Genealogy Story – Carrying on the Family Name and Business

In an earlier blog (http://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2017/02/genealogy-story-james-pierpont.html), I wrote about my great*7 grandfather, James Pierpont. James was the pastor of the congregational church in New Haven. He had a total of 9 children (3 girls and 6 boys). From these he had 48 grandchildren and 219 great-grandchildren. I’d now like to explore what happened to this large family, concentrating on how many carried on the family name and/or business.

All three of James’ daughters married ministers, carrying on the family “business”. Between them, these three women had 29 children and 128 grandchildren. But, of course, none of them were to have the Pierpont last name, although that name shows up as a first/middle name in several instances.

Three of James’ sons had no children. One died at the age of 5 months and one was in training to be a minister but was unmarried when he died at the age of 23 in a drowning accident. The other received his theological training and went to the British Virgin Islands in the West Indies, perhaps as a missionary(?), where he died at the age of 29. One report of his death attaches the term “dwi”, died with issue, meaning that he may have had children, but this is unconfirmed. For purposes of this blog, I will simply count him as not passing along the family name.

That leaves only three of James’ children who would have been able to carry on the family name. But interestingly, these three were the only ones of his children who chose NOT to continue on the family “business” of going into the ministry, even though two of them did marry the daughters of other ministers.

James’ youngest son also died young at age 29 but not before having two children. One of them had no children, but the other, Hezekiah, had 10 children. However, five of them died young, two were unmarried, and two were daughters, so only one would have been able to carry on the family name. But Hezekiah had changed his name to the original French spelling, Pierrepont, so the Pierpont name was not the one that would have been carried on. You can read more about Hezekiah’s story here (http://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2016/05/afs-hillary-clinton-and-my-ancestors.html).

This leaves only two of James’ nine children to carry on the family name – James (his second born), and Joseph (his fifth born). James had 5 children and 32 grandchildren and Joseph had 12 children and 51 grandchildren. Let me explore them just a little bit more.

James (1699-1776) received his theological education at Yale, graduating in 1718, the year that the college was first called that. But he chose to become a business man instead. He had 5 sons and no daughters. His three oldest sons (Evelyn, Robert, and James) married three sisters (Rhoda, Lois, and Elizabeth Collins). The sisters’ were descended from the minister of Litchfield CT, Timothy Collins, and they were great*2 grandchildren of William Leete, a former governor of Connecticut (you can read about him here - http://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2017/04/governors-of-connecticut.html).

Joseph (1704-1748) was also educated at Yale, but he chose to become a farmer. He married the sister of his older sister’s husband, i.e. the daughter of a minister. This pattern of multiple marriages between two families seemed to be a fairly common thing in the Pierpont family. Two of his eight children died young. Four of his children married members of the Brockett family with Hannah and Mary marrying Abel and Richard Brockett and Giles and Hezekiah marrying Elizabeth and Mehitable Cooper who were cousins of Abel and Richard through their mother Mehitable [Brockett] Cooper. Also, Joseph’s sons Samuel and Benjamin married Elizabeth Frost and her niece Sarah Blakeslee who was the daughter of Elizabeth’s sister Mary [Frost] Blakeslee.

Between them, James and Joseph account for approximately 2800 of the over 4300 known descendants of their father, and all of his grandchildren who carried the Pierpont name. Joseph was the great*5 grandfather of my mother, Sylvia [Pierpont] Russell.

I’m “blown away” by the size of the families of this era. James had the following number of descendants at the children/grandchildren/great-grandchildren level (with the number of male children who lived long enough that they could marry and pass on the family name in parentheses): 9(2), 48(13), 219(34). By comparison my grandfather Russell had numbers: 2(1), 7(3), and 12(1), and my grandfather Pierpont had numbers: 5(2), 18(4), and 30(5).