Tapestry: Two Families Weaving Through American History

0/5 ( ratings)

When amateur genealogist and author V-Anne Chernock traced her English Puritan ancestors to their arrival in The New World as part of the Great Migration in the early 1630s, she discovered that her mother’s eighth great-grandparents – Andrew and Hester Ward – and her father’s eighth great-grandparents – Robert and Margery Rose -- were both founders of Wethersfield, Connecticut in 1634.
They were friends. Andrew and Robert quickly became leaders in their new home, serving respectively as a colonial magistrate and town constable. Hester and Margery kept the households running smoothly, raised children, and occasionally testified in court over trivial community disputes and witch trials.
After about two years Andrew Ward sold his land to Robert Rose and moved away to start a new “plantation” in the rapidly expanding Connecticut Colony. Over their lifetimes the two families moved frequently and helped start new Connecticut colonies in Stamford, Branford, and Fairfield. But after Wethersfield, they seldom saw one another again.
Descendants of these two couples eventually spread out across New England to the Upper Midwest, with stops in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Minnesota. Over the generations the descendants met and married other English settlers from New York, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Maryland; and immigrants from Switzerland, Sweden, Germany and Canada .
Those few who claimed the middle states of Virginia and Maryland eventually headed west and never returned. Later generations ended up as far away as North Dakota, Idaho and Texas. One descendant moved to California to search for gold ; another moved to California to enjoy the sunshine .
Descendants of these two couples were farmers, shoemakers, carpenters, coopers, butchers, and doctors. One was a surveyor in 1762. Another founded the first ferry line across Lake Champlain between Vermont and New York . One owned a restaurant in a tiny hamlet in central Iowa in the 19th century. Another was a traveling salesman at the dawn of the automobile age.
Their cousins included several clergymen, a field-based journalist during the Civil War, and a few minor-league criminals. One owned an inn frequented by an itinerant lawyer named Abraham Lincoln, while his brothers served as civic leaders in the cross-roads city of Atlanta, Illinois.
Descendants of these two couples were patriot soldiers in all the country’s major wars, although a few were Loyalists during the Revolution and a few were Confederates during the Civil War. Two fought for the Union in Battle of Gettysburg. Another was a decorated WW II bomber pilot.
Descendants of these two couples and their cousins served in governments at all levels. They had among them the first president of the colony of Rhode Island ; a signer of the Declaration of Independence ; third Vice President of the United States ; the first governor of Kentucky ; a United States Congressman from New York ; a Secretary of State ; and the 25th governor of New York .
They counted, among their cousins, statesman Benjamin Franklin; woodsman Daniel Boone; and Ezra Cornell .
Descendants of these two couples spawned families large and small, including many sets of twins. They buried infants stillborn and children, victims of disease. One patriarch and one teenager died in farm-related accidents; several died in wars. And many lived well into old age and died peacefully.
Descendants of these two couples finally settled in Iowa and Wisconsin. But they never met until 1938, when two college students met in Iowa City, fell in love and married.