WWI Effects

I was recently doing some research on the residents of my hometown (Wolcott CT) who served in WWI. As part of that I came across a questionnaire that had been given to all the individuals in CT who served after the completion of their service. Besides a lot of demographic data, list of the places that they were, etc, there were a couple of questions on the last page that intrigued me.

To paraphrase the questions, they asked, “What have you learned from this experience” and “How has this effected your state of mind.” Not everyone took the time to answer these particular questions, but of those who did, it offers some interesting perspective into how these individuals thought nearly 100 years ago. In particular, I’d like to look at the responses of two individuals.

The responses to the two questions of the first individual are:

“That an American fighting man was equal to anything any country could put into the field. That the first four divisions of the Regular Army could and did prove superior to other units.”

“The effect has been encouraging. Believe America has a real future and believe her head and shoulders above any country on earth."

The response from the second individual are:

“My stay in France tended to broaden my views of life and to make me realize that people can live differently than we do here.

“I think more and show my feelings less. I would be more than mildly interested if we had another war and would enlist at once.”

There are two very different responses here – which interestingly are some of the same things that we discuss regarding US exchange students experiencing after their time abroad. The first individual has come back with a very nationalistic attitude, i.e. note his use of the words “superior”, “head and shoulders above”, etc. In contract, the second individual has returned with a much broader view of the world as noted by his recognition that other people live differently and that he should ponder these things rather than just “show his feelings” immediately when confronted with new situations.

As I look at my own perspective after having been abroad to many countries and experienced how people have different approaches to things, I’m much more like the second individual in that I value what others have to offer.

So, even though these are thoughts from individuals a century ago and under very different circumstances than my own (i.e. having gone to fight in a war), we can still learn from them.

Genealogy Story – Finding a Birth Mother

I received a very unusual request last week from one of my 3^rd cousins. (Because this involves living individuals, I’m going to just use a first initial for each person involved.) My cousin (“L”) wanted help in locating her husband’s (“A’s”) birth mother as they had been unable to. She wrote, “Hi cousin! I was wondering if you might provide me with some guidance on how to search for my husband's birth mother. We know her name and date of birth and state of birth, but not much else. I've searched a bit on my own but came up empty. I remembered that your [sic] are a wiz at genealogy so I thought maybe you could give me some ideas. Thanks!“

I indicated that such searches, i.e. finding living people, rely on a lot of intuition, that it might be better if she gave me the information that she had and I’d see what I could do. She gave me his birth mother’s name (“M”), a date of birth, the state she was from, the state where “A” was born, that she had been employed as a “cashier,” and a few other pieces of information that were not pertinent to my search. Since the date of birth was in 1930, I tried looking for her in the 1940 census in that state or surrounding states and came up with nothing. However, I had some suspicions that the information that I had been given might have not been entirely correct. The most suspicious was the alleged date of birth since it would have meant that “M” was 28 years old when “A” was born. Unlike our current society, in those days it would have been extremely unlikely, but not impossible, for a 28-year old single mom to have given birth out of wedlock. Also, the job of “cashier” would have been an entry-level position which is also consistent with someone who would have been younger. I asked “L” where she got that information.

She had the final decree of adoption but that only had the name “M” on it. The other information was on a typed up paper from “A”s adoptive parents who are now both dealing with dementia. I decided to move forward with the presumption that the name “M” was correct (since it was on an official court document), but that the date of birth was not correct and would have been in the later 1930’s to make it more consistent with both the out-of-wedlock birth and the job of cashier.

I quickly hit “pay dirt!” I found a person with the name “M” in the 1940 census in the proper state, but with an age that indicated a birth in 1938 or 1939. And, of course, that also meant that I had the name of her parents and any siblings still at home. Then I found further confirmation with a person named “M” in high school in the city where “A” was born. It was a high school yearbook where “M” was in 10^th grade (so that age matched the date of birth on the 1940 census). I also got a thumbnail picture of her class.

I then tried finding any of “M”s siblings in recent obituaries to see if that would give me the eventual married name of “M” and enable me to further research her. Apparently most of her siblings died in the 1990’s which is before obituaries are generally available on websites. But one sister (“B”) (confirmed by names of parents, etc.) only died last year and it said that “B” was preceded in death by all her siblings. So apparently “M” is no longer living (she would be 78 if she was).

However, the obituary gave the names of the “B”s children and I was able to track down one of them and get an address and phone number which I passed along to my cousin “L”. “L” and “A” plan on calling this individual to see if she remembers her aunt “M” and knows any further details that will help “A” bring closure to his search for a birth family.

As I indicated to “L”, this type of genealogical research is sometimes pretty intuitive. You have to know not only where to search and what search terms to use, but when information looks right and when it doesn’t. But in this case, with only 5-6 hours of research, I was able to have a successful result that will help my cousin and her husband.

Genealogy Story – Research for a Friend

For about 10-15 years I’ve been part of a small group of men (3-4 of us) who have met twice a month for prayer, mutual support, and study. We meet for breakfast at one of the local diners where we enjoy a meal together, then often talk about a chapter of a book that we’re reading together to help strengthen our faith. We also talk about what’s going on in our life, the challenges that we are facing (in confidence), pray for each other, etc.

One of the others of this group, Bob Davies, who has been part of it for longer than I have, is a man whom I’ve known from church for 40 years. We have a lot in common – both of us had careers in the IT field, we sang together in the church choir, sang together in a men’s quartet for many years, served as elders together, etc. And while we’ve known about each other’s immediate families, it’s interesting that the topic of our ancestors never came up until our last meeting a week ago. But it finally did, and I thought it would be interesting, given my interest in genealogy, to research his family.

Here is what I had to go on – the names and approximate year of birth of his parents; that Bob knew practically nothing about his paternal grandfather; the fact that his paternal grandmother had the last name of von Steuben and that she was somehow related to General von Steuben from the Revolutionary War; and that his maternal grandmother’s last name was Green but that it had come from Gruen which is the German word for Green but got Anglicized.

I put the above information into a new tree in ancestry.com and fairly quickly came up with the names of Bob’s grandparents. But each of these four individuals required me to do a very different type of research – a potpourri of genealogy if you will – that was so interesting that I thought it warranted being documented in this blog.

Misinformation in the Census

I was quickly able to find Bob’s parents in the census records of 1940 and then before they were married in the 1930 and 1920 census with their parents (Bob’s grandparents). Bob’s grandfather, David T. Davies, was born in 1878 and both the 1930 and 1920 census indicated that he was born in Maine and his parents were born in Wales. But I was unable to find him anywhere in the 1910 or earlier census records – in PA, in ME, or anywhere else.

But not deterred by this dead end, I started looking for information elsewhere. After some digging, I was able to find him in immigration records from 1911. These records are pretty detailed and give lots of information, so I noted that David was a blacksmith, that his destination was Portland, ME, that he left behind his mother, Jane, and many other interesting things.

Thus, it appears that when the census taker stopped at the Davies’ home in 1920 and 1930 that Bob’s grandmother was the one who answered the door. When she was asked, “where was your husband born?,” she gave what she thought was a truthful answer of “Maine”, because as far as she knew that’s where he had come from. But the truth was that while he was in Maine originally in 1911 when he entered the US, he only lived there a few years before moving to PA and marrying her in 1916. This is not unusual in doing genealogical research, to encounter misinformation that occurs for a variety of reasons. But it complicates this research – or at least slows it down as it did here.

Connection to a Famous Person

Bob’s paternal grandmother was Charlotte von Steuben – a helpful thing to know, as finding maiden names is sometimes difficult in genealogical research. As I traced back through her ancestors there was a plethora of German names, nearly all of whom came to the US over 200 years ago. So while Bob is ¼ Welsh through his paternal grandfather, it is pretty obvious that he is ¼ German through the von Steuben line.

But General Friedrich von Steuben never married and had no children. So what was Bob’s connection to him? This required me to research both Bob’s ancestors and General von Steuben’s ancestors to find the intersection. But along the way I found that the von Steuben line took a detour. Bob’s great*3 grandfather, Peter von Steuben, came to the US not from Germany but from Denmark where both he and his parents lived. General von Steuben was Peter’s first cousin, thus he is Bob’s first cousin, 5 times removed.

My Cousin – Three Ways!

In tracing back Bob’s maternal grandfather, I found that the Ackley family moved to Bradford County PA from Connecticut. Since genealogy records from Connecticut are pretty robust, I was able to trace it back several more generations quite easily. In the process I began to notice family names that occur in my own family tree – which has been in Connecticut for over 300 years. So I took some of those family names and began checking to see if Bob’s ancestral lines intersected with my own. I have found three such connections.

Bob’s great*4 grandmother was Abigail Doane. Her ancestral line goes back to John Doane (b. 1575 in England), but John is also my ancestor on my father’s side. Through this connection Bob is my 10^th cousin, once removed.

Another of Bob’s ancestors is Sarah Andrews who was born in Waterbury, CT – the same town that I was born in. Her father, Abraham Andrews is also an ancestor of mine on my mother’s side, making Bob my 8^th cousin, once removed.

Finally, another family in Bob’s ancestral line is the Terrill family where Daniel Terrill is Bob’s great*6 grandfather and my great*7 grandfather, making Bob my 7^th cousin, once removed, again on my father’s side.

This makes a total of three ways that I am related to Bob. But it also means that through the Doane family line Bob is an official “blue blood” as one of his ancestors, Constance Hopkins, who is the grandmother of Israel Doane came to the Plymouth Colony on the Mayflower in 1620.

Unraveling a Complicated Story

The last of Bob’s family lines, through his maternal grandmother, was the hardest to unravel. He knew his grandmother, Minnie Green, and that the family name used to be Gruen, but establishing that through genealogical research was a bit difficult. After several hours of looking through census records, death certificates, etc., the story goes like this:

Conrad Gruen was born in Germany in 1853 and came to the US in 1872. He married for the first time in 1884 to a woman named Marie Dengler. But this was the second marriage for Marie. Her maiden name was Marie Pistor and she had married back in Germany and had a daughter Pauline [Dengler] (b. 1869). Conrad and Marie had two children, Pauline (who went by Minnie) (b. 1885), and Frederick (b. 1890). Conrad then divorced Marie and married a woman by the name of Mary Frank in 1899. He and Mary had a child Anna (b. 1904). [Note that part of the problem was that the first marriage was after 1880 and ended before 1900 so there were no census records documenting Conrad and Marie being married.]

Of the 3 children of Conrad, Anna lived with her parents, Frederick lived with Conrad and his step-mother Mary, but Pauline (Minnie) went to live with her half-sister Pauline who by this time had married Ernest Hausman and lived in Allentown. Pauline/Minnie eventually married Isaac Ambrose Ackley. 

Conclusion

Bob’s ancestry is ¼ Welsh, ½ German, and ¼ British. And after knowing him for 40 years I can now call him a cousin!

It’s been a good week

Instead of writing a blog this week on a particular topic, I thought that for a change of pace I’d put together the potpourri that this week has been. As always, I’ve learned some new things. But the challenge sometimes is not forgetting some of the old things so that you’re total knowledge keeps increasing. So without further ado, and in no particular order, here are three of the highlights of the past several days.

Progress on my weight goal

I’ve been trying for the past several years to slowly reduce my weight. Rather than go on any crash diet – where many people tend to yo-yo, I figure that since the weight went on slowly, the best thing is to slowly take it off by life style changes. I don’t get on the scales regularly, just try to make better choices and when I get my weight taken as part of my periodic visits to my primary care physician see where I stand and then log it in a small spreadsheet. This week was one of those periodic visits and my weight is down a little bit (again!), so I’m continuing to make progress.

The funny part of this is that when I stood on the electronic scales in the doctor’s office it registered 228.2, but when the nurse entered it into the computer she had a little dyslexia and put in 282.2. When I checked the summary sheet after I came home I noticed it and sent a quick message off to the office. I got a return reply a short time later which acknowledged the correction and ended with “Sorry about the sudden weight gain, but, you’ll be happy to know you just lost 54 lbs!” That was a little chuckle to lighten up my day.

A distant famous relative

I was watching a few old episodes of Antiques Roadshow on YouTube for a little light entertainment one evening and they had a piece of art by Charles M[arion] Russell, the artist probably best known for his western work. That got me wondering if he and I were related. So I decided to see if his family tree and mine intersected. Since I know my Russell family tree back to its origin 1000 years ago, all I had to do was see how far I could trace his and see if there was a common ancestor.

It took a while, since I was not able to locate any complete family tree for him, so I had to piece together some of the research that others had done with some original checking. But after about a half-hour I was successful. Our common ancestor was John Russell who was born in 1340 in England. That was a lot farther back than I envisioned, but the connection was pretty solid. Since John Russell is my great*17 grandfather and also Charles’ great*15 grandfather, that make Charles my 16^th cousin, twice removed!

Uncovering a census error

Twice a month I get together with two other Christian men for breakfast and a religious book study. We also share about our families, pray requests, etc. One of the men, Bob, whom I have known for 40 years, mentioned that he knew very little about his ancestry, particularly about his paternal grandfather – where he came from, what his occupation was, etc. Since I enjoy doing genealogical research, I asked Bob for the names of his parents, including his mother’s maiden name, to see what I could find out.

In tracing his father back through census records, I easily found him in the 1920 and 1930 census where his father was then living with his parents (Bob’s grandparents). That gave me the name of his grandfather. The notation in both census records indicated that his grandfather was born in Maine, but that his grandfather’s parents were born in Wales. But even though that gave me an indication that his grandfather would have been born in 1878, I was not able to find him in the census records for 1910, 1900, or 1880. So where was he?

I then found him in immigration records for 1911 – and a real treasure trove of information that goes along with that. It showed that this was the first time that he had come to the US, that his destination was Portland Maine, and that the person he left behind in Wales was his mother. So it appears that when the census taker knocked on the door in 1920 and 1930, it was probably Bob’s grandmother who answered the door and she gave incorrect information about her husband – knowing that he came from Maine, she gave Maine as his place of birth, when he was actually born in Wales in 1878 and only lived in Maine from 1911 until he moved to PA where he married. His occupation on the immigration records was also listed as “blacksmith”, solving the other mystery that Bob had.

My Extended Pierpont Family Relatives in Wolcott

If you’ve read much of my blog over the past few years, it’s pretty obvious that I have been able to document a lot of connections to other individuals – both in the history of my hometown, Wolcott, CT, and in Connecticut history as well. Part of this is due to the sheer number of relatives that we all have as well as the modern tools we now have for doing genealogical research.

One’s family tree expands by a factor of two for every generation we go back – the father’s side and the mother’s side. From my own birth in the middle of the 20^th century back to the early 1700s there are about 8-9 generations. Thus there are a potential of several hundred great*7 grandparents in that length of time (2 to the 9^th power is 512). However, not all of one’s ancestral lines can be traced back that far, some were not in the US until later in history, and there are some duplicates where two branches converge. But with the current tools, I have about 200 documented ancestors at the great*7 grandparent level in my family tree. And with each of those individuals having the potential for perhaps several hundred descendants (for arguments sake let’s say 400), that gives me 80,000 possible individuals at various levels of “cousin-ness” (of which I have only documented a few thousand).

Until recent years, most of these distant connections would have been unknown. So while many of us may have had people growing up around us who were related to us in some fashion, we would not be aware of most of those connections. The ones we knew best were our first cousins, and, if we were fortunate enough, a few of our second cousins. That was true of me as well – my siblings and I knew all 15 or so of our first cousins and we interacted with them frequently, and we knew of and occasionally met some of our second cousins.

However, there was one branch of our family tree that was well documented. My mother’s maiden name was Pierpont, and the Pierpont Family Association maintained a large document which kept track of all the descendants of the New England Pierpont family (primarily the descendants of James Pierpont, one of my great*7 grandfathers). And since there was an annual Pierpont Family Reunion where all the people in this tree (at least those that we had an address for) were invited, we knew of and had an opportunity to meet with all the people in this descendant tree (they have met for every year since 1924). This is of course only one of the 200 ancestors that I have since documented, but the Pierpont family were pretty prolific and the potential pool of attendees was pretty large. Of those, those who attended numbered between 30 and 100, with there only being a single instance where the 100 was exceeded (1998).  But the attendee list was different each year, so we got to know perhaps a couple of hundred Pierpont relatives by meeting them and because the family descendant tree was so well documented, we knew the names of many more.

Our immediate family was relatively involved, with my grandfather and two of my uncles/aunts being president of the PFA at various times, my father having been the vice-president, and my mother having been the secretary for a few years as well. So our particular branch of the family tree were often the ones to be recognized for having the largest number attending, and when my aunt and uncle from Arizona were there a few times they received the distance trophy. In more recent years, with the generation of my parents having nearly all passed away, there has only occasionally been a representative from my immediate family (aunts/uncles/cousins/etc.). However, with my renewed interest in genealogy from the past few years, I am planning on attending this coming weekend!

But to get back to the point of this blog, I’d like to mention my Pierpont relatives who lived near me in my hometown and whom I knew growing up. They didn’t necessarily have the last name of Pierpont anymore due to them being descended through a female who took on her husband’s last name, but they are still relatives. So, in no particular order, here are my Pierpont relatives who lived in Wolcott (at least back when I lived there while growing up).

·         My Uncle Zeke (Clarence) and Aunt Babs (Barbara) Pierpont and their family who lived just a few houses from us (only my cousin Rob and his wife are still in Wolcott)

·         My Uncle Tony and Aunt Vi (Violet) Semeraro and their family who lived at the other end of town

·         The Kraft family (Howard & Marian) and their children and grandchildren (note that the Krafts were also related to the Peterson family in Wolcott). My 3^rd cousin, Bob Kraft, is the current PFA family historian/genealogist

·         Margaret [Miller] [Northrop] Hall – she was the mother of Marian [Northrop] Kraft and Jean [Northrop] Fleming

·         Byron and Jean Fleming

·         The Garrigus family (I’ve documented this connection here - http://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2017/03/wolcott-history-inter-family-marriages.html). It is recorded in the PFA minutes from 1948 that “Morton Pierpont gave a humorous account on how families inter-marry, namely the Garriguses and Pierponts, and said he felt like his own grandpa.”

While this is certainly just a handful of individuals compared to all the other Wolcott families who are related to me through other of my ancestors, it is always nice to grow up in proximity to ones relatives.

Genealogy Story – Yale part 2

In a blog I wrote recently (http://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2017/03/genealogy-story-harvard-and-yale.html), I gave a list of the ten men who were involved in establishing the Collegiate School of Connecticut in 1701 – which became Yale just a few years later. In that blog, I described these men as follows:

·        Samuel Andrew (1656-1738), Harvard class of 1675, pastor in Milford, CT – Rector in 1707-1719, while at Harvard was a tutor to James Pierpont, Samuel Russell, Noadiah Russell, and Joseph Webb. He and Samuel Mather married sisters. His granddaughter married the grandson of Noadiah Russell and James Pierpont.

·        Thomas Buckingham (1646-1709), the only non-Harvard graduate, pastor in Saybrook, CT – the founders originally agreed to locate the Collegiate School in Saybrook and it was only with much resistance that it was relocated to New Haven.

·        Israel Chauncy (1644-1703), pastor in Stratford, CT – son of Charles Chauncy, president of Harvard, he and James Webb married sisters. In addition to his father, a brother and nephew were also ministers.

·        Samuel Mather (1650-1727), Harvard class of 1671, pastor in Windsor, CT – cousin of Cotton Mather

·        Rev. James Noyes II (1640-1719), Harvard class of 1659, pastor in Stonington, CT – a cousin to Timothy Woodbridge, father, grandfather, and other relatives were also ministers.

·        James Pierpont (1659-1714), Harvard class of 1681, pastor in New Haven, CT – related to Abraham Pierson by one marriage and to Thomas Buckingham by another marriage. His children married descendants of Noadiah Russell, Samuel Russell, and James Noyes. Five of his children either became ministers or were married to one. (See http://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2017/02/genealogy-story-james-pierpont.html for further details).

·        Abraham Pierson (1646-1707), Harvard class of 1668, pastor in Killingworth, CT (later renamed Clinton) – first Rector of the Collegiate School, was supposed to teach in Saybrook, but due to his pastoral duties, taught at his parsonage in Killingworth. Son of a minister.

·        Noadiah Russell (1659-1713), Harvard class of 1681, pastor in Middletown, CT – two of his sons also became ministers.

·        Joseph Webb (1666-1732), Harvard class of 1684, pastor in Fairfield, CT

·        Timothy Woodbridge (1655-1732), pastor in Hartford, CT – son of a minister, his brother and son were also ministers. His daughter married a son of Abraham Pierson.

·        Samuel Russell (1660-1731), Harvard class of 1681, pastor in Branford, CT – 2^nd son of Rev. John Russell (1626-1692) of Hadley, MA, Harvard 1645, ministered in Wethersfield CT 1650-1659, then left CT and founded Hadley MA.

I’ve now had a chance to do some further genealogical research on these individuals with the goal of seeing what their connection (if any) is to me. I expected to find some of the below, but the degree of connectedness is pretty astounding. So, without further ado, here is how each of these men is related to me.

·        Samuel Andrew, grandfather-in-law of William Russell (my 1^st cousin 7 times removed)

·        Thomas Buckingham, 2^nd husband of Mary [Willet] [Hooker] whose first husband was my great*8 uncle

·        Israel Chauncy, married to 1^st cousin of my great*8 grandfather, Abraham Nichols. His wife and Joseph Webb’s wife were sisters.

·        Samuel Mather, cousin of sister-in-law of James Pierpont (through his first wife)

·        James Noyes II, father-in-law of Abigail Pierpont (my great*7 aunt)

·        James Pierpont, great*7 grandfather His children married descendants of, Samuel Russell

·        Abraham Pierson, uncle of first wife of James Pierpont

·        Noadiah Russell, great*7 grandfather, his daughter married Joseph Pierpont.

·        Joseph Webb, married to 1^st cousin of my great*8 grandfather, Abram Nichols

·        Timothy Woodbridge. His daughter married a son of Abraham Pierson. Also a cousin of James Noyes II.

·        Samuel Russell, great*3 grandfather of my great*3 aunt, Abigail [Russell] Pierpont

While some of these connections are multiple “hops”, e.g. cousin of a cousin sort-of-thing, the fact that I can document a family connection to every single one of them seems pretty amazing to me.  And it is further demonstration of what I quoted in that earlier blog:

The clergy, unlike farmers or artisans, were relatively successful in developing effective local and trans-local alliances which, in turn, led to patterns of collective action and to formal corporate institutions. This is not surprising, for the clergy were, by their very nature, a group with clearly defined common interests, a group whose members had been trained together at either Harvard or Yale (thus having shared an intensive common socialization experience), who were often sons of clergymen themselves (thus having kin-continuity), and who presided over a social institution, the church, whose interests they had a vital interest in preserving. The clergy, as earlier suggested, followed simultaneously two patterns of alliance-making, a bifurcation dictated by the non-inheritable nature of the clerical office. On the one hand, they cultivated close ties with important lay families in the communities in which they served, which strengthened their power in their congregations and opened up occupational opportunities for their sons. On the other hand, they cultivated trans-local alliances with other clergymen (to consolidate professional identity) and with powerful laymen (to further the interests of the church).

Genealogy Story – My Hill Relatives

My father’s sister, Dorothy (known to me as Aunt Dot), married Robert Clinton Hill (known to me as Uncle Bob), the brother of my father’s best friend in high school, Harold Hill (also known to me as Uncle Harold, even though he was not a blood relative). Since I’ve written extensively about the Russell side of the family tree, I thought I should write about the Hill family as well.

Both my father’s Russell ancestors and my mother’s Pierpont ancestors came to America (specifically to the Massachusetts Bay Colony) around 1630 during the Great Migration which ran from 1620 to 1640 (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puritan_migration_to_New_England_(1620%E2%80%9340)). Approximately 20,000 individuals, mostly in family units, came during this time. However, when the English Civil War began in 1641, the rate of migration dropped sharply.

The original Hill family member to come to American, John Hill (1598-1647), had been born in England. He, together with his wife and young son, John B (1624-1688), also migrated around 1630, first to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in Boston, but about 1640 moving up the coast to Dover, New Hampshire. The Hill family would remain in New Hampshire or nearby Maine for the next several generations.

While there were many children in each generation after John B, the line that led down to my Uncle Bob all had names beginning with the letter “J” for the next several generations. In order, these were another John (1665-1718), Joshua (1698-1774), Joseph (1743-1797), and James (1774-1847). Finally, in the 1800s, the line of J’s was broken with the birth of Oliver (1801-1883), then Sylvester (1823-1897). Sylvester also moved away from Maine to S. Weymouth, MA. (See http://www.genealogy.com/ftm/r/a/b/David-E-Rabing/GENE3-0008.html for complete details of each of these individuals.)

Sylvester married Mary Ann Fessenden in 1847 and had four children with her. When she died in 1861, he remarried Aurelia Randall the following year and had six more children with her. One of these was Frank Clinton Hill (1876-1963).

Frank married Georgia Knussman (1880-1930) in 1901. Georgia had been born in Connecticut but her father, George, was a German immigrant, and her mother, Mary, was the daughter of two Irish immigrants. That made Frank and Georgia’s children half-English, one-quarter-German, and one-quarter-Irish. Frank and Georgia initially lived in Wallingford, CT where Georgia’s parents lived, but then moved to Waterbury, CT. They had four children – Frank (b. 1912), Edith (b. 1914), Robert (b. 1916), and Harold (b. 1919).

My Aunt Dot and Uncle Bob met when my father and his sister began living with their grandparents (my great-grandparents) in Waterbury in 1937. The Hill family lived right around the corner and Dot and Bob, besides then being close neighbors, also shared a common birthday, 13 October 1916. They married the following year – 1938. Initially, she just moved the one block and the newlyweds shared the house with Bob’s father (then widowed), his older sister Edith, and his younger brother, Harold. That’s not a typical living arrangement for a newlywed couple, but it seemed to work out for all involved.

Over the next decade, they had two children (Carolyn and Bob) and moved several times. Meanwhile my father continued living with his grandparents, then served in WWII. His grandparents both died while he was in the service, so when he finished his service in 1946, he could no longer return “home”, so he lived for a few months with his sister and her family – which, very conveniently, was just a few blocks away from his new fiancée. My parents married a few months later and moved into a home in Wolcott. Harold married six months later and for the first part of his married life he and my Aunt Gloria lived in an upstairs room in my parent’s house while their residence was being completed at the other end of town. Harold and Gloria had three children (Bruce, Debbie, and Craig). In 1952, Dot and Bob also moved to Wolcott into a new home on Laurel Lane. With all three families in the same town, we were all pretty close growing up and I spent a lot of time with all my Hill cousins.

The close physical ties of being in the same town did not last forever, but the family ties remained and we all still met when we could. Aunt Dot and Uncle Bob moved to Florida when he retired, but our house in PA was a stop each year on their annual visit back to CT where they stayed with my parents for a few weeks. Uncle Harold divorced Aunt Gloria in 1960 and he eventually remarried and moved to Southern CA. That whole generation has now passed on. Also, all three of my Hill male cousins have died at younger ages than I am now, the most recent being my cousin Craig who died just last year due to the effects of his exposure to Agent Orange while serving in the military in Vietnam. But I still remain in touch with my cousin Carolyn via email and with her daughter (my cousin once removed) Jennifer, my “cousin” Debbie, and Craig’s wife Paula on Facebook. Family is still family!