The Great Awakening

One of the things that has happened as a result of researching my own family history is that I've gained a greater appreciation for events I studied in history classes of the past. One such event is The Great Awakening. I learned that one of my ancestors was converted under George Whitefield and then went on to preach in churches in upper New England himself. PhiloBiblos has a review of a new book published by Yale University Press on this significant event. The Book is entitled The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America. Its author is Thomas Dodd.

I Resolve Not to Resolve

I am not a fan of New Year's Resolutions. Most of them are broken in the first week or so. I do sometimes set goals, but I learned a long time ago that my genealogy goals are long-term rather than short-term, and I've had so many unexpected obstacles that I'm even hesitant to make anything a one-year goal.

What did I accomplish last year? I uncovered Agnes Thornton's maiden name. That had been a dead-end for awhile. I've also found a marriage location for Richard Thornton to Agnes through this. I have a "date" the marriage is said to have occurred; however, I still need a better source for this date. I'm not stupid enough to think I'll find that source in one year when it took several years to find Agnes' maiden name! This family liked to burn courthouses to cover up their history (or at least it seems that way).

I indexed over 9000 10,000 records for FamilySearchIndexing.org. I'd hoped to do at least 10,000, but family health issues and the busyness of the holidays has kept me from doing as much the last couple of months as I'd wanted to do. I reached this "goal" on December 31.

I've made some progress in entering a backlog of previous research into my database; however, I keep adding to the pile! LOL Actually, I'm doing pretty good at keeping up with information on the lines I'm trying to focus on (my New England maternal lines); however, I have information collected on lines which are not my current research focus (primarily the Thornton line) that have some "backlog" building up. I actually accumulated a lot of the research myself because of contact with some of the lines with whom my brother's DNA matched. Most of what I collected was research in the county in which I work because a line that had lived in that county matched. Some of it was accumulated by a cousin who lives closer to where one of these lines settled. I'm less concerned with getting the North Carolina line that matched into the database because the individual who researched it was a historian who documented what he did and he sent me his self-published book on his research. It's not that I'm not interested in researching these lines -- I've just got to prepare for my New England trip, and getting those lines in the best shape possible will help me be more focused and productive when I get there.

I've made significant progress on many of my New England lines. This has largely been because of Google Books. I take what I find and search for more or note resources that I need to examine when I go to New England.

This brings me to my biggest genealogical plan for 2008. I have a library conference in Boston in June. It is my intention to go to Boston one week early and stay an extra day and a half (or maybe even two days) so that I'm in the area for at least two weeks. During the extra days, I want to do research at NEHGS and other repositories and visit some of the places my ancestors lived. I'd also like to do a few touristy things. I know that I don't have time to visit all the places my ancestors lived. (I plan to save Block Island for a separate trip.) I really want to make at least a day trip to Hampton, New Hampshire. I'd also like to go to the present town of Essex, Massachusetts which used to be Ipswich's Chebacco Parish. I've got several other places I want to be a tourist, some of which also figure into my family's heritage. I haven't worked out all my weekends yet. One of the reasons is because I know that the conference will be organizing some pre-conference and post-conference tours. If some of my destinations are on their list, I may go with a group of my friends instead of doing it alone.

I'm not going to plan any further than that because I know I'll be preparing for a couple of future conferences which may consume some of my normal research time; however, I know that I'll sneak some research in! I always manage somehow.

This article is submitted for the 39th Carnival of Genealogy hosted by Jasia at Creative Gene.

Update (12/31): I thought of one more thing I researched last year. A new index to was available which allowed me to know some of the names in some of the probate files at the Monroe County, Mississippi Chancery Clerk's office. I spotted my elusive "W. D. Phillips" on some of the records. I was hoping that some of them would give me some insight into his father. What I discovered, however, after copying a rather huge file was that the file that would have given me the greatest insight into his identity was not him but another W.D. who apparently also lived in the area. The files pertaining to the estate of John E. Fowlkes were, of course, the correct W.D. because he is mentioned as the husband of John E.'s daughter Mary Elizabeth. My W.D. is William David Phillips. The W.D. in chancery case 3195 is William Dennis and was married to a P.J. and is younger than my W.D. There is also a David (or D.M.) Phillips in the county who appears in the Harmony Church records and appears to have married a Sallie from the tombstones in the Hatley Cemetery. There are two Sarah Phillips mentioned in the Harmony Church records. There is a female M.E. Phillips in the Harmony Church records who could be my Mary Elizabeth Fowlkes Phillips. I need to go to Jackson and get his Civil War file to see if it yields any clue to his identity. He just kind of "appears" in Monroe County in the 1860 Monroe County census residing in the household of his future father-in-law. I've seen him in records as late as 1866 or 1867 - and then he kind of disappears. I can't find him, Mary Elizabeth or daughter Jennie (aka Lucinda Virginia) in the 1870 census unless they are the W.H. and Mary listed as a couple without any children mentioned. (In the 1880 census, there is a W.H. the same age who is married to a Martha, slightly older.) Since Jennie was born in 1865, you wonder where she is if that is them. Jennie is enumerated in the George Tubb household in 1880.

Great Colonial Hurricane of 1635

As I'm watching Hurricane Noel go up the Atlantic Coast and threatening Long Island and parts north, I'm reminded of the Great Hurricane of 1938 and of the Great Colonial Hurricane of 1635 which some of my ancestors, particularly the Perkins family, were sure to have experienced first-hand. The Perkins family had removed from Boston to the Ipswich area by 1635. They were probably spared the worst of the storm by doing so. The eye of the category 3 or 4 storm is believed to have passed between Plymouth and Boston.

There are several first-hand and second-hand accounts of the storm available. Increase Mather, the well-known Puritan minister who is a central figure in the Salem Witch Trials, has this to say:

I have not heard of any storm more dismal than the great hurricane which was in August, 1635, the fury whereof threw down (either breaking them off by the bole or plucking them up by the roots) thousands of great trees in the woods. Of this some account is given by Mr. Thacher in the first chapter of our present collection. And I must confess, I have peculiar reason to commemorate that solemn providence, inasmuch as my father and mother and four of my brethren were then in a vessel upon the coast of New-England, being at anchor amongst the rocks at the Isles of Sholes when the storm began; but their cables broke, and the ship was driving directly upon a mighty rock, so that all their lives were given up for lost; but then in an instant of time, God turned the wind about, which carried them from the rock of death before their eyes. (1)

Writing two months after the storm, William Bradford, the well-known leader of Plymouth, described it thusly:

This year, on the 14th or 15th of August, a Saturday, there was such a fearful storm of wind and rain as none living hereabouts either English or Indians, ever saw. It was like those hurricanes and typhoons that writers mention in the Indies. It began a little in the morning, a little before day, and did not come on by degrees, but with amazing violence at the start. It blew down several houses and unroofed others; many vessels were lost at sea, and many more were in extreme danger. To the southward the sea rose twenty feet, and many of the Indians had to climb trees for safety. It took off the boarded roof of a house which belonged to the settlement on Manomet and floated it to another place, leaving the posts standing in the ground; and if it had continued much longer without the wind shifting it would probably have flooded some of the inhabited parts of the country. It blew down many hundred thousands of trees, tearing up the stronger by the roots, and breaking the higher pine-trees off in the middle; and tall young oaks and walnut trees of a good size were bent like withes, -- a strange and fearful sight. It began in the southeast, and veered different ways. It lasted, though not at its worst, for five or six hours. The marks of it will remain this 100 years in these parts, where it was most violent. There was a great eclipse of the moon the second night after. (2)

Today, we know that many hurricanes spawn tornadoes. In his history of Newbury, Joshua Coffin recounts the town’s official record of the storm. The account seems to be that of a tornado spawned by the hurricane:

August 14th: About eight o’clock there was in Salisbury and part of Amesbury the most violent tornado, or short hurricane, perhaps ever known in the country. It continued about three minutes, in which time it damaged, or entirely prostrated, nearly two hundred buildings. It removed two vessels one of them of ninety tons, twenty-two feet from the stocks. The vein of the tempest was about a quarter of a mile in width on the river and about a mile and a half in length. (3)

The descriptions in these accounts remind us so much of today's hurricanes. Today we have heavier settlement so the impact may seem more devastating, but to those early settlers, the hurricane of 1635 was just as devastating.

(1) Increase Mather, Remarkable Providences Illustrative of the Earlier Days of American Colonisation (Boston: Samuel Green, 1684. Reprint. Reeves and Turner, 1890), 220; digital images, Google Books (http://books.google.com : accessed 3 November 2007).

(2) William Bradford; Harold Paget, translator, Bradford’s History of the Plymouth Settlement 1608-1650 (New York: Dutton, 1920), 270-71; digital images, Google Books (http://books.google.com : accessed 3 November 2007).

(3) Joshua Coffin, The History of Newbury, Newburyport, and West Newbury, from 1635 to 1845 (Boston: Samuel Drake, 1845), 241; digital images, Google Books (http://books.google.com : accessed 3 November 2007).

"Imprisoned by Andros"

That phrase caught my attention as I was studying an article (pages 97-103) from a July 1899 (vol. 3, no. 7) issue of The Essex Antiquarian which gave an account of my Andrews line. I found the article entitled "Descendants of John Andrews of Ipswich" through my research membership at the New England Historic Genealogical Society, utilizing their online collections. In this account, the progenitor of this particular branch of Andrews, Lt. John Andrews, born about 1618, is said to have been "imprisoned by Andros." The Andros in question is, of course, Edmund Andros who was governor of the Dominion of New England from 1686-1689. It appears that my Andrews family were among the majority of people with whom he was not popular. I was curious about why he was imprisoned and found the answer in Google books. In The Memorial History of Boston: Including Suffolk County, Massachusetts, 1630-1880 edited by Justin Winsor, vol. II, The Provincial Period, (Boston: Ticknor & Company, 1881), page 10 tells us that the town of Ipswich "had refused in open meeting to comply with the law and to levy the new taxes." John Andrews, along with five other men who were town leaders, were imprisoned under charges of high misdemeanors. It appears they ended up with a rather stiff fine after the trial. A very interesting account of this can also be found by scrolling down to John Andrews' name near the bottom of this Forsythe Family web page.

Mystery Series Discovered

I went to McKays, a great used bookstore in Knoxville, yesterday. As I was browsing through the mysteries, the cemetery on a cover caught my eye. Now, we all know that no genealogist can resist a cemetery. I decided to pick up the book and read the "blurb". I discovered that the series was set in New England and features an expert in "funerary art" which basically means that the main character loves graveyards and gravestones as much as a genealogist. This book was the 2nd in the series. I browsed the shelves and located the 3rd in the series. I had to go home and order the 1st in the series from Amazon.com. I also discovered there is a 4th book in the series, but I decided to wait on purchasing it. If I'm lucky, McKays will get the paperback in by the time I'm ready to read it. The author of the series is Sarah Stewart Taylor.

O'Artful Death is the first book in the series and has a Vermont setting.

This is the one that caught my eye. The featured cemetery is Boston's Mount Auburn Cemetery.

The 3rd book in the series has a Concord, Massachusetts setting.

This one is supposed to have a Boston setting as well.

I'm looking forward to trying out this series, and I hope that I'm right about how good it looks, especially since I've already invested in the first three books. The reviews look good!