Ernest Hemingway and Me

Last night I was reading an account of my great*7 grandfather, James Pierpont. The next-to-last line of the article I was reading was about James’ children. It said, “Hezekiah married Lydia Hemingway and settled at New Haven.” This made me wonder about the Hemingway family and if there was any connection to the author, Ernest Hemingway. After some research, this is what I found.

Ralph Hemingway was born in Yorkshire, England. In 1633, as part of the great migration, he came to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. There he settled in Roxbury. He married the following year and he and his wife had seven children, one of them being named Samuel. Ralph remained in Roxbury the rest of his life, dying in 1678.

Samuel Hemingway (1636-1711) moved to the fledgling New Haven Colony in Connecticut some time in his early years. It was there that he married Sarah Cooper in 1661. He was then 25 and she was 16. Samuel and Sarah had ten children, two of the younger ones being Abraham (1677-1752) and Jacob (1683-1754). As members of the New Haven Colony, the family would have attended the New Haven Congregational Church. When my great*7 grandfather, James Pierpont, became the minister of that church in 1685, the family would have been among those listening to his sermons each Sunday.

When he was 18, Jacob was among the first students of the Collegiate School of Connecticut (later Yale) which had been founded by James Pierpont just a few months prior. He graduated in 1704 and upon his graduation began a new church in East Haven (the Church of Christ). See (https://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=110304121) for more information. One of his children, Lydia (1715-1779), married the youngest son of James Pierpont, Hezekiah (1712-1741). I have told the story of Hezekiah here (http://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2016/05/afs-hillary-clinton-and-my-ancestors.html).

Meanwhile, Jacob’s older brother, Abraham, married Sarah Talmadge (my 2^nd cousin, 8 times removed), making a second connection to the Hemingway family. They continued living in the New Haven area. Their youngest son, Abraham (1727-1796), married Mercy Tuttle (my 3^rd cousin, 7 times removed), making yet a third connection to the Hemingway family. Their youngest son, Jacob (1764-1838) moved from New Haven to Plymouth, CT, just one town away from my hometown of Wolcott, CT. The next several generations (Jacob Street (1791-1863), Allen (1808-1886), and Anson (1844-1926)) continued to live in Plymouth. They are mentioned prominently here (https://www.cga.ct.gov/hco/books/History_of_the_Town_of_Plymouth.pdf). Others in the church there with connections to my hometown included the families of Blakesley/Blakeslee, Pond, Barnes, Adkins, Beach, and Hoadley. The current mayor of Plymouth grew up just a few houses from me and his wife is a school classmate of mine.

Sometime late in Allen’s life, he moved from Plymouth to Oak Park, Cook County, IL, although when he died in 1886 his body was returned to Plymouth where he is buried. Anson, continued to live in Oak Park.

Anson’s son, Clarence (1871-1928), was born in Oak Park, as was Clarence’s son, Ernest (1899-1961). Ernest was born in his grandfather’s house. Through my several connections to him, Ernest is my 9^th cousin, once removed.

In his early years, Ernest and his family spent the summers in Northern Michigan where the family had a home on Walloon Lake. However, Ernest developed a number of friendships in the small town of Horton Bay, MI – a one mile boat ride across Walloon Lake, then a 4-mile walk. The town of Horton Bay continues to celebrate the life of their famous “son” to this day. It was in the original Horton Bay Methodist Church that Ernest was married for the first time in 1921.

In a little book about the history of Horton Bay (http://www.boynelibrary.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/100-YEARS-IN-HORTON-BAYMB.pdf), there are several mentions of Ernest Hemingway. I especially note that the person who drove the newly married Hemingways back to Walloon Lake was John Koteskey. I got to know several of the Koteskey family (more on that below). Horton Bay was the setting for several of Ernest’s short stories. See http://www.michiganhemingwaysociety.org/hemsites.html for more information on various Hemingway sites in the area. When my wife’s parents died, I was the executor of their estate and added it to the properties on the Horton Creek which belong to the Little Traverse Conservancy which is mentioned in this website.

Although the original church where the Hemingways married is no longer there, the predecessor church is the current United Methodist Church right across the road (it was a United Brethren Church back then until the two denominations merged to create the current United Methodists. My wife attended that church and that was where we were married in 1971 (50 years after the marriage of Ernest). The township school mentioned in the above “hemsites” list is where we had our wedding reception. This church is also where I got to know some of the older individuals (Koteskey, Crouderfield and others) who still remembered Ernest as a young man in the early 1900s.

It’s amazing to me the number of connections that I have to this famous author – from my great*7 grandfather being the minister to his family, to my several connections by marriage, to growing up in the town next to where his ancestors lived for several generations, to my being married in the same small village and knowing people who had first-hand knowledge of him. I’ve read a number of his writings over the years, but I’m now interested in reading his short stories about Northern Michigan.