Preserving Family Legacies, No. 1, Part 6

Letters from Aunt Helen, Part 6

O P Q contained the PARKER family letters. Alright, now we've departed from tracing the Gertrude Ellen (WALTER) lineage and have gone back to her husband's NEWTON ancestors. Let's take a look at the NEWTON generations to see where Aunt Helen may have been going with this:

George Ulysses (8) Newton md. Gertrude Ellen WALTER, 1 July 1895 in Binghamton, NY

Francis Louis (7) Newton md. Elizabeth Mary RILEY, 5 Nov. 1854 in Maine, NY

Nahum (6) Newton md. Thankful PARKER, 22 Oct 1818 in poss. Worcester County, MA

Nahum (5) Newton Jr. md. Damaris BRIGHAM, 6 May 1778 in Marlborogh, Middlesex, MA

Nahum (4) Newton Sr. md. Tabitha SANDERSON, 30 Feb 1741 in Leicester, Worcester, MA

Joseph (3) Newton Jr. md. Abigail ----

Deacon Joseph (2) Newton md. Katharin WOODS, abt. 1670 in Marlborough, Middlesex, MA

Richard (1) Newton md. Amy LOKER, 9 Aug 1636 in Bures, Essex, England

R held the RILEY family history letters.

W provided letters relating to WALTER/DUDLEY/FIELD/SCRANTON/HOWARD, all of Guilford and Norfolk, CT. An interesting letter from the War Department, dated July 13, 1931, states:

There are no military records in this Department of a date prior to the War of the Revolution. Such Colonial War records are in existence, except those in the possession of the British Government, are most likely to be found in the custody of the various states that sent troops to those wars or, in some instances, of historical societies. . . . Signed, C. H. Bridges, Major General, The Adjutant General.

 Aunt Helen generally did not preserve copies of her outgoing correspondence, except in this case, where the War Dept. stamped it and returned it to her.

 

X & Z preserved a variety of documents. First is a blank fan chart from the Media Research Bureau, 1110 F. Street, Washington, DC, measuring 22" x 15". Following is an advertisement brochure for The Story of Connecticut, published by The Hartford Times. . . . "Every Home Should Have a Set" it boasts. "Original Price $3.00 for 3 Volumes. Now On Sale: $1.50. As you can see, a used copy now costs $30.00...ten times the original price!

American Library Services , 117 W 48th St., NY, NY

Much of the rest of my aunt's correspondence seems to be with a company where she was seeking to purchase genealogical volumes: The History of Chenango and Madison Counties, NY, by James H. Smith; The British Invasion of New Haven, Connecticut, by Charles Henry Townsend; The Morse Genealogy; The Newton Genealogy; History of Enfield; History of Madison County, NY, by Mrs. L. M. Hammond; History of the Colony of New Haven, by Edward E. Atwater; various other histories of Ridgefield, Wallingford, Simsbury, New Haven, Putnum, Connecticut, and various published genealogies on family surnames already mentioned. 

Tucked away in the very back of the file, however, was a real treasure: 

Letters from Mrs. Bertha Davey of Binghamton, NY.

She was my aunt's first cousin, the daughter of Charles Philetus WALTER and Ellen Adell DARLING, the sister of my great grandmother Gertrude Ellen (WALTER) NEWTON. Pages and pages of typewritten transcriptions from the CURTIS, SCRANTON, DUDLEY, MINOR, DARLING, and HOWARD genealogies, were held together by paperclips, and loosely rolled up at the bottom, revealing a multitude of abstracted family history.

It could take months and months just to process this information into my genealogical database, but this is nothing compared to the years of research and correspondence that went into this small letters file. 

Many thanks to all our family historians before us 

who left us a well-worn path through prior generations!

Preserving Family Legacies, No. 1, Part 2

Letters from Aunt Helen, Part 2

Genealogical research was a whole different world in the 1930s and 40s. Behind my aunt's baptismal record was this letter dated March 12, 1941, addressed to the Hartford Times:

Whenever correspondence was communicated through the genealogical section of a newspaper, each researcher was identified by an assigned number and their initials. In this case, Dorothy A. Y_____ requested to communicate with my uncle, R. L. B. [Ralph Loren Beers], who had answered Query 8010 on the Howard family on March 8, 1941.  A portion of my Aunt Helen's legacy was a binder with the original genealogical newspaper clippings attached to paper with cellophane tape, which had yellowed and become brittle. The pages smelled musty, so I photocopied them to acid-free paper and placed them in archival presentation sleeves in a new binder. 

 

As I paged through the HOWARD section of the clippings, I found the original query dated 12-21-1940 and it's reply, dated 3-8-1941. As you can see, it took nearly three months to get a response. I don't know if I could wait that long! The age of email has certainly benefited genealogists tremendously!

My HOWARD connection looks like this:

Debra Ann (10), Richard Allen (9), Francis Allyn (8) NEWTON; Gertrude Ellen (7), Charles Philetus (6) WALTER; Betsey Elizabeth (5), Amos (4), Nathan(3), Nathan (2), Thomas (1) HOWARD, emigrant.

Preserving Family Legacies, No. 1, Part 1

Letters from Aunt Helen, Part 1

On 17 November 1990 my grand aunt, Helen Gertrude (NEWTON) BEERS, daughter of George Ulysses and Gertrude Ellen (WALTER) NEWTON, and the widow of Ralph Loren BEERS, died in Garden Grove, California at the age of 89. She had been the NEWTON family historian since about 1930. Before she died she had her family history archive divided between my Dad, her oldest brother's oldest son, and my Dad's cousin Doris, the oldest child of Aunt Helen's only surviving sister. 

Dad had no interest in family history, so he passed the information on to his younger brother, David. Eighteen years later, on March 1, 2008, Uncle David and Aunt Sue stopped by our apartment in Asheville, NC to hand-deliver to me the legacy my Dad had forsaken.

Among the file boxes of handwritten and typed family group sheets and notes was a West Easy Clasp File marked, LETTERS. The spine of the file is imprinted:

Frank A. West Co., Inc.

Office Equipment and Supplies

130 State Street

Binghamton, N. Y.

Unlatching the metal clasp, the front opens to reveal a typed carbon copy of the first three pages of the NEWTON genealogy, followed by twenty pages of originals, beginning with "Nahum Newton, born Oct. 25, 1795 . . . " The next  item was a cream colored booklet entitled "Church Membership," which is displayed here.

The poem following a photograph of First Baptist Church in Johnson City, NY, and entitled, "The Church," by Timothy Dwight holds great interest for me. 

The Rev. Timothy Dwight (14 May 1752 - 11 Jan 1817) was the son of Timothy and Mary (EDWARDS) DWIGHT, the grandson of the Rev. Jonathan EDWARDS; the grandson of Col. Timothy and Experience (KING) DWIGHT. He was a Congregational minister, born in Northampton, MA. He led a very distinguished career, his credits including an appointment by the U. S. Congress to the chaplaincy of the Connecticut Continental Brigade, and president of Yale. 

It was believed by some that he was an ancestor of mine . . . a cousin through the KING family tree. However, a family legend yet unproved may show that we may not be linked to this distinguished Northampton family. I had spent the better of three years documenting the KING family history, and one day hope to complete the volume from Capt. John King down through this past generation. 

In any event, it seems remarkable that my Northern Baptist grand aunt's baptismal record of 24 March 1918 includes Dwight's poem, with the exclusion of two stanzas:

             *  *  *  *  

If e'er to bless thy sons
My voice or hands deny,
These hands let useful skill forsake,
This voice in silence die.

             *  *  *  * 

Jesus, thou friend divine,
Our Saviour and our King,
Thy hand from every snare and foe
Shall great deliverance bring.