Immigrants
Thomas Alcock/Alcocke was born in
England in 1609. In May of 1630 he married and shortly thereafter he
and his new bride immigrated to the newly forming Massachusetts Bay
Colony as part of Winthrop's company. He was one of the original
members of the first church in Boston. The “Great Migration” into
Boston in 1630-1640 was just beginning and he and his wife were just
two of what eventually would become 20,000 individuals moving from
England to New England in search of religious freedom.
While Boston was the primary port city
where these individuals first landed, not everyone remained in the
same area. Some went north to New Hampshire and what would eventually
become Maine. Others went farther west into the interior sections of
Massachusetts and communities up and down the Connecticut River. And
still others went down the coast, some to Rhode Island, others to the
many small communities which were springing up along the coast of
Connecticut.
The Puritans took seriously the command
of God in Gen. 1:28 to “be fruitful and multiply”. They tended to
have large families – both to have additional help in farming and
to counteract the results of early death of young children that was
common in those days.
Thomas and his wife were no exceptions
to either of these. They had a total of nine children (mostly girls).
His son Phillip was born in Massachusetts, but moved to New Haven,
CT, where he had his family. Phillip had 5 children, including a son,
John, and John had 6 children, including a son, also named John, who
was born in New Haven in 1705.
Moving to the Interior
John Alcox (the spelling of the name by
this time having changed) married a local young lady, Deborah
Blakeslee in North Haven in 1729. Their first child, Lydia, was born
in 1730. The following spring, the young couple and their infant
daughter moved into the interior of Connecticut into the area that
was called Farmingbury but would eventually become known as Wolcott.
Deborah was the first white woman in the area.
Farmingbury had that designation
because it lay between the cities of Farmington and Waterbury. There
was a dividing line up the middle which was called the “Bound Line”
which continues to this day as Boundline Road. There were a few
settlers along the very southern border of the town where there was a
road connecting Waterbury to other towns to the east (now called
Meriden Road). And just two years earlier a man named Jacob Benson
had established a residence on the hill in the center of the town
(and right on the Bound Line) such that the hill was named Benson's
Hill. (*1)
John, Deborah, and their infant
daughter were the only other settlers in the area and they lived
along a path (later called Spindle Hill Road) that was used by the
local “indian” tribes to travel from Farmington to Waterbury. But
they were not to remain just a family of three for very long. Over
the next two decades they had 11 more children. (*2)(*3)
John started out with land holding of
about 117 acres, but he kept adding to his holdings until they were
nearly 1200 acres (100 for each of his children) – thus being the
owner of nearly 10% of the entire town. More information about John
can be found in (*4).
More Generations
From their twelve children, John and
Deborah had a total of 67 grandchildren. With such a large family and
being such a large landowner, there were a number of marriages into
other families in the town. Some moved away to other towns such as
New Haven, Waterbury or Bristol, but many remained in town where the
extended family continued to have considerable influence. I'd like to
focus on just a few of these family members.
William Andrus Alcott
William (*5) was a great-grandson of
John and Deborah (the spelling of the last name now changed yet
again). He was born in 1798, just two years after the town was
incorporated and was renamed Wolcott. He attended some of the
one-room schools in town which had begun in 1770 after the local
Ecclesiastical Society voted to establish them. At the age of 18 he
began teaching at the one-room school next door to his father's house
in Wolcott. One of his contributions to education was that after
observing that the benches used by the students were often painful
he, at his own expense, built backs for the benches – these became
the ancestors of the later school desks.
In addition to being a teacher, he also
studied to become a doctor – so that he could use the extra
knowledge to aid his teaching. He contributed greatly to the Annals
of Education and wrote 108 books over his lifetime. He moved to
the Boston area in the early 1830s, where he finally married at the
age of 38. The cause of greatest interest in his life was
vegetarianism, although an analysis of his writings clearly shows
that today he would be regarded as preferring a vegan diet. He was a
founding member and the first president of the American Vegetarian
Society as well as the founder of the American Physiological Society.
Amos Bronson Alcott
Amos (*6) was another great-grandson of
John and Deborah and a 2nd cousin to William – who was
just one year older and a neighbor. Although he started out in the
same one-room school as his cousin, he left school at the age of 10
and he was basically self-educated after that point.
After a failed try at being a salesman,
Bronson (as he liked being called), turned to teaching. While he had
little to base that teaching on, he relied to a great extent on what
he had gleaned from his cousin William. As one author later noted,
“Indeed there is a sense in which nearly everything Alcott wrote
and did is attributable to William.” Nonetheless, and perhaps
because of the controversy surrounding Bronson's life, he is much
more well-known today that his better educated cousin.
Bronson's schools were mostly failures
as his emphasis on transcendentalism and controversial innovative
methods were not viewed very positively, and he rarely stayed in one
place very long. His writings were difficult to read, and financially
he was often not able to support his family. Bronson was also a
supporter of vegetarianism (which he may have learned from William).
However, his unique teaching ideas
created an environment which produced two famous daughters in
different fields, in a time when women ere not commonly encouraged to
have independent careers. One of these daughters was Lousia May
Alcott – the author of Little Women. The other was Abigail
May Alcott who became a renowned artist.
Influence on me
John and Deborah Alcox are my great*6
grandparents. I grew up in Wolcott, the same town where they moved to
over 200 years prior. William Andrus Alcott and Amos Bronson Alcott,
in addition to being 2nd cousins to each other, are both
2nd cousins (5 times removed) to me. But it's not my
relationship to them that is an influence.
From grade 1-7, I attended Alcott
Elementary School. This school, which was built just a few years
before I was born, was named in honor of Amos Bronson Alcott (*7). As
noted above, a better choice for the name should have been William
Andrus Alcott, as he spent more time in the Wolcott schools, taught
in them for many years, and was a much more prolific author. But Amos
Bronson was the more “famous” of the two, perhaps mostly because
of his daughter Louisa May, and so the school was named after him.
This school (with a large addition) later became a middle school and
now is also home to the school superintendent's office.
In high school, I had the honor of
being elected to the National Honor Society – and in my senior year
I was the president of our chapter. Our chapter was the Amos Bronson
Alcott chapter – again a tribute to the more “famous” of the
two educator cousins.
Finally, as a voracious reader, I was a
frequent visitor to the Wolcott town library (at the time housed in
what had been the old Center School – which is now the new home of
the Wolcott Historical Society). This library was begun in 1828 by
none other than William Andrus Alcott (*8, *9) who still lived in
Wolcott. Later, in 1873, Amos Bronson Alcott also donated some books
to it – primarily works of other transcendental author friends of
his from Concord, MA.
Notes:
My parents, Marian and Howard Kraft, rented and renovated the old "Seth Thomas House" on Peterson's Farm (which used the main "Alcott House" and its property) on Spindle Hill Road where it meets Mad River Road. I think that Peterson house was also an Alcott residence (Bronson's?), although I'm vague on the details. My older brother Charles was born during their stay in the "Seth Thomas House," and caused a truck to roll onto the well (family legend). I have some pictures of the old house, which was subsequently renovated by Art Peterson and is still in use by the family (as is the main Alcott-Peterson house, I think). One of my grandsons is Vegan -- I'll inform him of his Alcott connections! Thanks!!
ReplyDeleteMy bad: it was Albert Peterson (and wife Doris) who lived in Thomas house after my parents. His brother Art lived in the next house up the road towards the Alcott-Peterson main farm house.
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