In Memoriam – Bob Kraft

Last month, Sept. 15, 2023, my cousin, Robert Alan (Bob) Kraft, passed away at the age of 89. We were alike in many ways and had much in common (as you’ll see below), but our paths did not cross much until recent years when we were co-historians of the Pierpont Family Association. His memorial service will be next week, but I’d like to write this post to honor him first, so I am not influenced by the emotions of that day.

[Bob Kraft]

 

[Bob Kraft obituary]

Genealogical Connections

Bob and I are biological 3^rd cousins. Our common ancestors are Charles Pierpont (1825-1884) and his wife Mary Ann Warner (1828-1911). My descendant line is through Wilson Pierpont (1855-1921), Harold Pierpont (1898-1969), and my mother, Sylvia [Pierpont] Russell (1924-2012). Bob’s lineage is through a series of females – Mary Ann [Pierpont] Miller (1860-1938), Margaret [Miller] [Northrop] Hall (1889-1987), and Marion Northrop [Kraft] (1912-2006).

But there is another complicated path that connects us at the 2^nd cousin level. My grandfather’s mother, Annie Merrill (1858-1898), passed away just two weeks after he was born. He was given to another family in the next town to be raised. But his father, Wilson, then remarried about 3 years later in 1901 to Anna [Root] Hall (1853-1938). Anna was a widow who had four children, then ages 25, 23, 19, and 14, from her first husband. These would have been my grandfather’s stepsiblings. One of them was George Ransom Hall (1877-1946). When Bob was only 2 years old, his grandfather Northrop passed away in 1936. George Ransom Hall also became widowed only a year later, so Margaret and George married not long thereafter. Thus, Bob’s step-grandfather is a step-brother of my grandfather, making us step-step-second cousins. Complicated, yes, but genealogy is not always neat descendant charts.

 

Wolcott Connections

The Pierpont Family Association (PFA) had begun in Waterbury, CT, with their first meeting in 1924. Mary Ann [Pierpont] Miller and her husband, Charles Somers Miller, were some of the prime movers in getting that organization started. The PFA met in those first few years at the Mill Plain Church in the west end of Waterbury. My grandparents were part of that church (they lived less than 2 miles from it) and so our family was also heavily involved in those early years.

But members of the greater Pierpont family were beginning to migrate just a few miles north into Wolcott. Wolcott had no industry nor many large farms due to its topology, so it was a “bedroom community”. It had no high school of its own, but high school age children were bused to Waterbury. Of the above families, the Root and Hall families had been in Wolcott since the late 1800s, Howard and Marian Kraft had moved to Wolcott when they married in 1931, and my parents also moved there when they married in 1946 (as did two of my mother’s siblings and my father’s sister).

Wolcott was a small town. In 1940 the population was only 1800 people. So those who lived there tended to know each other. With genealogical connections in common as well, the Hall/Kraft and Pierpont/Russell families were well acquainted with each other. Bob was 14 years older than me, so I did not know him personally at the time. I hadn’t even started school when he was going away to college. But I knew his family. His sister, Sharon, was just two years older than me. His mother was my swimming instructor when I got my Red Cross Lifesaving Badge.

So, while third cousins are often unacquainted with each other, our closer second cousin connection as well as both our families being in the same small town gave us lots of other connections.

 

Parallel Lives

Bob left Wolcott when he went to college in the mid-west. He got a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Wheaton College in Illinois in 1955, and a master’s degree from that same school in 1957. He then got a PhD in religion and Christian origins (from Harvard). His teaching career at the University of Pennsylvania began in 1963. But when computer technology began to spread a few decades later he also had an interest in that. His obituary (above) notes that “In 1983, he helped Penn students fulfill a new computer literacy requirement that led to innovative computer science classes and groundbreaking digital application in scholarly research and information dissemination.”

Fourteen years behind him, I followed the same path. I left Wolcott and went to college in the mid-west, getting my BS in computer science from Michigan State University in 1969, then a pair of master’s degrees from that same institution in 1971. I later got a PhD in information systems. I had a 25-year teaching stint at DeSales University from 1980 to 2005 in parallel with my work in the computer field. And Bob and I lived just 35 miles away from each other in eastern Pennsylvania.

 

Reconnecting

Bob retired from his professorship at UPenn in 2003 at the age of 69. I retired just a few years later in 2007 at the age of 58. With one of his interests being genealogy and using the computer to help organize it, Bob had been involved in the PFA for a number of years as their historian. When my father passed away in 2006, I began to get interested in genealogy as well (I began my membership in ancestry.com in 2008). Thus, it was only natural that I began attending the PFA meetings where Bob and I crossed paths. It was a few years later that the PFA, both recognizing my growing interest in genealogy and Bob’s getting older, appointed us co-historians of the organization.

Bob and I actively corresponded on genealogy-related subjects. But shared email was our only connection outside of the annual PFA meeting. He had 4 children, 3 of whom lived in the area, and 9 grandchildren. I only had 2 children, but a growing brood of grandchildren that reached a total of 7 by 2014. These family interests took precedence and so we just never seemed to have the time to get together.

 

The End of the Story?

Now Bob has moved on from life in this world. But the things that we held in common are still there – love of family, importance of religion, and appreciation for the impact of growing up in the small town of Wolcott. I’ll miss sharing with him and getting his comments on my various blog entries on Wolcott and genealogy stories. And I’ll miss seeing him at the annual PFA meetings (this summer was our 100^th consecutive meeting).

Next week I’ll be driving down to Philadelphia to attend a memorial service him at the UPenn library. It’s only 2 buildings away from UPenn’s Perelman Center where I go a few times a year for my participation in various Alzheimer’s studies, so it’s a route I know well. But it will be a much more emotional time than my study visits. I hope to have a chance to talk to some of Bob’s children who also live in this area.

Thanks for your contributions, Bob. I was not aware of how much I was following in your footsteps as I grew up in Wolcott, drove to college several states away, got my degrees, then settled down in eastern PA. We’ve been a lot alike. Maybe something in our genes and in the environment we shared in Wolcott?