The past

The genealogy bug hit again pretty strongly about a month ago. It started when my oldest brother was asking me some questions. He got a subscription to ancestry.com for Christmas, so he was revisiting old info. I got to poking around the site and was pleased by some of the recent developments to their site organization where on-line trees are concerned. It made it much more natural to link sources and records to individuals. This partially led to my working on the genealogy for a co-worker, which has been really fun. I like starting to solve the mysteries of a new family. I’ve also been systematically re-visiting some other friends’ trees as well to update and search for more info. It’s good for me to have a few to cycle between.

Last November Ancestry introduced a publishing ability that basically allows you to push a button and it automatically formats all of the information, records, photos, stories, etc. into an interesting personalized book. My family is very lucky to have a lot of old photos. I’m not talking 1950’s old, I’m talking 1850’s old. There was an early photographer in the family. It’s so nice to put faces to the names of my research. I wanted to make a good book some day, so my mom and I organized some key photos on Thanksgiving. This procrastinator finally started scanning them last week. I’m so glad I did. It’s great to see them organized.

Here are a few key pics:

This is an 1873 tintype of my great grandmother Sadie. My grandfather was very proud of this picture of his mother. He wrote the description on the back of the copy I have. Sadie was the original genealogist in the family. She had the Hopkins genealogy to join the DAR, but also had the first Mayflower links. Amazingly, all of the old research seems to hold up against skepticism. She also was very ahead of her time as quite the independent woman. She’s one of my heroes. Too bad I never met her. She died in 1955.

One of my all-time favorite pictures on the left. This is Sadie again, with my grandfather’s older brother Harold as a baby. Her husband Will is on the right.

This is Captain Spooner and his wife Lizzie, my other great grandparents. He was a tugboat captain who went between Everett and Deception Pass. He built the log cabin at the north end of Whidbey Island that still stands.

Sadie’s parents and Will’s parents. That makes them great great grandparents for me.

Sadie’s paternal grandparents, my great great great grandparents.

Sadie’s maternal grandparents, also my great great great grandparents. This pretty much *has* to be the oldest photo in our collection. If I’m estimating ages correctly, I think this was around the time that photo portraiture was just becoming big. The photos weren’t very sturdy then, so it’s even more amazing to me.

If you’re eager to see even more pictures of dead people, check them out here.

I have *many* more to scan. I managed to very carefully scan the records in the family bible as well. It’s an 1831 bible and was originally owned by those people in the oldest photo. Scanning it made me very nervous, but I worked out an odd looking yet smart way to do it as safely as possible.

New England – Days four and five

Uh-oh, I’m falling behind. That can’t be good. Luckily I don’t think I have nearly as much to say about the last two days, so I think I can do it.

Let’s see… How can it be so hard to remember what I did just yesterday? That’s why I write these things when I travel. OK, time to reference the pictorial evidence…

Ah, I remember now. My main game plan for the day had been to go to Mystic Seaport in Mystic, CT. It was going to be <2 hrs to drive there, so I decided I could do a little bit of stuff in Plymouth in the morning before heading out. So, the night before day four, I’d looked on google maps and noticed the word “Cordage” appearing. I zoomed in further and noticed a “Cordage Park Circle”. That was a very promising thing for me, especially when I noticed nearby were Spooner St and Bourne St and Ropewalk Ln. All of these things led me to believe that this was the original location of the Plymouth Cordage Company founded by my GGG grandfather Bourne Spooner. I drove over there early, and sure enough, there it was. The building was more recent than his era, but it still had the name etched in the building, even though it now houses many other business instead. The theme for the day, though, became the history of the company.

I also made a stop back at Vine Hills/Oak Grove cemetery. Again, I drove around and around and around. The office still wasn’t open. I kept seeing some of the same things over and over. At one point, I took a turn, looked to the left shortly thereafter and saw the name SPOONER at the bottom of an obelisk. Much glee ensued. I parked the car and started filming as I went up to it. Here’s the link to the video.

Then, I felt I’d wasted enough time, so I headed east toward Mystic. Going to Connecticut also means driving through Rhode Island. So, that was two more states. Mystic is on the SE coast of Connecticut. This meant I drove through RI diagonally. I’m kind of surprised how long it took . Mystic Seaport is the current home of the original ropewalk of the Plymouth Cordage Company. I was really confused about that when I first stumbled upon that bit of information. I now realize it makes sense since the Seaport attraction covers all things related to maritime industries. Regardless, I’m glad it still exists. Well, a part of it anyway. It’s only about 1/4 the original length. It was still really long, so that’s hard to imagine. I was then planning to go do part two of my reason for going to Mystic Seaport, visit their research library. According to the website, they have basically all of the historical records of the Plymouth Cordage Company in the manuscripts division available for research. It is inside the park, and requires you to pay the admission to the park to get there. The park is open 9-5, 7 days a week this time of year. I was a little surprised when I arrived at the library to find that it is closed on the weekend. And very disappointed. Had I known that, I would have gone there on Friday and done the stuff I did Friday on Saturday. That stuff was all available both days. But here’s the Plymouth Cordage Company video.

Since I was basically out of stuff to do and it was much earlier than I’d anticipated, I eventually made the decision to go to Vermont. I knew it would be a long drive, but I also knew it would bug me if I missed it. Luckily, there were more fall colors on this part of the trip than I’d seen in my normal stomping grounds on the trip. I went via Hartford, CT, and Springfield, MA, and eventually made it to Brattleboro, VT. I wanted something small to eat, so I went through a Burger King drive through for a 6 piece chicken fries. The guy running the drive through was very amusing to me. He had enormous hair and acted like he’d done way too many drugs, in that really confused with life sort of way. When I got to the window to pay, he was kind of looking around everywhere then asks if I know how much he said I owed. I told him it was $1.84. That was interesting. It just made me laugh.

By the time I got back to Plymouth, I was completely exhausted, so I pretty much was ready to call it a night. But I wanted food. All I had found available at around 7 PM on previous nights are Papa Gino’s where I can get take-out (did that twice), or the two expensive sit-down places with dress codes on the harbor (did that once). I wanted something different though. I discovered there was a BK on the other side of the highway. It was connected to a gas station, which I usually avoid, but at that point I wasn’t picky. I went through the drive through and was on my way back to my hotel when I realized I drove away without my food. Gah! I knew that would happen someday. I think I really was tired. Went back. Got food. All was well.

This morning, I didn’t have much else to do, so I went to get a few more pictures that I hadn’t taken previously around Plymouth including the Forefathers monument. Then I returned to South Duxbury to visit the burial site for John and Priscilla. That was way easier than my other burial site hunts.

With even more time to kill, I decided to return to Salem and visit some of the museum stuff that I hadn’t had time for before. I went to the Salem Witch Museum. It was pretty cool. It was more presentation than normal museum. The first part covered the history of the 1692 trials. They had these life-size, kind of dioramas around a dark room that would light up as they told the story. It was pretty cool. Then in the second part, they covered the perceptions of “witch”. They had 9 pictures of “witch” including a Wizard of Oz image and a fairy tale image, and a Bewitched image, etc. Then they kind of went through a history. The first “person” was a pagan midwife who had all of the healing knowledge and was a highly trusted and powerful member of the community. Then the stereotype witch that kind of was formulated because of that power, and covered that history. There was then a comparative time-line of Western and Pagan related events. The third “people” were wiccans explaining current belief and practices. The end.

Returning to the airport from Salem also helped with the navigation bits. They had told me that the directions for returning the car were incorrect for returning from the south because of the tunnel being closed, and I had no faith in remembering what they had told me. It’s at a very confusing location. The instructions from the north include two pictures to make sure you don’t take the wrong turns, which would be pretty easy to do.

The rental car company shuttle took me directly to the T station after dropping off the others at their airport terminals. I bought my ticket and took my first trip on the T. I even answered a navigation question for someone while waiting for my transfer. I exited the station and walked to my hotel easily. I checked in dropped off my stuff, cooled off for a bit (It’s really humid and fairly hot here. It should cool off right after I leave…), then decided I’d get a head start and head down to Faneuil Hall tonight. The Cheers replica location is in Quincy Market. I decided to go in, get a drink, and watch the half-time update of the football games.

Now I’m back at the hotel, resting, updating. Taking it easy. Watching the first episode of Amazing Race.

New England – Day Three

Today opened up a lot more that I could do here. It’s getting harder to prioritize.

I started off the day going to “Burial Hill” where a lot of the early inhabitants were buried. I didn’t go in with a very strong game-plan, instead deciding to just wander and look for familiar names. I should have known better. I got all excited when I saw the first Bartlett marker. Then the next, and the next. Soon I realized there were groups of Bartletts everywhere and none of them appeared to be in my direct line. Kind of ridiculously I had started filming the random Bartletts. I eventually stopped. I finally found one “good” Bartlett. I was pretty excited to see Amasa Bartlett and his wife Sarah Taylor. I knew that name very specifically. And I kept having multiple name options for the wife, and had recorded it as “Hannah Sarah Morton Taylor” just to include all the options.

It was then that a memory stirred. I remembered researching Bourne Spooner trying to prove that his wife Hannah was the daughter of this Amasa. I had previously found a site listing Bourne and Hanna’s graves connected to Amasa’s. I hunted and hunted, but no sign of Bourne Spooner. A couple other Spooners were nearby though. I got a little frustrated. However, I found a few other oddities there. (Long) video here.

After I felt my efforts were fruitless, it was 10 am and the Mayflower Society Library was open. I went down with a few printouts to see what it was all about. The librarian was very enthusiastic and very helpful. It also helps that I was more or less the only researcher there for 4 hours. This was apparently very atypical. I eventally went back to the hotel and just brought down my laptop so I’d have more names and could enter info directly. So, I added a new connection to a Mayflower passenger I already had ties to (Richard Warren). This time it was a direct link from Bourne Spooner, not just his wife. How exciting! (OK, really it is for me.) The funny thing is I was only 2 people away and never made the connection. Considering the Mayflower genealogies are all complete to 4 or 5 generations of descendants, that’s just silly of me.

It was getting late if I wanted to have any chance of visiting the Alden House on this trip. I decided I’d better go. I made it up to Duxbury at the perfect moment, as he was about to start a tour for another couple. Another case where I couldn’t take pictures inside, but in this case I was much less frustrated. The furniture inside was not authentic to the house, just roughly period pieces. Also, my only direct relationship to the house was the original inhabitants in the mid-1600’s, John Alden and Priscilla Mullins. The house was passed down through one of their sons. I was descended from their daughter Elizabeth. It was still an interesting story.

Apparently at one point the house was willed to two brothers who did not get along at all! In the will it was specified that one would get the east half and the other the west half of all of the various sections. The two of them actually built barriers in the house and had to add various ways of dealing with the fact that, for example the stairs were on the west half, such as cutting new holes. There was a photograph of one of them sitting in front of the house after he had re-done the roof on his half only. It kept getting more absurd as the tour progressed.

This was actually the second house on the original 100 acres they received in 1627. Apparently it was also arbitrary that they wound up in Duxbury. All of the families were given land along the shore and they drew lots. They got 100 acres because they had 5 members of the family. The original house on the land was approximately 35 feet by 10 feet. And they raised 10 children there. Basically, that’s a trailer. Wow. I also made the quick trek to the location where that first house used to be. Video here.

Once I got back to the hotel, I looked up the Amasa Bartlett and Bourne Spooner cemetery connection I’d once read about. Turns out it was a different Amasa (a son) AND a different cemetery. That cemetery I had driven by several times already. I drove over, but it was enormous and quite a maze. There were also gates at the entrance. I was a little concerned about getting stuck there. Also the office was closed, so I couldn’t get any guidance on where to look other than driving and walking around. After about half an hour of that in the drizzle, I called it quits. Hopefully I’ll get back for another attempt at a later point in the trip.

I wish there was more I could do in the morning and evening. This place is completely dead after about 7pm. I can’t even figure out where to get munchies.

New England – Day Two

I am running ahead of “schedule” so far. Day two was a good day. I would have liked to just play the trip by ear, but the weird hours of everything plus the fact that I had to book different hotel rooms and rental car return times meant I had to do some amount of pre-scheduling to figure it all out. I have happily deviated though.

After partaking of the continental breakfast in the morning (aka a donut and orange juice) I headed out to Plimoth Plantation. It was quite interesting, although tricky for my extreme inherent shyness. The plantation is in 3 main parts. One is a recreation of a part of a Wampanoag village of the era staffed by native peoples who speak from a modern perspective. Another portion is a craft area where they make some of the items for the pilgrim village. I only peaked in there briefly. The most interesting part to me, of course, was the actual pilgrim village re-creation. It is staffed by role players who have taken on the identities of some of the original inhabitants. They all become experts on what is known of those individuals and what they would have known of the other inhabitants. The village is laid out as it would have been in 1627. That was the year of the division of cattle amongst the current residents and provides a static viewpoint of who was there at the time.

In the village, It felt weird to go up to various role-players and ask them their names, but I did. I was curious how many ancestors I could find. Obviously not all the inhabitants are portrayed, just a select few. I did a lot of listening in when others had already engaged someone in conversation. I tried to guess their identities from what they were saying, but it was usually pretty difficult. It was really very interesting to see it all as it would have been. And the role-players really were doing the work as it would have been then. What a tough job! At one point I stumbled into one of the houses. The man in the house invited me in to have a seat. I did and began speaking with him for awhile. Several other visitors came and went. One of them finally asked his name and he replied “Hopkins.”

Bingo! Stephen Hopkins is one of the ancestors who is the most intriguing to me. The more I read up on him, the more fascinated I am with his life. He was not among the half who came for religious purposes. He had previously made a journey toward Jamestown on the Sea Venture in 1609. However a hurricane wrought havoc on the ship and they ended up shipwrecked on Bermuda for 10 months where they built new smaller ships out of the wreckage. There, all survived, whereas those in Jamestown, about 90% perished in the first year. While on the island, Hopkins was sentenced to death for mutiny! He was eventually released, however, due to his pleading for his wife and children. Interestingly enough, it is during this time that the contemporary records in England list his wife as a widow, as it was typically just assumed that all who went to the Jamestown colony were likely dead.

At some point, he made his way back to England and then came on the Mayflower with his wife and children. They are the ones who had a child at sea who was named Oceanus. He had a few troubles with the law as well: “In 1636, Hopkins was fined for the battery of John Tisdale, in 1637 he was found guilty of allowing men to drink on a Sunday at his house, and in 1638 he was fined for not dealing fairly with an apprentice-girl, Dorothy Temple. He was also charged with several other minor crimes, including selling glass at too high a price, selling illegal intoxicants, and allowing men to get drunk at his house. However, this in no way indicated he was disloyal to the Colony–in fact he was Assistant governor from 1633 until 1636, and he volunteered to fight in the Pequot War of 1637.” (Copied from calebj’s site)

But back to the visit. So it was interesting to speak with him. I pointed out later on that I believed we were “distantly related”. It was kind of funny. I told him my grandmother was a Hopkins. (I remembered later that she’s my great grandmother…) He went on to offer to put me up for the night despite the overcrowding of the dwelling. I also took a bit of video and decided I’d take a stab at editing. I also included a mini-slide show of the plantation. I also ran into Myles Standish, John Billington, Edward Winslow, Elizabeth Hopkins, Elizabeth Tilley, and Manasseh Kempton who came on the Anne in 1623. There were a few others whose names I didn’t get. I was there for several hours.

After that, I drove back to the main part of town. I had about 2 hours until the Spooner House Museum was to open. I decided to use the other part of my combination ticket and boarded the Mayflower II. Originally I hadn’t expected it to be all that interesting, but once I learned more about it it was actually pretty cool. It was built in 1957, so it’s coming up on 50 years. It actually did make the crossing from Plymouth, England, to Plymouth, MA at that time as well. Apparently it took 10 fewer days. The original ship was never intended to be a passenger ship and the passengers spent the journey in the cargo hold. I had to duck in places to get around, and much of it was only a couple inches above my head. Later that night, on the Lantern Tour, the guide told me that it was actually built 10 inches higher than the original would have been! The English were shorter then, but geez… There were some costumed role-players here as well and some non-costumed staff. The main role-player on the main deck was portraying William Brewster, yet another ancestor. He was most definitely from the religious side of things. He acted as the preacher for all of the settlers as Elder William Brewster. He was also the person who had the most prominence prior to sailing.

After a bite to eat, I finally went over to the Spooner House. I spent quite a bit of time there. I previously believed it was originally inhabited by Bourne Spooner. I previously spoke about him here where I also met my half third cousin once removed. No really. It turns out it was originally inhabited by a great uncle of his, Ephraim Spooner, c. 1747 and passed through the generations until James Spooner, a lifelong bachelor, donated it to become a museum. Everything in the house, with the exception of an old stove, was originally in the house when the antiquarian society received it. It caused me great pain that I couldn’t take any pictures inside. Gah! Many of my relatives who are all descendants of the “Spooner girls” would LOVE to see some of this stuff. There were many painted portraits in the house. In the library, there were two old photographs on the wall. I asked about them, but the tour guide didn’t know who they were apart from one being the husband and the other his wife. I said that it reminded me of a picture I’d seen of Bourne Spooner, but I couldn’t remember for sure. Later on, I remembered I had a scanned copy of the picture in my email. I printed it in the hotel office and returned to the house. Sure enough, same picture! Pretty cool.

It had started to drizzle around the time I first went to the Spooner house and continued all afternoon. I felt at home. All these silly people around here were using umbrellas. It did get a little humid for my taste though.

Between those two trips to the Spooner House, I also visited the Pilgrim Hall Museum. They have a number of items that it is claimed arrived on the Mayflower, although they mention that if all of the items which are thought to have come over on the Mayflower really did, it would have sunk! Still, they are clearly old pieces that did originate with the families. Whether they came on the Mayflower or were brought over in the years after doesn’t really matter to me. Some of them were attributable to my ancestors, so of course, that was of particular interest to me. Brewster chest, Alden cupboard, Brewster chair, Prence chair, and Constance Hopkins hat was pretty interesting to see. (She was the brother of Giles Hopkins who I am descended from.)

In the evening I went on the Lantern Tour, still in the rain. It was pretty interesting. It was mostly all stuff I’d seen on my own on the first night, but the tour guide added some interesting info. It probably would have been more interesting for me if I didn’t already know so much about this particular bit of history.

It’s now early morning, though not so early anymore after typing all this. I highly doubt anyone actually read it all. That’s OK though, as it’s just my record of my trip. Today I’m going to traipse through a bunch of cemeteries.

Mayflower

Today I was informed by a historian that I am descended from 2 more Mayflower passengers that I didn’t know about. That brings the grand total to 7 of the 26 heads of households with descendants that I am directly descended from. (One of them twice.) Unfortunately, he didn’t tell me how I’m related to the new people. I’m in the process of proving I’m related to my great great grandfather and by extension my great^9 grandfather John Alden so I can be a big snob in the Mayflower Society. Of course, I really just want it to be certified, so it’s not just something I say. The historian told me the easiest line to prove first, so I’m going with it. It’s a little frustrating when you want to just say, “Well, duh, my mom just knows it…” But I’ve assembled birth certificates, marriage certificates and all the existing census records for the family between 1870 and 1930. Now to see if there’s any corroborating evidence I’m not thinking of. Apparently they consider census records secondary sources. Sad.

This is kind of fun because the relevant great grandfather is the one who built the cabin up on Cornet Bay near Deception Pass. (One of my favorite places in the world. I always feel close to “family” there, despite the fact that I never got to meet them.) The extended family I spend holidays and such with are all tied to him and his 4 daughters.

So, speaking of researching genealogy, I installed the new cheapo ($10) version of family tree maker on my laptop a couple weeks ago. Despite that it made me pay $20 for full functionality, I’m loving how seamless it is with anscestry.com. Of course I’ve also paid a gazillion* dollars to them for the full access there. Hmmm. I’m noticing a trend.

* I typed gagillian. Google’s spellchecker tells me the proper way to spell it is gazillion.