Genealogy Story – Russell Family Migration

While researching something else on behalf of a friend recently, I came across an interesting fact that I had not known before. That started me thinking on the topic of why people move from one area to another. I’ll mention the interesting fact later in this post, but I want to put it in the entire context of the migration of the Russell family from their origin about 1000 years ago until now.

Prior to coming to the US

As I have posted earlier, the Russell family name began in Normandy, France in about the year 1000. However, they were only there a short time. In 1066, the Baron Hugh de Rozel went to England with William the Conqueror’s army as they defeated the tribes there. After the defeat, the Russell family settled in the south of England in Dorset. They were there for 4-5 generations, then moved to Strensham in Worcestershire. They remained in that part of England for several hundred years until the late 1500’s, then briefly moved to Yorkshire. It was from Yorkshire that Robert Russell migrated to America, specifically Andover, MA, about 1640. So there were only a few moves of any consequence in the first 600+ years of the family.

Massachusetts to New York

It was only a few generations later that the Russell family began disbursing. Some of them headed north into New Hampshire, but my great*6-grandfather, Robert Russell (1722-1784) moved to Westchester County, NY in the mid-1700’s. Records are somewhat sparse from back then, but the Russell family were farmers and the stop in Westchester County was a brief one as he later moved to Putnam County, NY and then on to Dutchess County, NY.

Settling in Dutchess County, then a move to Connecticut

The Russell family stayed in Dutchess County for about 100 years and continued to farm. John Russell (1756-1820) was in the county by 1772, Caleb Russell (1780-) lived his entire life there, and Silas Russell (1803-1886) lived there until the late 1870’s. All were farmers and according to census records did not know how to read or write. Walter Russell (1852-1895) was also born in Dover, Dutchess County, but he decided to better himself and move on. By 1870 he had moved to Kent, CT, just a few miles to the east of Dover. By 1880 the family had moved a few miles to the south to New Milford, CT. There he learned how to be a millwright and not a farmer like his father.

Moving around Connecticut

My great-grandfather, Louis Russell (1871-1946), was born in Kent, but grew up in New Milford. He learned how to be a millwright from his father. He initially worked for the New England Lime and Cement Company, then trained to be an electrician and began working for the Tucker Electrical Construction Company.

Here’s where the interesting fact I learned comes into play. During WWI, Connecticut produced nearly ¾ of the brass munitions used by the US. There were a number of large brass mills in Waterbury, CT, one of which was Scovill Manufacturing Company. When Russia entered the war, they wanted to have access to these same sorts of brass munitions. Czar Nicholas II paid Scovill to build a new power plant so they could increase their production and sell this increase to him. The Tucker Electrical Construction Company was selected by Scovill to build this new power plant. So my great-grandfather moved his family to Waterbury during the war to help build this new power plant – a move that was funded by the Russians!

When the plant was finished, my great-grandfather was hired by Scovill to help run the plant that he had helped build. So on August 26, 1918, the Russell family began working for Scovill – a relationship that lasted for over 60 years.

My grandfather, Erskine Russell (1894-1970), had been born in Sherman, CT (just outside of New Milford). He married when the family still lived in New Milford in 1914, but when the US entered the war he and his wife moved to Bridgeport, CT where there was work available. My aunt and my father were born there. But my grandparents’ marriage was not going well and they separated in 1924. My grandmother remained in Bridgeport, but Erskine moved to Waterbury where he lived with his father, Louis, and step-mother. Louis got him a job working in the power plant. Erskine moved out (just a few blocks away) for a short time in 1928 as he attempted to reconcile with his wife, but that did not work out, so they divorced and he moved back to his father’s house. He got married a second time in 1933 and moved across town, but he continued to work with his father in the power plant.

My father, Vernon Russell (1920-2006) moved around quite a lot – being born in Bridgeport, then with his mother to Waterbury for a short time as mentioned above, then back to Bridgeport, then to New Milford, then to Danbury when his mother remarried a much older man (30 years older). In 1937 he moved to Waterbury to finish high school, living with his grandfather. After graduation he also began working for Scovill in 1939 where he worked until 1981.

There was a short break from that work in 1944-1946 when he was in the Navy in WWII. His grandfather finally retired from Scovill in 1945 and died just a few months later. Freed from the oversight of his father, Erskine also resigned from Scovill in 1945 and began working for Pinkerton as a security guard.

Meanwhile, my father returned from the war in 1946, lived briefly with his sister just mile or so away, then married and moved to the next town, Wolcott, where he lived until his passing in 2006.

Recent years

People are much more mobile these days. While I worked in CT for a few years after getting married, I got a job offer and moved to Pennsylvania in 1975 where I still live. My son was born here, worked in New Jersey, after graduating from college, for 15 years, then recently moved to Florida, but staying with the same company.

So – from France to England to Massachusetts to New York to Connecticut to Pennsylvania to Florida. Many moves and for a variety of reasons. But we are still all Russells and still all connected.

Famous and not-so-famous Russells

On a couple of occasions over the past few weeks I’ve felt challenged to see if someone with the Russell surname was related to me. Since I’ve been able to track my Russell ancestors back to the origin of the family name nearly 1000 years ago, this is just a matter of tracking the other person’s ancestry to see if it intersects with mine.

Sometimes it’s obvious that there is no easy connection. For example, the actresses Jane Russell and Roselind Russell both track their ancestry back to Ireland. I really would have liked to find a connection to Roselind Russell because she was born in Waterbury, CT – the same place that I was. But I have not yet been successful in finding connections between the Irish Russells and the English Russells that are in my family tree, so I wrote those off as something I don’t have the time for now.

Similarly, I have not tried to follow the family trees of individuals such as comedian Nipsey Russell or basketball great Bill Russell as I’m not sure how to follow the genealogy lines of African-Americans.

But in other searches I have been successful. I saw a quote that was attributed to the English philosopher Bertrand Russell and wondered about any connection. He is descended from a long line of English Royalty (Earls and Dukes) which is fairly well documented back into the 1400s. From that point I was able to refer to a resource that I have on the Tudor line of Russells and take his family tree back to the 1100s. It was finally there that it intersected my own family line. So I have now established that Bertrand Russell is my 17^th cousin, 6 times removed – certainly not a close connection, but a connection nonetheless.

More recently, I had a meeting with a man in NY who said that he had a Russell connection in Dutchess County NY which is where my Russell ancestors lived from the late 1700s until the late 1870s. I thought surely that would be a great connection. I started by locating his father’s obituary which mentioned his Aunt Thelma Russell (her married name). I was then able to find another obituary for Thelma’s sister-in-law which gave the name of Thelma’s father-in-law, i.e. the Russell ancestry. From there it was simply a matter of tracing census records back through several generations. I thought I hit a snag in just a few generations when I found that the next generation back was born in NJ and he was married to someone from RI. So that line of Russells did not move to NY until after my relatives had left that area and moved to CT.

But I decided to continue on anyway and was rewarded when in the next generation I found that they had come from NH. At that point I was pretty sure that I would find a connection because I knew that my Russell ancestors who had come to America in the mid-1600s and lived in Andover, MA and some of them had moved just a few miles north to NH. I was able to eventually make a connection back in Andover, MA. So instead of this gentleman from NY having a connection to me in Dutchess County, NY, I found that his aunt (who is still living but has severe dementia) is my father’s 8^th cousins. Again, not a real close connection like I hoped I would have found, but a connection nonetheless.

The study of genealogy and how it intersects with geography as people move and with history in terms of what was going on at the time is always very interesting to me.

Genealogy Story – Henry Ward Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe

In an earlier story (http://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2016/05/afs-hillary-clinton-and-my-ancestors.html) I talked about the history of Brooklyn Heights and the role that one of my ancestors, Hezekiah Pierrepont, had in establishing that community. In one of the reference articles (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooklyn_Heights) it noted that prior to the Civil War, Brooklyn Heights was a locus of the abolitionist movement, primarily due to the speeches and activities of Henry Ward Beecher.

My great*3 grandfather, Austin Pierpont, married a woman named Sally Beecher. Hezekiah’s son Henry (a contemporary of Austin) would have been Austin’s 3^rd cousin. But on the other side of the family, Henry Ward Beecher and his older sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe, were both 5^th cousins of Sally. So that means that Hezekiah, Henry, and Harriet are also cousins of mine (with a few extra “removed”s added in).

Both Henry (1813-1887) and Harriet (1811-1896) were born in Litchfield, CT, where their father, Lyman Beecher (1775-1863) had moved in 1810. Lyman was then a Calvinist preacher, having received his education at Yale under the tutelage of Timothy Dwight, then the president of Yale. And with yet another family connection, Timothy was the grandson of Jonathan Edwards and Sarah Pierpont, the daughter of the founder of Yale, James Pierpont (my great*7 grandfather).

That means that two of the most well-known leaders in the abolitionist/anti-slavery movement are not only my cousins, but the religious basis for that was passed to them from the Pierpont family – starting with the Rev. James, to his son-in-law, Jonathan Edwards, then to Jonathan’s grandson Timothy Dwight, then to Lyman Beecher, then to Lyman’s children Henry and Harriet – everyone in this chain being my ancestors/relatives!

In his later life Lyman was known as “America’s most famous preacher”. Harriet of course is well-known for her novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin which was written in 1852. But I want to focus a little more on the activities of Henry.

Henry Ward Beecher was the first pastor of the Plymouth Church which was founded in 1847 in Brooklyn (then a separate city from New York). He preached at that church for over 40 years until his passing in 1887. Plymouth Church was known as the “Grand Central Station of the Underground Railroad” for the number of slaves it was said had passed through on their way to freedom in Canada. Henry once brought a female slave to the church and held an auction, with the highest bidder purchasing not the slave, but her freedom.

In 1859, the church offered Abraham Lincoln $200 for coming to Brooklyn and giving a lecture to the congregation, Lincoln accepted and participated in the church service on Sunday February 26, 1860 – remember that he was not elected President until that fall. His actual address the next day was moved to Cooper Union because of the high demand. This tie to Lincoln continued over the following years.

In 1863, during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln sent Beecher on a speaking tour of Europe to build support for the Union cause. Beecher's speeches helped turn European popular sentiment against the rebel Confederate States of America and prevent its recognition by foreign powers. At the close of the war in April 1865, Beecher was invited to speak at Fort Sumter, South Carolina, where the first shots of the war had been fired; Lincoln had again personally selected him, stating, "We had better send Beecher down to deliver the address on the occasion of raising the flag because if it had not been for Beecher there would have been no flag to raise."

I am happy to have such individuals in my family tree – Hezekiah and Henry Pierrepont who were instrumental in the founding of Brooklyn; James Pierpont, Jonathan Edwards and Timothy Dwight who helped make Yale one of the premier institutions in the US; and Lyman, Henry Ward and Harriet Beecher who had such key roles in the Civil War.

Genealogy Story – Finding Juanita

I had written in a few stories last year (http://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2015/02/genealogy-story-tracing-female-ancestors.html and http://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2015/02/genealogy-story-louis-russell.html) about my great-grandfather Louis Russell and his second wife Helen [Madigan] [Pulver] [Waldron] Russell. In the first story I had mentioned Helen’s granddaughter, Juanita Woodcock who lived with them while she was growing up. This is her story.

Juanita was the youngest daughter of Helen’s daughter Lola [Pulver] and her husband George Woodcock. Lola and George married in 1906 and had four daughters, Lola (1907), Ethel (1908), Ruby (1910), and Juanita (1914). In the 1910 census just the two older girls are with them, but also living in the same household are George’s mother Sarah, Lola’s sister Eva (18 at the time), and a “lodger” named Luther Peet (also 18). Eva and Luther eventually married.

Sometime around 1917 the family split up and the four daughters were “farmed out” to others. Lola was adopted by another family. I have not yet found what happened to Ethel and Ruby, but Juanita went to live with her grandmother and step-grandfather in Waterbury, CT. She lived with them until she came of age (she can be found there in the 1920 and 1930 census when she was 6 and 16 respectively). (I suspect that she left around the time that my father and aunt left Danbury and moved in with Louis and Helen around 1936/1937. My father remained there until he went off to WWII in 1944 and by the time he returned in 1946 both Louis and Helen had passed on.)

In the course of my genealogy research I was able to complete much of the family tree of Juanita’s aunt Eva and made contact with the great-granddaughter of Eva who lives in Massachusetts. Recently we had a phone conversation and I learned that she had in her possession several journals/diaries of Eva. She is going through them herself and has promised to share them with me so I can examine them as well.

A few days ago she said that she found an entry in the 1965 journal that said that Juanita had a new address – in New Milford NJ and she gave me the address. This was the key to solving the problem of what happened to Juanita. While I still don’t know that happened to her between the mid-1930’s and 1965, I know where she spent the last few decades of her life.

Doing a search for records in New Milford, NJ, and looking for anyone named Juanita, I found Juanita Kohlhase at the same address in New Milford that was in the diary. I then looked for further information on other Kohlhase family members at that same address and found two – Harry and David. In checking, I found that David was born in the 1950’s, but Harry was his father and was about Juanita’s age. I then located a family tree that had both Harry and David in it – and found Juanita (without a last name).

Harry’s first wife had passed away in 1963. Juanita moved to that house in June of 1965 and Harry and Juanita married in December of that year (according to the family tree I found). They lived together until 1986 when Juanita passed away (confirmed by her social security death record which has the correct date of birth for her). Her SS# was registered in NY when it was issued – which would have been sometime shortly after the SS system became live in around 1937 or 1938.

So it appears that Juanita moved to NY when she left the home of her grandparents in 1936 or so. Then in 1965 she moved to NJ where she lived out her life. Evidently she did remain in touch with the rest of the family during that time. I’m looking forward to finding further references to her in her aunt’s journals so I can fill in the missing pieces.

It’s amazing to me how just the finding of one tiny piece of information can help break through the brick wall of missing information. In this case it was a journal entry which had an exact address. When I recently tried to track down some of my high school friends for our upcoming 50^th high school reunion, it was things like remembering the exact date of someone’s birth (for a girl who was one day younger than I), or knowing what town someone moved to (for a friend who I rode the bus to/from school with). Genealogy is an amazing discovery process – and one that I will never be “done” with.

Genealogy Story – The Reno Nevada Connection

My maternal grandmother, Sara [Blackman] Pierpont, was the middle child of three. She had an older brother, Stanley, and a younger sister, Edna. This story is mostly about Stanley, but Sara and Edna both figure into it.

The Blackman family, Clarence and Alice [Talmadge], lived in Prospect, CT. Stanley was born in 1893, Sara in 1898, and Edna in 1906. Stanley was a salesman. He married a girl, Bessie Riggs, from Newburgh, NY in 1913 when he was 20. They had two sons. The first, Elmer, was born in 1914 in Waterbury, CT. But following WWI, they were evidently not doing well financially, and by 1920 they had moved in with Bessie’s parents and her sister back in Newburgh. It was there that their second son, Stephen, was born in 1923.

Meanwhile, in 1919 Sara had married a young man who lived nearby in Prospect, Harold Pierpont. They began what would eventually be a family of five children – Clarence (1920 – named after his maternal grandfather, but always called “Zeke”), Alice (1922 – named after her maternal grandmother, but always called “Allie”), Sylvia (1924), Richard (1926 – but always called “Dick”), and Violet (1929).

In June of 1929, Clarence Blackman passed away, followed only three months later by the passing of his wife Alice. The three Blackman children decided that the house in Prospect should be given to Edna as Stanley already had a family and a job and Sara was raising her family in Waterbury – just a few miles away. So at the age of 23, Edna, now a single lady with no parents, became the owner of the family home in Prospect.

However, it appears that things were not going well in Stanley’s life. Just a few months later (in the 1930 census), Stanley can be found living with his younger sister Edna in the family home in Prospect (where she is listed as the head of house). Bessie and her two sons were still living in NY with her parents. Stanley and Bessie had separated.

By late that same year, even more changes were in store. Stanley had evidently begun courting a lady in Hartford, Eda [Beaupre] Lapointe. But Eda was already married to her husband Victor and had two daughters, Joyce and Hope (then ages 11 and 7). Since Eda was still living with her Victor in 1930, it can only be speculated why she was agreeable to being courted by Stanley. Perhaps it was because Victor was Canadian and made frequent trips back to Quebec to visit his family and Eda wanted to become more “American”. Whatever the reason, Stanley and Eda wanted to get married, but since they were both currently married to others, they needed a “quickie” divorce first and the only place to do so was in Nevada.

So in the middle of a cold winter day sometime in mid-December of 1930, Stanley and Eda set off on a cross country drive from Prospect, CT, to Nevada. Eda’s two daughters, Joyce and Hope, went along for the ride, and so did Edna.

I heard stories about this when I was growing up, but like many stories I believe that things got changed a little in the telling. My uncle Zeke thought that this happened in the late 1920’s, but he was off a year or so. And my mother (Sylvia) thought that Aunt Edna went along as a chaperon, but I suspect it was more as someone to watch the two girls.

But for whatever reason, Stanley and Eda arrived in Nevada (filed for divorce in Reno on December 16th) and waited the requisite 6 weeks to establish “residency.” On February 2^nd, 1931, Stanley divorced Bessie, Eda divorce Vincent, and then Stanley and Eda got married. I’m not sure if Stanley officially adopted Joyce and Hope at the same time, but they did take on the Blackman last name.

Divorce isn’t a big deal these days, but back in the early 1930’s this was pretty scandalous! And although Nevada had allowed such “quickie” divorces beginning in 1911, it wasn’t until the late 1930’s that it earned the title of “Divorce Capital” due to several Hollywood couples going there for that reason.

After driving back across the country to CT, Stanley, Eda, Joyce and Hope settled into a new life in Hartford. Edna remained in Prospect for a while, then she sold the family home and moved into an apartment in Hartford where she worked for the State government until she retired (she lived in that same apartment for about 60 years). Joyce and Hope grew up, married, and raised their families in the same area.

When I was trying to flesh out my family tree a few years ago, I thought that I should try to track down Joyce and Hope and see what happened to them. I was able to make contact with Joyce’s oldest son, Herb Andrus, who still lives in the Hartford area (he’s only two years older than I). I talked to him on the phone and was able to send him some of the information I had on his step-grandfather’s family. I also learned a few very interesting things.

Our family had always had a close connection to my great-aunt Edna, visiting her in her apartment in Hartford, having her stay at our home on occasion, and having her as part of the greater Pierpont family for Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc. My mother and my uncle Dick were the executors of her estate when she passed away in 1997. But we had had little to no contact with great-uncle Stanley and his family as he was kind of a “black sheep” due to this divorce/re-marriage in Las Vegas. But my great-aunt Edna evidently kept in touch – not only with her older brother Stanley, but with his children – both from his first wife and his second wife. While we had been visiting “Aunt Edna” in the assisted living home where she spent her last few years, Herb and his brother had as well – but Aunt Edna had never told us (at least to my knowledge). And Herb’s brother, Scott, even had the middle name Talmadge which had been the maiden name of his step-great-grandmother.

So, while I never knew much about this branch of the family tree when I was growing up, I’m happy to have been able to make the connection with my step-second-cousins.

Finding New Cousins

The focus of much genealogical work is tracing one’s family tree back through the generations. And I have done a good amount of that. But I also decided that I wanted to find all my Russell cousins who were still living. While finding ancestors has many challenges, finding living relatives has its own set of challenges. Some of these are (1) census records are not released until 72 years after they are taken, so many of your relatives may not be found in places like ancestry.com; (2) it’s a moving target – both geographically as more recent generations are much more likely to change locations, but because new family members are always being acquired through marriages, birth of children, etc.; and (3) if one of your relatives has built a family tree in ancestry.com living individuals are screened from view of others.

I have two fairly large documents of descendant Russell family that I have been building. One is all the descendants of my great-great-grandfather, Walter J. Russell (1852-1895). These would be all my first, second, and third cousins. The other goes back one more generation to Silas Russell (1803-1886) and contains all my fourth cousins. This latter document still has a lot of “holes” and unfinished research, so I’ll focus on the first document in this blog.

Walter was married twice. He had six children with his first wife and four with his second. However, three of these children never married, one married but had no children, and one I have not been able to find any further information on. Still that leaves five family lines to try to trace and find all the living individuals at the end of each branch. Here are some of the methods I used to fill out this extensive family tree.

Personal Knowledge

A good place to start any investigation is by recording what facts you actually know yourself. In this case, I knew all my first cousins, all my aunts and uncles, and many of my great-aunts and great-uncles. Even if I hadn’t seen some of them in over 50 years, I recorded what/who I knew and approximate ages, relationships, etc.

Phone Calls

I used whitepages.com to try and find phone numbers for any of the near relatives who appeared to be living in the towns where I knew them. If I could get a phone number, then I called them, introduced myself to them (for some it had been 50 years since we had communicated), then asked them about other family members.

Obituaries

A good source of information are obituaries which can be found in the archives of the newspapers or funeral homes where the individual had their funeral. Many of these are searchable via google and give details like dates, names of parents, maiden names, names of children and their spouses and where they were living at the time, etc.

Google Searches

Sometimes just open-ended Google searches may locate information for you. I’ve gotten pretty good at structuring searches to locate individuals.

Ancestry.com

While there are not as many resources that contain information on living individuals, there is some – if you know where to look for it. One that I’ve used on a couple of occasions is a database of all marriages in CT between 1959 and 2001. Since I, and many of my relatives, are from CT, this has been quite useful.

DNA Matching

Although I had documented what I thought were all of my cousins, as I mentioned in an earlier posting, I was surprised to find a new cousin through DNA matching.

Facebook

Once I have found one relative through the above methods, I often see if they have an account in Facebook. If they do, then I look through their friend list (assuming that it’s public) and see what other people with the same last name they have as friends. I note all the ones I find and use this as a starting point for trying to find other of my relatives.

Conclusion

It takes a lot of work to do this sort of “forward searching” instead of the more typical ancestor searching. But the results for me have meant making connections to many cousins whom I did not know existed before and some new friendships.

My Royal and Famous Relations

I have previously documented (http://ramblinrussells.blogspot.com/2015/05/genealogy-story-scandinavian-roots.html) how my Russell ancestry can be traced back to the origin of the Russell name in Normandy, France, about 1000 years ago. I documented at that same time the connections from that first Russell to his Scandinavian ancestors. One of the more important in that lineage was Ragvnald I Earl of Orkey Eysteinsson (830-894). Besides being the founder of Normandy, he is the direct ancestor to most of the royal families in Europe.

Ragvnald is my 34^th great-grandfather. Here is his biography (https://familysearch.org/photos/stories/26170199). And here is one account of the family line around that time (http://www.ffish.com/family_tree/Descendants_Halfdan_Sveidasson/D1.htm).

But it is through one of his great-grandsons, Hugh Capet (938-996), that most of the European royalty are connected. Here is a webpage that lists some of the famous descendants of Hugh Capet (http://famouskin.com/famous-kin-menu.php?name=4190+hugh+capet). Some of these include:

·         Most of the US presidents, from George Washington (my 26^th cousin), to Thomas Jefferson (my 26^th cousin), FDR (my 29^th cousin), and many others

·         Charles Darwin (my 28^th cousin)

·         Douglas MacArthur (my 29^th cousin), George Patten (my 31^st cousin)

·         Queen Elizabeth II (my 30^th cousin)

While these cousin relations are a little far removed and so I would not feel comfortable calling them “cousin,” that does not change the fact that these relationships exist. But it’s fun to know just the same!