Too Many Williams

Recently I posted about a potential genealogical connection from the Pierpont family back to William the Conqueror. You can see it here. Some additional information has been given to me so I needed to do some further investigation. But before I get to that, there are a few items in the original post that bear some comment.

[William the Conqueror]

 

Tree Source Issues

There are a number of sources for family tree information. Some of the ones that I use for reference include Wikitree and geni.com as both of them draw composite information from a number of trees. I will sometimes use Wikipedia where the individuals being reviewed are well-known historical figures. But these sources all have limitations. A few of them showed up here.

 

Hill/Hulle genealogy – The Hill/Hulle genealogy listed was sourced primarily from geni.com. But it had some confusion about the parents of Lord Hugh de la Hulle (1175-1224). His parents were listed as:

Ayleth de Normandie de la Hulle (1152-1187), who is listed as being male and being “Son of Ozwell de Hill”, “Husband of Oseberre de Hulle” and “Father of Lord Hugh de la Hulle”

And, Oseberre de Hulle (1154-1200) is also listed as being male with the same “Son of Ozwell de Hulle”, “Husband of Ayleth” and “Father of Lord Hugh de la Hulle”

But it is impossible that both Ayleth and Oseberre are male and that they have the same parents. Also, note that the fathers of these two are separate entries in their database as one is “Ozwell de Hill” and one is “Ozwell de Hulle”. But two brothers cannot marry and have a child. Looking at other sources, it’s clear that Ayleth is female (her name would have been simply Ayleth de Normandie before her marriage and the “de la Hulle” part would be taken from her husband after marriage).

Thus, while I corrected the gender in my posting, it’s probably more likely that the parents of Ayleth are unknown and that Ozwell de Hill/Hulle is the father of Oseberre and I have perpetuated that error in my blog (I’ve added a comment to note it).

 

William the Conqueror family – geni.com is also confused about the family of Williams the Conqueror, specifically his son, Robert Curthose. Referring to the family tree below, in addition to the Robert’s four children (1a-1d), they list Henry I (4) as the child of Robert Curthose instead of the child of William the Conqueror. With so many duplicate names – William, Robert, Henry – it’s an easy mistake to make.

 

WikiTree looping – WikiTree is not without its problems too. The Hill genealogy listed in my posting is primarily from geni.com. The one in Wikitree is mostly the same in the lower generations, but goes awry in the middle of the list. In particular they show the father of Richard (1268-1317) as John Hill de Hull (1240-), John’s father as Adam Hill (1268-1317), and Adam’s father as Robert Hill (-1255). One can’t have the father of someone be 28 years younger than the son, but then the father of that individual dying 13 years before the son is born. This is obviously a mistake, which is why I chose to source from geni.com

 

Age gaps – one test for reasonability of a tree is the age gap between father and children. In the time frame being covered in my posting, individuals married younger than they do now – often in the mid-late-teens. They also generally had their children while in their early-mid-twenties, and rarely after age 30. The age gaps in the Hill/Hulle family as shown were: 17, 29, 31, 23, 18, 26, 26, 13, 25, 31, 24, 21, 23, 29. Since the age of birth for these individuals are often estimates based on events in the person’s life, the only one “out of range” is the 13-year gap between Sir Thomas (1255-1325) and Lord Richard (1268-1315). I’m not too bothered by this as it may just mean that the age estimate for one or the other is off by a few years due to errors in making the estimate of birth year. But we will also use this reasonability test in the below discussion about “too many Williams”.

 

Too Many Williams

Now let’s move onto the primary purpose of this post, trying to make the link from the Hill/Hulle family to William the Conqueror. First, let me list the first few generations of descendants of this family. I’ll use this, together with the list references in the discussion which follows.

Family of William the Conqueror

1.      Robert Curthose (1051-1134) - inherited Normandy

a.      William Clito  (1102-1128) – died without children

b.      Richard (c. 1079-1100) – illegitimate, died young without children

c.      William (c. 1079-1111?) – illegitimate – went to Holy Land after 1106 as Lord of Tortosa and disappears from historical record after 1110

                                                              i.     Unnamed son, but possibly also named William

d.      Illegitimate daughter

2.      Richard (1054-1070) – died young without children

3.      William II of England (1056-1100) – no legitimate children, had several concubines, but no illegitimate children can be identified leading some to speculate that he was sterile

4.      Henry I of England (1068-1135)

a.      Empress Matilda (1102-1167) – married Henry V, became queen of Germany in 1110 – died without children

b.      William Adelin (1103-1120) – died young without issue

c.      As many as 24 illegitimate children

5.      5 or 6 daughters – no consideration by historians as possibilities

6.      No evidence of any illegitimate children

 

Looking at the six! Williams

Let’s make an initial pass as each of these six to see how many we can eliminate in our search for the potential link to the Hill/Hulle family, a potential “William” who could be the ancestor of “Ozwell”:

·        William the Conqueror – obvious he is just the starting point.

·        William Clito (1a) – because of the “Clito” attached to his name having a similar meaning to “Aetheling” for Aetheling William and because his date of birth in 1102 was the same as what we were looking for, he was the candidate that I examined in my initial post. But, as we see above, he died in 1128, three years before Ozwell was born. Therefore, we need to rule him out.

·        William (1c), illegitimate son of Robert – went to Holy Land in 1106 and appears to have died or been killed a few years later. Further investigation needed.

·        William? (1ci), son of William (1c) – Further investigation needed.

·        William II of England (3) – appears to have been sterile and has no known children, so can be ruled out.

·        William Aethling (4b) – as we see above, died young without issue, so can be ruled out.

Thus, there are only two possibilities left, the father-son combination (1c) and (1ci). Let’s see what we can find about them.

 

Looking at William (1c)

The McKay-Stephens family tree lists William De La Hulle (1079-1111) as the father of Ozwell. But they then have the year of birth for Ozwell as 1111 instead of 1131. There are several problems with this arrangement:

·        Since William (1c) disappeared from the historical record in 1110 when he was likely killed in Palestine, his having a son in 1111 would require that either Ozwell was born in Palestine to or William (1c) to have returned to Normandie. There is no record of this happening.

·        The birth year for Ozwell has been moved 20 years earlier than what has been given in most other sources in order for this connection to work.

·        The age-gap between William (1c) and Ozwell is 32 years (a bit high), and the age-gap between Ozwell and Oseberre is now 43 years (way too high to be reasonable).

Thus, I reject this as a possibility. I have seen a date of 1111 attached to Ozwell in a few other locations and they suffer from the same flaws because of it.

 

Looking at William (1ci)

William (1c) was born around 1079 when his father Robert Curthose was 28. His son, possibly also named William (1ci) would have been born in the period 1100-1105 when his father was age 21-26. If William (1ci) was the father of Ozwell, then the age-gap between them would be 26-31. Therefore, having this extra generation makes all the age-gaps quite reasonable and does not require the 20-year adjustment in Ozwell’s birth as in the above case. Since William (1c) went to Palestine sometime around 1106, this would also be consistent with his having a son before he left.

Finally, attaching the Aetheling (prince) designation to William (1ci) would also be appropriate since all the other male heirs of Robert II (1) passed away without any children who could inherit the throne of Normandy. Thus, this is a quite reasonable conclusion. But can we find any “proof”?

There is an excellent bit of research in WikiTree which was put together that you can read here. It’s attached to a page devoted to William de Hull, but if you scroll down to the “Research Notes:” they are all about William of Tortosa (1c) and his son (1ci). I’m not going to reproduce the whole thing here, but there are several compelling points made:

·        The name “Hill” (which originated with this individual) was taken from an English translation of his mother’s name, de Ribemont, which means “ribbon of hills”.

·        Robert II (1) would have wished to pass the crown to one of his [illegitimate] offspring as his only legitimate heir, William Clito, had passed away.

·        The Hill/Hulle family crest includes references to his ancestry with “Two Battle Axes to represent his father and grandfather’s royal battles” as well as a “Blue Ribbon that serves to connect the Spear to the small Shield on which appear the Two Battle Axes [which] represents his mother’s line Ribemont.”

This research contains many more details and seems fairly well put together. Having ruled out all other possible direct connections from William the Conqueror to the Hill/Hulle family, and thence to the New England Pierpont family, this seems to me to make a good case. There are also other references to the events referenced in this research (see here for one of them).

A Genealogical Mistake

Recently I received a comment on a post that I had made back in 2016 about a connection of the Pierpont family to William the Conqueror. This comment stated:

Hi I am also a descendant of both Rev Noadiah Russell and Rev James Pierpont. They are both my 7th great grandfathers. My mother's maiden name is Russell and we came down a male line of Noadiah's son, William and James' daughter Mary (whereas I believe you have documented your connection as being of Noadiah's daughter, Hannah, and James' son, Joseph). This line of Russells has been in Illinois for 4 generations before me and only Middletown, Connecticut before that.

Anyway, I was doing some preliminary investigations on how far back I could trace my ancestors and randomly came across a connection to William the Conquerer through the Pierpont/Pierrepont line. If you follow Pierpont back to George Pierrepont (1510-1564), his parents were Sir William Pierrepont (1486-1531) and Joan Empson (1466-1550), daughter of Chancellor Richard Empson (1450-1510, minister of Henry VII) and Lady Jane Hill (1438-1498). If you follow Lady Jane Hill's father's male line you go through several generations of "Hill", "de Hill", and "de la Hull" until you get to Robert II, Duke of Normandy, son of William the Conquerer.

Don't know if it's any more "direct" than the route you describe here, but it does just go through 1 female Empson and 1 Female Hill to get there in an otherwise straight line of Englishmen/Frenchmen. Might be worth an investigation!

This individual has made an interesting claim that he has found a previously unknown (at least to the Pierpont family) connection from one of the New England Pierpont family back to William the Conqueror. The details in this were missing, but were worthy of checking out. And an amateur genealogist and the co-historian of the Pierpont Family Association, I needed to do so. Here is what I found.

 

The Pierpont Connection

The line from the New England Pierponts is well documented here. The pertinent portion starting from the Rev. James Pierpont is as follows (following the male line):

·        Rev. James Pierpont (1659-1714)

·        John Pierrepont (1617-1682)

·        James Pierrepont (1597-1664)

·        William Pierrepont (1547-1648)

·        Sir George Pierrepont (?-1564)

Sir George is the son of Sir William Pierrepont (?-1533) and Joan [Empson] (1466-1550). Joan is daughter of Sir Richard Empson. Joan’s mother is not named here. So, as we leave the Pierpont/Pierrepont line we must look to other sources.

 

Following The Hill Line

In a well-known resource for genealogy trees, WikiTree, we find, as the commentor has stated, that Joan [Empson) Pierrepont is the daughter Chancellor Richard Empson and Jane (Hill) Empson - also called Lady Jane Hill. Then turning to other well-known resources, Familysearch and geni.com, we have the following line back:

·        Lady Jane Hill (1438-1498)

·        Robert IV Hill (1421-1493)

·        Robert III Hill of Shilston (1392-1444)

·        Robert Hill of Spaxton (1361-1423)

·        Sir John Hill (1338-1408)

·        Lord Richard de Hill (1320-1363)

·        Sir William de Hill, Earl of Bridgnorth (1294-1349)

·        Lord Richard Hill, of White Mere De La Hull (1268-1315)

·        Sir Thomas Hill, Lord of Axminster (1255-1325)

·        Lord Symon de la Hulle (1230-1283)

·        Robert de la Hulle (1199-1264)

·        Lord Hugh de la Hulle (1175-1224) 

·        Ayleth de Normandie de la Hulle (1152-1187) and Oseberre de Hulle (1154-1200) [Note that we are once again moving from the male line to the female line – Ayleth is a female name and she is the wife of Oseberre]

·        Ozwell de Hill (1131-1164) [Note that geni.com has Ozwell listed as the father of both Ayleth and Oseberre and has both listed as male. This is obviously a mistake. The more logical, given the naming conventions of the time, is that Ozwell is the father only of Oseberre and my comments above and below about moving from the male to the female line is incorrect.]

·        Aethling William de la Hulle (1102/3-) and Isabelle de Normandy (1106-)

I have no reason to question anything in this line. There is only one deviation from what the commentor stated in that there are now a total of three instances of following the female side of the tree as he did not recognize that Ayleth was the mother of Lord Hugh (granted that it’s not a name in use these days and I didn’t catch it at first either).

 

William the Conqueror’s Family

Now let us leave the trail back and look at a portion of the family of William the Conqueror, using a variety of other resources. From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Curthose) and (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Clito) we find the following:

Robert Curthose is Robert II of Normandy (1051-1134) and he was the eldest son of William the Conqueror and succeeded his father as Duke of Normandy in 1087. He had one legitimate child, William Clito who was born in 1102. Then quoting from the latter reference:

His nickname Clito was a Medieval Latin term equivalent to the Anglo-Saxon “Aetheling” and its Latinized “Adelinus” (used to refer to his first cousin, William Adelin). Both terms signified “man of royal blood” or, the modern equivalent, “prince”. [Aetheling is also found spelled Aethling.]

 

The Source of Confusion

This is the source of the confusion. There is no doubt that William Clito of Normandy (who could also be called Aetheling William de Normandie) is the grandson of William the Conqueror. However, it is also well documented that he died in 1128 with no issue.

However, the sources in WikiTree and Geni.com say that Aethling William de la Hulle was also born around 1102 in Normandy. But Aethling William de la Hulle is NOT the same person as Aetheling William de Normandie as the former had a son, Ozwell, who was born in 1131. Since Ozwell was not born until three years after William Clito died, he could not be a great-grandson of William the Conqueror. It’s an easy mistake to make, but shows why facts always need to be examined very carefully!

As the commentor stated, “Might be worth an investigation!” I have done so, but not with the results that he might have hoped. But since he and I are both descended from James Pierpont who is our common great*7 grandfather, he is still my 8^th cousin and I’m happy to have him in my family tree.

 

Wolcott Teacher Cousins

Last year I spent several weeks doing genealogical research on all the members of my high school graduating class (Wolcott High School class of 1966). As you can see here, about 1/3 of my classmates were in some sort of cousin relationship with me. I had also written a post about 5 years ago about some of my favorite teachers.

Recently, I saw a posting on FB that asked if people could remember their fifth-grade teacher, to which I responded, “of course, it was Mrs. Dunlap and she lived right across the street from my elementary school, Alcott School.” But it got me thinking – were many of my teachers actually distant cousins just like my classmates were? Not one to shirk from a challenge, I decided to see if I could do the same kind of genealogical research on them as I had done on my classmates.

[Wolcott High School]

 

Challenges

Age – when looking up my classmates, I knew that they were all born in 1948 (the cutoff back then for entering school was based on being born before the end of the calendar year), with a few possible exceptions for some who might have been held back a grade. But how old were my teachers? Could I make a guess based on pictures of them in my high school yearbook?

Name – for my classmates, I had their name in the yearbook, but while the teachers were also there, were the female teachers single or married (the latter would be listed with the designation “Mrs.” and with their married name with no indication of their maiden name which is key for doing research). Also, while I have a pretty good idea of most my elementary school teachers’ names, could I remember which teachers I had in each subject for the years I was at WHS? And even for my elementary teachers, I mostly remember them by their last names (since we called them Mr. X or Mrs./Miss Y and not by their first names). And there were no yearbooks before my high school years to conveniently give me their names.

Place lived – except for a couple of students who lived in Waterbury and whose parents paid to have them go to Wolcott HS, all my classmates lived in Wolcott. But the teachers might have lived in any of the nearby towns. There was a slight advantage in that except for some of the younger teachers during my high school years, the others would have been old enough to be in the 1940 census. But if I didn’t know their age/name/place, that was not much consolation.

Who to include – when researching my classmates, I included everyone in the class, regardless of whether I encountered them in particular classes or not. Should I do the same for the teachers and include all of them? Some of them I encountered in various clubs, others I saw in the halls and definitely knew them. Yes, it would make my task much harder, but that’s not an excuse. That put the total number of individuals to look up at around 100. That’s less than the number of the students in my graduating class, But the work to look them all up was going to be more because of the above challenges.

 

Scope of Work

In the end I decided to include all the faculty in the school as well as the administration. Fortunately, I had access to the 1961-62, 1962-63, and 1964-65 yearbooks online as well my own 1965-66 yearbook. That enabled me to put together a pretty complete list of everyone at the high school during the years I was there (including for the 1961-62 year when I was in 8^th grade) [I did not include the lunchroom staff or janitorial staff as their names were not always provided.] For my elementary years at Alcott, I had to go strictly on memory, and there were a few whose first names I could not remember. The total number of individuals turned out to be 101, but I was only able to complete my research on 96 of them – there were a couple that I could not recall the first names and I have not yet located my stash of report cards which might have that information, and there were a couple of high school teachers for whom I was not able to find information on them.

The wide range of ages of my teachers (the oldest was born in 1893 and the youngest in 1943), together with the lack of maiden names for any of the married teachers, turned out the be just as big a challenge as I thought it would be. So, the process that I had to use was totally different than what I could do to investigate my classmates. I was fortunate in that the city of Waterbury published (mostly annually) a directory of all residents that often included the occupation of each individual. Taking advantage of that meant that I could look for entries that included the word “tchr” or “teacher”. Then, I could look for other individuals with the same last name and same address to find either parents (for single individuals) or spouse (for married individuals). For married women, I could then find other information about their husband, including the maiden name of the person they married. But it certainly was challenging!

 

Overall Results

Of the 96 people I was able to complete my investigation on, 16 are related to me and 80 are not. This lower percentage is due to a number of factors as I’ll outline below. Here are the ones who are related to me: Betty Coe, Mary Crandall, Sheila Crichton, Virginia Fitzpatrick/Stopper (she got married in between two of the years), Martha Garrigus, Yvonne Hacquet, Robyn Jewell, Rose Klitka, Ethel Kohrs, Kathryn Lawson, Cynthia Meuse, Doris Peterson, Georgianna Phelan, Cora Rice, Francis Ryan, Elizabeth Woodward. Obviously, all of these have connections through English ancestors as all my ancestors are from England. All but Sheila, Yvonne, and Robyn have passed away.

 

Observations

Non-teaching/Non-administrators – The non-teachers/administrators (secretaries, nurses, study-hall coordinator) in my list were demographically quite different. These 11 individuals were all married women. They mostly lived in Wolcott, in fact three of them were mothers of one of my classmates. They also were much more likely to be related to me. Of my 16 cousins, 6 of them were from this group, i.e., over 50% of the group were related to me. In contrast, there were only 10 cousins among the 85 teachers/administrators.

Age Distribution – All my classmates were born in 1948 +/-1. The age distribution for these 96 people was: pre-1910 (5), 1910-1919 (12), 1920-1929 (31), 1930-1939 (33), 1940-1943 (15). That’s 48 born before 1930 and 48 after, making this group on average just a little younger than the parents of my classmates.

Single Country of Origin – With my classmates there was a lot of ethnic diversity in their background. For my classmates, I had noted, “Those with only a single country of origin are from Italy (30), England (14), Ireland (8) and single individuals from French-speaking Canada, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Scotland, and Syria. Thus, 114 of the 172 (66%) are part of the ‘melting pot’ that is America.” But among this group of 96 faculty/administration, I found the following with only one country of origin: Italy (24), Ireland (15), England (6), Germany (6), Poland (4), Russia (3), Canada-French (2), plus single individuals from Greece, Lithuania, Persia, Syria, and Wales. Thus, only 31 of the 96 (32%) are part of the “melting pot” that is America.

The explanation for this difference is quite simple. Most of the immigrant ancestors of these individuals, with the exception of those with roots in colonial New England, came to this country in the latter part of the 19^th century. They were the grandparents of our teachers and were still living in the early part of the 20^th century when the parents of these teachers got married. The sense of “family” was much stronger. For a young person in that time period, say with Italian parents/grandparents, to bring home a potential spouse who was not Italian was a big no-no. (I had an uncle who was from an Italian family and whose mother still spoke exclusively Italian. He made the bold decision to date and marry my aunt who was decidedly of English stock from colonial New England. That was a bold move on his part and not one taken lightly.) Thus, we see in this group of teachers with 29 having Italian heritage, there were 24 who had both their parents being Italian, but there were only 5 (17%) of this group who had one parent being Italian and one non-Italian. In contrast among my classmates who were one generation removed, the Italian immigrant great-grandparents were no longer living when their parents chose a mate. There were still strong family ties, but of those with Italian heritage only 30 of my classmates were full-blooded Italian while 19 (39%) were an Italian/non-Italian mix.

 

One more connection

In my last post, I had noted a number of connections between myself and one of the teachers at WHS, Sheila Crichton. I thought I was done with that topic, but as I was finishing up going through all the teachers/staff, I found another item which belongs in that category. One of the school secretaries, Mrs. Barbara Dowling, had a maiden name of Matthews and grew up living with her parents at #84 Radcliffe Ave. in Waterbury. This house is right on the corner of Radcliffe and Auburn/Atwood Ave. In the 1940 census, when my father was living at #57 Radcliffe with his grandparents, and my aunt was living with her husband and his family at #99 Auburn, not only were Sheila’s parents living at #49 Radcliffe (where Sheila would be born in September of that year), but Barbara Matthews was living 200’ from my father and 200’ from my aunt and uncle, in a house that they walked past on a regular basis if not daily. Barbara was 19 at the time. My father was also 19, and my aunt was 23. All three of them were working at Scovill and walked the mile to the plant. My father was a toolmaker apprentice, my aunt was a stenographer, and Barbara was a bookkeeper. It’s obvious that they would have known each other, and that all of them would have been aware of little Sheila joining the neighborhood that fall. They all would have also seen Sheila growing up as Barbara lived with her parents until she married in 1949, my father lived with his grandparents until he left for the war in 1944 and still had ties there when his aunt Loretta and uncle George inherited the house in 1946 and he and my aunt both would have visited from time to time. I wonder if Barbara would have recognized Sheila – who would still be going by her maiden name when they both worked at WHS from 1962-1968?

 

Final Thoughts

This has been a fascinating, as well as time consuming, bit of genealogical research. I’ve put a lot of hours in over the past two weeks, deciding on a course of action, then pulling together all the necessary pieces that are part of such a project. In the process I’ve learned a lot about the teachers in the Wolcott school system and come to appreciate them perhaps more than I did at the time. They were a dedicated group who had the best interests of all their students in mind. A lot of what I am today I owe not only to my own family, but to the teachers who spent untold hours working with us. In elementary school they saw us for several hours each school day. In high school they might have only seen us in their class for a few hours a week – or perhaps they only saw us for a few minutes in homeroom or at periodic club meetings or perhaps just passing by respectfully in the hall while they watched out for any troublemakers. But regardless of which end of the spectrum of hours they may have interacted with us, they all had a part in our lives and we are better for it.

Go Eagles!

[WHS Eagle – from cover of 1968 yearbook]

 

Too Many Coincidences

I’ve recently started a new genealogy investigation looking for connections between myself and the teachers in my hometown. I have a lot more work to do there, so that will be a later posting. But as I was doing some investigation into one of the WHS teachers, Sheila Crichton, who taught in the science department, I found that she lived at #49 Radcliffe Ave in Waterbury. That triggered an alarm in my head as I silently exclaimed, “I know where that is!” This is the story of what I found out.

(Note that besides all my online research, I also was able to have a phone conversation with Sheila. She has lived in Massachusetts since getting married back in 1968, has had a long career in education, teaching science at the high school and college level up until a few years ago. It was a delight to be able to talk to her and to verify some of the below long-ago information about her family.)

[Sheila Crichton – 1963 yearbook]

 

The Families

There are several families involved in this story. I’m not going to list all I know about each of them here, but as I give a synopsis, I want to concentrate on where each of these families lived at the time, since that’s a major element of the connections that I’ll get into later.

 

Louis Russell Family – My Russell family line goes from my great-grandfather Louis (1870-1946) to my grandfather Erskine (1895-1970) to my father Vernon (1920-2006) to myself (1948-). I’ve written about many of the details of their lives before which you can read here if you desire:

1.      My great-grandfather's history

2.      Our family connections to Scovill Mfg. Co.

3.      My father's history

As noted in (1), my great-grandfather, Louis, was an electrician working for the company which built a new powerplant for Scovill, then got asked to run that plant in 1918 after it was built. In 1918-1920, he and his family lived at 1318 E. Main St, just a quick walk of .2M from the powerplant. This was a large brick 6-family structure. In 1920, Louis bought a house at #57 Radcliffe Ave. He still walked to work, but it was now a mile. He lived there until his passing in January 1946.

Louis’ first wife had passed away in 1903 and he had remarried in 1910 to Helen. Louis had his two daughters from his first marriage still at home when he began living in Waterbury. Pauline married in 1923 and Loretta in 1924 (more on her below). Also living with them during this period was a young granddaughter from Helen’s first marriage, Juanita.

As noted in (2), my grandfather, Erskine, left his wife in 1924. Since his two sisters had recently married and there was room in the house, he went to live with his father, Louis, in Waterbury. Except for a brief period when he and his wife tried to reconcile, he remained living at #57 Radcliffe until he remarried in 1933. He also worked in the powerplant at Scovill with his father. Helen’s granddaughter, Juanita, being of age, also moved out around this time.

Finally, as noted in (3), in 1936, my father and his older sister Dorothy left their mother and step-father and moved to Waterbury where they lived with their grandfather Louis and his wife. Dorothy got a job with Scovill and my father finished high school, graduating in 1938. He then worked for Scovill, walking the same one mile as his grandfather, Louis. He lived at #57 Radcliffe from 1936 until 1944 when he was drafted into WWII.

Louis’ wife, Helen, died in 1945 and Louis died in 1946. The house then passed to their daughter Loretta (see below).

 

Robert Hill Family – In the 1930’s the Hill family was living at #99 Auburn (Auburn St. was later named Atwood St.) This was right around the corner from Radcliffe and only 400’ from #57 Radcliffe. In the home at the time were the father, Frank, and three children – Robert, Harold, and Edith. Robert was the same age as Dorothy [Russell] and they shared a birthday. In 1938, Robert and Dorothy married and they initially remained living with the rest of the Hill family. Dorothy was working as a stenographer for (not surprisingly) Scovill. A few years later, in 1942, they had their first child, Carolyn, and they moved to a house at #80 Midland. This was about a mile “as the crow flies” from #57 Radcliffe, and about 1.6M by road. They remained at this location until the late 1940’s, adding to their family a son, Robert, in 1944.

When my father came home after WWII in April 1946, his grandfather, Louis, and step-grandmother, Helen, had both passed away (Louis just 3 months earlier). The house where he lived before leaving for his Navy Service as now occupied by his aunt and uncle, the MacNaughts (see below). But he was in love with and was corresponding with Sylvia Pierpont. Thus, rather conveniently, his discharge papers listed as his address #80 Midland, i.e., he lived with his sister Dorothy [Hill]. The Pierpont family lived just a short distance (.4M) down E. Main St. He proposed to Sylvia within two weeks that April, purchased a home in Wolcott that summer, and they were married in September. His sister, Dorothy, and his best friend, Robert’s brother Harold, were in the wedding party.

 

George MacNaught Family – George’s family was from Scotland, but they had come to the US in the 1890 and George grew up in Waterbury. George married Loretta [Russell] in 1924. Their daughter, Shirley, was born in 1929. George was working for the Connecticut Company (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connecticut_Company) which ran a whole series of trolley systems. He was part of the Waterbury Division which had ten routes from Waterbury to places like Beacon Falls, Watertown, Thomaston, and Cheshire. During this time the family lived in a variety of places in Waterbury (I have identified at least four addresses). In 1937, the Connecticut Company trolleys in Waterbury ceased running and were replaced by buses. George and his family moved to 2909 E Main St. This was at the foot of the hill that Midland Road ran up, so when their niece, Dorothy [Russell] Hill and family moved there in 1942, they only lived 900’ away. George found new work as a printer.

In 1946, when Loretta’s father passed away, George and Loretta moved back to her family home at #57 Radcliffe (she had lived there from 1920-1924 before she married, and again briefly in the mid-1930’s with her husband, George). Their daughter, Shirley, would have been about 17 at the time. After graduation from high school, Shirley remained at home, working as a stenographer at a bank until her marriage in 1950. George and Loretta remained at this home until his passing in 1973 and hers in 1986.

 

William Meo Family – The Meo family were Italian immigrants and William was born in Waterbury in 1926. In 1950, he married Shirley [MacNaught]. The family moved around a bit in their early married years including when their first child, Cynthia (known as Cindy), was born in 1952. Around the same time, they moved in a home at #99 Atwood (the same house that the Hill family had occupied earlier when the street was named Auburn). Not too long after (sometime between 1955 and 1959), they moved into a house at #76 Atwood, shortening the distance to Shirley’s parents at #57 Radcliffe from 400’ to 200’.

 

The Crichton Family

The Crichton family had emigrated from Scotland around the turn of the century. There were two brothers, George and John. Just to make things confusing, George (whose middle initial was “M” after his mother’s maiden name McCrorie), had sons named John and James. George’s brother John also had sons named George (with the middle initial “M” after his mother’s maiden name McKenzie) as well as sons John and James. (Since they all lived in Waterbury – two named George M, three named John, and two named James – this made tracing them through city directories, etc. especially challenging.)

Concentrating first on the two immigrant brothers, John worked as a blacksmith. Initially he worked doing things like shoeing horses, but as the automotive industry gathered momentum and fewer people owned horses, he later worked in the same capacity as a blacksmith but for one of the many brass companies in town, the American Brass Company (abbreviated ABC) which later became part of Anaconda American Brass Company (abbreviated AABC). George worked as a carpenter, initially for ABC, then later in home construction.

Turning to George (the younger), like the rest of the Crichton family, he was trained in the trades, specifically becoming a plumber. His father got him a job working for ABC. In September, 1939, George married Mary Mccarthy.

 

The Connections

Unlike all the other families above, there are no genealogical connections between the Crichton family and the others I have outlined (except as I note below in connection #5). But there are a whole bunch of other connections that are the focus of this posting.

Connection #1 – Location – As I have noted above, the house at #57 Radcliffe plays a prominent part in all the families. When George and Mary married in 1939, the house they moved into was #49 Radcliffe – right next door to Louis Russell and his family – which at the time included my father. My father’s sister, Dorothy, lived right around the corner. The below 1940 census (taken in April 1940) documents this, but what it does not show is that Mary Crichton was four months pregnant as Sheila Crichton was born in September of that year. George and Mary lived in the house from 1939 until Mary’s death in 1984 at the age of 70. George then moved to Massachusetts to live near his daughter, Sheila, until he passed away in 1993 at the age of 88.

[1940 census]

 

Sheila remembers fondly the MacNaughts who lived next door as well as their daughter, Shirley. She also remembers that Shirley married William (Bill) Meo and that they lived right around the corner. Bill and Shirley’s daughter, Cindy, took part in Sheila’s wedding in 1968 (she would have been about 16).

Connection #2 – Occupation – George Crichton was a plumber, but he was working in the powerhouse for ABC. His next-door neighbor, Louis, although twice his age, was working in the powerhouse for Scovill. These powerhouses turned the energy from running water (in ABC’s case, the Naugatuck River, in Scovill’s case, the Mad River) into electricity to drive the brass-making operation. While Louis’ expertise was on the electrical side and George’s expertise was on the water side, I can imagine that they had many interesting conversations about their respective operations.

Connection #3 – Name and Country of origin – George Crichton was from Scotland. When his original neighbor, Louis Russell, passed away in early 1946, the house at #57 became the home of Louis’ daughter Loretta and son-in-law, George MacNaught. George MacNaught was also from Scotland. The Crichtons only had one child, a daughter name Sheila. The MacNaughts also only had one child, a daughter named Shirley. The two Scottish Georges enjoyed being neighbors for over a quarter century – from 1946 until George MacNaught’s death in 1973.

Connection #4 – Wolcott High School – My parents moved to Wolcott, the next town to the north, when they married in 1946. I attended Wolcott High School from 1962-1966 (I was actually there for the 1961-1962 year as well as part of the eighth grade was in the same building). My Hill relatives also moved to Wolcott. There was initially no high school, so my cousin Carolyn attended high school in Waterbury, but my cousin Robert was part of the initial graduating class of WHS in 1962.

Meanwhile, Sheila Crichton finished high school in Waterbury in 1958 and went to college during 1958-1962. She studied science and education. She continued living with her parents at #49 Radcliffe. Her first teaching assignment after graduation in 1962 was at WHS which was about 5 miles away. She remained on staff there until getting married in 1968 and moving to Massachusetts. I have her picture in my high school yearbook. As someone who excelled in math and science during my high school years, I encountered her many times during my years there. Sheila would have also encountered my sister who was a year younger and at WHS from 1963-1967.

Connection #5 – Late-in-life Marriage – When Sheila’s mother passed away in 1984, her father, George, moved to Massachusetts to be closer to his daughter. There he met a widow, Lillian [Peck] Osborne, whose first husband had passed away in 1985. They married a few years later, both being in their early 80’s. They have since both passed on and are buried in a cemetery in Dennis Port, MA, under a “family gravestone”. There are seven names on the gravestone: George W Rogers and his wife Maude (Lillian’s maternal grandparents), Joseph S Peck and wife Hattie (Lillian’s parents), Laurence L Osborne (Lillian’s first husband), Lillian [Peck] [Osborne] Crichton, and George M Crichton.

[Rogers Gravestone]

 

With those last names and being in New England, I was pretty certain that I could find a genealogical connection to them, so I did some further investigation and was able to confirm my suspicions. George Washington Rogers is my 5^th cousin, 4 times removed – our common connection being my great*8 grandfather, John Rogers (1642-1713). And Joseph Sydney Peck is my 8^th cousin, twice removed – our common connection being my great*9 grandfather Robert Peck (1546-1593).

 

Conclusion

Last year I worked on a project to see what genealogical connections I could find to my high school classmates. I am now working on an extension of that project that is looking at the various teachers in elementary/high school. But since I have so much genealogical information memorized, when I saw Sheila’s address, it triggered me to do some further checking. I’ve probably spent 15-20 hours doing the research above – looking at census records, city directories, maps, and other sources. Some might say that’s a waste of time, but it keeps from getting bored and keeps my mind active so I can stave off any potential dementia. So, to me, it’s fun! And being able to have a phone conversation with Sheila was the “icing on the cake.” While she and I are not related by blood (that I have been able to uncover), we are step-10^th cousins as well as step-8^th cousins once removed through her step-mother Lillian [Peck] [Osborne] Crichton. So, I’ll be happy to call her “cousin” anyway!

Book Writing and Publishing

Recently our church secretary, Laura, posted a picture of herself signing a contract for a book that she is writing. In talking to her earlier this week, she said that the book is due to the publisher in August – just a few months away. Her book, a work of fiction, is one of a group of books each being written by a different individual that will be part of a series. I always enjoy interacting with people who have God-given talents that are different than my own. I’ve said about some who are artistic that they have more art ability in their little finger than I have in my whole body. And I could say the same thing about some who are experts in small engines, in plumbing, in nursing, and many other skills/professions.

Now, I have several books with my name on/in them on Amazon.com, but what makes Laura’s talent different than my own? I thought I’d explore what the talents are that I have by looking at what my role has been in the production of these books. While I have blogged about these books in the past (see here and here), it was primarily just a list of the books and not what was involved. Here is the most recent list of these books. But now I want to dwell on the process and not the contents.

1.      3/2009 – College Daze

2.      3/2009 – My Father’s Love

3.      5/2009 – Special Poems for Special People

4.      9/2009 – The Replacement

5.      6/2010 – My Legacy

6.      7/2010 – Sir Marrok

7.      8/2010 – Thoughts to Ponder

8.      11/2010 – The Complete Sir Marrok

9.      7/2011 – Passing it On: Lessons Learned in Life

10.   5/2013 – Calvinism in Light of the General Tenor of the Scripture

11.   4/2014 – My Life

12.   3/2015 – He Gave Me a Song

13.   11/2015 – Journeys with God (see story here)

14.   9/2017 – Then and Now

15.   10/2017 – Introdukshon di Bukinan di Testament Bieu (Old Testament overview)

16.   12/2017 – Excellent Marriage

17.   5/2018 – And He Wiped Away the Tears

18.   2/2022 – A Great Depression Baby

There are books of poetry (#1, #2, #3, #5, #17), autobiographies (#9, #11, #12, #14, #18), devotionals (#7, #13), fiction (#6, #8), Christian theology (#10, #15, #16), and true-life stories (#4).

 

Publishing

One of the skills that I learned early on was the process of working through the self-publishing procedure. Initially this was through an Amazon subsidiary called CreateSpace, but more recently that product has been absorbed into KindleDirect. Using my computer skills to register a book, getting it into the format necessary for these products to accept, formatting an appropriate cover, etc. These are things that most people find daunting and I have mastered so I can relieve them of having to learn all that is involved. I have done this for all the books in the list above.

 

Formatting

Some people are sufficiently skilled that they can create a formatted and properly edited document (generally using the power of MS-Word). For others, while they can produce the basic content, things like putting the document in proper page size (6”x9” instead of 8.5”x11”) with an appropriate (and consistent) font, adding page numbers, putting in chapter breaks and having MS-Word produce the table of contents, etc. are beyond their word processing skills. Often this also includes using my well-developed grammatical skills to find the misspelled words, the missing commas, and other inconsistencies. I have used these skills in most of the above books – with the exception of #9-13, #15-17 as using MS-Word as a tool is getting more common.

 

Typing and/or Data Conversion

Sometimes the “raw material” for the book is not even available as an MS-Word document. All the early books of poetry (#1-3, #5) were only available as type-written or even hand-written pages from prior decades which I had to type into a document. In the case of #6, the original book was from 1905 and was only available as a scanned PDF (in poor condition) so while I could use a pdf-to-MS-Word program to make the initial pass, there was a lot of manual checking and manual updates needed as well. Finally, in another case (#7), the devotionals had been written over a series of years and were done using a number of different word processors depending on what the author had available at the time. So, I had to convert each of the 366 devotionals to a common format.

 

Providing Content

For most of these books, the content was provided by someone else. But there were some where I contributed content. Obviously, the books that I wrote (a book of poetry #1, and my autobiography #11) were in this category. But in the case of #4, the basic material was a series of monographs. I had to put them in chronological order, and eliminate the duplicate stories that were sometimes in more than one monograph. But there was a transitional chapter needed between the end of the war stories and later stories about individuals that Bob had met after the war. So, I wrote the necessary short chapter to provide that transition.

In addition, for #8, the original author of #6 had ended one chapter with a brief outline of a couple of events that he said he would not cover, then he picked up the story a few days later in the life of the main character. So, I challenged myself and wrote the “missing” chapters, writing in the same style as the original author and making the story fit both the timeline as well as the general outline of the alluded-to stories. This was the only real fiction that I wrote in all the above books.

 

Other Technical Challenges

There were a few unique situations that I had to deal with.

#15 is a commentary on the Old Testament, but it is written in Papiamentu, the Spanish Creole language of the islands of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curacao that also contains admixtures of Portuguese and Dutch. Thus, the entire book is in a language that I do not speak or even read (in fact there are only 340,000 native speakers of this language). So, I could not do my normal editing and had to just ignore the fact that MS-Word flagged nearly every word as being misspelled. Seeing pages and pages of words underlined in red was a unique experience! This is also the only book I published in 8.5x11 format.

Finally, while it’s not one of the above books, I recall my first exercise in preparing a book. In 1984-85, back long before Microsoft Windows or MS-Word, I had the opportunity to help a missionary friend prepare his doctoral dissertation for a PhD in Missiology. Not only did I use many of the above skills of formatting, editing, etc., but there were technical challenges such as designing character sets for Hebrew and Greek (which did not yet exist), and operating in the environment of diskettes (hard drives were not yet available on the early IBM-PC), near-letter-quality (NLQ) printers (laser printers did not yet exist either), and the printing of a 600+ page (single-spaced) document. His dissertation became the basis for several books he later wrote. (I’ve given a lot of details here if you are interested.)

 

Best Experiences

Bob Kauffman (book #4) was very invested in his stories and had memorized most of them. But having a published book propelled him to a new level of acceptance. In the years after the release of his book (it was published in 2009 and he died in 2013), he gave speeches to various local civic organizations, in schools, etc. He was invited to be one of the featured speakers at the annual Remembrance Day at Gettysburg National Park. And he recited one of the stories at the Normandy Cemetery in France. This latter one was recorded in 2012 and can be viewed on YouTube here – I encourage you to watch it, he is reciting from memory the last chapter of his book.

The other one that I get emotional about was related to the book of poems written by my mother-in-law (book #3). In her final year or so of life, we had her moved into a nursing home and my wife spent several months living in Michigan to help coordinate her care. We were also working on cleaning out her house and one of the things I came across was a large box of all the poems that she had written. There was no organization to them, most of them were written on scraps of paper and often with carbon sheets so she could have several copies. We made the decision to organize them and publish them for all her family members to enjoy. It took a few months and a lot of work, but I did so, then brought several copies with me on one of the many trips to Michigan I made during that year. She was by then an older person, living in a nursing home, and being very hard of hearing had little interaction with the staff. But when we made a presentation of several copies of her book, she became an instant celebrity. Instead of being an old, mostly ignored, lady, she was now a published author. They paid to have her hair done in the local solon and got her picture taken for the nursing home newsletter. For the remaining months of her life, when you entered the nursing home, a copy of her book was prominently displayed on a table right inside the front door as you entered the lobby. From ignored to important – just because she had written a book! It was a pleasure being able to give her that experience.

 

Conclusion

I am not, and never will be, a famous author. But through my efforts, I’ve had the opportunity to help many others (mostly my age and older) to see a dream be realized and to have what for many is their life’s work be turned into a physical book with their name on the cover. They can then “go out in style”, knowing that at least some of their life experiences will not be forgotten and can be passed on to future generations. Seeing the smiles on their faces makes my effort all worthwhile.

I conclude here with a copy of the covers of the books I have helped to publish. Each one is unique and each one worthwhile reading.