Several branches of my family were a part of this history. Most of my New England ancestors connect to me through my great-great grandmother, Nancy Sophia French, and they account for one-sixteenth of my pedigree. This was the first branch of my family that I had any knowledge of, partly because before computers, it was the easiest one to research. New Englanders during the 19th century were obsessed with tracing their heritage, and family history libraries are filled with the books they produced. In a sense, they began the genealogy craze that continues to this day.
Nancy French’s ancestors divide into four quadrants that follow a migration pattern to her birthplace of Stockton Springs, Maine. Both of her grandfather’s branches lived in the area north and west of Boston for generations, then trickled up into New Hampshire. Her mother’s mother's branch followed a path that took them up the Connecticut River, from the founding of Hartford to the towns of eastern Massachusetts, finally moving to northern Vermont. Nancy’s other grandmother wasn’t of an English heritage — her ancestors were Scottish people from Ireland, who arrived in America in the early 1700s and settled in Bedford, New Hampshire. Within a generation or two, the New England Scots-Irish were more or less assimilated into the English colonial society.
Locations of towns where Nancy French's ancestors lived.
In addition to Nancy French’s ancestors, I have a few other smaller branches trickling back to New England. In some cases, the immigrant who settled in the Massachusetts colony simply didn’t stay there. This was true for Grace Dollen of Maine, who married a man of Dutch heritage, and wound up living in Brooklyn. In a different way, Phoebe Sayles came to live in the same area after her trouble-making father got them kicked out of the English colony. And Boston-born John Franklin became a seaman who during the 1750s, signed up for a military venture in Virginia, and then never returned to his birthplace.
The 17th-century migration of my family to New England happened because of their religious beliefs. Those in England who were followers of Puritanism were at odds with the people in power; the Stuart kings had no tolerance for dissenters. By the late 1620s, persecution of Puritans was on the rise. This led to a mass exodus which began with the Winthrop Fleet of 1630. Because the motivation for leaving wasn’t about their economic status, some ancestors were fairly well-off, and left behind a comfortable life. A few even had some nobility on their family trees, something that wasn’t true for most American colonists.
Descendants of the Puritans of New England have the advantage of an extensive amount of records. While vital records aren’t as detailed as the French-Canadian colony, there are other sources of information in New England that are unique. One example is the notes of town meetings. Here it’s possible to glimpse the day-to-day life of the settlers as they grappled with issues affecting the community. Petitions were a common means of expression, and even women sometimes used this method to voice their opinions. As for the men, many ancestors served on town councils as “selectmen,” and a few also traveled to Boston as representatives to the General Court, a sort of legislative body in the colony.
Not everything about the New England settlers was virtuous by modern standards. The accusations of witchcraft in Salem and other places were a stain on their history; today it reads as people being singled out by mobs just for being different. Another aspect of New England that seems wrong now was in how the colony dealt with indigenous people. They may have been well-intentioned at first, but as the English population grew, the tribes of the region were aggressively pushed to the west. Even though tribal land was purchased in formal arrangements, the Indigenous people had little choice but to go along with it. Tensions escalated into King Philip’s War (1675-1676), with both sides committing atrocities. Many of my ancestors served in town militias as the war played out all over Massachusetts.
17th century Puritans.
Because of the way New England was settled, it quickly became much more populated than the French colonies to the north and east. The Puritans had come over in large numbers during the 1630s, which meant the growth of their colony began much earlier than the French ones. For this reason, New England was able to dominate their rivals, and several times, tried to conquer them. An attempt was made to invade Quebec in 1690 which failed, but Acadia was successfully taken by 1710. I have a few New England ancestors who fought in conflicts against the French. My 6G grandfather Timothy Baker joined the force that rounded up Acadian settlers in 1755, sending families into exile. And my 7G grandfather Samuel Dakin was killed in action in 1758 as he led a company of men fighting the French near Lake Champlain in New York.
While the people on my pedigree weren’t central figures in the American Revolution, they are represented in the generation of young men who “answered the call” of April 1775. When word spread of the events happening at Lexington and Concord, several of my ancestors (or their sons) marched towards the action with their town militias, and some enlisted later on to serve in the Continental army. The women, too, showed support back home, and one of my female ancestors hosted a British officer who had been captured as a prisoner.
Because the majority of U.S. presidents have some New England ancestry, I can count many of them as my cousins, the closest two being Franklin Delano Roosevelt (4th cousin 4 times removed) and Franklin Pierce (2nd cousin 6 times removed). I can also prove distant cousinships to such people as Princess Diana and Winston Churchill. So although I didn’t get much DNA from the New England branch of my pedigree, it did give me a connection to a lot of history. That’s the mind-boggling aspect of tracing your genealogy.
Candle snuffer and foot warmer that belonged to my ancestors (probably from eastern Massachusetts).
