Category: Genealogy

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Changing the NSCDA

When my grandmother had me proposed for membership in the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America (NSCDA) in the mid-1990s, I understood that I needed to choose one of my many notorious colonial American ancestors to qualify. My great-grandmother, grandmother, grand-aunts, mother, and mother’s first cousins had all joined through different colonial ancestors. I was already familiar with the well-researched family chart my grandmother had given my mother, which had inspired me to embark on my genealogical quest years before. By my count, I had eighteen colonial-era men listed in the NSCDA’s Register of Ancestors (ROA), and at least another ten of my male colonial ancestors met the Dames qualifications but did not yet appear on the ROA.

To my great and lasting disappointment, however, the direct ancestor I admired the most, whose influence over colonial neighbors and society was significant and reached into the two earliest New England colonies and then beyond, did not appear on the list.

She was a woman.

The NSCDA’s requirements for qualifying ancestors specified that an ancestor had to have given some significant public service to their colony, and the categories were almost exclusively limited to military service, public office holders, founders of significant colonial towns, and religious leaders. They were male, practically without exception, because only males could serve in those formal capacities, and only the signatures of the men appeared on public documents proving such service. The names of women rarely appeared in public records. It especially jarred me to realize that these men who qualified based on founding significant towns such as Providence, Rhode Island, were almost always married, but their wives were never listed as founders.

One of the female exceptions to the NSCDA’s Boys Club was my favorite ancestor’s sister, Anne Marbury Hutchinson. Anne was notorious for being prosecuted and then exiled from Boston in the winter of 1638 for having the audacity to preach to the women of Boston and even (gasp!) challenge the positions of several respected local preachers. She and Mary Dyer, another outspoken preacher, appeared on Massachusetts’s list of accepted ancestors. Anne’s sister and Mary’s friend, Katherine Marbury Scott, who moved to Providence Plantations when Anne was tried for heresy, did not appear in the ROA.

I asked about adding Katherine to the list. I’d happily prove her preaching, notoriety, and challenge to Massachusetts Governor John Endecott. I don’t recall if I only approached the Arkansas Registrar or communicated with the Rhode Island Registrar or genealogist about her. Ultimately, I was told to pick someone else. I was told that unlike Anne Hutchinson and Mary Dyer, Katherine didn’t famously preach, nor was she arrested, tried, or punished for her religious objections.

But she did, and she was!

To the dismay of Massachusetts Governor John Winthrop – the man who acted as her sister’s accuser, judge, jury, and executioner – Katherine influenced Roger Williams, the famous Anabaptist preacher who was the first colonial advocate for the separation of church and state. At least partly due to her influence, Williams agreed that infant baptism was inappropriate and broke from the Puritans of Massachusetts.1Winthrop, John, The History of New England from 1630-1649, Hosmer, ed., p. 297, available at https://archive.org/details/winthropsjournal00wint.

Katherine and her husband were the first known Quakers in the American colonies and spread the Quaker philosophy and practice among the populace. In her late 40s, she was imprisoned, stripped to the waist in public, suffered ten cruel lashes from a knotted whip, and threatened with hanging if she didn’t keep her mouth shut from here on out. Two of her young daughters – one only 11 years old – went to prison with her. Katherine’s crime was objecting to the mutilation of Quakers. The older imprisoned daughter later married one of the mutilated Quaker men in England.

But somehow, this wouldn’t count? Katherine – and her daughters Patience and Mary – should qualify as NSCDA ancestors because of their overt advocacy of religious freedom.

Americans universally claim religious freedom as one of the founding principles of our country. The Protestant Reformation was in full swing when religious separatists boarded the Mayflower in 1620, joined the Winthrop fleet in 1630, fled to William Penn’s Quaker utopia in the 1690s, and embraced the Great Awakening in the 1730s.

In fits and starts, and despite theocratic local governments in the New England and Mid-Atlantic colonies and parish control of government functions in Virginia and Carolina, notions of religious freedom spread and permeated all of colonial America. George Mason’s Virginia Declaration of Rights declared that reason and conviction should direct a person’s religion, not force or violence. The first item in the Bill of Rights appended to the United States Constitution includes the free exercise of religion and the freedom from government interference in religion. In 1789, France’s Declaration of the Rights of Man – heavily influenced by American ideals – maintained that “No one shall be disquieted on account of his opinions, including his religious views.”

On top of all of this, the NSCDA limited its membership to women but excluded nearly every colonial woman from their list of qualifying ancestors. Why? Did its governing leaders honestly think their entire gender had so little to offer in the colonial era? Did they not understand that no colony could succeed without women? The founders of Jamestown certainly came to understand that in short order. Even so, the NSCDA’s Register of Ancestors included very few of Jamestown’s early women. Those it did include had to be wealthy, powerful, and independent – something legally impossible under coverture laws except in extremely limited circumstances.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a part of this group.

In passive-aggressive protest, I let my application linger for several years. Genealogy was my hobby and passion, and I could have chosen any of the ancestors my relatives had already proven. The injustice of not accepting Katherine rankled me.

My grandmother insisted I join, and my mother badgered me to complete my application. Neither could understand why I didn’t pick someone already on the list and get the paperwork done. After all, genealogical research was my passion, and I could copy any of the applications of my many Dames relatives in short order. It wasn’t that big a deal, was it?

Yes, damn it, it was.

Bowing to their pressure, I finally decided to join based on Katherine’s husband’s recognized service. He was wealthy and influential but didn’t impress me nearly as much as she did. He seemed a solid, principled man, sure. Still, he only embodied the usual among my colonial ancestors: he was an educated landowner who bravely went to a new place to start a new life and took part in the political affairs of his community. Beyond that, he did not spark my imagination.

Two or three years ago, the NSCDA had a change of heart. At a national level, it decided to push to include more women in the Register of Ancestors. It set a goal of having 250 females included on the ROA by the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The individual colonial states set the guidelines for ancestor qualifications, though, and other than Virginia, the colonial societies seemed reluctant to widen the qualifying “service” women might have legally been able to give. Foot-dragging stymied this otherwise attainable goal.

Rhode Island, where Katherine Marbury Scott lived, finally expanded their qualifications in 2024. (I’ve been watching for it.) Other colonial states are just as slow, if not slower. For example, Eliza Lucas Pinckney still doesn’t appear on South Carolina’s list of acceptable women despite her herculean accomplishments in cultivating indigo and refining the process of extracting its dye. Because of her singular efforts, indigo became one of her colony’s three staple exports in the 18th century. Massachusetts finally expanded its list of qualifications so applicants for membership could claim Women of Distinction. The first colonial American poet, Anne Bradstreet, finally counts.

The blatant misogyny and snobbery of the organization still flabbergasts me. Are the NSCDA’s colonial societies afraid that if they expand the qualifications to include women, men who did the same important things – men of science and letters, for example – might suddenly qualify, and the “wrong sorts” will pollute the Register of Ancestors?

I have a few men of science and letters in my tree who I’d like to include, like Dr. Benjamin West of Providence, Rhode Island, a prominent man of both science and letters who never held public office, never preached, never served as an officer in the military, and wasn’t wealthy enough to join the board of organizers of what is now Brown University.

I want to claim John Perkins, who, as a youth, led the important Moravian expedition that ultimately resulted in the founding of Salem, North Carolina. He was the son of a horse thief and a notorious adulteress but became prosperous, prominent, and one of the largest landowners in 18th Century Western Carolina. Without a doubt, he represents the wrong sort for the Colonial Dames. Never mind that the murderer John Billington qualifies because he came on the Mayflower or that his fellow Mayflower passengers Edward Doty, Stephen Hopkins, William Latham, and Richard More also built impressive rap sheets in colonial America.

The Dames’ snob factor is real. Several larger southern state societies of the NSCDA actively refuse admission to genealogically qualified women, including the legacies of their current members. While such selectivity and elitism may appeal to some, it’s appalling to others. The NSCDA is a lineage society, not an exclusive country club.

Am I complicit in this snobbery and misogyny? I have been a member of the NSCDA for over two decades. I have served on the Arkansas Society’s board since 2005 and have been its Registrar or Assistant Registrar since 2013. As Registrar, I process the applications of candidates for membership. I do most of the genealogy research for our candidates myself. I am intimately familiar with the policies for qualifying ancestors. I am also intimately familiar with the snobbery.

At a Regional meeting in Nashville, Tennessee, I sat at a table with a member from Memphis. The evening’s entertainment was an actor portraying Thomas Jefferson. A notorious DNA project had recently confirmed Thomas Jefferson to be the father of Sally Hemings’s enslaved children. I remarked to my dinner companion that because of DNA technology, it would be much easier for Black women to join the NSCDA. To my knowledge, there were no Black Dames at that time.

She gave me a look of abject horror. Apparently realizing that she shouldn’t be racist, she said that such people couldn’t join because they couldn’t prove legitimate descent from the qualifying ancestor. I laughed and told her that DNA proves actual descent, and the NSCDA has never required legitimacy. Her reaction to that news made me think she was about to have a fit of apoplexy.

For years, in the password-protected section of the NSCDA website, a letter from a prominent early Dame, Clarinda Pendleton Lamar, was posted as an example of who to invite to join the Dames. Clarinda Lamar cautioned proposers to consider whether the candidate for the NSCDA was a credit to her race, her ancestors, and her community. During my first term as Arkansas Registrar, the NSCDA’s national president visited us and was present for a board meeting. At the time, two existing members had to write proposal letters to suggest a candidate for Dames membership. They had to know the candidate well and vouch for her. Our bylaws required us to read the proposal letters aloud during two separate board meetings, after which the board would vote on whether to invite the proposed candidate to apply for membership in the NSCDA. To the best of my knowledge, Arkansas has never rejected a proposal.

When we got to the proposal-reading portion of the agenda, the national president suggested reading Clarinda Lamar’s letter aloud to remind us what qualities we should look for in a candidate. After reading the “credit to her race” line, I stopped. “Well, that’s awful,” I said. Nervous laughter went around the table.

I advocated removing the Lamar letter from the website at subsequent national conferences in Washington, D.C. While most of Clarinda Lamar’s contributions to society were significant and good, that letter represented the worst of what we can be. It was patently unsuitable as the lodestar of membership. At one meeting of all the Registrars nationally, around 2016 or 2018, I repeated my request to remove it. On receiving pushback, I lifted my middle finger prominently skyward. I declared that Clarinda Lamar’s racism did not speak for me or the Arkansas Society and that having the letter there was an embarrassment. She was a product of her time, yes, but just like we stopped ignoring when people in positions of power demanded sex from their subordinates – and I specifically mentioned Thomas Jefferson and casting couches – we needed to stop ignoring racism because by ignoring it, we promoted it.

There was a general outcry, but after the meeting, several Registrars approached me privately and thanked me for pointing that out. A couple of others later admitted they had never read the letter until my words prompted them to do so, and they agreed that it should be taken down. In 2024, the National Society overhauled the website. The Lamar letter no longer enjoys publication there. Nevertheless, my beloved friend and successor Arkansas Registrar has never let me live down “the day [I] flipped off Mrs. Lamar” in front of 50 devoted Colonial Dames.

In October 2016, at another National meeting in Washington DC, I found myself seated between my counterpart in Vermont, who I liked very much and remain in contact with, and a woman from Arizona. Barack Obama was about to leave the Oval Office, and Donald Trump, the primary denier of Obama’s American citizenship, wanted his job. This Arizona woman bragging about her close personal friends the Koch brothers, stuck in my craw. I turned to my Vermont friend and suggested we ask the DC Dames if they’d reach out to the Obama sisters to ask if they’d like to join our lineage society. After all, they qualified through their father’s ancestors. I would be happy to do the genealogy research, and getting our hands on their father’s birth certificate, which would be necessary to prove their colonial lineage, was a matter of public consumption at this point. The Obama girls also had a half-Indonesian aunt who qualified because of the same lineage. We would finally integrate the Dames!

We did approach the DC Dames’ Registrar about it, but nothing ever happened. I remain ready, willing, and able to compile the applications for the Obama sisters and their paternal aunt.

I have taken other steps to make changes from within this organization. I have completed applications for NSCDA membership for women whose home societies would not let them join, and then I’ve processed transfers to their home societies. The National Society requires that transfers be automatically approved. Alabama, Georgia, and the Carolinas have all benefitted from my end-run around their blackballing town committees. I will do it again whenever I can. I can’t abide the snobbery.

Change comes from within. I can do more to challenge the Colonial Dames’ culture of elitism and snobbery as a member than I can by refusing to participate and letting it go on. I can advocate for change, I can take steps to rectify wrongs, and I can, incrementally, make it better. I do not support racism or snobbery any more than Katherine Marbury Scott supported religious oppression.

Footnotes

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Heroes and Legends

My 2nd great-grandfather, Giovanni Orsi (1833-1908), gave his sons powerful names: Carlo, Aristodemo, Attilio, Gaetano, Ercole, and Amadeo.

Carlo Tranquillo Benvenuto Orsi (1856-1944) was the only child of Giovanni’s first wife, Maria Luigia Clementina Affaticati. None of Carlo’s forenames appear earlier in known Orsi lines, although his maternal grandfather was named Carlo Affaticati. Maria Affaticati died when Carlo was very young; two months after Carlo turned three, Giovanni married Maria Annunciata Borella, the mother of his following eight surviving children.

Known as Charlie in the United States, Carlo Orsi’s name seems innocuous enough, but given the obvious heroic antecedents of his brothers, Giovanni likely named him for one or more of the great men of history.

Perhaps his inspiration was Charles Martel (c. 688-741), the Frankish ruler and progenitor of the Carolingian Dynasty. “Martel” means “hammer” in the Frankish tongue. Charles Martel spent most of his adult life at war and consolidating power in the vacuum left in the last gasps of the Merovingian Dynasty (c. 481-751). One of Charles Martel’s significant military achievements was repelling the Umayyads at the Battle of Tours in 732, effectively preventing the Muslim invasion of Gaul. At the time, the Umayyad Caliphate controlled Al-Andalus – nearly all of the Iberian peninsula – and would for another 750 years.

Carlo may also have been named in honor of Charles Martel’s equally notorious grandson, Charles the Great, or Charlemagne. Charlemagne removed the Germanic Lombards from power in the northern Italian peninsula in 774, which may have stirred Giovanni Orsi’s imagination since that directly affected his family’s history. In 800, Charlemagne was crowned emperor by Pope Leo III, the first emperor of the Western Roman Empire in 300 years. The German parts of his realm became known as the Holy Roman Empire, an imperium that persisted for a thousand years.

The first son born to Giovanni Orsi’s second wife was Aristodemo (1865-1905) – a name that would be passed down for two more generations. There were many famous and noteworthy men named Aristodemus, so figuring out which one was on Giovanni’s mind when he named his son is difficult.

Perhaps the inspiration was Aristodemus of Messenia, who, in the 8th century BCE, offered to sacrifice his virgin daughter to the gods to win a war but instead murdered her when her betrothed declared her to be pregnant and, therefore, not a virgin. That much patriarchal bliss creeps me out, so I choose to dismiss this possibility.

The next candidate could be Aristodemus of Cumae, a military governor who became a populist and was propelled to tyrannical power by an adoring public. (This hits uncomfortably close to home in November 2024.) He was eventually assassinated for his abuses of power. He also won a couple of battles against the Etruscans, so he was active in Giovanni’s homeland. Since he was on the opposite side of the locals, we can probably rule him out as well.

Aristodemus of Cydathenaeum was a student of Socrates. Plato said he was a barefoot runt of low birth; Xenophon said he was a dwarf; and Aristophanes used him as a sexually promiscuous character in the comedy Banqueters. While the classic Orsi sense of humor means this man has great appeal, I suspect Giovanni would have had a more respected namesake in mind.

Aristodemus was the name of one of two survivors of the 300 Spartans sent to defend Sparta against the Persian incursion at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BCE. I doubt Giovanni would have picked this one, however. The reason lies in just how Aristodemus survived Thermopylae.

For some reason, King Leonidas ordered Aristodemus and another soldier, Eurytus, to return to Sparta. Eurytus, who was blind, disobeyed orders, charged into the fray of attacking Persians, and promptly and heroically died anyway. Because Aristodemus obeyed his king’s orders, he lived and, according to Herodotus, was forever afterward known as “Aristodemus the Coward.”  The other survivor of the 300, Pantites, had been sent to Thessaly, and when he learned that 298 of his companions had died at Thermopylae, he hanged himself in shame. Aristodemus, apparently, was not sufficiently chagrined by his own survival to follow suit.

Perhaps one of the Aristodemuses known for literary and philosophical works was Giovanni’s inspiration for the name. In the 1st century CE, Plutarch mentioned at least two of his contemporaries named Aristodemus: one was a Platonic philosopher, and the other collected fables à la the Brothers Grimm. There were several writers, one of whom wrote epigrams, another who summarized the philosophies of Herodian of Antioch, and a couple of others whose literary achievements do not survive but who were mentioned by their contemporaries.

To me, though, the most inspiring Aristodemuses of Letters were a pair of grammarians and pedagogues who lived in the 1st century BCE, Aristodemus of Nysa the Elder and Aristodemus of Nysa the Younger. Being a pedantic grammarian and pedagogically inclined, I can’t deny their appeal, especially if I imagine great-great-grand-nonno as a man of my own sensibilities. Both were teachers of the great philosopher and geographer Strabo, and Aristodemus the Younger also taught Julius Caesar’s son-in-law, Pompey the Great. Pompey, Caesar, and Crassus formed the infamous First Triumvirate, which kicked off the Roman Empire. So, I pick these guys as Giovanni’s inspiration.

Giovanni’s third son was my great-grandfather Attilio (1867-1929). His namesake is obvious. Attila the Hun needs no further elucidation.

The fourth son, Gaetano (1869-1936), a.k.a. “Guy,” presents more of a muddle. Many Gaetanos of arts and letters may have inspired Giovanni, but the strongest contender is probably Gaetano of dei Conti di Thiene, also known as Saint Cajetan. Gaetano was a lawyer and papal diplomat who lived during the late Renaissance. He established hospitals in Venice and his hometown of Vicenza, helped create the monastic order of the Theatines, and was tortured by mutinous soldiers of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V after the Sack of Rome in 1524. He also helped found the Bank of Naples. He is the patron saint of bankers and the unemployed, which seems an odd juxtaposition. Then again, maybe Giovanni simply liked the name.

Ercole (1871-1911) came next. Ercole is the Italian version of Hercules. As with Attilio/Attila, no further explanation is necessary. We note that Lucrezia Borgia and her third husband, Alphonse d’Este, the Duke of Ferrera, Modena, and Reggio, named their son and heir Ercole.

Last came Amadeo (1880-?). Amadeus was the name of many Counts and Dukes of Savoy and Kings of Sardinia. Piacenza and Emilia-Romagna were ruled by the House of Savoy and the Kingdom of Sardinia before the creation of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861. I think of the name Amadeo as equivalent to the names of the American founding fathers being visited upon the newborns of the masses. Those of us whose ancestors were in the nascent United States have direct ancestors, uncles, and cousins whose names were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and the like.

Giovanni Orsi did not name any of his sons for his male ancestors or (with the possible exception of Carlo) for his fathers-in-law. He had no sons named Antonio, Domenico, Francesco, Giacomo, Giuseppe, or Giovanni for his father, grandfathers, or great-grandfathers. He did not name them Pietro, Luigi, or Paolo for his uncles or brothers.

He seems to have named them for his heroes, for the powerful and intelligent men he admired.

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Building a Cottage in 1907

Here is a construction contract for the original Henry Nichols house at the corner of 4th (called Park Street at the time) & Curran in Des Arc, Prairie County, Arkansas.

1907 contract between Henry Nichols and C.R. Brown of Des Arc, Prairie County, Arkansas for the construction of a house
1907 Contract to build the Nichols Cottage in Des Arc

At first, I thought the contract called for construction to be completed in “Jany,” a common old abbreviation for January. However, three weeks was swift, even for the masters of yore who didn’t have to include plumbing, electricity, or modern amenities like insulation or indoor baths. I suspect it says “July” because even 115 years ago, it took six months to build a house.

Henry Isaac Nichols and Grace Pearl Reinhardt married on June 12, 1907, so they bought the property and planned the house afterward. H.W. Nesseltrager was a contractor and builder based in Little Rock. (“Plans and estimates cheerfully furnished,” according to a 1905 ad I found for his company in the Arkansas Democrat.) They bought the plans from Nesseltrager but hired someone locally to build the home.

The 1909 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map for Des Arc shows the house’s original footprint. (North is on the left in the map’s orientation.) Interestingly, the lots on the 1909 Sanborn map are numbered differently from those on the official plat of the city. On the official plat, lots 7-8 of Block 38 are in the southeast corner of Block 38, but the 1909 Sanborn map shows those as lots 6-7. (The error was corrected on the 1918 Sanborn map.)

The front of the house now faces 4th St (what was then Park St), but based on the footprint and the house numbers assigned to the lots, it initially faced Curran. The small rectangle behind the house was a shed.

I don’t know when they bought Lot 9 (Lot 8 on the 1909 Sanborn map), but they owned ¼ of the block by 1930 when they remodeled. According to my mother, her father, Shuford Reinhardt Nichols, designed the remodel in the late 1920s. Shuford was Henry and Grace’s only child. Throughout his life, he loved architecture and dabbled in it constantly. In addition to redesigning his childhood home, he built three houses for himself, all in consultation with some of the most prominent architects working in Arkansas at the time.  First was the large antebellum-style house where he and his wife raised their family in Des Arc, and where my mom raised her family. It was designed by Max Meyer. Second was their lake house on his wife’s family’s Rob-Bell Plantation near Scott, Arkansas. The last was their retirement home in Little Rock, which was designed by Noland Blass, who was well known locally for his iconic Mid-Century Modern style. Both the Des Arc house and the lake house were remodeled multiple times during Shuford’s life.

The Henry Nichols cottage was expanded again after Grace died. Henry married Grace’s widowed cousin, Catherine “Feb” Harshaw Terry. I suspect the construction contract for both remodels of the cottage included extra amenities like plumbing, electricity, an indoor bathroom, and possibly even paint and paper.

Henry Isaac and Grace Pearl Reinhardt Nichols home in Des Arc, Arkansas. September 2023, from Zillow listing.
Henry & Grace Nichols house, Des Arc. September 2023 (listing on Zillow)
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In Which I Am Not Related to My Husband

The research into my horse thief ancestor has gotten really crazy. I know I have bored all my friends with the minutiae of this story at every opportunity, but I swear, every new document turns up more drama and bizarre stuff. Now I’m dragging other people into it – and not just people I’m related to by blood.

See, about 35 years ago, I married this guy called Skip, and since we have a kid together, I’ve spent quality research time on his family, too. Some of our friends may remember that after Skip and Matt’s mom died, Matt and I were cleaning out the books and found a missing family bible with genealogy info in it. The Bible originally belonged to a childless woman named Averilla Hollis Franck. Back before the Bible went missing, I had copied the genealogy pages and was stumped by them. The bible recorded the births, deaths, and marriages of several families. Their names were Hollis, Franck, Humlong, Luckes, and Smith.

Here’s the twist: the Smiths, who had inherited the Bible, weren’t related by blood or marriage to any of the other people listed in it. I researched them all, though, and knew the Hollises came to Kentucky from Baltimore County, Maryland.

Actually, Matt and I found THREE family Bibles that day. One of them was a Bible belonging to Fanny Gash, their 3rd great-grandmother, who was the wife of the earliest Smith listed in that previously missing Bible. Fanny’s Bible cleared up a big mystery and confirmed her maiden surname (her full maiden name was Frances Ann Gilbert Gash) and identified her parents (Bernard Preston Gash and Isabella Barr), but I hadn’t gotten any further, and I still hadn’t figured out what connected her to the rest of the people in the big bible. Gash is a relatively rare surname; besides a couple in Virginia, I found none in her grandparents’ generation. I couldn’t find her family before they reached Kentucky. I set Fanny aside and started chasing other rabbits.

My horse thief, Elisha Perkins, was born in Baltimore County, Maryland in 1697. As I dug through the St. George’s Parish records of births, deaths, and marriages in 17th and early 18th-century Baltimore County, I kept coming across the names Hollis and Osborne. I had researched the Hollis family and knew they were connected to the Osbornes by marriage a century later.

Then I noticed that some Gilberts lived along the same small stream as my Perkins ancestors right about 1700. Huh. That was interesting. Gilbert was one of Fanny Gash’s middle names. And then I found a Gilbert-Osborne marriage in the early 1700s. I wondered if that might explain Fanny Gash’s connection to the Hollis-Osbornes a century later. If I could just find her people!

Now, you may think you see where this is heading. Or, maybe you’ve leaped to a conclusion. (Don’t. Leaping to conclusions is dangerous and you can get hurt.)

It took me a while because I’m dense and was distracted by a horse thief, but I finally decided to broaden my search to see what sorts of interactions there might have been between the Perkins and Gilbert families since they lived so close together. (And just for the merry hell of it, I included the Hollises and Osbornes, because I really ought to have fleshed that out better back when I was chasing Fanny Gash.)

I’ll be damned if I didn’t find a Gilbert-Gash wedding. And then another.

In the court records, I found a guardianship case. Thomas Gash died in 1703 leaving an orphaned toddler son also named Thomas Gash. His neighbor, Richard Perkins, was made administrator of Thomas Gash’s estate, and was therefore responsible for little Thomas Gash’s inheritance. Richard Perkins was my horse thief Elisha’s father. Then Richard died, and the horse thief’s widowed mother, Mary Perkins, became the new administratrix of Thomas Gash’s estate. Young Thomas Gash and the horse thief Elisha Perkins knew each other very well as children.

I traced the Gash family, this time in the other direction. I found young Thomas’s wedding to Johannah Ashford, and then found their son Thomas who married Elizabeth Gilbert and moved to Kentucky right after the Revolution, and then found their son Bernard, who was – you guessed it – Fanny Gash’s father.

I hadn’t initially found the Gashes in Baltimore County because they were in Virginia. Yes – I had found them several years ago and not realized it.

Young Thomas’s family and some other Baltimore County people, including Elizabeth Gilbert’s family and Elisha Perkins, had gone there after Elisha’s conviction for horse thievery. Thomas (III) and Elizabeth married there and later returned to Baltimore County. I would have found them years ago if I had broadened my Baltimore County search by a generation. Elisha died in Virginia, but his son ended up in North Carolina, where he bred horses, and the Gashes went to Kentucky.

I still can’t figure out why Fanny Gash’s son ended up with Averilla Hollis’s Bible, except that Fanny lived with Averilla’s spinster sister Martha all of her adult life – at least, after her husband left her shortly after their son, Henry Bernard/Barnet/Bernet Smith was born. Martha Hollis willed her entire estate to Henry Bernard Smith.

So, no, Skip and I aren’t related, but my 8th great-grandparents cared for Skip and Matt’s orphaned 6th great-grandfather.

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We Have a Horse Thief!

I’m going to be useless for the foreseeable future. I started digging into one of my ancestors over the weekend, thinking I’d learn a few fun facts about an orphaned waif who went to live with his uncle near the Great Dismal Swamp and ended up a prosperous landowner when the Carolina backcountry opened up. I had no idea what I was in for.

Over three generations – from about 1670 to 1804 – the story covers nearly every stereotype and significant historical event in the South. It starts with a criminal transported to the American colonies and ends with a will that mentions the direct ancestor of two Triple Crown winners.

The in-between is anything but boring and sedate. Across Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and both Carolinas, it’s a story of fur trading, horse thieving, adultery, multiple prison stints, prosecutions for fornication and disturbing the peace, herds of illegitimate children, Conestoga wagons, battles over inheritance, grudges, forgiveness, the Earl of Granville, a Moravian Bishop straight from Germany, wilderness explorers, the founding of Salem NC, the French & Indian Wars, murder, the State of Franklin, colonial militias, questioned patriotism, slavery, horse races, political influence including a potential run for the U.S. presidency, and a famous descendant of both the Godolphin Arabian (King of the Wind himself!) and the Darley Arabian – not to mention at least three other famous sires of what would become Thoroughbreds, Standardbreds, and American Quarter Horses.

I have never wished so much that I could plumb the depths of my aunt Laura Nichols’ equine knowledge to learn more about these famous creatures. I’m doing as much research on the horses named in John Perkins’s will as I am the people.

And every time I find another document, I find more drama.

I have two meetings, a hearing, and a doctor’s appointment this week. Other than that, I will be locked into position in front of my screen and behind my keyboard until the New Year.

You can send food, but I won’t be taking any calls. I have genealogy to do.

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Prairie County Insanity

Arkansas Gazette, Daily Edition, October 18, 1883, p. 8., col. 2.

I don’t know about you, but Prairie County having “more than her quota” of crazy people seems kind of ….

My 2nd great-grandfather, Abel Shuford Reinhardt (1847-1935), was the beleaguered sheriff in question, bless his heart.

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Dr. Benjamin West of Providence, Rhode Island

Benjamin West marble bust Brown Univ

One of my favorite ancestors is Dr. Benjamin West (1730-1813) of Providence, Rhode Island.1Not to be confused by the famous English/American painter Benjamin West (1738-1820), who was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1791. Their circles sometimes overlapped, and many genealogies conflate the two. That’s his marble bust at the top of the page. Brown University has it.2 It was recently restored.

The 1822 obituary of my 5th great-grandmother, Mary “Polly” Smith West Pearce, referred to her father as “the eminent Dr. Benjamin West” of Providence. I had not known who her parents were before I found that obituary. What followed were several days of frantic discovery on my part, each one better than the last. The man was phenomenal, and I don’t understand why every generation after him hasn’t continued to hold him up as the pinnacle of the Enlightenment. (Actually, there are many males named “Benjamin West” in the Robinson branch of our family, so someone clearly remembered him. My line from him has been daughter-intensive for the last four generations, so I suppose there’s a reason for it to be missing.)

Dr. Benjamin West Brown University Portrait Collection
Dr. Benjamin West, Brown University Portrait Collection

Benjamin West was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American equivalent of England’s Royal Society. Although he was a merchant for about 25 years, he earned great respect as a teacher and a university professor. He taught at Philadelphia’s eminent Protestant Episcopal Academy and at the College of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations (now Brown University) in Providence. Brown University owns his portrait.3Dr. Benjamin West (1730-1813), Professor of Mathematics, Astronomy, and Natural Philosophy, 1786-1799. Artist unknown; Watercolor silhouette, 3½” x 7½” from the portrait collection of Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. Gift of the family of Dr. West. Portrait 156, Brown Historical Property No. 1853, located in the John Hay library 122. From the Brown University website: “The painter of this miniature portrait is unknown … It was a family portrait during Benjamin West’s lifetime and after his death in 1813 it was prized by his descendants for generations until it was ultimately donated to Brown.” Portrait Collection, Office of the Curator, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, website  (https://library.brown.edu/cds/portraits/display.php?idno=86). His life and work are fabulous examples of the Enlightenment in North America.

Benjamin West was born in March 1730 in Rehoboth, in Massachusetts Bay, one of the New England Colonies. His father was a farmer. When Benjamin was a young child, the family moved to Bristol. At the time, both Massachusetts and Rhode Island claimed jurisdiction over Bristol.

Benjamin was an autodidact. After a mere three months of formal education and without the means to buy books, Benjamin borrowed every book he could. His most significant benefactor during his childhood was a fiery Congregationalist minister in Bristol named John Burt.4Rev. John Burt died while fleeing the bombardment of Bristol by the British on 7 October 1775, at the beginning of the Revolutionary War. Benjamin West had known Rev. Burt well for thirty years at that point – from his childhood to his marriage to Elizabeth Smith. We can assume that the bombardment of his hometown and the death of his friend and mentor made the war personal for Benjamin West. See Wilfred Harold Monro, The History of Bristol, Rhode Island, Providence, Rhode Island: J.A. & R.A. Reid, 1880, 208, digital image, The Internet Archive (www.archive.org : accessed 6 Mar 2022); and “A Revolution is Brewing,” The Rhode Island Slave History Medallion Project, Linden Place newsletter,  Bristol, Rhode Island: Linden Place (www.lindenplace.org : accessed 6 March 2022). Around the time of his 1753 marriage to Elizabeth Smith when he was 23, he moved to Providence, Rhode Island (population ~3,3005United States Bureau of the Census. A century of population growth from the first census of the United States to the twelfth, 1790-1900, Washington: Government Printing Office, 1909. p. 162. The Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/centuryofpopulat00unit/page/162/mode/2up). He lived most of the rest of his life in Providence.

By 1758, Benjamin found backers to help him open a dry goods store. A couple of years later, he opened the first bookstore ever to grace the commercial avenues of Providence, now paying for the books he wanted by selling them to other people. He published almanacs for Providence, Bristol, and Halifax, Nova Scotia, to supplement his income for nearly 40 years. His work in plotting and recording the transit of Venus across the sun in 1769 was recognized in 1770 when the College of Rhode Island, then newly established on College Hill in Providence, awarded him an Honorary Doctorate of Letters.

During the Revolutionary War, he manufactured clothing for soldiers in the Continental Army while publishing his almanac and pursuing his scientific studies. The Royal Society of London published his paper on the transit of Venus and Mercury. In 1781, Benjamin West became a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 1786 began to teach mathematics and astronomy at the College of Rhode Island. In later years he added natural philosophy to the curriculum.

His friends were early backers of the College of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, which later became Brown University. Providence was a small town in those days, so he naturally came into regular contact with the progenitors of the school: Stephen Hopkins (a signer of the Declaration of Independence), the famous four Brown brothers (Nicholas, Joseph, John, and Moses), Judge Daniel Jenckes, and others. He loved mathematics and astronomy and conferred with some genuinely great minds of his day. He tutored students privately throughout his life.

Benjamin West was a member of an active abolitionist group in Providence. This position pitted Benjamin against his friend John Brown, who actively engaged in the slave trade. Except for John, the Brown brothers’ thoughts on slavery shifted after a disastrous series of events on their slave ship Sally. Of 196 people purchased on its two-year voyage to Africa, only 87 survived to be sold as slaves in Antigua. The inhumanity of the Sally debacle especially shattered Moses Brown. He manumitted the people he had enslaved and became one of the most outspoken abolitionists of his time.

Purple prose and flowery metaphors abound in the contemporary biographical accounts, some written around the time of his death. They all reach one conclusion: Benjamin West was a genius who contributed considerably to science and mathematics. He was indeed a product of the Age of Enlightenment.

Astronomical Genius

An event in 1766 opened some gilded doors for him. A comet appeared in the constellation of Taurus on the evening of April 9. Being an excellent self-taught astronomer, Benjamin took careful measurements. He wrote a letter to a Boston astronomer named John Winthrop,6The Harvard President was a direct descendant of the John Winthrop whose 1630 fleet began the Great Migration. The earlier Winthrop was the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and the persecutor of Anne Marbury Hutchinson. who was at Cambridge College (now known as Harvard University). He had never met or corresponded with Winthrop but was so excited about his observation he simply had to share it – and shared it with one of the foremost astronomers in North America.

Providence, April 10, 1766

Dear Sir:

For the improvement of science, I now acquaint you, that the last evening, I saw in the West, a comet, which I judged to be about the middle of the sign of Taurus; with about 7 degrees North latitude. It set half after 8 o’clock by my watch, and its amplitude was about 29 or 30 degrees. Nothing, Sir, could have induced me to this freedom of writing to you, but the love I have for the sciences; and I flatter myself that you will, on that account, the more readily overlook it.

I am, Sir, yours,

Benjamin West

This flowery language essentially says, “Sorry to bother you, but wow! I saw a comet last night!” He and Winthrop became great friends and continued to write to each other. For the rest of their lives, they would share observations about the night sky.

1769 Transit of the Planets

In 1716, building on the work of Johannes Kepler a century before, Edmund Halley figured out how to apply the theory of parallax to determine the distances between astronomical bodies. With both Mercury and Venus predicted to pass between Earth and the sun in 1769, astronomers worldwide were anxious to test the theory. Since this was the first opportunity to view the transits of both inner planets since Halley’s theory was published, everyone in the field of astronomy was excited. Captain Cook would observe the 1769 transit of Venus from Tahiti on his ill-fated circumnavigation. At the time of the last transit of Venus in 1761, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, who had just finished their survey of the boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland, had traveled to the Cape of Good Hope to observe it. These men used astronomy as an essential tool in their lives – navigating the oceans and surveying the land required precise measurements, and measurements started with the stars.

Telescope used by Benjamin West to observe the transits of Mercury and Venus in 1769, Brown University Collection. Photo credit: Brown University

There was no telescope in Providence in 1769. Benjamin West, Stephen Hopkins, Joseph Brown, and Moses Brown were determined to see the phenomenon, though, so they managed to import a telescope from England at the incredible expense of 500 pounds. The men set up on the outskirts of Providence and watched the celestial event. Transit Street in Providence is named after the spot where they viewed the transit on June 3, 1769. There are photos of the telescope on the Brown University website – the school still has it and displays it.

As was his habit, Benjamin West made careful measurements of the transit.7See a list of Brown University’s observations of the transits of the planets at the Ladd Observatory. He published a tract (and dedicated it to his friend Stephen Hopkins) about the event.8See a copy of the 27-page tract on the Brown University website, complete with diagrams.

Benjamin West’s diagram of the transit of Venus, 1769, from the Ladd Observatory, Brown University

In July 1770, he and other astronomers observed the new;y-discovered Lexell’s Comet,  which passed closer to earth than any known comet before or since. His observations contributed to a theory about the tails of comets. Because of his astronomy observations and publications, Benjamin West, a man with only three months of formal education, was awarded an honorary Master of Arts from Harvard on July 18, 1770. Here’s the text of the notification letter from his friend John Winthrop:

Cambridge, July 19, 1770

Sir —

I have the pleasure to acquaint you that the government of this college were pleased, yesterday, to confer upon you the Honorary degree of Master of Arts; upon which I sincerely congratulate you. I acknowledge the receipt of your favour, and shall be glad to compare any observations of the satellites.

Yours,

John Winthrop

Honors and degrees

Benjamin West primarily worked as a merchant during the 1760s and 1770s. When the Revolutionary War finally arrived, commerce dried up. He went to work manufacturing clothing for the American troops, but he continued his studies and correspondence with the other great minds and kept publishing his almanacs. In 1772, Dartmouth College awarded him an honorary degree for his work in astronomy. Then, in 1781, he was elected in the first class of honorees to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Some of his correspondence survives in the Academy’s archives. Two articles by Benjamin West appear in the Academy’s inaugural journal. First was the three-page article, “An Account of the Observations Made in Providence, in the State of Rhode-Island, of the Eclipse of the Sun, Which Happened the 23d Day of April, 1781.” He and Joseph Brown observed the eclipse together, and they would continue to share observations of the sky their entire lives.

Mathematics seems to have been Benjamin’s first love. In 1773 he wrote to a friend in Boston of a theorem he had developed to extract “the roots of odd powers” that was probably his most significant contribution to the field of mathematics. The American Academy of Arts and Sciences published a copy of his letter in its first journal. This article was entitled “On the Extraction of Roots.” It caused a sensation on both sides of the Atlantic. He created theorems in quadratic equations to extract the third, fifth, and seventh roots of numbers. Some skeptics claimed his theorems were no different from those already in use; others praised their clarity and simplicity.

He didn’t stop at math and astronomical observations, though. One surviving biography explains a physics problem he cogitated upon for more than two years in conjunction with John Winthrop and a Mr. Oliver. It had to do with the properties of air in a copper tube that was then placed into an otherwise airless container. The qualities of invisible gases – basically, the scientific understanding of the very concept of the physical nature and properties of “air” – were in their infancy. Benjamin West speculated about the attractive and repulsive nature of the tiny particles that made up the matter of air and how they would behave under different conditions. (We now call these particles “molecules.”) Gravity, matter, magnetism, and ultimately the behavior of the tails of comets played into his understanding of the question.

Benjamin West’s mind was at the peak of its illuminating brilliance as the world around him heaved. His most important discoveries and writings happened as the American Revolution was about to explode. By the end of the Revolution, he had returned to academic pursuits. He tutored students in math and astronomy. In 1786, the College of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations offered him a full professorship.

For some reason, he did not begin teaching at the college for a couple of years. Leaving his wife and family in Providence, Benjamin West moved to Philadelphia temporarily to teach at the illustrious Protestant Episcopal Academy. While there, he solidified relationships with the influential minds of that city, including Benjamin Franklin and David Rittenhouse. He assumed his post at Brown in 1788.

Benjamin West on the Committee for the Providence Library Providence Gazette, 29 March 1783

Brown University awarded Dr. West his first non-honorary degree, his Doctor of Laws, in 1792. He taught mathematics and astronomy there from 1788 until 1799. After leaving the university, he opened a navigation school and taught seafaring men astronomy. He clearly felt called to teach other people the wonders of the universe. I found an advertisement in the Providence Gazette published 29 March 1783 in which he and other influential men of Providence were reconstituting the local library and organizing its books.

The Almanacs and Revolution

Almanacs are annual publications that include helpful information on many practical subjects. People in farming, fishing, sailing, and other trades relied on their weather forecasts, high and low tides tables, ferry times, stagecoach times, and planting dates. Astronomical events like the phases of the moon and eclipses could be found within their pages, as could folklore, proverbs, poetry, essays, recipes, religious calendars, and more. The Franklin brothers (James and his apprentice Benjamin) were famous for their almanacs. Some of the most significant competitors to Ben Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac were the New England almanacs published by Benjamin West.

One of Franklin’s chief rivals was Benjamin West, who published his almanacs in Boston … West usually used the pseudonym “Isaac Bickerstaff,” a name famously used by Jonathan Swift several years earlier. “Abraham Weatherwise” was also a pseudonym [used by West], and likely used by a number of different almanac printers, and he “ushered in the healthiest and most interesting period of almanac making.”9“Eleven Early American Almanacs, 1733-1795, Including Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard Improved, 1755,” Bauman’s Rare Books, citing Sagendorph, 116. This auction offering, for $15,000, includes two (and possibly five) of Benjamin West’s almanacs.

Benjamin West’s first almanac was published for 1763 on Providence’s first printing press by William Goddard. It was published continuously for 118 years – continued under the pseudonym “Isaac Bickerstaff” and with various titles until 1881. “From 1763 to 1781, Benjamin West was the author, with the exception of the year 1769 when “Abraham Weatherwise” took his place. From 1781 to 1881 “Isaac Bickerstaff” was given as the author, except in 1833, when the name of R. T. Paine appeared on the title page.”10Howard M. Chapin, “Checklist of Rhode Island Almanacs 1643-1850,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 25:19-54 (April 1915), p. 23.

John Carter published the almanacs from 1770-1814.11Howard M. Chapin, “Checklist of Rhode Island Almanacs 1643-1850,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 25:19-54 (April 1915), p. 23. John Carter was the father-in-law of Nicholas Brown, Jr., after whom Brown University was named. Nicholas’s uncle Joseph had secured the telescope to observe the transits of Mercury and Venus and observed them with Benjamin West in 1769.12Howard M. Chapin, “Checklist of Rhode Island Almanacs 1643-1850,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 25:19-54 (April 1915), p. 24. The two men engaged in a conflict over publication rights in 1766. Carter continued publishing (and complaining when others published the same almanac, apparently with West’s consent). Around 1781 the men resolved their conflict. Their relationship continued for the rest of Benajmin West’s life.13Howard M. Chapin, “Checklist of Rhode Island Almanacs 1643-1850,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 25:19-54 (April 1915), pp. 25-26.

Benjamin West’s New England Almanack for 1775. Note the pro-liberty poem on the cover.

Benjamin West did not limit his almanacs to dry data and noncontroversial proverbs. Almanacs during the Revolution and the period leading up to it often included political essays and even propaganda. Since nearly every literate household owned and used almanacs regularly, the political leanings of the publishers and almanac writers influenced the sentiments of the people reading the almanacs. When George III ascended the throne in 1762, Benjamin West’s almanac praised him.14Allan R. Raymond, “To Reach Men’s Minds: Almanacs and the American Revolution, 1760-1777, The New England Quarterly, September 1978, 51:370-395, 372 http://www.jstor.org/stable/364614. However, the passage of the Stamp Act in 1765 changed everything, and, as it turned out, Benjamin West did not hesitate to share his passionate political opinions. He was one of the “notable patriots” publishing popular almanacs throughout this period.15 Marion Barber Stowell, “Revolutionary Almanac-Makers: Trumpeters of Sedition.” The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 73, no. 1 (1979): 41–61, 42. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24302752.

Benjamin West, mathematician and Brown University professor, was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. From 1763 through 1781 he published almanacs in Providence, Rhode Island. That West calculated the almanacs does not necessarily mean that he wrote the contents. The printers often hired a calculator, whose name, if it were prestigious, was given to the almanac. Frequently the printer himself furnished the additional text. For 1766 in “A Short View of the present State of the American Colonies, from Canada to the utmost Verge of His Majesty’s Dominions,” the author clearly states that his description of the general despair in English America is to propagandize: “such being the deplorable Situation of this Country, once renown’d for Freedom, it is hoped a Review thereof will excite such a universal Spirit of Patriotism in every Inhabitant, that our Liberty and Property may be yet rescued from the Jaws of Destruction.”16ibid, p. 45. The article’s author notes that “The West almanac for 1766 was printed by Sarah Goddard and her son, William. On 21 Sept. 1765 William Goddard published his sensational Constitutional Courant, a patriotic polemic for the Whig cause.” That being said, Benjamin West’s own strongly Whig sentiments are not lost to history.

His 1767 almanac contained an essay protesting strongly against the Stamp Act and is credited with being one of six critically important almanac-based essays on the topic.17Allan R. Raymond, “To Reach Men’s Minds: Almanacs and the American Revolution, 1760-1777, The New England Quarterly, September 1978, 51:370-395, 374 http://www.jstor.org/stable/364614.

His 1775 almanac contained “A brief view of the present controversy between Great Britain and America, with some observations thereon.” It filled three pages of the 25-page almanac. Benjamin West’s friend and mentor, Rev. John Burt, would die on October 7, 1775, during the British bombardment of Bristol.

Rev. John Burt was the fifth pastor of the Congregational Church in Bristol, R.I. He assumed his duties on 13 May 1741. He died at the age of 50, on 7 October 1775,18Find a Grave memorial # 13165832  for John Burt, at the Congregational Churchyard cemetery in Bristol, R.I. (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/13165832). as the British bombarded the town in the first year of the Revolution.19During the Revolutionary War, the British Royal Navy bombarded Bristol twice. On October 7, 1775, a group of ships led by Captain Wallace and HMS Rose sailed into town and demanded provisions. When refused, Wallace shelled the town, causing much damage. The attack was stopped when Lieutenant-Governor William Bradford rowed out to Rose to negotiate a cease-fire. Bristol and the neighboring town of Warren, RI, suffered a second attack by the British on 25 May 1778, when 500 British and Hessian troops marched through the main street (now called Hope Street (RI Route 114)) and burned 30 barracks and houses, taking some prisoners to Newport.

Rev. Burt was born in Boston and educated at Harvard. After the French and Indian War of the 1750s-1760s, Burt was adamantly anti-Catholic and anti-French.19John F. Quinn, “From Dangerous Threat to “Illustrious Ally : Changing Perceptions of Catholics in Eighteenth Century Newport,” Rhode Island History, 2017, 75:56,60, accessed 6 Mar 2022. At the time of the 1790 census, only 3,211 lived in Bristol county, a little less than half of which lived in the town of Bristol.

It takes little imagination to believe that Rev. Burt’s death during the shelling of Bristol by the British inspired Benjamin West to take action on the American side, even if he had not been inclined that way before. However, Benjamin West’s published almanacs make clear that his sentiments lay strongly with the American cause long before the first official shots were fired at Lexington and Concord.

Benjamin West’s Family

Since I discovered him as Mary Smith West’s father, the rest of Benjamin’s family has been a brick wall for me. “Brick walls” in genealogy research refer to those ancestors whose origins and relations are shrouded in seemingly impenetrable mystery. Of course, I may have gotten so wrapped up in researching the man that I haven’t put enough energy into the rest of the family!

Most secondary sources list Benjamin’s father as a farmer named John and his wife as Elizabeth Smith. A couple of these sources say Ben’s grandfather was an immigrant to America, but his name is not given. Several sources claim he had eight children and was survived by three of them, but as of March 2022, I have found names for only four or five: Elizabeth, Nancy (Anne?), Benjamin, Mary “Polly” Smith, and Joseph.20Rhode Island Census, 1774, p. 53, Record for Benjamin West in Providence, Rhode Island. Ancestry, website (www. ancestry.com : accessed 6 Mar 2022). In his household, there were two white males over the age of 16, one white male under the age of 16, two white females over 16, and three white females under 16. Assuming he and his wife are two of the people over 16, this report allows for two sons and four daughters in the household. Two others may have died young, been living elsewhere, or not yet born. Where his wife’s maiden surname is mentioned, it is given as Smith. His birthplace is given as Rehoboth, Massachusetts,  or Bristol, Rhode Island. In 1730 Bristol was claimed by Massachusetts as part of the original Plymouth colony. It became part of Rhode Island in 1746, when the border between Rhode Island and Plymouth colonies was finally settled. Bristol was where King Philip’s War had started in 1675, and served as the primary base of operations for Metacomet, or King Philip. If Benjamin’s family was in the area at the time, they would have endured the first (and worst) of the wars between Native Americans and European colonists. The town was started in 1680, after the war.

Many online trees confuse and conflate Benjamin West the astronomer with another Benjamin West born in Rhode Island around 1730. The other Benjamin West (c. 1730-1782) was the son of William West (1681-aft 1742) of Kingstown, Rhode Island. William was the son of Susannah Soule (c. 1642-c. 1684) and Francis West (c1632 in England – 1696 in Kingstown). Susannah was the daughter of Mayflower passenger George Soule (c1601 in Holland – c. 1680 in Duxbury, Plymouth Colony). The descendant of George Soule is said to have been born in North Kingstown or Newport, Rhode Island, around 1730. He is said to have lived in Farmington, Connecticut, and died in Rensselaer,  New York in 1782. The “Silver Books” of the Mayflower Society list the 1753 marriage record of Benjamin West and Elizabeth Smith as belonging to George Soule’s descendant, not to the astronomer. Since the astronomer was from Bristol, and the Soule descendant was from Kingstown, it seems more likely that the attribution of the marriage record to the Soule descendant is incorrect.

There is a marriage record for Benjamin West and “Mrs. Elizabeth Smith” in Bristol, County, Rhode Island, on 7 June 1753.21James N. Arnold, Rhode Island Vital Extracts, 1636-1850, Vol. 6: Bristol County, pp. 50, and citing Bristol Marriage Record Book 1:125. Providence, Rhode Island: Narragansett Publishing Company,  1891-1912. Rev. John Burt performed the marriage ceremony. Based on the title she was given in the marriage record, she may have been married to a man named Smith prior to marrying Benjamin West. However, no other records in Bristol show a man named Smith marrying a woman named Elizabeth in the 10 years prior to this. It is possible that she married elsewhere. It is also possible that “Mrs.” was simply an abbreviation for “mistress” and did not denote her previous marital status.

In 1767, Benjamin West was a commissioner for the insolvent estate of Joseph Smith, deceased, of North Providence (Pawtucket). He valued the estate and filed papers confirming the portion that should be allowed to Joseph Smith’s widow, Marcy or Mercy Smith.22 “Probate files, early to 1885 (Pawtucket, R.I.),” Pawtucket (Rhode Island). Court of Probate. Probate files, 1, 5-85, Estate of Joseph Smith (1768), images 363-373 of 1199, FHL Film 2364533. FamilySearch (www.familysearch.org : accessed 6 March 2022) Joseph may have been a brother or another relative of Benjamin’s wife.

Elizabeth Smith West may have been a daughter of Anne Arnold, the widow of Benjamin Smith who married Stephen Hopkins in 1755. Hopkins was a signer of the Declaration and a colonial governor of Rhode Island, among his many other accomplishments, and was known to be a close friend of Benjamin West.

Benjamin’s wife Elizabeth died in 1810 in Providence. When Benjamin died in 1813, the probate court appointed two administrators: his daughter Elizabeth, who apparently never married, and his son-in-law Gabriel Allen, who was married to Benjamin’s daughter Nancy. Nancy was a nickname for Anne, so her name appears as both in records. It appears that Joseph, Elizabeth, and my 5th great-grandmother, Mary “Polly” Smith West Pearce, were the children who survived him.

In the first Decennial Census of the United States in 1790, Benjamin West lived next door to his son-in-law, Oliver Pearce. Oliver was married to Benjamin’s daughter Mary Smith West, who was called Polly. They were my 5th great-grandparents. In 1800, the Pearces had moved, but Gabriel Allen, who married Ben’s daughter Nancy (or Anne), lived next door. In Ben’s home were four white adults: a man and a woman over 45 and a man and a woman between the ages of 26-44. The younger couple may have been one of their children and a spouse or possibly two adult unmarried children.

Oliver Pearce and Polly West moved to Fayetteville, North Carolina, sometime between 1793 and 1807. By 1800, Oliver’s brother Nathan was already living in Fayetteville, North Carolina with another adult male and two enslaved people.

A man named Benjamin West died in Providence in 1801 and may have been Benjamin and Elizabeth’s son. One of Benjamin’s sons also may have been named Joseph. Joseph West, a Revolutionary War veteran from Rhode Island, married Violetta Howard of Baltimore County, Maryland, and died there in 1840. I’ve gone a bit back and forth as to whether he’s the right Joseph Smith, and have found nothing definitive to connect him to the astronomer despite the repeated insistence of quite a few unsourced online trees.

More information is out there, but not accessible to me online. Brown University’s John Hay Library has in its special collections letters from Benjamin and Joseph West to Dr. Solomon Drowne23in the Drowne Family Papers (MS Drowne). The Rhode Island Historical Society has documents in its special collections relating to Benjamin West’s mercantile business and a narrative of his 1769 observations of the transits.24Benjamin West Papers, MSS 794. There are references to him in the papers of Moses Brown at the same repository.25MSS 313. Letters from Benjamin West to one of his granddaughters, Cecilia Pearce Newby (a daughter of my 5th great-grandmother), are in the special collections at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, with the papers of her husband, Larkin Newby.26Larkin Newby Papers, 1796-1884. Collection Number: 03247.

Bibliography:

American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Website (amacad.org : accessed 6 March 2022).

Arnold, James N. Rhode Island Vital Extracts, 1636-1850, Vol. 6: Bristol County, p. 50, citing Bristol Marriage Record Book 1:125. Providence, Rhode Island: Narragansett Publishing Company,  1891-1912. (FamilySearch.org : accessed 6 March 2022).

Bailyn, Bernard. The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of the Harvard Press, 1967, 50th Anniversary Edition, 2017.

“Biography of Benjamin West, L.L.D. A.A.S.:  Professor of Mathematicks, Astronomy and Natural Philosophy, in Rhode Island College – and Fellow of the Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, &c.”, The Rhode Island Literary Repository, Vol I, No. 7 (October 1814):  137-160 (337-360). Google Books (books.google.com : accessed 6 March 2022).

Bliss, Leonard. The History of Rehoboth, Bristol County, Massachusetts:  Comprising a history of the present towns of Rehoboth, Seekonk, and Pawtucket, from their settlement to the present time; together with sketches of Attleborough, Cumberland, and a part of Swansey and Barrington, to the time that they were severally separated from the original town. (Boston:  Otis, Broaders, and Company, 1836). The Internet Archive (archive.org : accessed 6 March 2022).

Brown University. Portrait Collection, Office of the University Curator, Providence, Rhode Island. Website (https://library.brown.edu : accessed 6 March 2022).

Find A Grave. Website, database with images (findagrave.com : accessed 6 March 2022).

Hall, Louise. “Family Records: Newby Bible”, New England Historical and Genealogical Register 122 (Apr 1968):  125-128, 125. American Ancestors (americanancestors.org : accessed 6 March 2022).

Mitchell, Martha. “Benjamin West”, Encyclopedia Brunoniana (1993).

Newmann’s Ltd. Website (newmansltd.com : accessed 6 March 2022)

Pease, John Chauncey, and John Milton Niles. A Gazetteer of the States of Connecticut and Rhode-Island,  (Hartford:  William S. Marsh, 1819), 331-333. Biographical entry for Dr. Benjamin West. (Google Books : accessed 6 March 2022.)

The Providence Gazette, various issues, 1763-1802.

Quinn, John F. “From Dangerous Threat to “Illustrious Ally : Changing Perceptions of Catholics in Eighteenth Century Newport,” Rhode Island History Journal, 75:56, 60 (2017). Rhode Island Historical Society (www.rihs.org : accessed 5 Mar 2022.

Raymond, Allan R. “To Reach Men’s Minds: Almanacs and the American Revolution, 1760-1777.” The New England Quarterly 51, no. 3 (1978): 370–95. https://doi.org/10.2307/364614.

“A Revolution is Brewing,” The Rhode Island Slave History Medallion Project, Linden Place newsletter,  Bristol, Rhode Island: Linden Place (lindenplace.org : accessed 6 March 2022).

Rhode Island Historical Society Library. Benjamin West Papers. 121 Hope Street, Providence, RI 02906.

Spencer, Mark G. Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of the American Enlightenment, Entry for Benjamin West (1730-1813). London: Bloomsbury (2015). pp. 1096-1097.

Stowell, Marion Barber. “Revolutionary Almanac-Makers: Trumpeters of Sedition.” The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 73, no. 1 (1979): 41–61. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24302752.

United States Bureau of the Census. A century of population growth from the first census of the United States to the twelfth, 1790-1900, Washington: Government Printing Office, 1909. p. 162. The Internet Archive (archive.org : Accessed 6 March 2022).

Wikipedia. (wikipedia.org : accessed 6 March 2022).

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An earlier version of this post originally appeared on Aramink.com.

Footnotes

  • 1
    Not to be confused by the famous English/American painter Benjamin West (1738-1820), who was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1791. Their circles sometimes overlapped, and many genealogies conflate the two.
  • 2
  • 3
    Dr. Benjamin West (1730-1813), Professor of Mathematics, Astronomy, and Natural Philosophy, 1786-1799. Artist unknown; Watercolor silhouette, 3½” x 7½” from the portrait collection of Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. Gift of the family of Dr. West. Portrait 156, Brown Historical Property No. 1853, located in the John Hay library 122. From the Brown University website: “The painter of this miniature portrait is unknown … It was a family portrait during Benjamin West’s lifetime and after his death in 1813 it was prized by his descendants for generations until it was ultimately donated to Brown.” Portrait Collection, Office of the Curator, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, website  (https://library.brown.edu/cds/portraits/display.php?idno=86).
  • 4
    Rev. John Burt died while fleeing the bombardment of Bristol by the British on 7 October 1775, at the beginning of the Revolutionary War. Benjamin West had known Rev. Burt well for thirty years at that point – from his childhood to his marriage to Elizabeth Smith. We can assume that the bombardment of his hometown and the death of his friend and mentor made the war personal for Benjamin West. See Wilfred Harold Monro, The History of Bristol, Rhode Island, Providence, Rhode Island: J.A. & R.A. Reid, 1880, 208, digital image, The Internet Archive (www.archive.org : accessed 6 Mar 2022); and “A Revolution is Brewing,” The Rhode Island Slave History Medallion Project, Linden Place newsletter,  Bristol, Rhode Island: Linden Place (www.lindenplace.org : accessed 6 March 2022).
  • 5
    United States Bureau of the Census. A century of population growth from the first census of the United States to the twelfth, 1790-1900, Washington: Government Printing Office, 1909. p. 162. The Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/centuryofpopulat00unit/page/162/mode/2up
  • 6
    The Harvard President was a direct descendant of the John Winthrop whose 1630 fleet began the Great Migration. The earlier Winthrop was the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and the persecutor of Anne Marbury Hutchinson.
  • 7
    See a list of Brown University’s observations of the transits of the planets at the Ladd Observatory.
  • 8
    See a copy of the 27-page tract on the Brown University website, complete with diagrams.
  • 9
    “Eleven Early American Almanacs, 1733-1795, Including Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard Improved, 1755,” Bauman’s Rare Books, citing Sagendorph, 116. This auction offering, for $15,000, includes two (and possibly five) of Benjamin West’s almanacs.
  • 10
    Howard M. Chapin, “Checklist of Rhode Island Almanacs 1643-1850,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 25:19-54 (April 1915), p. 23.
  • 11
    Howard M. Chapin, “Checklist of Rhode Island Almanacs 1643-1850,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 25:19-54 (April 1915), p. 23.
  • 12
    Howard M. Chapin, “Checklist of Rhode Island Almanacs 1643-1850,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 25:19-54 (April 1915), p. 24.
  • 13
    Howard M. Chapin, “Checklist of Rhode Island Almanacs 1643-1850,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 25:19-54 (April 1915), pp. 25-26.
  • 14
    Allan R. Raymond, “To Reach Men’s Minds: Almanacs and the American Revolution, 1760-1777, The New England Quarterly, September 1978, 51:370-395, 372 http://www.jstor.org/stable/364614.
  • 15
    Marion Barber Stowell, “Revolutionary Almanac-Makers: Trumpeters of Sedition.” The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 73, no. 1 (1979): 41–61, 42. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24302752.
  • 16
    ibid, p. 45. The article’s author notes that “The West almanac for 1766 was printed by Sarah Goddard and her son, William. On 21 Sept. 1765 William Goddard published his sensational Constitutional Courant, a patriotic polemic for the Whig cause.” That being said, Benjamin West’s own strongly Whig sentiments are not lost to history.
  • 17
    Allan R. Raymond, “To Reach Men’s Minds: Almanacs and the American Revolution, 1760-1777, The New England Quarterly, September 1978, 51:370-395, 374 http://www.jstor.org/stable/364614.
  • 18
    Find a Grave memorial # 13165832  for John Burt, at the Congregational Churchyard cemetery in Bristol, R.I. (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/13165832).
  • 19
    During the Revolutionary War, the British Royal Navy bombarded Bristol twice. On October 7, 1775, a group of ships led by Captain Wallace and HMS Rose sailed into town and demanded provisions. When refused, Wallace shelled the town, causing much damage. The attack was stopped when Lieutenant-Governor William Bradford rowed out to Rose to negotiate a cease-fire. Bristol and the neighboring town of Warren, RI, suffered a second attack by the British on 25 May 1778, when 500 British and Hessian troops marched through the main street (now called Hope Street (RI Route 114)) and burned 30 barracks and houses, taking some prisoners to Newport.

    Rev. Burt was born in Boston and educated at Harvard. After the French and Indian War of the 1750s-1760s, Burt was adamantly anti-Catholic and anti-French.19John F. Quinn, “From Dangerous Threat to “Illustrious Ally : Changing Perceptions of Catholics in Eighteenth Century Newport,” Rhode Island History, 2017, 75:56,60, accessed 6 Mar 2022.
  • 20
    Rhode Island Census, 1774, p. 53, Record for Benjamin West in Providence, Rhode Island. Ancestry, website (www. ancestry.com : accessed 6 Mar 2022). In his household, there were two white males over the age of 16, one white male under the age of 16, two white females over 16, and three white females under 16. Assuming he and his wife are two of the people over 16, this report allows for two sons and four daughters in the household. Two others may have died young, been living elsewhere, or not yet born.
  • 21
    James N. Arnold, Rhode Island Vital Extracts, 1636-1850, Vol. 6: Bristol County, pp. 50, and citing Bristol Marriage Record Book 1:125. Providence, Rhode Island: Narragansett Publishing Company,  1891-1912.
  • 22
    “Probate files, early to 1885 (Pawtucket, R.I.),” Pawtucket (Rhode Island). Court of Probate. Probate files, 1, 5-85, Estate of Joseph Smith (1768), images 363-373 of 1199, FHL Film 2364533. FamilySearch (www.familysearch.org : accessed 6 March 2022)
  • 23
    in the Drowne Family Papers (MS Drowne)
  • 24
    Benjamin West Papers, MSS 794.
  • 25
    MSS 313.
  • 26
    Larkin Newby Papers, 1796-1884. Collection Number: 03247.
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Business, Politics, and Family in 1809

A few years ago, I had the extraordinary good fortune to come into possession of a letter written by my 5th great grandfather, Paris Jenckes Tillinghast (1757-1822), to “Messers Brown & Ives.” The letter was written 20 February 1809, postmarked the next day, received 4 March 1809 in Providence, and answered on 7 April 1809.1809 Tillinghast-Brown & Ives letter - opened

This letter was so full of family connections that I nearly hyperventilated when I saw it on eBay. I lost the auction but persuaded the winner to rehome the letter. Fortunately, he was also interested in family history and understood my excitement.

Fayetteville Febry 20th 1809

Messrs Brown & Ives
Gentlemen
This will make you acquainted that I have drawn on you for $200 in favr Mr Sebastian Staiert of this place payl in N York which I have no doubt will be duly honord & meet with your approbation. I have purchased since my last to you 10 Hnd Tobacco & hope to make out the 45 Hnd in time for the Augus return & not exceed $3 Hn. The planters are now asking more on acct the rumour of the (??a garlemesd??) to be intendd to be repeald that Horrible Law. Cotton is now current at $12½ Cash. I was in hopes to [ge]t hold of some at your limits. But it was improbable as the holders all expect the Odious Law is to be repeald by 4th March. I hope your Mr Ives will have arrd to his Family eer this comes to Hand in good health. I should have been very Happy indeed to have seen him at Fayetl & would chearfully given him my best bed & table. I think he must have had a pleasant jaunt & seen something new among the Demots at Congress. I anticipate the Hope that they the Demos will not Dare to involve their Country in a War with GB to make Free Ships Free Goods for that’s the Bone of all the Quarrel at last I think. Please to inform me your opinion respecting the price of cotton with you & in Boston I shall have a Debt due in Boston next month & wish to know If cotton will do the honors and I have pickd up some few Bales for this purpose. I will do all I can to hand you your pay as fast as I can possible get hold of anything But would (empower?) for your Interest. O Pearce Daughter Eliza intends to take a Husband on Thursday Evening next a Dr Robinson of this town to be Happy man. A good Demo he suits OP well. He is Nephew to the Senator from Vermont now in Senate US. I wish them all the happiness they can desire &tc. I can’t help telling you Mrs Huske had a fine Boy 31st Janry She & child finely. My best wishes for your & family Happiness
& Remain yours Respectfully
Paris J Tillinghast

Nicholas Brown and his brother-in-law, Thomas Poynton Ives, owned an international trading company called Brown & Ives. It was the successor to a series of companies owned by various members of the Brown family for three generations. Thomas Ives was apprenticed to a previous iteration of the Browns’ company, became a partner, and ultimately became family when he married Nicholas Brown’s only sister, Hope.

Nicholas and  Hope inherited the shipping business of their father and three uncles, the famous four Brown brothers of Providence, Rhode Island. Their father and uncles had focused on conventional goods, but a significant portion of their fortune came from the transatlantic slave trade. The Brown family – especially Nicholas – donated a lot of money to Rhode Island College, so the school renamed itself Brown University in the family’s honor. (You may have heard about Brown University’s examination of its part in the slave trade a few years ago.) Hope Hall at Brown University is named for Hope Brown Ives, the sister and wife of the men addressed in this letter. Nicholas and Hope were the only surviving children of Nicholas Brown, Sr., and his wife, Rhoda Jenckes.

Nicholas and Hope’s maternal ancestors also made a significant mark in early New England. Their maternal grandfather, Daniel Jenckes,  was a prominent judge, politician, and landowner. The first patent in North America was granted to Daniel’s great-grandfather. His grandfather founded Pawtucket. His paternal uncle, Joseph Jenckes, was a prominent Rhode Island politician and colonial governor of Rhode Island. Governor Jenckes also married a Brown: Nicholas’s great-aunt Martha.

The author of this letter to Nicholas Brown and Thomas Ives was my 5th great-grandfather, Paris Jenckes Tillinghast. His mother, Joanna, was Rhoda Jenckes Brown’s sister. He was also a grandson of Judge Daniel Jenckes. Therefore, Paris was writing to his first cousins.

Paris’s letter first addresses business. In 1804, Paris had emigrated to North Carolina from Rhode Island with his wife’s brother, Oliver Pearce. (Oliver was married to Mary Smith West, a daughter of the astronomer and polymath Dr. Benjamin West of Providence.) The “Horrible Law” and “Odious Law” that Paris is so upset about in the letter is likely the controversial Embargo Act of 1807, which made international trade illegal. The Act intended to stop privateer attacks on American merchant marines and prevent Americans from being impressed by the British to fight against France, but it nearly devastated the American economy. Since Brown & Ives, like other Brown family entities before them, were engaged in international trade, the Embargo Act nearly crippled them. As Paris anticipated, Congress repealed the Embargo Act two weeks later and replaced it with the somewhat less onerous Non-Intercourse Act of 1809, which prohibited trade only with England and France. (The Non-Intercourse Act wasn’t any more popular than the Embargo Act.) The War of 1812 was looming.

I do not know the extent of the Tillinghast and Pearce involvement in Brown & Ives. This letter indicates some shared interest, whether by association, contract, or perhaps even employment. Given the amount of international trade from the Carolina backcountry at the time, Paris Tillinghast and Oliver Pearce may have moved to North Carolina to further the business interests of Brown & Ives and then been hindered by the Embargo Act. For generations after this letter, they were merchants, among other things. For at least three generations before Paris, the Jenckes and Tillinghast men had been ship captains and traders to the West Indies.

The Browns had supplied Dr. Benjamin West Robinson with the telescope he used to observe the transits of Venus and Mercury in 1769, so there is a known connection of the Browns to the Pearce family through Dr. West’s daughter. And, of course, all of these families had roots in Providence, which was a relatively small city at the time. In 1769, Providence’s population was about 3,300 people; by the date of this letter, fewer than 10,000 people lived there.

That’s not all the family news, though. In the letter, Paris tells Nicholas that his wife’s niece, Eliza West Pearce, had met Dr. Benjamin Robinson – the nephew of Senator Moses Robinson of Vermont – and that they would soon be married. Paris also reported that his daughter, Joanna Jenckes Tillinghast Huske, had given birth to a healthy son. This son was John Winslow Huske (1809-1841), the eldest brother of Joanna Anne Huske. Joanna Anne Huske grew up to marry her second cousin, Dr. Benjamin West Robinson. They are my 3rd great-grandparents.

The diagram puts everyone in a tree and in the places where they were (and where they were from). The names of the people mentioned in the letter are ALLCAPS, and the sender and recipients are bold. I also transcribed the letter. Please let me know if anyone can make out any of the writing that I couldn’t read.

Hope Brown was named for her paternal grandmother, Hope Power. The Brown, Power, West, Pearce, Jenckes, and Tillinghast families entangled over generations in Providence and continued entangling with each other and with Huskes, Starks, and Robinsons once they arrived in North Carolina.

At the beginning of the letter, Paris refers to Sebastian Staiert, to whom Paris had advanced some of Nicholas’s money. Sebastian’s daughter Ann married John Jennings, a great-uncle of my 2nd great-grandmother, Laura Pemberton. Two generations after this letter, Laura would marry Oliver Pearce Robinson and bring him to Arkansas to run the plantation she had inherited. That plantation – we now just call it a farm – has been in our family since the 1850s.

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Fanny’s Bible

We’ve been cleaning out Fletch and Shirley’s house and looking hard for the missing Smith family bible from the 1800s without any luck. I’m so glad that I scanned the genealogy pages years ago – it makes me sick that we can’t find the book now.

That Bible has always been a mystery to me. At one point, it apparently belonged to Averilla Hollis Frank, who never had any children. All of her adult life, my son’s 4th great-grandmother – Skip & Matt’s 3rd great-grandmother, Frances A. “Fanny” Gash Smith – lived with Averilla, Averilla’s mother, or another of the Hollis sisters. Fanny is buried with Averilla’s mother, Martha Hollis, in Brooksville, Kentucky. We don’t know how Fanny and the Hollises were related, but Fanny’s son Henry [Barnard or Barnet] Smith ended up with Averilla’s Bible. That’s the one that is now missing.

Fanny’s husband, O.F. Smith, is also a mystery. I have found only two records for him besides Averilla’s Bible: the record of his marriage to Fanny in Kentucky, and his death, which was recorded in the 1880 census mortality schedule in Polk County, Iowa – over 600 miles from Fanny and their son Henry in Kentucky. The census reported that he died at the county’s poor farm. One record says he was born in Ohio; the other says he was born in Pennsylvania. For a man named Smith, that’s not much to go on.

This afternoon, on a high shelf at the Smith home, I found a worn album of tintypes, daguerrotypes, and old studio photos from the 1850s through the 1890s. There was a note from one of the childless Smith relatives inside. Shortly before her death at a great old age in the mid-1990s, this relative had written to Fletcher that she didn’t know who the people in the album were but wanted him – her only living relative – to have it. One of those photos is identified as Averilla Hollis Frank. Others are identified, but the names aren’t familiar to me. More have no identifying information beyond the studio’s name, and sometimes its location (always in Ohio), printed on the cards.

Next, I reached for the worn, leather-bound book shelved beside that album. Its spine was illegible, but the name “John Barr” was inked thickly into the edge of the pages opposite the spine. I opened it. Scrawled inside the front cover was a poem of sorts, or possibly a dedication: “John Barr his hand and this 18th day of March 1838 / Steal not this book my honest friend for fear the gallows may be your end. Oliver P. Gash March the 18th 1838.”

Oliver was one of the Gashes who lived in the Ohio/Kentucky area where Fanny lived, but I had not made a firm connection between them. My heart started beating fast. “Matt, look! Here’s a dedication to someone named Gash!”

I flipped the page. It was a bible! It isn’t one of the big ones we normally find from that time, but an ordinary-looking book about the size of a fat mass-market paperback. I flipped through, but no interior genealogy pages appeared. Then I flipped to the back cover.

Names. Dates. All of them Gashes.

“Oliver P. Gash was born July the [ ] 1817” – meaning he was 20 when the front matter was written. “Martha Elizabeth Gash was born February the 9, 1827.” “Fanney Ann Gilbert Gash was born November 14th, 1829.”

“FANNY! It’s FANNY!” I exclaimed.

By now, Matt was standing right next to me. “You just got chill bumps,” he observed. Chill bumps? I was shaking. Ecstatic!

Names of Gashes I have not been able to connect to Fanny appeared in order by date of birth, in different inks, in pencil, and in different handwriting. I turned the page. They had to be her siblings. Right? I had found them, but they were not firmly connected to one another like this. For a few years now, my working hypothesis has been that they were siblings, but I didn’t have anything to support that other than they lived in the same area at the same time and were close in age.

Below the Gash entries, I could barely make out, “Henry Bernet Smith, born October 5, 1851.” Fanny’s son! Then, “Barnard Preston Gash was born June the 23, 1786.” “Isabel Gash was born August the 2, 18__” “Bernard P. Gash died March 1837.” “Isabel Gash died December 12, 1874.”

And then, “Fanny G. Smith died July 28, 1886.”

Oliver was only 12 years older than Fanny, so he couldn’t be her father. Barnard Preston Gash died the year the youngest Gash child listed in this Bible was born. Could he have been Fanny’s father and Isabel, her mother? Isabel appears in the census as head of household in 1840, 1850, and 1860, with children but never a husband. I had wondered if she might be Fanny’s mother.

But who was John Barr? One of the recorded births is Martha Jane Barr, born January 3, 1837. Now I wonder about the family relationship between John Barr, Martha Barr, and all these Gashes!

Flipping back to the front of the bible, I found an obituary for Martha A. Shetler, the wife of George Shetler, Sr. She was the mother of four children and died in Marshalltown, Iowa – near where Fanny’s husband, O.F. Smith, died. The obituary said she was born in Ohio and married in Pennsylvania.

And later, when I picked up the book to photograph it for this post, I saw that a copy of a genealogy page from Averilla Hollis’s Bible – the very one that originally identified Fanny Gash and her husband O.F. Smith to me – is pasted into the front of this bible, too, carefully folded to the right size to have been undetected when my shaking fingers first started looking for names in this little book.

Today’s treasure trove of the little bible and the photo album may crack the Smith/Gash ancestry mystery. Now I need time to puzzle it out – although a few more hints and records would help!

UPDATE: We found Averilla’s Bible!

 

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Diary of Rev. Robert Harrison Poynter (1844-1902) of Arkansas

Robert Harrison Poynter (1844-1902) was a Methodist minister who rode a circuit in southeastern Arkansas in the latter part of the 19th century, preaching and otherwise interacting with local people. He had served in the Confederate forces in Arkansas during the Civil War. He kept a diary from January 1896 until just a couple of weeks before his death of pneumonia in 1902. The first section of the diary is an account of his life.

I unearthed a typescript of the diary a few days ago when I sorted through a box of family history ephemera and treasures. The box in which I found it had been in storage for at least four years. The items in the box came from lots of different sources. They included 100 years of photographs, miscellaneous documents dating from the 1930’s to the 2010’s, 40-year-old letters and 25 years of printed emails related to family history research, a scrapbook that had belonged to my grandmother as a child, concert ticket stubs spanning 1975-2004, brochures from vacations from the 1950’s through 2004, my great-grandfather’s legal files (he died in 1967), mementos from the first Clinton-Gore presidential campaign, and so many other various and sundry items they defy exhaustive description.

I found a reference to Rev. Poynter’s diary online. As of 1995, the actual diary belonged to L.D. Poynter, Jr., of Pine Bluff, Arkansas. I assume that the diary’s owner is a descendant of Rev. Poynter.  Rev. Poynter’s obituary was printed in the Minutes of the Methodist Episcopal Church South for 1902 and is available online.

Typed copies of newspaper articles, handwritten family group sheets, and handwritten notes about the diary are appended to it.

As best I can tell, Rev. Poynter was not a relative of mine and did not interact with anyone in my extended family. Creation of an index to the people and places mentioned in the diary would greatly assist other researchers of southeastern Arkansas history and genealogy. I don’t think I’m going to take on that project any time soon, though!

I wish I knew how this typescript came into my possession. I would gladly give credit to the person who spent great effort and considerable time creating it. If you know about this diary or the creator of the typescript, please contact me.

 

 

 

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