There
was one important person in Farmingbury/Wolcott history that I have been
wishing that I could able to establish a connection to. It took me a while of
researching a variety of family trees, but I was finally able to make the
connection. I’d like to title this the story of Mary(s) and Martha(s).
The
story begins with a man named Samuel Tuttle (1659-1733) who lived in New Haven.
His grandfather, William Tuttle, had emigrated from England in 1635 as part of
the Great Migration. Samuel and his wife had several children, among them were
two girls named Mary (b. 1684) and Martha (b. 1694). Like many families, they
gave their children biblical first names – some of the other children were
Daniel, Sarah, and Stephen.
Let’s
follow Mary first.
Mary
married Ebenezer Frost. They had a daughter – named not too unexpectedly, Mary.
Mary
married Isaac Blakeslee. They had a son – named not too unexpectedly, Isaac.
Isaac
married Lydia Alcott (recognize that last name?). They had a daughter – named as
expected, Mary.
This
last Mary married Ezra Pierpont.
So,
after a run of three Marys, we have the connection to the Pierpont family and
thus a few generations later to my mother, Sylvia [Pierpont] Russell and then
myself. That makes Samuel Tuttle my great*7 grandfather.
Now
let’s follow Martha.
Martha
married John Smith. They had a daughter, named appropriately Martha.
Martha
married Caleb Barnes. They had a daughter, named (what would you expect?)
Martha
Martha
married James Thomas, a recent immigrant from Scotland. They had a son, Seth.
So,
after a run of three Marthas, we finally get to Seth Thomas, the clockmaker
from Wolcott (it was still Farmingbury when he was born in 1785, but Wolcott by
the time he was a clockmaker). Samuel Tuttle is his great-great-grandfather.
That
means that Seth Thomas is my 3rd cousin, 5 times removed.
This
was probably one of the more interesting bits of genealogy research that I’ve
done and when I saw all the Mary and Martha names, I just knew that it had to
be a separate blog post instead of just including it with all the others in the
list.
Seth Thomas was born, or at least lived (possibly built?) in a house on what became the Carl and Hilma Peterson farm property at Spindle Hill Road and Mad River Road. That house had been unoccupied for several years when my parents (Howard Kraft and Marian Northrop) married in 1931 and were offered the house rent free by the Petersons (cousins) in exchange for making the house liveable. My older brother Charles was born in 1932 and lived there until my parents moved up the road to a "house/garage" they built on property purchased from the Petersons. Subsequently, Albert Peterson (son of the farm owners) and his wife Doris lived in the Seth Thomas house for a number of years and raised their children there.
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