This week’s blog prompt doesn’t seem like it would be difficult but for someone with a VERY small immediate family (one uncle, one cousin, plus my two siblings), this was a bit challenging for me. I’d always longed for a big family – in fact, when I was about 10 I even made up an older brother who, I told people, was away in the Army. Ahhh, the imagination of a child.
I’ve written a lot about my Waller family so I decided I’d focus my attention there and see what I could find out. When I first started on this journey I was ecstatic when I would find a shaking leaf and boy, those Wallers produced a lot of those! But I’ve since learned that these aren’t always correct so I need to research and research and research some more.
I wrote about Phineas Waller, my 6x great grandfather, HERE when the unusual name prompt came up. While Phineas seems like an unusual name, it actually is somewhat common in my tree.
Phineas and his wife, Rhoda Taylor, were married 19 Apr 1749 in Cornwall, Connecticut and had 10 (or 11) children. What I’ve learned today is that not only were women hard to find from 250 years ago, I still have A LOT of research to do here. And here are the children of Phineas and Rhoda:
Rhoda, b. 21 Jul 1750, Cornwall, Connecticut.
Mercy, b. 9 Oct 1751, Cornwall, Connecticut.
Nathan, b 7 Mar 1753, Cornwall, Connecticut. Married Elizabeth Weeks 4 May 1773. Died 11 Jul 1831 Wilkes-Barre, Luzerne, Pennsylvania.
Lydia (per Starr copy of the Barbour Collection) or Gideon (per the Arnold copy of the Barbour Collection), b. 10 May 1756 in Cornwall, Connecticut.
Levi, b. 10 May 2758, Cornwall, Connecticut. Or maybe 17 Mar 1758? Died 1778, Princeton, New Jersey. He was in the Revolutionary War – did he die in service?
Ashbel, my 5x great grandfather. b. 18 Oct 1759, Cornwall, Connecticut. Died 20 Sep 1848, Butler County, Ohio. Married Sarah Abbott 1 Nove 1781, Cornwall, Connecticut. Married Elizabeth Blackleach 5 Sep 1820, Butler County, Ohio. Married Jane Turner, 12 Apr 1842, Hamilton, Butler County, Ohio. MY TICKET TO DAR! [get on it you big loafer]. I wrote about Ashbel's inclusion in the first United States census HERE.
Hannah, b. 6 Jan 1762, Cornwall, Connecticut.
Joseph, b. 4 Feb 1764, Cornwall, Connecticut. Died 19 Mar 1849, Elba, Genesee, New York. Married to Mary Polly McDaniel and Hannah Force.
Daniel, b 17 Mar 1760, Cornwall, Connecticut. Died in Elba, New York?
Esther, b. 21 Mar 1768, Cornwall, Connecticut. Died 27 Feb 1822, Elba, Genesee, New York. Married John Howe Jr., 21 Dec 1787.
Bonus child – Joseph. This can’t be true. Joseph born in 1764 didn’t die until 1849 so why would they have named their 11th child Joseph? This has got to be an error in one of those Ancestry trees I was so happy to find.
Mercy (pun intended), that’s a lot of kids. And two of whom were born on the same day (TODAY!) and, thus, share a birthday with my first grandchild who turned 17 years old today.
And there’s the big family I always longed for! Who knew?
That is a lot of children. And yes, be very careful when relying on anyone else's trees!
ReplyDeleteYeah, I learned that the hard way :-(
DeleteAshbel - now that's a name that should make a comeback.
ReplyDeleteAs for 2 Josephs, I have seen MANY trees with the same child named multiple times but with different birth or death dates as if that makes them 2 different people.
I've also seen it Asabel, Asahel, Ashahel. None of the variations is something I'd want to see make a comeback.
Delete