Since
my father, grandfather, and great-grandfather all worked for Scovill
Manufacturing Company in Waterbury, one of the Facebook groups that I belong to
is the Scovill Bulletins Ancestors Network. Copies of most of the old employee
newsletter (the Bulletin) are available online to peruse. Some of those that
were until recently missing from the collection were the war years (1944-1945),
but the group administrator acquired copies of them and has started scanning
all the individual articles and posting picture collections in the group.
In
mid-1944, the president of the company completed 50 years of service and “retired”
by stepping into the Chairman of the Board position. There was an article about
the new president, Leavenworth Porter Sperry. As I viewed his name and picture,
the thought came to me that I had people with the name Sperry in my family tree
and that with such an unusual name as Leavenworth, he should be fairly easy to
trace and see if I was related to him. I signed on to Ancestry.com and quickly
found a family tree for the Sperry family and his family line as follows:
Richard
Sperry (1605-1698) b England, d New Haven CT
Richard
Sperry (1652-1734) New Haven CT
James
Sperry (1693-1775) New Haven CT
James
Sperry (1718-1789) New Haven CT
Timothy
Sperry (1747-1836) New Haven CT
Hezekiah
Sperry (1776-1826) Burlington CT
Corydon
Stillman Sperry (1810-1856) Waterbury CT
Mark
Leavenworth Sperry (1842-1926) Waterbury CT
Leavenworth
Porter Sperry (1883-1958) Waterbury CT
Thus,
Richard Sperry (1605) is the great*6 grandfather of Leavenworth Sperry.
I
then went to my own family tree to see if Richard Sperry was in it and what my
connection was to him (it’s been a few years since I was actively working in
that part of my family tree). I quickly found Richard (1605), thereby
confirming that I was related to him. However, curiously I had documented three
of his family lines through his sons Richard (1652), John (1649), and Daniel
(1665). (Richard (1605) had a very large family – these were three of over a
dozen children.) So in tracing each of these lines I found the following
connections to myself.
Richard
Sperry (1605-1698)
Richard
Sperry (1652-1734) New Haven CT
John
Sperry (1683-1754) New Haven CT
Desire
[Sperry] Wooding (1732-1812) New Haven CT
Huldah
[Wooding] Perkins (1763-1797) Bethany CT
Anna
[Perkins] Merrill (1792-1881) Bethany CT
Nathan
Merrill (1823-1909) Waterbury CT
Annie
[Merrill] Pierpont (1858-1898) Waterbury CT
Harold
Pierpont (1898-1969) Waterbury CT [his mother died after giving birth]
Sylvia
[Pierpont] Russell (1924-2012) Waterbury CT
Myself
[and making Richard (1605) my great*8 grandfather]
Richard
Sperry (1605-1698)
Daniel
Sperry (1665-1750) New Haven CT
Abel
Sperry (1700-1776) New Haven CT
Joseph
Sperry (1737-1801) Wallingford CT
Moses
Sperry (1765-1808) New Haven CT
Anna
[Sperry] Talmadge (1800-1888) Cheshire CT
Stephen
Talmadge (1843-1924) Prospect CT
Alice
[Talmadge] Blackman (1870-1929) Prospect CT
Sara
[Blackman] Pierpont (1898-1979) Prospect CT
Sylvia
[Pierpont] Russell (1924-2012) Waterbury CT
Myself
[and making Richard (1605) my great*8 grandfather]
Richard
Sperry (1605-1698)
Richard
Sperry (1652-1734) New Haven CT
Moses
Sperry (1681-1754) New Haven CT
Anna
[Sperry] Humiston (1711-1781) New Haven CT
Anna
[Humiston] Sperry (1740-1814) New Haven CT
Moses
Sperry (1765-1808) New Haven CT
And continuing as above
Anna [Sperry] Talmadge (1800-1888)
Cheshire CT
Stephen Talmadge (1843-1924) Prospect
CT
Alice [Talmadge] Blackman (1870-1929)
Prospect CT
Sara [Blackman] Pierpont (1898-1979) Prospect
CT
Sylvia [Pierpont] Russell (1924-2012)
Waterbury CT
Myself [and making Richard (1605) my
great*9 grandfather]
Richard
Sperry (1605-1698)
John
Sperry (1649-1692) New Haven CT
Elizabeth
[Sperry] Hotchkiss (1683-1760) New Haven CT
Gideon
Hotchkiss (1716-1807) Wallingford CT
Jesse
Hotchkiss (1738-1776) Waterbury CT
Charity
[Hotchkiss] Russell (1761-1851) Waterbury CT
Mary
[Russell] Sperry (1786-1857) Wallingford CT
Anna
[Sperry] Talmadge (1800-1888) Cheshire CT
And continuing as above
Stephen Talmadge (1843-1924) Prospect
CT
Alice [Talmadge] Blackman (1870-1929)
Prospect CT
Sara [Blackman] Pierpont (1898-1979) Prospect
CT
Sylvia [Pierpont] Russell (1924-2012)
Waterbury CT
Myself [and making Richard (1605) my
great*10 grandfather]
Thus
it appears that not only am I related to Leavenworth Sperry, but I am related
in several different ways because of intermarriages of the various descendent
lines. In particular:
(1) When
Joseph Sperry (1737) married Anna Humiston (1740), he was marrying the daughter
of his second cousin (i.e. his 2nd cousin once removed). A legal
marriage, but still pretty close as family members go.
(2) When
Moses Sperry (1765) married Mary Russell (1786), he was marrying his 3rd
cousin twice removed.
(3) When
my grandfather Harold Pierpont married my grandmother Sara Blackman, he was
marrying his 7th cousin. It’s unlikely that they knew this as the
Sperry family name were pretty far back in my grandfather’s family tree.
Oh
the complicated web we weave!
Hi,IAM also related to Anna Sperry,I'm trying to find the source connecting her to Moses Sperry as her father. And Mary Russell as her mother. I see people have them connected ,but with no confirmation.
ReplyDeleteThis is a difficult one to "prove". Moses Sperry died in April 1808. His will is pretty definitive that his widow was Mary Rebecca Sperry, but she is only 21 and is illiterate (signing her name with an "X"). Thus in all probate documents there is a co-signer of one of her relatives - who all have the Russell surname. So it's pretty certain that her maiden name was Russell. However, she is not able to carry on the household by herself, so the probate records the sale of all of Moses' property. Anna would have been about 17 months old at the time. Both of them disappear from the public record, so the best possibility is that Mary went back to live with a male relative elsewhere in New Haven County - probably in the city of New Haven. Census records with all family members named didn't start until 1850, but by then Anna [Sperry] Talmadge is 44 and married.
DeleteAny "proof" would be if one could find a [Russell] family back in New Haven who had a 23-yo female and a 3-yo female in the 1810 census, but since the census only has age ranges, that would be quite difficult and still a bit speculative. I was not able to find any other Sperry families in Cheshire (where Anna was born) who had unaccounted for girls of her age - so that's a bit of a negative-proof. Another indication is that Anna is not recorded anywhere having siblings. Being an only child would be quite unusual for the time. So the story of Mary getting married in her late teens to Moses, having one daughter (Anna) when she was 20 and then having Moses die just a year later before they were able to have any other children is a quite likely scenario for Anna being an only child.
Thus, while I have no "proof" in the form of public records or other documents, I have a lot of other circumstantial evidence that supports Anna [Sperry] Talmadge being the daughter of Moses Sperry and Mary Rebecca [Russell].