Mary Whitcomb (1751-1828) (52 Ancestors 2020 Week 10) Theme: "Strong Woman"

Giving birth under a bush while fleeing with her husband and several young daughters in the aftermath of Shay's Rebellion puts my 4th great grandmother Mary high on my list of strong female ancestors.

Mary Whitcomb was born 23 October 1751 in Warren, Worcester, Massachusetts, the youngest of 10 children born to James and Sarah (Winslow) Whitcomb. Mary's parents had both been married and widowed previously, James to three cousins in succession, none of whom had produced any children, and Sarah to Thomas Lincoln by whom she had three children. Several of Mary's older siblings were a full generation older than she was! Her father died when she was 11 and her mother when Mary was 19.

At the age of  20, Mary married John Bullen in Warren, Worcester, MA. John had been born in Brimfield, MA in 1747 to John and Abigail (Greene) Bullen, but had moved  to Ware by the time of his marriage. Baby girls started arriving within a couple of years and regularly thereafter: Anna (c.1774), Mary Polly (1777), Demia (1778), Ascha (1779). While Mary was busy producing all these daughters, her husband John was operating a tavern at "Bullon's Corners" on the turnpike at Ware. Assuming this was also the location of the family home, it is quite likely that Mary would have assisted with operating the tavern as well.

John enlisted in the American army during the War of Independence. First, he was on the payroll of Captain Breakenridge's Company of Militia in 1777. On 5 June 1780, John Bullen of Ware is among the men raised to reinforce the Continental army for the term of 6 months. They arrived at Springfield 13 July 1780 and marched to camp under command of Captain Thomas Pritchard. He was discharged 8 December 1780  and is credited as serving for 5 months, 3 days.

No children were added to the family between 1779 and 1783, probably a bit of a relief to Mary even though it was while her husband was involved in fighting the Revolutionary War. Finally, Mary and John's girls were joined by a brother, another John (1783) and yet another girl, Irene (c.1785).

Mary's son John Bullen (1783-1850)
(Sadly no photographs are available from the time of his mother Mary's life)

After the end of the Revolutionary War, all was not well in the new country. Economic and cultural injustices led to an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the new government during Shay's Rebellion (1786-1787). John is said to have served as a captain in the affair and is often thereafter referred to as "Captain John". Life must have been chaotic during those years for both John and Mary and their growing family of young children. After the suppression of the rebellion, 18 men were sentenced to death and escaped into neighbouring states to avoid their fate. John fled with Mary and all their young children to Paris Hills, Clinton (Oneida) N.Y., a distance of some 200 miles.

Escape from Warren, MA to Clinton, NY 

It was during this escape, sometime in 1787, that Mary inconveniently went into labour. She gave birth to daughter Pamela under a bush (or in a bush hut, according to some reports). Both mother and baby daughter survived, attesting to the strength of this family. (A recent DNA match between our family and a descendant of Pamela's adds a more personal connection to this event.)

(There is some confusion over birth order since yet another daughter was said to have born to John and Mary in 1787: Sarah Sally on 4 February 1787. No good source can be located for the place of Sarah Sally's birth - both Brimfield, MA and Clinton, NY are given in various family trees. Pamela's birthplace is generally given as Whitesboro, NY.  Without any good birth records, we can only guess that she must have been born close to the end of that year while the family was making their escape.)

The next child born was my 3X great grandfather David in 1788, followed by daughter Abigail (1790) and a third son Alfred (1793). In all, Jane gave birth to 11 children, all surviving to adulthood to marry and have children of their own. My database indicates 75 grandchildren for Mary and John, one of whom was my 2X great grandmother Sarah Catherine Bullen. Mary was obviously a strong woman made for motherhood in even the toughest of circumstances.

She died 28 February 1828 at the age of 76 years and is buried with her husband at Hannibal, Oswego, New York in the Old Clinton Burying Ground.

Old Clinton Burying Ground where Mary Whitcomb Bullen is buried, along with husband John.
Photo courtesy Jim High of Findagrave.com

Ingeborg Eriksdatter Elton (1794-1849) (52 Ancestors 2020 Week 9) Theme: "Disaster"

At the time this story is being written, news reports center on coronavirus COVID-19 causing self-imposed and officially imposed quarantines on shore and on cruise ships. Travel and business are being damaged as alarm is spreading around the world along with the virus. Although COVID-19 is a new virus, similar communicable diseases are not new; they have been around since time began and most certainly impacted the lives of our ancestors.

Cholera is one such disease. There have been a series of pandemics/epidemics over the centuries. The third wave of cholera in the 19th century was ongoing during 1849-1850 when members of my extended family succumbed to it.

Ingeborg Eriksdatter Elton was my third great grandaunt on my father's side, younger sister to my 3X great grandfather Andris Erikson Elton. She was born on the Elton farm in the Vang, Valdres area of Oppland, Norway and baptised 2 March 1794 in the Vang Church.

Vang Kirke Photo by John Erling Blad
Wikimedia Commons

When Ingeborg grew up she married Ole Knudson Stende on 18 October 1818 in the Vang Kirke and went to live with him on his nearby farm. The couple would have 3 children: Ingeborg Olsdatter Stende, Gunvor Olsdatter Stende and Knut (or Newton Andrew) Olson Stende. (There seems to have been a huge unexplained gap between the birth of first child in December of 1818 and the next apparently not until fourteen years later in 1832.)

By the middle of the 19th century, hordes of Norwegians were emigrating to America. Ingeborg and Ole were among them. The Vang church record for out-migrations shows the couple, each age 55 and the two younger children, Gunvor 17 and Knut 14 1/2 leaving for America in 1849.

Udflyttede record for 1849 (9 March) from the Vang church records

The passenger list  for the newly constructed Norwegian Brig Concordia shows Ole and Ingeborg and the two children making the voyage in steerage, leaving Bergen, Norway on 12 May 1849 and arriving in New York City almost two months later on 10 July. No doubt their experience was a far cry from the comforts experienced by ocean-going passengers today. After arriving in New York, they proceeded (again largely by boat) to Wisconsin, the most popular area for Norwegian settlers at that time.

Then tragedy struck! Both parents fell victim to the cholera epidemic sweeping the country. Within two days (24-26 July 1849) the two teen-aged children were left orphaned in a new land. Fortunately they were taken in by extended family members who had already immigrated to the area.

Peter Harstad (see Resource List below) discusses the history of the cholera epidemics in Wisconsin in the 1830s and in 1849-50. At the time, it was thought that impure air ("miasma") was the cause of the disease. Sometimes, more fatalistically, it was simply blamed on "Providence". Because of this lack of scientific understanding, it was mistakenly believed for awhile that the disease was not contagious. Treatments included bleeding or administering medicines such as mercury, laudanum (opium), morphine, turpentine and sulphur. Quarantines were sometimes attempted.

Although not necessarily fatal, the disease was very fast-acting with terrible symptoms of dehydration and diarrhea that often resulted in a quick death, seemingly within hours of the onset of any symptoms. Terrified of catching cholera, people often fled from one area to another, carrying the disease with them and making matters worse through close proximity on boats, trains and stage coaches and often sharing a common contaminated source of water or food. The middle of the 19th century was also the time of mass migrations during the Crimean War, the California Gold Rush and the Irish potato famine. People were on the move; cholera moved right along with them.

Business owners were terrified of potential economic damage caused by fear of the plague. The Milwaukee media shamed doctors and the Board of Health for trying to provide honest information to the public. Eventually the Board of Health doctors were replaced by lay citizens, generally businessmen who greatly underestimated the severity of the disease. This makes it difficult to get accurate statistics on the number who died in the epidemic.

Then, as now, immigrants were often made scapegoats. Irish immigrants fleeing the potato famine were frequently blamed for importing the disease into America. (Given the timing, it is probable that our family did not bring cholera with them from Norway and instead contracted the disease once they were in America.)

Matters were made worse just a week or two after the deaths of Ingeborg and her husband. President Taylor set aside the first Friday of August as a day for prayer, humiliation and fasting. Thousands flocked to congregate at church services, thereby spreading the disease even further. It was difficult to keep up with all the burials required. In some cases, if a whole family died, their house was simply burned to the ground with their bodies still inside. Presumably this didn't happen to Ingeborg and her husband since they had not been in the country long enough to establish a home.

***

Another of my relatives, John Bullen, my third great granduncle on my mother's side, also died of cholera in Wisconsin during this same epidemic. Born in 1783, he had been instrumental in starting the new settlement of Kenosha north of Chicago on Lake Michigan. He died there of cholera on 15 August 1850. No one else in his family seems to have succumbed, but he had been a particularly active man and would have been out and about in the community making him perhaps more vulnerable.

John Bullen (1783-1850)

A couple of weeks after John's death, Michael  Frank (Poormaster and Chief of Board of Health) recorded the Kenosha cholera fatalities in his diary of 26 August 1850, indicating that the epidemic appeared to have run its course with the number of fatalities that season being 32.

Four years later, a physician in London, England named John Snow discovered that cholera was being spread through contaminated drinking water. After this, improvements were made in hygiene and in water and sewage systems around the world such that cholera has largely been eliminated in developed countries.

Cholera continues to be a problem in war-torn, poor or devastated areas such as occurred in Haiti after the earthquake there resulted in contamination of their water supply. It is estimated by Phelps et al. (see Resource List below) that there are still 2-3 million cases worldwide resulting in over 100,000 deaths each year. Let us hope that medical practitioners, scientists, politicians and the public at large can successfully work together to contain COVID-19 so that it does not exact such an ongoing toll.

Resource List: 

• Harstad, Peter T., "Disease and Sickness on the Wisconsin Frontier: Cholera." The Wisconsin Magazine of History, vol, 43, no. 3, 1960, pp.203-220. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/4633516. Accessed 16 Feb.2020.
• "Cholera's Seven Pandemics" CBC article accessed 17 Feb. 2020 at https://web.archive.org/web/20081216071746/http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2008/05/09/f-cholera-outbreaks.html.
• "Asiatic Cholera Pandemics during the Life of John Snow" accessed 17 Feb. 2020 at http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/snow/pancholera3.html
• Phelps, M. et al, "Cholera Epidemics of the Past Offer New Insights into an Old Enemy." The Journal of Infectious Diseases, Vol. 217, Issue 4, 15 Feb. 2018, pp. 641-649. https://doi.org/10.1093/infdis/jix 602. Accessed 17 Feb. 2020.
• Parish Registers (kirkebøker) for Vang, Oppland, Norway from the Norwegian Digital archives accessed online at the website https://media.digitalarkivet.no/en/kb/browse
• Valdres Samband genealogical database (membership required) located through the website http://www.valdresgenealogy.com/

William Mullins (c.1572-1621 ) (52 Ancestors 2020 Week 8) Theme: "Prosperity"

Prosperity is hard to find in my family tree. Most ancestors seem to have attained, at most, a modicum of comfort and security. But prosperity can be a relative term: if you seem to be a bit better off than your neighbours, perhaps they see you as prosperous. This might be said of my 11X great grandfather William Mullins. With 2020 marking the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the Mayflower in America, this story centers on its relatively prosperous passenger William Mullins who made the voyage at about 50 years of age.

Although people love to claim Mayflower ancestors, these were not high society wealthy immigrants! They were, in the main, religious dissidents. But not all the Mayflower passengers were Pilgrims (sometimes called "Saints"); this was the group that were persecuted in England for their desire to separate from the established church, a wish that landed them in hot water over and over again with the church authorities. Many of the people who eventually made their way aboard Mayflower were just regular English folk: craftsmen and tradesmen. The Mullins were among the latter group, although there is a strong suggestion that William was taken to court in Surrey, England for his religious leanings. He was probably a Puritan.

William Mullins was from Dorking, Surrey, just southwest of London. He had been a shopkeeper there for many years and had been married at least a couple of times before making the decision to leave England with wife Alice and his youngest children: Joseph and  Priscilla.

William Mullins purchased this building of 4 unit street-front shops on 28 December 1612
Photograph by Richard Slessor / Antique shops in West Street, Dorking 
This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

Probably in anticipation of his move, in May of 1619 William sold the Dorking property pictured above to Ephraim Bothell for 280 pounds. He made a large investment as part of the Merchant Adventurers group that financed the Mayflower journey.

When the Mayflower left Plymouth, England in September of 1620, William Mullins was aboard, along with wife Alice and children Joseph and Priscilla and a servant named Robert Carter. He also packed aboard over 250 shoes and 13 pairs of boots. No, he didn't plan to wear all these himself! William was a shoemaker and planned to establish a shop in America.

Mayflower II (replica vessel) in Plymouth Harbour 1999

It was not an easy journey and they did not land in America until far too late in the season. Landing off Cape Cod instead of  the intended destination of Virginia meant that some sort of self-government agreement was required until they could obtain approval from England. When the Mayflower Compact was signed on 11 November 1620 as the ship lay at anchor off the tip of Cape Cod, William Mullins was one of the signatories.

Signatories of the Mayflower Compact
(William Mullins half-way down left column)

Much has been written about the tough winter the newcomers endured. Lacking clean warm shelter and adequate food, half of the 102 original passengers and crew died that winter in what was called the "General Sickness". One of the first to die was William Mullins on February 21. Wife Alice and son Joseph soon died too, as did their servant Robert Carter. (Of the Mullins family, only daughter Priscilla, my 10X great grandmother, survived the General Sickness that winter.  On 12 May 1622 she married the Mayflower's cooper John Alden, went on to have ten children with him and lived into her 80s.)

William Mullins listed in Coles Hill Burying Ground Memorial
Photo by Marina Williams Findagrave website

William Mullins was buried secretly with all the others who died that winter on a hill overlooking Plymouth Rock in the Coles Hill Burial Ground, Plymouth. The bodies were buried under cover of darkness to prevent the Native Americans from realizing just how vulnerable the colonists had become.

Memorial to Mayflower passengers who died during the winter of 1621
Photo by Emjay on Findagrave website

Relatively well-off, William Mullins never got to set up his shop to prosper by selling all those boots and shoes in the new settlement. He did, however, leave a lasting legacy in the multitude of descendants who claim him as an ancestor.

Some Resources:

• Williston, George F., Saints and Strangers (Being the Lives of the Pilgrim Gathers & Their Families, with Their Friends & Foes; & an Account of Their Posthumous Wanderings in Limbo, Their Final Resurrection & Rise to Glory, & the Strange Pilgrimages of Plymouth Rock), New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1945.
• Johnson, Caleb H., The Mayflower and Her Passengers, Xlibris Corporation 2006. Also Caleb Johnson's Mayflower webpage on William Mullins.
• Roser, Susan E., Mayflower Increasings 2nd Edition, Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc., 1997.
• Wikipedia entry for William Mullins  which contains many additional references.
• Find a Grave website for the Coles Hill Burial Ground located online.

Grace Fairbanks (1663-1689) (52 Ancestors 2020 Week 7) Theme: "Favourite Discovery"

Exploring family history for the past 23 years has led to many favourite discoveries. For at least a brief moment, each new discovery is my favourite! Recalling those early days of researching my family tree reminds me of the urgent sense of curiosity I had about the name "Grace Fairbank" hand-printed by my Uncle Bob as part of the family tree he had made for the family.

R.W. Anderson 1970s compiled Bullen Family Tree

Although 1997 was early days for the internet, simple searches could yield nuggets of genealogical information. My first searches were for John Bullen and Mary Morse in early New England, but that soon led me to see what I could learn about their children. I was particularly intrigued by the women who seemed to just marry into the family by dropping from the skies with no ancestral backgrounds of their own. Grace was wife to John and Mary (Morse) Bullen's son Ephraim Bullen (1653-1694) and mother to my ancestor John Bullen (1687-1757). She is my 7X great grandmother. 

There were some tantalizing online hints that perhaps our Grace was Grace Fairbanks, part of the family associated with the Fairbanks House. There was a fascinating description of some of the supposed exploits of Jonas Fairbanks who might be Grace's father.

Fairbanks House, Dedham MA
Photographed in 1999

This was before the days where sites like Familysearch and Ancestry provided digitized original source records. There were message boards and one early site called Genserv. As I recall, by providing them with your family tree file for use on the site, you were allowed a specified number of searches each hour or day. Often this was not enough and the results that came back were only as good as the uploaded family trees provided by other users. Frustratingly, many searches came back showing that Jonas Fairbanks and his wife Lydia Prescott did have a daughter named Grace Fairbanks who was born 15 September 1663 in Lancaster, Massachusetts. But there was no information on any marriage or children, where she lived out her life or when she died. My frustration seemed to go on for months, although I'm sure it was probably only a matter of days before enough documentation was found to convince me that our Grace was indeed Grace Fairbanks, daughter of Jonas Fairbanks and granddaughter of immigrants Jonathan and Grace (Smith) Fairbanks who had erected Fairbanks House. 

Grace was just 12 when her father and brother were killed during King Philip's War. Being in the middle of a pack of eight children in the now fatherless family no doubt meant she was called upon to help with her younger siblings. Fortunately, widowed mother Lydia's remarriage within a couple of years provided more security for the family.

Bullen Saward Bullard House
Sherborn Massachusetts
Photo taken 1999
(probably the home built by Ephaim and Grace Bullen)

At 16 Grace married Ephraim Bullen. They built their home on a beautiful hill overlooking rolling meadows and woods on Brush Hill Road at Sherborn, MA. At 17 she gave birth to daughter Mary. Sons Ephraim and John Bullen (my 6X great grandfather) followed over the next few years. Life seemed to be going well for the young family until the birth of her fourth child, a daughter (also named Grace), on 7 August 1689. Complications of childbirth are no doubt the cause of her death just a few days later at only 25 years of age. Baby Grace survived her mother by just 10 days.

At one time it had been reported that her gravestone was preserved in a stone wall in Sherborn, MA and read:  "Here lies Ye Body/ of Grace/ Bullen - Who/ Died August 11th/ 1689 in Ye 26th Year of Her/ Age." When we visited Sherborn in 1999, the local historian said she had been unable to locate this stone, but that it was probably located at the Brush Hill Road property.

The satisfaction of making this early discovery of Grace's family can largely be blamed for my ongoing obsession with family history.

Isaac Barton (1781-1857) (52 Ancestors 2020 Week 6) Theme: "Same Name"

My ancestor Isaac Barton (1781-1857) is one of many men carrying that name. Needless to say, this has caused much confusion to the descendants of all the Isaac Bartons. Many of the Isaac Bartons who turn up in a Google search of the name came from County Clare, Ireland.  I do not know where my ancestral line originated, but will focus mainly on the Isaac Bartons who lived in the New York state area in the 18th and 19th centuries. Even by limiting the search geographically, almost 500 results appear in an Ancestry.com search of the name Isaac Barton in New York.

Naming patterns in the past often resulted in many descendants being named for a father or grandfather or great grandfather. To avoid confusion in this story, I will call my 4X great grandfather born 1781 "our Isaac" and describe his life first before listing just a few of the other Isaac Bartons who have found their way into my database.

Our Isaac was born probably in New York State on 3 May 1781. His father's name is uncertain, most likely either Gilbert or Benjamin Barton (and to add to the potential confusion there are many men of both of those same names too!).

Our Isaac married Margaret C. ("Abba") Vought on 23 April 1804 in Yorktown,Westchester, New York. (My story about Abba's estate inventory including several of her quilts can be found through this link.) Their children included one son Jered ("Jerry") Barton (1804-1886), and daughters Sarah Ann (1809-1875), Catherine (1812-1880, my 3X great grandmother who married Stephen Wescott), Abby Jane (1819-1899) and Mary Matilda (1820-1903).

Census records have him in Butler, Wayne County, New York in 1830, and in Huron, Wayne County, New York in 1850. Huron is bordered on the north by Lake Ontario.

Location of Huron, NY
Google Earth Image

Our Isaac died in Huron, NY on 24 June 1857 at age 76 and is buried in Huron Evergreen Cemetery, near wife Margaret who died just a couple of years later.

Stone for Isaac Barton
Photo Courtesy Robert Byrnes on Find a Grave website

Some other Isaac Bartons:

1. Isaac Barton (1833-1855) was the son of Jered Barton and grandson of my Isaac. He lived his life in Wayne County, NY and died there at only about 22 years of age. 
2. Isaac Barton (c.1730-1800), a son of Roger and Elizabeth Barton, lived and died in Westchester County, NY.
3. Isaac P. Barton (1760-1834) was the son of Isaac Barton #2 above. He also lived in New York.
4. Isaac Barton (1770-1851), son of yet another Gilbert Barton, was born in New York but died in Prince Edward County, Ontario, Canada. He married Phoebe Vonblack and had a son named Gilbert Barton with her. (This branch of the Barton family seems to be the ancestral line of my paternal cousin Louise; I have been trying, so far unsuccessfully, to link her to my maternal Barton family line. Given the repetition of the names Isaac, Gilbert and Roger in both lines and given the geographic proximity, I remain optimistic about finding a link.)
5. Isaac Barton (1835-1910) was the grandson of Isaac Barton #4 above. He was born in Hastings County, Ontario, Canada and died in Grand Forks, North Dakota, U.S.A.
6. Isaac A. Barton (1868-1940) was the great grandson of Isaac Barton #4 above.  He grew up in Hastings County, Ontario and was a cheese maker there before moving to Saskatchewan, where he died and is buried. 
7. Isaac Barton (1790-?) was the grandson of Isaac Barton #2 above and the son of Roger Barton and Martha Covert. They lived in the Marlboro, New York area. 
8. Isaac Barton (1876-1877) was the son of Isaac Barton #5 above.
9. Isaac Barton (1740-1769) of Oxford, MA, married Sarah Covel; they had a son Isaac Barton.
10. Isaac T. Barton (1816-1833) was the son of David Barton of Duchess County, NY. 

If all these Isaac Bartons haven't made your head spin enough, you may wish to check out my story about John Bullen for another situation of too many men with the same name!

Some Resources:

Buxton, Anna Joan, "Family History of Barton 1559-1993", compiled December 1995, Victoria, British Columbia.