Saturday, September 5, 2015

Genealogy Story – Grandparent Cousins

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!

2 comments:

  1. 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.

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    Replies
    1. This 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.

      Any "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].

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