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The Legacy of The Girl From Alabama

May 3, 2012 by Diane Boumenot, One Rhode Island Family

A story of race and family

When you grow up in New England you don’t hear much about slavery. Despite many Rhode Island “shipping” fortunes based in the slave trade, slavery seemed to be from a remote time and place. Rhode Islanders, more than most, had reasons to want to put those days behind them.   My mother’s Rhode Island roots are distant from the seafaring communities, so I don’t suppose we had much of a role in the slave trade.  Occasionally, around 1700, one sees a slave or two in their farming homesteads, but no more than that.

Or so I thought.  I think for one part of my Rhode Island family, slavery was very real.  One of the only things I knew about my great great grandmother, Emma Lamphere Darling, was that she was born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. She reportedly said, concerning her family’s move up to Rhode Island in her late teens, that her father had lost his business in the Civil War, and besides, a “white woman” wasn’t safe down there.

Emma Lamphere Darling, 1857-1927

I guess you would have to know my family to understand how strange this seems to me.  My parents deliberately rejected the racial prejudice they may have observed in childhood and set out, in the 1960′s, to make the world a more equitable and loving place.  They were involved in local civil rights efforts, and were adherents to the philosophy of Dr. Martin Luther King.  Those are stories for another day, but my parents built a family that now contains grandchildren of all colors.  Two of those are my beautiful daughters, so my sympathies are closely aligned with my daughters’ interests, and their ancestors who were, undoubtedly, slaves.

But I think part of studying family history is uncovering everything, whether it’s flattering, happy, attractive, reasonable, or none of those things.  If you learn with great interest about the experiences of a Revolutionary War ancestor, wouldn’t you want to know about an ancestor who lived through an equally turbulent and polarizing time in American history?

The only artifact I have of Emma Lamphere is her picture, taken before the removal up north, and another picture which I believe to be her as a middle-aged woman.  No notes, letters, diaries, or possessions.  The usual records a genealogist might use reveal only glimpses of her, and may be the work of others: sadness about her mother’s death in 1878, and listing her oldest son as a resident of her household in Providence in 1910 even though he was living with his wife and two babies 10 blocks away.

possibly Emma, around 1903

I set out months ago to learn more about Emma’s father, Russell Lamphere.  I purchased some microfilm newspapers from the Alabama State Archives.  I did, indeed, learn more about Russell’s business; he had a tin shop.  What I also found were indirect clues to Emma’s life story.  No history class ever really prepared me for the atmosphere that was reflected in The Tuscaloosa Observer.

The roll I purchased commenced in 1860.  Stories of the day were detailed at length: the presidential election, John Brown’s trial, and the need for the South to become more self-sufficient (such as “Southern Insurance”, or boys withdrawing from northern colleges).  But every single page was also filled with strident and outraged defenses of slavery.  And not infrequently, the buying and selling of slaves was clearly illustrated.

From the Independent Monitor, January 14, 1860, vol. 23, no. 39. p.1:

FLOGGED AND ORDERED TO LEAVE – The Lexington (Miss.) Advertiser of Friday last has the following:

We understand that a man by the name of Miller was unceremoniously stripped, flogged and ordered to leave the neighborhood, by several citizens of Tobula on one day during last week.  Although Miller claimed to hail from Perry county, Ala., still his conduct and intimacy with the negroes in the neighborhood, created the belief that he was a secret abolition emissary. We learn that he passed through this place a few days ago.  He alluded, we understand, to the whipping he received, in good humor, although he complained that the strap with which he was whipped “hurt awfully”.

From the Independent Monitor, January 21, 1860, vol. 23, no. 40. p.2:

MORE AFRICANS COMING. – The Sea Coast (Miss.) Democrat learns from good authority that a cargo of African slaves is expected in Ship Island Harbor the latter past of the present month.  They will be landed without secrecy, the consignees trusting to the predominant sentiment of Mississippi for an acquittal, in the event of a government prosecution.

From the Independent Monitor, April 5, 1861, vol. 24, no. 52. p.3:

ADMINISTRATOR’ SALE    By virtue of the order of the court of probate, of Tuscaloosa County, the undersigned Administrator of the Estate of William L. Bealle, deceased, will sell at PUBLIC SALE, at the Plantation lately occupied by said decedent, in said county, on the 17th day of December next, the following slaves, belonging to said estate, viz: Marin, Mary, Harriet, Mipta, Ellen, Henry Fox, Henry Cody, Moses, Jake, George, Dub, Tom, Alfred, Orry, Mary Ann, Sophia, Francis, Evaline, Edmund, Tol, Ad, Richmond, Steph, Martha and her child Tiny; together with other personal property belonging to said estate, to wit: Horses, Mules, Oxen, Cattle and Hogs, and one Carriage, one Hack, Wagons and Farming Utensils.

TERMS OF SALE:  Notes with two approved securities, payable first of March, 186(?), with interest from the day of sale.

Charles S. Bealle, Administrator

“The slave sale is indefinitely postponed”

As 1860 turned to 1861 the war went from a skirmish to a drawn out  battle.  The paper suggested that any young man who had not enlisted be derisively “bonneted” by the local women.  Jeers at the north filled much of the paper.  I realize now that my ggg-grandfather Russell Lamphere could never have remained loyal to his Connecticut roots in that atmosphere.  I have a record of an “R. Lamphere” enlisting in a  regiment at the Tuscaloosa City hall on April 25, 1860 in response to a call from the Alabama legislature … I suppose that was him.

As for Emma, she was born in 1857 so the Civil War and the slaves being freed were among her earliest memories.  I can only imagine the talk she grew up with, of hating the north, resenting the growing destruction and poverty all around her, and fearing these people who suddenly had gained the rights of human beings. Given what I read in the paper, an impressionable young girl could easily be convinced of the righteousness of the south’s cause.  How much she must have resented her pragmatic father for turning about and returning to New England!

Emma grew up in an atmosphere of hate and oppression, and war.  The defense of slavery is soul-crushing for all parties, and it’s something that she lived with.  She was probably insecure about her northern roots, and once up north, lonely for her southern roots.  All in all I suspect Emma’s happiness was a casualty of that war.  In the end she died too young, leaving children and grandchildren to mourn her.  But somehow I know that the fact that her descendants stepped far beyond racism to a more loving, peaceful place is something that she would not resent.  I suspect her life was hard enough that she would not wish it on anybody.  So Emma, we are not living your life.  But we are living your legacy.

The link to this post is:  http://wp.me/p1JmJS-wm

Posted in Alabama, Genealogy, Lamphere | 5 Comments »

The Brick Wall Stories: I Find Edward Baldwin

April 22, 2012 by Diane Boumenot, One Rhode Island Family

I am always curious about how others solve a long-standing problem, so I’d like to share my recent experience.

A few weeks ago I had a remarkable breakthrough on my Baldwin line.  Some Massachusetts town records were put on Ancestry.com and I managed, for the first time, to find the 1933 death record of my mother’s great aunt Hattie Baldwin Clapp.  The death record listed her father’s place of birth as Townsend, Massachusetts.  I knew he was born in Massachusetts, but never knew the town.

Here is the progression of how Edward Baldwin’s background came to light.

What I knew

  • I knew through family lore, obituaries, and marriage records that my great grandfather Miles Edward Baldwin was born in Belmont, Allegany County, New York.  I gradually pieced together that Miles had three siblings, only one of whom, Aunt Hattie, was a full sibling.  The other two siblings were children of their mother Catherine’s by a previous marriage.

    Miles Edward Baldwin, Sr., circa 1900, in Providence

  • I knew that Miles and Hattie’s father was named Edward Baldwin.  Their mother is sometimes referred to as Catherine Youngs and sometimes Catherine Spaulding.  I have never found birth records for Miles and Hattie; to the best of my knowledge there are none.
  • The first actual evidence I found of Edward was a poorly crafted 1860 federal census record for Belmont (“Amity”) New York.  I had to go page by page to find this “Baldin” record.

    Ed, Cate, Anna Jean, and Hattie, 1860

  • From this record, I learned that Edward Baldwin was born in Massachusetts.  I spent the next two years gradually narrowing down my guess to Worcester and Middlesex counties based on subsequent events in the lives of the various family members. Catherine married for the third time in 1870.  So I knew they were divorced, or he died, by then.

Things that threw me off the track

  • In the standard “Baldwin Genealogy from 1500 to 1881” by Charles Candee Baldwin, and his Supplement, there are dozens of Edward Baldwins.  On two occasions I went through them all. The book is also divided into branches; in the end my branch turned out to be the Billerica branch.  I had wandered through the Billerica and Woburn branches, but nothing seemed right.   As it turns out, he is mentioned in the book, but is incorrectly referred to as Edmund.

    listed as "Edmund" in the Baldwin Genealogy book

  • Once in a while, one of the descendants would indicate that Edward was born in New York State.  And given the poor quality of that entire Amity, New York 1860 census enumeration, I hated to rely on its indication of “Massachusetts”.  After all, the enumerator missed, or wasn’t told, that Catherine was born in England.  Plus, many Baldwin branches are from Connecticut.  So, I wasted time on other states.

What solved it

  • This is from Aunt Hattie’s 1933 death record:

    A place of birth for Edward Baldwin - Townsend, Massachusetts

  • I still haven’t found a birth record for Edward (not surprisingly, because I think I would have found that long ago).  But what I did find in Townsend was a young couple, Eli and Polly Baldwin, who both died very young; Edward at 29 and Polly at 33.  In their brief marriage they had two children, Catherine (coincidentally) and Edward.  The Middlesex County Probate index [through NEHGS, membership may be required] cited some guardianship records, so off I went to the NEHGS to see that on microfilm.  It wasn’t a smoking gun, exactly, but pointed to which of Polly’s siblings  the children went to.  I’m following up on all the relatives.
  • Why do I think Eli and Polly may be the parents?  Several reasons:
    1. Polly’s maiden name is Spaulding, and in fact Townsend is filled with Spauldings. I don’t know what to make of that, but it sounds like a clue to me.
    2. Edward and Catherine (wife) had 2 children, Miles and Harriet.  Polly has 8 siblings.  Two of them are named Miles and Harriet.  Harriet never married, and eventually had (sister) Catherine living with her.  Miles was an up and coming doctor, who became quite wealthy, and is buried in Townsend.
    3. Eli was paid by the town of Townsend for making 2 caskets in 1831 [Vital Records of Townsend, NEHGS database - membership may be required].  In 1860, Edward was a lumber planer.  The skills couldn’t have been handed down directly, since the father died when Edward was a baby, but it seems vaguely appropriate.
    4. Edward’s life was, I suspect, short and chaotic.  Born in Massachusetts, married to a divorced woman, living in poverty and working at a lumber mill in western New York by age 27, back in Massachusetts eventually, possibly dying an obscure death at a young age … it does not surprise me at all to think he may have been an orphan.

The clues I missed

  • I always tried to make a connection between the last names of Miles and Baldwin, given that I knew one of the children was named Miles.  I even, through searching, managed to quantify the appearance of those last names in an 1830 census collection, town by town in Massachusetts.  In that scenario, the town with the most Baldwins/Miles turned out to be Gardner, Mass and nearby Baldwinville.  As it turns out, those are only about 10 miles from Townsend, but searching in those exact locations didn’t turn anything up. WHAT I MISSED was that there was a connection between that mysterious “extra” maiden name of the wife, “Spaulding”, and Baldwin.  I never thought of that.  WHAT I ALSO MISSED is that he could have been named for someone with the first name of Miles.
  • I knew (wife) Catherine remarried in Sterling, Mass in 1870, so she must have been divorced or widowed.  I never tried hard enough to find a death record for Edward during the period 1860-1870 in Massachusetts.  WHAT I MISSED was a record for an Edward Baldwin who died sometime during February, 1867, in Northbridge, Mass.  No details at all are given in the town record so clearly whoever this was was not well known there.  Even though this was in my “guess” counties, I never found it.  Frankly, it all seems so mysterious, I wonder if I may find a newspaper article somewhere.

Lots of things I still don’t know

  • Where did Catherine (the wife) come from?  Was she an English orphan, adopted by some Spauldings?  Did she meet and marry her first husband, with the utterly common name of William Bennett, near Townsend, and head off to western NY?
  • Did Edward follow her out there? I know Catherine and William Bennett divorced, because their son lists him as alive in an 1890 document.  Was their relationship the cause of Catherine’s divorce from Bennett, or did he come out to help her pick up the pieces after the divorce?  Or, did he wander west on his own, and met her for the first time?  Why does my family story always sound like a soap opera?
  • Did Edward have family out in Belmont?
  • When and why did they return to Massachusetts?  Was Edward trying to avoid the draft, perhaps?  I see no evidence that he served in the Civil War.

What’s next?

I suspect further research into all the siblings of Eli and Polly, some local newspaper research, exploring the cemeteries in Townsend and some research in Belmont, NY, will, somewhere, somehow, provide a direct link between this new theory and the parts of the story that I know.  But I’m not sure I will ever pin down the death of Edward Baldwin, for sure.

If you accessed this through a feed, this post is found here.

Posted in Genealogy | 4 Comments »

The First 10 Things You Learn About Genealogy

April 14, 2012 by Diane Boumenot, One Rhode Island Family

The other day I saw a question about finding the 1890 federal census and it made me wonder, what are the very first things you learn about genealogy in the United States, say, in the first six months, that you did not know before?

  1. The 1890 federal census pages are gone except for a few segments. They burned in a fire back in the 1920′s before they were reproduced in any other form.
  2. Spelling means little or nothing before about 1860. Usually, the documents that survive today weren’t even written by your ancestor. If the clerk could string some letters together and in the near future people would know that referred to your ancestor, he did his job.
  3. FamilySearch.org is helpful for finding vital records, and free.
  4. There are a surprising number of inaccuracies in the federal census records. Sure, some of it is carelessness by the census takers, but some of it is out and out lying by your ancestors. I’m not sure I have one female ancestor since 1850 who gave her correct age in the census. They always shaved a bit off. And then there’s the surprising case of my gg-grandparents listing an adult daughter in their household. Their real daughter, Jessie Billington and her husband, upstairs, list 8 and 12 year old offspring – but they never had any children. My theory is they had taken in a local single mother and her children, and were perhaps hiding this from the landlord. Anyone have another theory?

    There is no Jenette, or John and Mildred

  5. States have census records, too; often but not only in the “5″ years between federal censuses. For each state, the census schedule, questions asked, and survival of the records vary widely, so you have to go state-by-state to research this.
  6. It’s all about sources. The style of footnotes may be something you will put off worrying about. But recording where you found something, or checking out where others found things, is crucial. The time you really learn this is the first time you find something SO wrong on the web that everyone else accepts as fact, or the first time you follow someone’s footnote and find a valuable book or article you weren’t aware of.
  7. The cultural norms we take for granted about the”olden days” are not all that true. People did sometimes sue other family members, they did sometimes get divorced, and they did sometimes have a child before marriage. Well – sigh – my ancestors, anyway.
  8. Newspaper articles, wills, obituaries and letters are at the heart of genealogy. At first, you wonder why people would spend years compiling names and dates. Then those names and dates lead you to the real stories you never knew about, and you get it.
  9. All old pictures are valuable, and even the undocumented ones may be decipherable by comparing identified pictures of those family members.
  10. And lastly, one of the first things you learn about genealogy is that most of your family members are not going to care all that much. But a few will, so be good to them.

Can you remember the first things you figured out?

Posted in About Genealogy, Genealogy | 14 Comments »

Dear Third Cousin

March 31, 2012 by Diane Boumenot, One Rhode Island Family

I never got into genealogy thinking that I would reunite with lost cousins.  In fact I have wonderful cousins with full contact information that I don’t manage to keep up with very well.  There’s not much point in adding to that.  I have one cousin, tracing a different side of the family, who loves to connect with distant cousins; calling them on the phone and explaining all about it (sometimes they hang up on him!)  I admire that, but I don’t think that’s me.

So I am uncertain what to do about some cousins that I would like to connect with.  My great-great “Grandma Ross”, Catherine (Young or Spaulding) Bennett Baldwin Ross was married 3 times and had four children.

Catherine Baldwin, circa 1900 in Providence, RI

Two of those children had no descendants.  Another was my great grandfather, Miles E. Baldwin Sr.; I am aware of his descendants.  The fourth was artist William Blackstone Bennett.  William married an architect, Sophia Hayden, but prior to that through his first marriage to Harriet Ella Crosby, he had a daughter, Jennie May Bennett.  Jennie was a nurse, and married Seth Newton Manning on Oct. 30, 1919.  Jennie had one son, William F Manning, who was my mother’s cousin Billy, although she did not know him well.

Uncle Gene, Jennie May, Billy, Edna, Jim, Russell, twins, Seth in back?

The reasons I would like to be in touch with William F Manning’s two children are:

  • I wonder if they have pictures of Aunt Hattie (Hattie’s widower, Uncle Gene, is pictured above), Grandma Ross, or any of the older generations
  • I wonder if they have pictures of their great grandfather, William Blackstone Bennett, or if they have surviving paintings by him.
  • Perhaps they can explain something about the origin of their great great grandfather, William or Thomas Bennett, and what happened to his marriage to Catherine, and why the family ventured from Townsend, Massachusetts to western New York, and back again.  Conversely, if they have no information but are curious, they may want to follow along as I try to figure it out.
  • They might know more than I do – but somehow I doubt this – about the origins of their great great great grandmother Catherine who was apparently born in Surrey, England around 1830, and ended up in Massachusetts and New York.  Her name is sometimes given as Youngs or Spaulding, making me wonder if she came over as an orphan and was adopted.  That’s my wild guess at this point.
  • I wonder if they knew of their great great aunt Anna Jean (Bennett) Douglas (1854-1939) who lived in Providence.  Anna Jean (always called Aunt Jennie, and I suspect her niece Jennie May Bennett was named for her) has no descendants, and I am anxious to tell the story of her interesting life, if I can ever figure it out.

    Anna Jean Bennett Douglas with her niece Jennie May Bennett - the picture was sent to my grandfather in France during WWI

  • I have the digital pictures shown here and a few others that they might like to have.
  • And lastly, and perhaps least importantly, I have also told an incomplete story of their step-great grandmother Sophia Hayden Bennett’s life, and I would like to add some real information to that portrait from people who actually knew of her, and not just through books.  The one thing I am sure of is that Sophia was an immensely talented artist.  There must be much more to know.

Let me explain how we are related:

  • me — my mom (pictured above as a tiny twin) — my grandfather, Miles E Baldwin — his father, Miles E Baldwin Sr –  his parents Edward Baldwin and Catherine (Spaulding or Youngs)
  • them – their dad William F Manning — his mom Jennie May Bennett Manning — her dad William Blackstone Bennett — his parents William or Thomas Bennett and Catherine (Spaulding or Youngs)

Last night, I found the obituary of cousin Billy, William F. Manning.  He led an interesting life as a press photographer, but that’s not my story to tell.  He has a son and daughter, Jeffrey Manning of Merrimack and Pamela A Manning.  If they find their names here and want to connect, or just want the names removed, it’s all good, just let me know in a comment, which will remain private.

and greetings from your Rhode Island cousin -

Diane

Posted in Baldwin, Bennett | 2 Comments »

9 Free Rhode Island Resources

March 27, 2012 by Diane Boumenot, One Rhode Island Family

Here are some resources that have been helpful to me.  Please add your own ideas in the comments.

  1. Rhode Island State Census available on FamilySearch.org: 1885, 1905, 1915, 1925, 1935.  The data collected varies year by year and can be very helpful.  Be careful of the 1905 cards, though:  FamilySearch indexes them incorrectly as front + back of the previous card, so never rely on the search result screen, go to the original.  Find the front of the card then click to the next record for the back side.
  2. The Rhode Island Historical Cemeteries Transcription Project
  3. A large public library is likely to have the three-volume New England Marriages Prior to 1700 by Clarence Almon Torrey (Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2011).  If you find the couple you are seeking, the sources listed will be very helpful, although locating those books and articles will require a little work, or a visit to a genealogical library. Likewise, the same is true for Robert Charles Anderson’s The Great Migration Begins and The Great Migration series.  Many early Rhode Islanders started their American life in Massachusetts (and were thrown out!!)
  4. Rhode Island Newspapers on Chronicling America: U.S. Newspaper Directory – there are 742 different titles – click “Libraries that Have It” to see if you can find it at a nearby library.  This is just a guide; there are no online R.I. newspapers at that site yet.  The only old Rhode Island newspapers I have accessed online are at the paid GenealogyBank.com site.  However, you could try a free trial membership there.
  5. Rhode Island Historical Society Finding Aids.  While you would have to visit the RIHS Library to view the manuscripts and special collections, the finding aids themselves offer important glimpses into some Rhode Island stories and can help you prepare for a trip.  Searching within the finding aids can happen here.
  6. Arnold’s Rhode Island Vital Records volumes (21 volumes) are available for download on my blog; but a few of the pdf’s are light and hard to read.
  7. Also visit FamilySearch.org to search Rhode Island vital record data.  Be sure to specify a type of record in “Collections” on the side of the results screen, and then specify Collections further to access a Rhode Island record set.
  8. Read some guidance from the experts at The Rhode Island Genealogical Society.  I especially like the explanation of Early R.I. Censuses and the R.I. Genealogy FAQ.
  9. The Providence City Directories that I have found so far are on this page.  I hope to find more.

From the book Early Rhode Island

Posted in Genealogy, Helpful resources | 4 Comments »

What I Found in the New Massachusetts Town Records

March 20, 2012 by Diane Boumenot, One Rhode Island Family

Using the new Massachusetts Town Vital Collections, 1620-1988 on Ancestry.com has, in one evening, turned up a lot of good information for me.  Admittedly, coverage is not complete, but the thing I like is that these are the original town records, not the transcribed records held more centrally by the state.  I have noticed handwritten notes near some records (like permission for a minor to marry) and some extra data that did not make the transcriptions.

Here are 5 things I discovered in an evening:

  • From the 4059-page Newton records, I found my uncle Blanchard Baldwin’s corrected birth record.  His first name, the slightly edited names of his parents, and a note had been added in a darker pen, saying that the updates were done on April 9, 1914.   That may have been when Blanchard joined the Navy. I’m sure the original birth record was incomplete because his mother died the next day.  It must have been a chaotic time.
  • My great-grandparent’s marriage record (ok, nothing new here, but my family might like to see it):

residence ... occupation

place of birth ... names of parents

  • Evidence that the “Grandma Ross,” who was my grandfather’s grandmother (he always referred to her maiden name as Spaulding) is the same Catherine Ross that was the mother of William Blackstone Bennett, Anna Jean Bennett, and Hattie Baldwin (they all listed her maiden name as “Youngs” in their own marriage records), since in her (third) marriage license, to Hiram Ross, she gives her maiden name as Youngs:

  • Catherine's portion of the marriage record to her third husband, Hiram Ross. Note that her maiden name is listed as Youngs and her parents are listed as "unknown" - I wonder why?

  • A death record for Aunt Hattie, who died in Wayland, Mass in 1933.  This record had eluded me before; I didn’t even have a death date.  Her mother is listed as Catherine Young … were my grandfather, and HIS father, the only people who thought her maiden name was Spaulding?
  • The second half of Hattie’s death record contained something I’ve been searching for since pretty much the first week I started genealogy – the origin of my mother’s family, the Baldwins.  Hattie’s death record shows that her father, Edward Baldwin, was born in Townsend, Massachusetts.  If it’s true, this is the biggest discovery made I’ve made in a long time.

    THIS IS THE BIG FIND - a place of birth for Edward Baldwin

  • As you can imagine, I moved on quickly to the Townsend records.  First I checked the map – Townsend is at the northern border of Massachusetts, north of Worcester.  This is roughly in the section of the state where I thought he might have been born.  Then I went through the Townsend birth records by index and page-by-page.  Then I checked several other places, and I don’t see a birth record.  However, I see Baldwins, I see at least one Miles family, and, more intriguingly, I see LOTS of Spauldings.  And it’s possible that Edward was located at some time in Townsend, or was born close by.  Despite a lack of a definite solution at this point I am thrilled, and have lots more to explore.

Tonight’s breakthrough was made possible by the work of Jay and Delene Holbrook, who compiled the Massachusetts records, over several decades, that now appear on Ancestry.  Thank you!

The link for this blog post:  http://wp.me/p1JmJS-tr

Posted in Baldwin, Genealogy, Helpful resources | 5 Comments »

The Clue

March 19, 2012 by Diane Boumenot, One Rhode Island Family

How it started

I heard from a blog reader on Saturday concerning a post I did a few months ago about my ggg-grandmother Hannah (Andrews) Lamphere.  Because Hannah may have been born in Massachusetts and lived near Norwich, Connecticut, the commenter was giving me a heads up that a branch of the Andrews family had moved from Ipswich, Mass to Norwich (the section eventually called Preston) Connecticut just after 1700. The writer was herself an Andrews descendant who happened to move to the Norwich area and accidentally discovered that she lived on Andrews land.

Hannah was born around 1819, so this migration didn’t exactly involve her, but I was intrigued by this story of an Andrews migration to Norwich, which I hadn’t heard about before.  This is why blogging and reader comments are so wonderful.  Thank you, Susan.

The Ipswich connection quickly led me to a large book on the subject, “The Descendants of Lieut. John Andrews of Ipswich, Essex County, Massachusetts” by Betty Andrews Storey.  I was disappointed not to find Hannah, her brother Alden, or the parents Jesse and Sarah Andrews.  The book was almost 2,000 pages long so I had to rely on the index, checking names that came to mind, and I found nothing significant.  As I was glancing through the sections that dealt with the Norwich branch, I followed up with several sources listed in the footnotes.

That’s when I found the clue.  It was in the second New England Historic Genealogical Register article I perused, John Andrews of Ipswich, Mass. and Norwich, Conn., and Some of His Descendants (see below).   The first Andrews couple to make the move from Ipswich, Mass. to Preston, Conn., John and Sarah (Cook) Andrews,  had a daughter, Thankful, who married Joseph Read.  That made an immediate connection.  The Norwich line of Lampheres that I’ve been investigating recently as the source of my Lampheres was headed by Shadrack and Experience (Read) Lamphere.  I began to read about the details of these families’ lives.

The Long Society Meeting House

Long Society Meeting House and Cemetery

To the east of Norwich, Connecticut, a congregational church was formed in the early 1700′s called the East or “Long Society” due to the 11 or 12 mile length of the area where the church rate payers lived. The church building was constructed in 1726 and rebuilt in 1818.  This area of Norwich was eventually annexed to Preston, Connecticut.  A “Separate Church of Preston” was also established in 1747.

In the Storey book and the NEHGS article, the Andrews who settled in Preston became intertwined with numerous families.  In those families I recognized many names:  Read, Burnham, Williams, Andrews, Cook, Palmer, and Coit (other names commonly appearing that I don’t recognize include Brewster, Geer, Fitch and Tracy).  I recognize the names because of the marriages of Russell Lamphere and his siblings in the 1830′s:

  • Russell Lamphere m. Hannah Andrews
  • Lydia Lamphere m. Henry Palmer (son of Polly Williams) and had one daughter, Sarah Elizabeth Coit Palmer
  • Lucy Ann Lamphere m. Burnham Cook

I am very fortunate to have pictures of my gggg-aunt and uncle Lucy Ann (Lamphere) and Burnham Cook which are owned by a generous cousin (fourth cousin?) that I met through Ancestry.com.  She has kindly agreed to let me post them here. My family has never seen them.  These are the only pictures I have for that generation.

Lucy Ann (Lamphere) Cook, 1808-1865

Burnham Cook, 1807-1871

That cousin had been mystified about Burnham Cook’s origins, but I suspect the answers may be here, somewhere.

What Does This Prove?

Absolutely nothing.  I am still without direct evidence about Hannah Andrews’ origins; the earliest record I have is her marriage in 1838 where she is “of Ashford, Connecticut”.  Two known details do not yet fit into this idea that her Andrews line had settled in Preston by 1715:

  • She and her brother sometimes reported being born in Massachusetts in the late 1810′s
  • Her brother’s name, Alden, suggests a family connection that I do not see any evidence of in these articles.

However, I am very excited.  To find three siblings marrying into the same group, that did not live extremely close to them (our Lamphere part of Norwich was “the Falls” to the North) seems significant enough to warrant lots of further study.  Coincidentally, it provides further clues for my current theory about which Lamphere line I descend from.

Andrews is a hard name to study.  Spellings vary widely (Andrus, Andros) and the name is quite common and has numerous early immigrant families, not just one.  I suspect there is something unusual about Hannah’s family (a death, perhaps, or moving around a lot?) that has made her hard to track.  The NEHGS article claimed that many Long Society records were lost by the late 1800′s, and the Norwich town clerk was relatively far away, leaving these Andrews families poorly documented.

But for the very first time I feel like I have found a clue that links her to some Andrews in particular.

Next steps:

  • pursue all published work on the descendants of Shadrack and Experience (Read) Lamphere, as well as other local Read descendants.
  • Look at the full sets of census pages for Preston
  • Get to the Westerly Town Hall to look at land and probate records for Daniel Lamphere.
  • Keep searching NEHGS and other sources for work done on these Andrews lines.
Learning more about the Long Society Meeting House:
Sources
  • “The Descendants of Lieut. John Andrews of Ipswich, Essex County, Massachusetts” by Betty Andrews Storey which is available as a pdf from the Allen County Public Library.
  • “John Andrews of Ipswich, Mass. and Norwich, Conn., and Some of His Descendants” by Mrs. Harriett Andross Goodell, NEHGR vol 70, page 102 – 114, April, 1916.

This is part 3 of The Brick Wall Stories – Hannah Andrews.

Link to this article: http://onerhodeislandfamily.com/2012/03/18/the-clue/

Posted in Andrews, Genealogy, Lamphere | 3 Comments »

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