Genealogy Story – Pierpont-Russell Connections

When I was first documenting my family history, I wrote about the ancestral lines of both my father’s (Russell) line and my mother’s (Pierpont) line and how they both went back to Normandy, France about 1000 years ago (see http://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2015/04/genealogy-story-my-norman-ancestors.html). At the end of that story, I noted that these two families were “finally joined together.” 

But as I have done further research, I have found the Russell name a few other times within my Pierpont family lines. But these new connections were not to any of my immediate Russell ancestors who came to Massachusetts in 1640, then moved to New York, and finally came into Connecticut in the 1900s. So it’s taken me a bit longer to trace these family connections back to the point at which they intersect my own family line.

Recently I wrote about the religious roots of my hometown, Wolcott. As a follow-on to that, I also wrote a story about my great*7 grandfather, James Pierpont (see http://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2017/02/genealogy-story-james-pierpont.html). In that I story I initially recounted that there were two other men who were part of the founding of Yale University who had the last name Russell. I initially did not know how I might be connected to these two men, but I later did some preliminary research.

Nodiah Russell was the pastor of the church in Middletown, CT. Two of James’ children later married two children of Nodiah. James’ daughter Mary Pierpont married William H Russell, and his son Joseph Pierpont married Hannah Russell. Since Joseph Pierpont is my great*6 grandfather, that means that Hannah Russell is my great*6 grandmother. And I have now found that Nodiah is my 8^th cousin, 10 times removed. So that’s a definite family connection between the Pierpont and Russell lines. But I still had no connection to the Rev. Samuel Russell of Branford.

Earlier today I was doing some further research about inter-family marriages in my hometown (see http://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2017/03/wolcott-history-inter-family-marriages.html). In it I noted that my great*3 grandfather, Austin Pierpont, had a brother Seabury who married a woman whose grandmother was Abigail Russell from Branford. I have now found that Abigail is the granddaughter of Samuel Russell, at whose home the Yale founders met in order to pool their books and start a library for the new school which later became Yale. Abigail is my 12^th cousin, 6 times removed. So there is another definite family connection between the Pierpont and Russell lines.

This is a common thing that happens during genealogy research. You’re going back through old records and run across a family name or some other piece of information in a place that’s not where you expected it. And you can’t just let it sit there, you feel the urge to do some further investigation to see why it’s there. And you end up things like the above where you find that there were other family connections between your parents that they had no knowledge of.