Wells Siblings Stayed Close to Home ~ 52 Ancestors #4

This week's theme is Close to Home.

My third great-grandfather, Thomas Goodwin Wells (1804-1873), traveled from New Hampshire to California, and back to Massachusetts where he died. He was one of ten children of Dr. Thomas Goodwin Wells and Lucinda Lyman. Of these ten children, almost all of whom were born in Hopkinton, Hillsborough County, New Hampshire, a few traveled hundreds of miles from New Hampshire (Georgia, Texas, California), but most remained in New Hampshire.

Siblings, Lucinda Lyman Wells (b. 1806), Edwin Ruthwin Wells (b. 1814), and Ruth Lyman Wells (b. 1816), all remained in Hopkinton, where they died within days of each other in 1882.

Brother, Edwin, actually did move around during his lifetime; he lived in Pittsburgh, California, and Georgia, before returning to New Hampshire. The two sisters, Lucinda and Ruth, lived together in Hopkinton for their entire lives.

This newspaper article from the Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers database (accessed using my AmericanAncestors.org subscription) lists each of the siblings who died within a week of each other in March 1882.

"Fatality from Pneumonia," Independent Statesman (Concord, New Hampshire), 23 March 1882, p. 196, col. 8;
digital images, Gale Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers via AmericanAncestors (https://www.americanancestors.org : accessed 25 January 2020).

"Mrs. Long," the surviving sibling in this household, was Marcia Emeline Wells, widow of Edward Long, who survived her brother and sisters by just over seven years.

Many members of the family are buried at Old Hopkinton Cemetery in Hopkinton, New Hampshire. The FindAGrave memorial for Edwin shows links to memorials for his parents and siblings.

Long Lines of Stantons ~ 52 Ancestors #3

This week's theme is Long Line. I have a lot of colonial New England ancestors and I thought I'd share my Stanton lines in a "Surname Saturday" styled post.

Generation 1: Thomas Stanton (1617-1677) married Anna Lord (1614-1688) about 1636 probably in Connecticut.

Stonington within New London, Conn.
image courtesy Wikipedia

Thomas Stanton has been written about extensively. He likely arrived in Massachusetts in 1635 and was in Hartford, Connecticut by 1636, as one of its original settlers. About 1651, he and his family moved to New London, Connecticut, and a few years later, moved to the area now known as Stonington, Connecticut. He and his family owned land on both sides of the Pawcatuck River which now divides Connecticut and Rhode Island. Many descendants were recorded as living in Stonington, but a few were recorded as living in Westerly, Rhode Island.

One of Thomas's special skills was that he mastered Indian dialects very quickly, which made him very helpful in negotiating with Indians. In 1643, he was appointed Indian Interpreter for all of New England by the Commissioners of the United Colonies.

There is a Thomas Stanton Society which is an organization with membership for those who can show that they descend from him and has a separate membership for those who cannot meet the pedigree requirement. (I am not a member.) Their website provides a lot of information about him and offers many resources for research.

Thomas Stanton died December 2, 1677, and is buried in Stonington. His FindAGrave memorial has additional information about him, as well as the memorials of his ten children linked to him (even though they don't all have burial locations).

Thomas and Anna had ten known children, and I descend from their sons Joseph, Robert, and Samuel.

1903 Photo Mary Adsit ~ 52 Ancestors #2

I am hoping to blog more, using Amy Johnson Crow's 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks themes, and this week's theme is Favorite Photo. (And, no, you didn't miss post #1; I didn't post last week.)

I am very lucky to have many family photos and I have many favorites. See my many posts with the tag Wordless Wednesday.

Here is a portrait of my great-grandmother, Mary Bowman (Ashby) Adsit, taken in July 1903 according to a penciled notation on the back.

She would have been 40 years old.

Mary Bowman Ashby was born in Glasgow, Kentucky, in 1863 (though for most of her life, she lied about her age). She married Charles Chapin Adsit in 1890.  They settled in Chicago, where she gave birth to her son in July 1892 and to her daughter (my grandmother, Libby) in June 1897. I shared a photo of her with her son at M. B. Adsit and C. C. Adsit Jr. Circa 1893.

I also shared a photo of brother and sister at Wordless Wednesday ~ 1904 Car.

I have several portraits and photographs of Mary Adsit throughout her long life and she always looked very stylish.

Counting Third Cousins

Summer 1982; see
Throwback Thursday-Cousins Day

My current project (which I have spent many months on) has been to identify all the descendants of my eight sets of second great-grandparents. This is to help me identify my DNA matches on the several genetic genealogy testing sites where my results connect me to cousins. Smaller amounts of shared DNA suggests more distant relationships and knowing my third cousins might help identify those relationships.

I have identified 49 second cousins and over 180 third cousins. Note that on my father's mother's side (Adsit-Ashby), I have no known first cousins, second cousins, or third cousins. This makes it difficult to confirm more distant, colonial New England cousins on this side because I've got lots of other colonial New England in other ancestral lines.

Some families were more difficult to track forward than others; it depended on where they lived and whether I could find useful obituaries in online newspapers (among other resources). Then there are families with common names: Bailey, Hunter, Murphy, Smith, Walsh, as well as branches of cousins who moved abroad, making it harder to find them.

Notes:
* The couple's name in bold are my second great-grandparents.
*  In many cases, the number of third cousins is an estimate (especially McAlpin-Rose, Greeley half-third cousins, and Hunter-Freeland).
*  I refer to 3 siblings under my maternal lines and 4 siblings under my paternal lines as I have one sibling with whom I share my father and not my mother.
*  The colors are based on my long-time color-coding system.

PATERNAL-PATERNAL
James Pyle (1823-1900) and Esther Abigail Whitman (1828-1921) had:
   7 children (only 2 had children)
   9 grandchildren
  10 great-grandchildren
  40 great-great-grandchildren (me, my 4 siblings, no first cousins, my 31 second cousins, and 4 third cousins)

David Hunter McAlpin (1816-1901) and Frances Adelaide Rose (1829-1870) had:
  10 children
  23 grandchildren
  48 great-grandchildren
(at least) 139 great-great-grandchildren (me, my 4 siblings, no first cousins, my 31 second cousins, and (at least) 103 third cousins)


PATERNAL-MATERNAL
James Monroe Adsit (1809-1894) and Susan Arville Chapin (1820-1906) had:
   7 children
   4 grandchildren
   1 great-grandson (my dad)
   5 great-great-grandchildren (me, my 4 siblings, no first cousins, second cousins, or third cousins)

Daniel Morgan Ashby (1828-1907) and Mary Elizabeth Gorin (1833-1891) had:
   6 children
   3 grandchildren
   1 great-grandson (my dad)
   5 great-great-grandchildren (me, my 4 siblings, no first cousins, second cousins, or third cousins)


MATERNAL-PATERNAL
Henry Clay Copeland (1832-1912) and Sarah Lowell (1833-1916) had:
   3 children
   6 grandchildren
   7 great-grandchildren
  20 great-great-grandchildren (me, my 3 siblings, my 5 first cousins, my 11 second cousins, no third cousins)

Samuel Sewall Greeley (1824-1916) and his first wife Anne Morris Larned (1828-1864) had:
   4 children
  10 grandchildren
  27 great-grandchildren
  (at least) 57 great-great-grandchildren (my half-third cousins)

Samuel Sewall Greeley (1824-1916) and his second wife Eliza May Wells (1839-1880) had:
   5 children
   3 grandchildren
   7 great-grandchildren
  20 great-great-grandchildren (me, my 3 siblings, my 5 first cousins, my 11 second cousins, no third cousins)


MATERNAL-MATERNAL
James Hunter (1844-1902) and Mary Freeland (1850-1902) had:
  10 children
  10 grandchildren
  16 great-grandchildren
  (at least) 28 great-great-grandchildren (me, my 3 siblings, my 5 first cousins, my 7 second cousins, my (at least) 12 third cousins)  (Some with the surname Hunter are very difficult to trace, as the names are somewhat common.)

George Lysle, Jr. (1845-1900) and his first wife Marion Helen Alston (1850-1885) had:
   2 children
   7 grandchildren
   7 great-grandchildren
   21 great-great-grandchildren (me, my 3 siblings, my 5 first cousins, my 7 second cousins, my 5 third cousins)

George Lysle, Jr. (1845-1900) and his second wife Edith O. Hadly (1869-1933) had:
   2 children. One son died young and the other married, but didn't have any children. No half-third cousins here.

I have added these third cousins to my tree in Family Tree Maker and plan to upload it to Ancestry, MyHeritage (and perhaps other sites) to help connect me to more cousins. I have added many surnames to my tree and have already identified several cousins on the DNA testing sites while doing this project.

What Else Can You Find in Yearbooks: Grandfather at Northwestern

After reading about Leighton Mount, a college freshman who disappeared during a hazing incident in September 1921 at Under Every Tombstone (see Part 1: The Strange Disappearance of a Northwestern University Freshman - Leighton Mount and Part 2: The Shocking Conclusion), I remembered that my grandfather, Lowell Townsend Copeland, graduated from Northwestern University. He was known as Townsend, and later Toby, to distinguish him from his father, Lowell Copeland.

The family story from my mother is that her father attended Harvard University for one year, where his uncle Charles Copeland was a well-known English professor (see Copey of Harvard). Uncle Charles had Townsend take two English classes, which apparently was more than he could handle, and he flunked out.

He returned home to Winnetka, Illinois, and enrolled in Northwestern University, in neighboring Evanston, and based on the student lists and yearbooks that I found online, he was there in the fall of 1921 when the story of Leighton Mount was all over the news.

From Google Books

Google Books has a few years of the Northwestern University Bulletin / Annual Catalog, which provides lists of enrolled students and I found Lowell Townsend Copeland, of Winnetka, Illinois, enrolled in the College of Liberal Arts for the 1919-1920 school year and for the 1922-1923 school year. I wonder if he didn't take a full course load for a few years, because he was enrolled in 1919-1920 and ended up as a member of the class of 1925.

School yearbooks tell me a little bit about grandfather's experience at Northwestern. Unfortunately, they often didn't provide information for freshmen unless they were class officers (and Ancestry doesn't happen to have the 1923 copy at its U.S., School Yearbooks collection).


The following images are from the 1924 Northeastern University Yearbook (the Syllabus), which covered events and activities for the 1922-1923 school year, when the class of 1924 were juniors (and the class of 1925 were sophomores).

Grandfather was a member of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity and he was listed as Townsend Copeland, a sophomore.

He is in the back row of the fraternity photograph: