Up a Tree

In the chronicles of Stamford, Conn., to which I have referred in the previous couple of post, I encountered Mrs. Richard Crabb, a feisty woman who had no qualms expressing her displeasure with church leaders. I have mentioned that Stamford answered to the Puritan-led government of New Haven in its early days as a settlement. As happened in other parts of the budding nation that had been established under Puritan leadership, that leadership established the Congregational Church as the only legitimate church in the settlements.  Though technically the government and the church were different entities, in  reality government leadership was drawn from the ranks of leaders in the churches, whose pastors exerted considerable influence over their decisions. Government leaders had to be freemen and members in good standing in their churches. They then set the rules and policies that governed the colonies and settlements and believed themselves free to impose religious rules on their ...

First, a couple of housekeeping items. I was asked about the reference to the Church of Christ in the last post. I mentioned that this was a  popular name for the Congregationalist Church, which is what the Puritans in America called their church. I did not make clear that this Church of Christ has nothing to do with the modern day movement many of us call the Church of Christ today. Today's C of C arose in the 1800s and has its roots in the revivalism of that time. Sorry for any confusion. Second, I also referenced the tensions between the New Haven, Conn., settlement and the Stamford settlement. At the time of my great-great-to-the-x grandfather and the establishment of Stamford, New Haven was the center of a confederation of settlements that operated  independently from the rest of Connecticut. New Haven was the oldest of the settlements and functioned as the capital of the group.  The General Court, which was both a legislative and judicial body, resided in New Haven ...

I tend to think of the events that lead to the American Revolution as having roots fairly close to those events. But the reality is that the roots probably go all the way back to the colonization of what would become the nation. After all, many of those who boarded ships to come here came from a motivation of religious freedom, a desire to shake off the established religion in England, which like its predecessor, the Roman Catholic Church, fancied itself to be the true church, a failing of many reform movements in church history. They felt forced to leave their homeland for a place where they could practice their religion without interference from the English church and its king. Others sought new opportunities in a new land, free from a class system that placed control in the hands of people who often had no other qualification for wielding it than the privilege granted them by their name and title.  So we were founded by a bunch of folks with a fierce independence streak. And wel...

Before Sir Robert Drury, the subject of the last post, gained his knighthood for whatever role he played in suppressing the Cornish uprising, he was elected to be a knight of the shire for Suffolk, which made him a member of parliament in the House of Commons. According to Parliament's website, in the 15th and 16th centuries, when Sir Robert served, the knights of the shire were the most prominent members of the House of Commons. Two members were elected from each of the 37 counties under crown jurisdiction, and eventually each of the 12 Welsh counties were allowed to elect one member to send to the body. Other members of the House were burgesses who represented towns and cities. Initially, and freeman could be elected. But in 1429 Parliament decided too many of the riffraff were being elected, and they changed the law so that only freeman who owned property that produced at least 40 shillings a year in income could be elected, eliminating those who only leased property. The law st...

The Spanish and French may have arrived on American shores and established colonies before the English, and their legacy lives on in various ways, but the English and their way of life came to dominate American history. As I have discovered for the families that make up the two halves of my family, much of our heritage and ancestry dates back to the English colonies established in the 1600s. I suspect that is true for a great deal of the American population. Despite this, we know precious little about English history, which predates ours by hundreds of years. We like to think we invented most of the institutions and ideas that shape our culture, but the reality is we pretty much adapted English culture to the needs of a new and growing nation. And English history predates ours by hundreds of years. I remember picking up a used English history text, I think from the college bookstore, and being shocked at the size of it. The section on the American Revolution was pretty much just a chap...

I return to my part of the family tree and that most fruitful of the branches, the lines of Orpha Morse. As usual, I rummaged around in the names until I came on an ancestor whose listing contained biographical notes.  In this week's case, the relative in question is Francis Holmes, also sometimes referred to as Francis Homes. Francis seems to be an immigrant from England who began life in America in the Massachusetts Bay colony. In 1636, he and his family sold their land to newly arrived Puritan immigrants and moved to Watertown, Conn.  About the time the Holmses moved to Connecticut, Thomas Hooker, a Congregationalist minister who became known as the "father of Connecticut," decided to take a group of residents from Waterford, Conn., on a two-week journey, following a Native American trail, to a spot near present-day Hartford, where they began a settlement.  One of the sources I found on Francis indicates that his family was one of the group, but I can't pin that do...

John Amous Womble, Sharon's third great-grandfather, returned to his life as a carpenter after the Revolutionary War, marrying his wife Catherine Greene in 1798 and purchasing land the next year. He seems to have taken God's command to be fruitful and multiply seriously and fathered 11 children, though only five appear on the list of his children on FamilySearch.com. He was 43 when he married, and his wife was about 22, and a note in his file indicates he'd been married before, stating that six of his children were not Catherine's.  In an affidavit supporting his claim for a pension,  he only mentions the one wife and the children, so like much else in his life, the broad strokes produce a fuzzy picture. By 1820 he found himself in dire straits financially and decided to make that claim for a pension under a bill that Congress passed two years before.  The new law provided for a pension for every person who served in the war -- soldiers, musicians, hospital staff and me...