Pierpont Family Association Historian

When the Pierpont Family Association (PFA) was formed in 1923, they noted that they were the “North Haven branch of Pierponts”. By this, they meant that they were all the descendants of Ezra Pierpont (1757-1842) who had moved from North Haven, CT, to the East Farms area of Waterbury, CT. Ezra had moved to Waterbury upon his marriage to Mary Blakeslee in 1783, so this group represented 140 years of Pierponts. Ezra’s great-great-grandchildren were in their 40’s at the time, so this only represented 5-6 generations of the family. Even so, there were 80 people at the first reunion in 1924.

One of the tasks during those early years was to document all the individuals involved and their relationship back to Ezra and Mary. They recorded this 140 years of individuals and created a family “historian” whose principal responsibility was to keep the information up-to-date by recording any births/marriages/deaths each year and reporting on them at the next annual meeting. Since nearly everyone lived in a relatively small area in Waterbury, that was not too difficult a task.

In the mid-1930s, the group decided to expand their focus and to include all the “New England Pierponts”, thus going back another four generations to brothers John and Robert Pierpont who had settled in Roxbury, MA, around 1640. Many of the line had “daughtered out” (see details), so this effectively only added three generations back to Rev. James from New Haven. But it was still a considerable expansion. The PFA then assigned assistant historians to the various family lines in other places, such as a historian for the Pierpont families who lived in Litchfield. These assistants would record the births/marriage/deaths in their family lines and report them back to the primary historian for reporting at the annual meeting.

The ”historian” function of the PFA remained this way for several generations. The “bible” of the family was represented by R. Burnham Moffat’s book, “Pierrepont Genealogies from Norman times to 1913” and the PFA historians were responsible for all the updates since 1913. Early genealogy charts of the PFA showed Ezra and Mary at the center of the PFA and fanning out from there. It was a half-century later when Bob Kraft became the historian of the PFA and began converting the genealogical charts (now becoming quite long and complicated with each new generation) into a format that numbered each individual and used these numbers instead of family charts to show relationships.

While there was occasional new research, the “historian” function continued to be just a record-keeping function. However, the world was changing – the Pierpont family was no longer centered around Waterbury, or even in New England. Children were going to college and then going off to other parts of the US, or even to other parts of the world. We were discovering new family lines of Pierponts/Pierpoints/Pierreponts in places like Canada, Tennessee, England, and France – and they wanted to connect with us as part of the world-wide Pierpont family. Keeping our records up-to-date with family lines who did not have an interest in genealogy and who lived in far-off areas was nearly impossible. Trying to document our connections to these new groups of family members was challenging as those connections were often centuries ago and were not well documented.

Thus, the record-keeping function of the PFA historian tracking births/marriages/deaths is next to impossible. And new skills are needed to document relationships to these newly discovered family groups. And so, for the past few decades, (including the time that I have been first a co-historian of the PFA and now with the death of Bob Kraft, the only “historian” of the PFA), it’s been necessary to abandon trying to keep our old form of documentation up-to-date. But now I get to use my research and genealogical skills in other ways to investigate the various aspects of the PFA and its rich history!