Genealogy Story – A Triple Marriage

Recently I posted a story about William Grimes, a runaway slave who lived in Litchfield and New Haven, Connecticut (*1). One of my many Pierpont cousins responded to me with the following story (edited for clarity).

Alan, again you find a topic that connects me back to my ancestry. I have visited Litchfield as a follow-up to learning the story of my ancestor, David[,] and his two older brothers visiting Rev Collins and his family in Litchfield on a trip from their New Haven home. That visit became lore in the family as well as in Connecticut when, as you are aware I am sure, a monster snow storm came and prevailed for more than a week keeping the three brother[s] in the Collins home for the storm’s duration. The result of the weather was not just several feet of snow[,] but also three marriages as the good Reverend had three eligible daughters and it was not long before the three brothers Pierpont had married the Collins daughters! David’s son, Warren, was born in Litchfield and it was his son Samuel who was the first Pierpont to head west to Michigan where my father, his father, and his father were all born. Next to my fireplace here is my proud possession, Warren’s walking stick with the record of his birth (date and Litchfield location), the date he joined the church and his marriage to Polly Blakeslee. Also added later was the date of death. Ergo, my association to Litchfield/Morris is real[,] albeit a few generations away!!

Despite my cousin’s expectation that I knew about this snowstorm (I did not), this series of events was not one that I was familiar with. More research was needed so I could properly tell this story.

The Pierpont Brothers

The Pierpont brothers mentioned were the sons of James Pierpont (1699-1776) and the grandsons of the Rev. James Pierpont (1659-1714). James had gotten his education from Yale, but chose to not enter the ministry and instead became a business man in Boston. He had married there, but his first wife had died childless. He then returned to New Haven and in 1754 had married Anna/Anne Sherman (1728-1803) [Note that I will refer to her here as Anne, although there is some disagreement as to her exact name]. They had five children together, all boys. Note that because Anne was nearly 30 years younger than her husband, their children were young enough to be James’ grandchildren. The boys were:

·       Evelyn, 16 Mar 1755

·       Robert, 13 Jun 1757

·       James, 4 Jan 1761

·       David, 26 Jul 1764

·       William, 11 Jul 1772

It was the winter of 1779-1780 when the visit to Litchfield took place. The boys’ father, James, had died a few years prior and all five boys would have been unmarried and living with their mother, Anne. It is quite likely that Anne was being courted at this time as she married a second time to John Davenport on 11 October 1780. John Davenport was the great-nephew of Abigail [Davenport] Pierpont, Abigail being the first wife of James’ father, the Rev. James Pierpont.

The Collins Sisters

The Collins sisters were the children of Charles Collins (1727-1796) and the grandchildren of Timothy Collins (1699-1777). Timothy had been a classmate of James (the father) at Yale and had been the first pastor of the church in Litchfield from 1721 to 1752 when he asked to be discharged and became a justice of the peace for the town.

Timothy and his wife had eight children, two of whom had died with the remaining six still living in the Litchfield area. Although Timothy had passed away a few years earlier, his wife was still living and she was a midwife in town. Their children were:

·       Oliver, lived in Litchfield – had 3 sons

·       Charles, lived in Litchfield – had 4 sons and 6 daughters

·       Cyprian, lived in Goshen – had 5 sons and 6 daughters

·       John, lived in Litchfield – had 3 sons and 4 daughters (all the girls were much younger than the Pierpont boys)

·       Anne, lived in Litchfield – had 4 sons and 3 daughters (one already married)

·       Rhoda, lived in Litchfield - had 7 children (through 4 different marriages), 5 boys, one girl who was engaged at the time, one 5-year-old daughter

Focusing on Charles, he had a large family and lived on some of the considerable tract of land that his father had acquired in Litchfield. His children were:

·       Lewis, 29 Oct 1753

·       Charles, 14 Aug 1761

·       Darius, 8 Nov 1769

·       David, 1 May 1772

·       Elizabeth, 25 Sep 1755

·       Lois, 11 Oct 1757

·       Eunice, 11 Oct 1757

·       Anna, 10 Oct 1759

·       Rhoda, 5 Oct 1764

·       Lorain, 1 May 1767

The Visit and the Snowstorm

There is a certain amount of speculation why the Pierpont boys travelled to Litchfield during the winter of 1779-1780. Certainly, James Pierpont and Timothy Collins would have been long-time friends from their time together at Yale. It is quite likely that the Pierpont family had made the trip in the past to escape the confines of New Haven and visit the Collins family in the Connecticut countryside. While Anne would have then been paired with Timothy’s wife, she was more the age of his children and would have gotten along better with them and their wives. The Pierpont boys were the ages of some of the Collins grandchildren – of whom there were many – and would have been able to spend their time playing together on the many acres of fields and woodland that were owned by the various Collins children.

During the winter of 1779-1780, Anne would have been being courted by John Davenport. So perhaps having the boys out of the house for a short time was her way of being free. The older boys would be mature enough to be responsible to making the trip and chaperoning their younger brothers. The boys were then aged 24, 22, 18, 15, and 6. At age 6, William might not have taken the trip, but the four older boys certainly did. My cousin noted in his response to me (above) that David, then 15, made the trip, but there is a certain amount of speculation there as well.

When they left for Litchfield is also uncertain, but it is quite likely to have been late December during the time that William would have had a break from school. At any rate, we know that they were there in early January when the snowstorm arrived.

It had already been a cold and snowy winter. But at the beginning of January, things were about to get much worse. The heavy snows began on Sunday, January 2^nd, and continued for several days. One account of the time reads as follows: (*2)

“The following winter his father went to bring him home for the vacation [he was attending Yale and lived in Sharon, CT]. A great snow storm came on, and they were compelled to leave their sleigh in Woodbury, and travel to Bethlem[sic] on horseback. By that time the roads had become impassable to horses, and, fearing that they might be wholly blocked up, they set out, with Dr. Bellamy’s sanction, on Sunday afternoon, on snow-shoes, reached Washington that night, Warren the next day, and home on the third.”

Another account says, “The Winter of 1779-’80 was the severest ever known (up to that time). … In the woods and other sheltered places it lay for many weeks at least four feet upon the level.” (*3)

Because of the depth of the snow, travel by sleigh or horseback was all but impossible for any distance. Thus, the Pierpont boys were stranded in Litchfield for several weeks before they were able to return to New Haven where their mother anxiously awaited them.

During this extended time in Litchfield, it would have been natural for the boys to make better acquaintance with the Collins’ girls who were about their age. And that this happened can be seen in the marriages that took place beginning later that year and continuing for the next several years.

The Marriages

It was not a matter of the oldest Pierpont boy being smitten by the oldest Collins girl. One can only speculate what made the couples pair off. But over the next few years there were three marriage between the two families:

·       Robert, the second oldest, married Lois on 11 Oct 1780. They were both 23 at the time and that was her birthday. It was also the same day as Robert’s mother, Anne, was being married back in New Haven.

·       James, the third oldest, married Elizabeth on 24/28 Sep 1782. He was then 21 and she was six years his senior at 27.

·       Evelyn, the oldest, married Rhoda on 15 May 1783. He was then 28 and Rhoda was not yet 19 (she would have been 15 during that winter snowstorm)

David was only 15 during that winter and the same age as Rhoda. But she was apparently smitten by David’s older brother. However, there were other young girls in Litchfield at the time, including in the Phelps family who lived nearby. On 20 Jun 1787 David married Sarah Phelps. He was then 22 and she was 26.

All four of the older Pierpont boys initially remained in Litchfield with their families. While William did not find his wife in Litchfield that winter, when he married in 1793, he married Huldah Ensign who was from the town of Plymouth (also in Litchfield County). Evelyn moved back to New Haven around 1793, Robert later moved to Vermont. James and David remained in Litchfield and William remained in Plymouth.

Notes:

*1 - https://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-search-for-william-grimes.html

*2 – A biographical history of the county of Litchfield, Connecticut, p. 108

*3 – A History of Wilkes-Barre, Luzerne County, p. 1225

[First Congregation Church, Litchfield]

My Wife’s Family Tree

About a year ago I embarked on a project to try and take all the legs of my family tree back to their immigrant roots (*1). My ancestral lines are nearly all in New England (CT and MA) and I was able to document 1084 ancestors who were part of the Great Migration coming between 1620 and 1650. I had 78 ancestors who came to this country at other times or from other countries. And I hit 37 “brick walls” where I was not able to follow a particular line any farther.

With the enforced stay at home because of the Corona Virus, I thought this would be a good chance to see if I could make the same effort (many many hours over several days) and do the same with my wife’s family tree. I had done much of it a few years ago, so this was primarily an effort at going back the last few generations from where I had stopped.

Overall Results

My wife is from the upper part of Michigan (Charlevoix) just below the Mackinaw Bridge, and most of her immediate ancestors are from the same area. Let me give a quick summary before I get into the details. She has 504 great migration ancestors in her family tree (about half of the number in mine). In addition, I found 62 other immigrants and 67 brick walls.

The primary reason for the lower numbers is that there are a couple of lines in her family tree from fairly recent immigrations. Her maternal grandmother, Cassie Cincush, comes from a couple of immigrant families in the last part of the 1800s who came to the US from Germany/Prussia. That eliminates a full 25% of any chance of going back the dozen or so generations necessary to get back to the early 1600s. In addition, on her father’s side, she has a great-great-grandfather, Christopher Columbus Swaney, whose family was from Ireland in the 1800s and a great-grandfather, William Duba, who is of French-Canadian stock. Those three individuals are the primary reason for the numbers being so much lower than mine.

On the other hand, her maternal grandfather, Frank Wright, even though he was from Michigan, was from a long line of English ancestors going back to the same places as my ancestors in CT and MA. His ancestral lines are the primary reason for much of the overlap in our family trees as I’ll detail below. Her father’s family name, VanDeCar, goes back to the Dutch settlements in the Hudson River Valley in the early 1600s. But that family married into many other families over the years – some of which are part of the extensive number of brick walls I have noted, but others of which are also from the same English stock from New England.

Interesting Findings

I had previously documented a connection that I found between my wife and I and how we were 10^th cousins (*2) through our descent from Thomas Rogers who came to this country on the Mayflower. But as I completed her family tree and carefully checking for any individuals who I already had in my ancestry tree, I kept finding additional common ancestors. In the end, I found a total of 37 common sets of grandparents between us. There were 14 at the 11^th cousin level, 15 at the 10^th cousin level, 7 at the 9^th cousin level, and one at the 8^th cousin level. How amazing that there is so much in common in our family trees – especially between a fellow from CT and his wife from MI.

I was also able to document the first instance of a marriage between first cousins in our family tree (actually first cousin once removed, as the fellow married the first cousin of his mother). I’d found a couple of second cousin marriages before, but this was the first one at that level of relationship. There are many states that now prohibit this type of marriage because of the possibility of genetic problems in any offspring, but such laws did not exist back in the 1700s.

Conclusions

Although doing this type of research is very time consuming, there is a great feeling of relief when you finally reach a stopping point. (Of course one is never really “done” as I’d still like to do some in-depth analysis of all the “brick walls” to see if I can eliminate some of them, and I’d like to see how much support I can get for all those Great Migration ancestors and when they arrived and on what ship.)

But finding so many connections between my wife and I has been nothing short of amazing. Just one more reason for me to love her so much!

Notes:

*1 - https://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2019/04/great-migration-ancestors.html

*2 - https://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2015/02/marrying-my-cousin.html

Second Cousins

Growing up, I knew all my first cousins. My father had one sister and my mother had two brothers and two sisters. Three of these families (and nine of my first cousins) lived in the same town as I did. One lived in an adjoining town (with three more first cousins). Only my Aunt Alie and her family (three more first cousins) lived across the country. But even them I knew well. But my second cousins were another story.

Note that I’m not going to make the distinction between blood relatives with whom I share DNA, those who may be adopted, those with whom there is only one parent in common (i.e. half-siblings/cousins), or those who are connected through step- type of relationship. All of them are going to be labeled as “cousins”. Because most of these individuals are still living, I am leaving off last names for privacy.

I’ve broken the below analysis into several sections, based on my great-grandparents. Because of a variety of death/divorce and re-marriages, there are more than four sections.

Louis Russell and Annie [Merchant] Russell (*1)

Louis and Annie had six children before she passed away. Their oldest child was my grandfather and his grandchildren are myself, my siblings, and my first cousins. The other five children accounted for my second cousins as follows:

·       Linus (*2) – disabled with mustard gas during WWI, never married, no offspring

·       Loretta – had one child (Shirley), and two grandchildren (Cynthia and William). We saw them occasionally during my growing up years, but I have recently reconnected with both of them

·       William (*3) – two children (William and Allen) and five grandchildren (Roger, Jane, Timothy, Donald, Marianne). I only met them once growing up, but have since connected with Jane (*4) and Marianne.

·       Allen – died at age 4

·       Pauline – three children (Gertrude, Joy, Russell) and six grandchildren (Marilyn, Donald, Dennis, Roger, Cheryl, Dorothy). We saw them perhaps once a year while I was growing up. I am only in touch with Dennis at this time.

Total of 13 second cousins, currently in touch with five of them.

Helen [Madigan] [Pulver] [Waldron] Russell (*1)(*5)

After the death of his first wife, Annie, Louis married Helen. They did not have any children together, but Helen had had four children from prior marriages. I did not know any of these relations existed while growing up.

·       Lola – four children (Lola, Ethel, Ruby, Juanita) and three grandchildren (June, Bonnie, David)

·       Eva – two children (Kenneth, Eldridge) and four grandchildren (Janice, David, Donald, Melodie). I have now connected with the daughter of Janice.

·       Iva – died young

·       Marguerite – two children (Gordon, Margaret) and four grandchildren (Donna, Gordon, Raymond, Kevin)

·       Unnamed child – died at birth

Total of 11 second cousins, only in touch with one second cousin, once removed

Maurice Levy and Caroline [Northrop] Levy

My grandmother, Vera Estelle [Levy] [Russell] Rogers, only had one sister, Irene. [Great-]Aunt Irene and [Great-]uncle Joe only had one daughter (Marjorie) and three grandchildren (Stephen, Tommy, Jeanne). We saw them perhaps once a year while I was growing up. Tommy has passed on, but I have reconnected with the other two. Later in life, Marjorie married again and her new husband had two children from a former marriage.

Total of 5 second cousins, in touch with two of them.

Daniel and Elizabeth Evans

Following his divorce from my grandmother, my grandfather (Erskine) married a second time to Elizabeth Evans. She was an older woman who had never married and was an immigrant from England. Elizabeth had five siblings in England, but we never knew anything of them and I have not been able to construct a complete family tree for her, except to note that she had at least three nieces/nephews.

Unknown number of second cousins.

Oren Rogers and Sarah [Hubbard] Rogers

Following her divorce from my grandfather, my grandmother (Vera), married a second time to Charles Rogers (*6). Charles had been married once previously, but had no children. He had a younger brother, James, but James and his wife had no children either.

Total of 0 second cousins

Wilson Pierpont and Annie [Merrill] Pierpont

My grandfather (*7) was the youngest of eight children. His mother died a few days after he was born and he was raised by foster parents in the next town. Thus, he did not have a close relationship with his siblings and I never knew any of my second cousins while growing up. But thanks to the genealogical records of the Pierpont Family Association, I can at least enumerate them:

·       George – no children

·       Edith – one child (Merrill) and one grandchild (Francesca). I did at least know her name while growing up.

·       Albert – no children

·       Richard – died young

·       Joseph – two children (Wilson, Elizabeth) and three grandchildren (Wilson, Roderick, Joseph)

·       Charles – two children (Marjorie, Leslie), no grandchildren

·       Nathan – two children (Barbara, Nathan) and seven grandchildren (Steson, Peter, William, James, Lucy, Charles, Timothy)

Total of 11 second cousins, not in contact with any of them.

Annie [Root] [Hall] Pierpont

Following the death of his first wife, Wilson married a second time to the widow Annie Hall. She had five children from her first marriage:

·       Nettie Jane – one child (Edward)

·       George Ransom – two children (Dorothy, George), no grandchildren

·       Daisy – no children

·       Robert – two children (Margaret, Robert) and eight grandchildren (names unknown)

·       Unknown boy – died at birth

Total of 8 second cousins, not in contact with any of them.

Clarence Blackman and Alice [Talmadge] Blackman

My grandmother had two siblings. [Great]Aunt Edna never married. [Great-]Uncle Stanley had two sons with his first wife, then divorced her and married another woman who had two daughters with her first husband (*8).

·       Elmer – two children (Edson, Philip)

·       Stephen – six children (Stephanie, William, James, Beverly, Roger, Charles)

·       Joyce – two children (Herb, Scott), I have recently made contact with Herb

·       Hope – four children (April, Robert, William, Holly)

Total of 14 second cousins, only in contact with one.

Summary

That’s a total of at least 64 second cousins, of whom I am only in touch with eight of them. It’s amazing how quickly one’s family tree expands in only a few generations. But it’s also interesting how many of these second cousins are NOT related to me by common ancestors (and so I do not share any DNA with them), but through second/third/fourth marriages.

Notes:

*1 - https://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2015/02/genealogy-story-louis-russell.html

*2 - https://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2017/05/memorial-day-tribute-linus-walter.html

*3 - https://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2015/03/genealogy-story-william-merchant-russell.html

*4 - https://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2015/02/genealogy-stories-finding-cousin-jane.html

*5 - https://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2016/12/genealogy-story-sisters-and-step-sisters.html

*6 - https://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2015/03/genealogy-story-charles-rogers.html

*7 - https://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2017/12/genealogy-story-my-pierpont-grandparents.html

*8 - https://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2016/08/genealogy-story-las-vegas-connection.html