Russell Ramblings: New and Old Cousins

Over the past few months, I have contacted or made connections to a number of different cousins – and all through different paths. This is the story of those connections.

The Mill Plain Connection

Because of some of my blog postings are about my Pierpont relatives in Waterbury, and some mentions of their connections to the Mill Plain church, I had received a friend request around the beginning of the year from a man who had interests in that area. He was not a relative, so I vetted him before accepting his friend request, but eventually agreed to it. He was heavily involved in the Boy Scouts, in particular a troop that met at that church.

A few weeks later he posted a picture of a partial page from the Waterbury paper with some pictures on scouts receiving their Eagle awards. In one of the pictures was an older scout master with the name listed as “Bill (‘Bones’) Meo.” The name and age were about right and I wondered if this individual could be my 2^nd cousin, grandson of my great-aunt Loretta. I figured that there couldn’t be too many people with that name living in Waterbury. After a small amount of investigation, I determined that he was in fact my cousin, one whom I had not had contact with in about 60 years. (Bill’s older sister, Cynthia, was 4 years younger than myself and was the one I actually remembered as Bill was 9 years younger than I).

I had information about the Meo family in my family tree as I had been in contact with Bill’s parents, Bill and Shirley via phone over the years, the most recent being a phone call when Shirley had passed away in January 2017. I figured that this was a sign and within a few days added Bill, Cynthia, and Cynthia’s daughter Carah to my FB friend list. I’ve had a few online discussions with them in the months since then and it felt good to renew those long-ago friendships.

[Picture of Bill Meo]

The Friend Connection

Spurred on by the renewed friendship, I posted to my blog in March about all my 2^nd cousins and how many I was still in touch with (*1). In the section about my cousins through my Pierpont great-grandparents, I noted that I had “11 second cousins, not in contact with any of them.” But I did note that there was one whose name I was familiar with while growing up (Francesca Merrill Friend) whose name I knew because my mother had made mention of her often as my mother was apparently in communication with her first cousin (Merrill Friend) at that time. Francesca was a year older than myself, which may have accounted for my mother knowing of her at the time she was expecting my birth.

I wondered what had ever happened to Francesca and whether I could find her using my well-developed genealogical investigation skills. With a somewhat unusual name, I figured I had a least a good chance of doing so. With information about her from the Pierpont family genealogies, I knew her married name as well as the name of her husband and daughter – key things to go on when tracing female relatives.

It only took a few days, but I was able to find both Francesca and her daughter living in Oakland, CA. I contacted her and got an initial response that included, “How did you figure out who I am? I don’t think I know ONE relative of my father’s.” We have now become friends on Facebook, and now she can say that she knows one relative on her father’s side. I am happy to finally make her acquaintance after 70 years of knowing about her, but never actually meeting her.

A Chance Encounter

In early March I received an email from my niece Kathy VanDeCar. She had been getting her car worked on and the person doing the work noticed her last name and asked whether she was related to a relative of hers, Barbara VanDeCar. Knowing I was the family genealogist, Kathy asked, “Do you happen to know if I am related to a Barbara VanDeCar who is a cousin of the Pingel family name?”

The VanDeCar is a fairly uncommon one and since it originated in the Hudson River Valley in the early 1600s, I know that all individuals with that name are related to each other (*2). But could I find the connection? Within a few days I had located Barbara and her relatives, including one who lived in Petoskey, MI (the same town as Kathy was from and just mile or so from her brother, Marty). I was also able to document that leg of the family tree by tracing it back to its NY roots.

I contacted a few of the family members, discovering that like Francesca above, they knew little of their family heritage. I was able to enlighten them and be able to say, “hello cousin” to yet a few more members of my wife’s extended family.

An African Connection

One of my long-time friends is a retired missionary, Dick Gehman. He spent his time as a missionary in Kenya working with the African Inland Mission (AIM). Recently he’s bee posting to Facebook about his missionary service and last week he posted a picture of Charles Hurlburt, the director of AIM from 1901-1928. There was something about that name that triggered some thoughts in my mind and I decided to see where there might be some connections.

Hurlburt is one of those names that has undergone variations in spelling over the generations, so you will find some individuals who spell it Hurlburt, some Hurlbert, some Hurlbut, and even some Hulburt. I found mention of Charles in Wikipedia and was able to get his birth and death dates (1860-1936) and the name of his father. Using that I was able to trace his genealogy and found that while Charles was born in Iowa, his family had come there from NY and before that had been in VT and CT. In CT the family had been in Woodbury, a place that I was familiar with and before then had immigrated from England. I had a few individuals in my extended family tree with that name, but they were my wife’s ancestors. The Hurlburt members who came from England were connected to her, making Charles my wife’s 6^th cousin, several times removed.

But there was another reason that I remembered the Hurlburt/Hurlbut family name. While the ancestral family trees indicated that the family was from Woodbury, CT, they were more correctly from what is today Roxbury, CT. Woodbury was initially settled in the mid-late 1600s. Roxbury was split off from Woodbury in 1796. According to Roxbury history (*3), the Hurlbut family settled in what is now Roxbury in the early 1700s, so they were there for nearly a century before Roxbury was founded.

My great-aunt and uncle, Aunt Irene and Uncle Joe Hartwell, lived in Roxbury. Uncle Joe had moved there with his family some time prior to 1917 and he lived in the same house until after Aunt Irene’s passing in 1981. When my father was growing up, he spent many of his summers staying with them in Roxbury (*4).

I have a picture that was taken at the Hartwell 25^th anniversary in July 1948. Joe and Irene are (#24 and #20). Nearly everyone else in this picture is a relative of theirs. But on the left side of the picture (#2) is Alden Hurlbut. Alden is a sixth cousin of Charles Hurlburt who lived in Kenya. Alden’s obituary, written in 1998 by his son, notes that Alden was a seventh-generation Roxbury native and farmer.” He was a close neighbor and good friend of the Hartwells and so had been invited to this milestone celebration in their lives. My father is on the right-hand side (*29) and he and Alden would have certainly known each other from my father’s summers in Roxbury.

But as I finish the four different cousin connections in this blog, I note that it has come full circle. Also in this picture at #6 and #9 are Bill Meo and Shirley MacNaught who I mentioned above. They are not yet married, only dating at this time, but would marry a few years later and go on to have Cynthia and Bill (Jr.) in the coming decade.

Cousin Connections! They are everywhere.

[Hartwell Anniversary]