week 11: Fortune - Thomas Prence Everyone knows about the Mayflower, but who’s heard of the name of the second Pilgrim ship to arrive in Plymouth one year later in November 1621? The group of 70 London investors didn’t put up the money to support the new colony because they were nice guys, they expected to make a profit. Hence they named the second ship, FORTUNE, to foretell the results they craved.   While working on my family tree along my maternal grandfather’s line and among the 35 passengers on the FORTUNE, I came to a 21 year old single young man by the name of Thomas Prence (1602-1673). Much to my delight, I discovered him to be my 9 th Great Grandfather. Here is a link to that passenger list:  https://www.packrat-pro.com/ships/fortune.htm While most of the Plymouth colonists were yeoman farmers, Thomas Prence was highly educated and arrived with over 100 books. He married Patience Brewster in 1624. She was the daughter of the very influential Plymouth Elder W...

  Week 10: Name’s the Same - Winfield Scott Amy asked two questions to prime the pump for this week’s topic. Is there a name that keeps popping up in your family tree? Have you had to sort out multiple people with the same name? My answer to both questions is yes, but I’ve decided to do something slightly different. When you work with ancestors born in the 19 th and early 20 th century, it is not unusual to come upon male ancestors named after presidents and other well known leaders from their day, for example, George Washington Carver. With this in mind, I went looking for someone named after a celebrity of his day and found one in my wife’s Family Tree. He’s a 3 rd Great-Granduncle by the name of Winfield Scott Bontrager (1852-1927). Knowing military history, I immediately recognized the name of the famous 19 th century military leader, Winfield Scott (1786-1866). Way before our modern communications methods of radio, TV, the internet, and social media, Winfield Sco...

Week 9: Multiples – Imel Brothers   This is the story of five Imel brothers: Henry, Thomas, Jacob, Joseph and Peter, during and after the Revolutionary War All five brothers were born in Hesse-Cassel, Germany and orphaned in 1764. All five were conscripted into the Hessian Army , forced into service fighting for the British as German mercenaries. When they landed in New York in 1776, they were aged 20, 19, 16, 14 and 12. All five switched sides going AWOL from the Hessian Army in 1776 to enlist in George Washington’s Continental Army. General Washington promised any Hessian who changed sides 70 acres of land after the war and about 5,000 of the 30,000 conscripts took him up on his offer. Hessian Soldier There are many details lost to history but Henry, Thomas, Jacob, Joseph, and Peter all made it to America on British ships of war. Unfortunately, Thomas died of unknown causes in 1776 but the other four brothers survived Hessian service and United States service th...