One Life at a Time: A New World Family Narrative
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Title: One Life at a Time: A New World Family Narrative, 1630-1960
Author: R. Thomas Collins
ISBN: 0966788303
Description:
This book chronicles the ancestors of the author's children as they arrived in the New World, what propelled them from Britain, Ireland and Korea, and what happened to them and their descendants once they took root in America -- one life at a time. The narrative focuses on the history and development of New England and its people while illuminating episodes of the American experience spanning more than three centuries as lived by ordinary people forging a New World.
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From the Foreword by Joseph S. Wood, Ph.D, Provost, University of Southern Maine
It is a rare book of any kind that captures well both the laborious details of genealogy and a spirited sense of historical context. One Life at a Time - a New World Family Narrative 1630 - 1960 however succeeds at just that. R. Thomas Collins is a gifted writer with a passion for genealogy and ability to make the details of each life interesting. In so doing, he sets a standard for genealogical writing that few others writers will be able to match. Here is why this book works so well: too often we read historical events as the shapers of our lives but ignore the impact each of us has on those very events, assuming somehow that only a few elites actually make history. In fact, all of us all the time make history, and we write history too. Geographical migrants to a strange land or from the field to the factory, or social migrants across the lines of ethnicity and class, not only respond to the historical forces of change, but they also becomes agent of that change. We do shape the world, as it shapes us. Collins has shown exactly how this is done.
Statement of Ellsworth S. Grant, Former President Connecticut Historical Society, 1982-89
One Life at a time - a New World Family Narrative 1630 - 1960 is the first family chronicle I have read in genealogical format that comes alive, one family after another, generation after generation. The author, R. Thomas Collins brings together 118 pairs of his forebears over a span of three and a third centuries, men and women who exemplify the American experience as settlers, farmers, militiamen, artisans, adventurers, entrepreneurs and homemakers. Trained as a journalist, Collins has the Gaelic gift for turning a neat phrase, and his chronicle should serve as a model for genealogists who wish to compile more than a dry account of births, marriages and deaths.
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Introduction to One Life at a Time
In the spring of 1863, my great-grandfather, James Collins, a 22-year-old blacksmith from the village of Kilrush in County Clare, Ireland, stood on the deck of an Atlantic sailing ship watching as the port of Liverpool disappeared over the horizon. Near him, contemplating the weeks-long ocean crossing, was his father, Sinon, age 50. The father and son were aboard an 181-foot sloop bound for New York, escaping a ruined economy and destined never to return to their home village on the banks of the Shannon River in western Ireland.
The ship on which they would make their journey was not a unique or extraordinary vessel. Made of oak and hackmatack, with iron and cooper fastenings, the vessel had been built in 1851 at a shipyard in Damariscotta, Maine, by Grinnell, Miniturn & Company of New York. At 1,146 tons, the ship had three masts and could hold about 600 passengers on its three decks. Called The American Union, it was one of many ships constructed to handle the increasing trade between the United States and Europe and was part of the Swallowtail Line, which ran passengers and cargo between Liverpool and New York. The American Union would operate from 1852 to 1867, when it was taken out of service because of the advent of faster ships powered by steam.
James and his father, Sinon, arrived in New York May 25, 1863. On the ship's passenger list compiled in the Port of New York, Sinon was listed as passenger number 514, James, as number 520. Both had made the voyage booked on the lower deck and both, despite their trade as blacksmiths, were listed as "labourers." In the years ahead, they would occasionally look back wondering at the mystery of their journey, contemplating its causes and consequences. In this they were like the others who came before and those who would come after.
More than a century later, I got it in mind to investigate the journey they and my other ancestors had made to America. The idea began simply enough, as an effort to give my two children an understanding of their heritage. As the years of study, reading and writing unfolded, however, the idea evolved. Slowly, as if illuminated by another hand, a world became visible to me, hidden before, but now as real as my own. My past and my people came to life. Now, after studying their lives and their times, their voices whisper in my ear. I hear the songs of the Pagans and the Puritans;- the Deacons and the Druids; the lyrics of the ancients emerging in an American harmony.
This chronicle, the result of these labors, begins in the early 17th century and follows the immigration and progress of my children's ancestors from Britain and Ireland and concludes with the arrival of their mother from Korea. The paths taken were similar, with each of the immigrants fleeing an Old World that could not sustain them. In this country, the immigrants and their descendants participated in the formation of the New World, helping forge a new society, which is yet forming. Some led distinguished lives, others common. Some were strong, others less -so. Their occupations varied according to era. Yet all were builders. They were farmers, tinkers, militiamen, laborers, artisans, adventurers, canal builders, railroaders, industrialists, professionals, dreamers and homemakers. Their story is of America, told one life at a time. For me, as I conclude these studies, I find, and my wife's journey confirms, that the American Union still sails in waters charted by dreams.
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In the newspaper business, where I spent a decade, there was a job called rewrite. An honored task, once practiced around the city desk of every newspaper in the nation, rewrite called on the practitioner to redo words into a set style favored by the editors of the publication, adding facts, quotes, new information and, if necessary, rhetorical flourishes to give body and life to the bare bones of who, what, when, where and why. It is a craft that uses a reporter's own notes from interviews and observation, almanacs, encyclopedia, eyewitness accounts, ideas learned elsewhere, old newspaper stories, wire services - in short, any resource available. The rewriteman's task is to put scattered information together into a readable form. It may not be scholarship up to strict academic standards. It is more storytelling, a way of helping define reality, something we all try to do everyday, with mixed success. One learns the craft of rewrite as one would learn how to shoe a horse, after much practice and usually against a deadline while some creature with a lack of patience waits for results. It is my hope that the reader finds this chronicle well shod.
In struggling to adopt a format for this chronicle, a comment of my grandfather, James Michael Collins, the railroad master mechanic, came to mind: "Put a number on it." He favored bringing an engineer's eye to daily problems, addressing them as one would a problem with a mathematical solution. Such a device would not be appropriate in all things, of course, but it is a way to help measure the dynamics of a problem and decide what might be done. I knew of approaches I did not wish to take, and I knew that unless I adopted some system to deal with the information I was compiling, I would be lost. I followed the advice of my grandfather, the master mechanic, and devised a system using numbers. The numbers are assigned each of my children's ancestors in chronological order as they arrived in the New World as immigrants, and to their subsequent descendants. My Grandfather Collins' number is 116. Obadiah Mead Knapp, a brother of my great-grandmother Theodosia Caroline (Knapp) Savage (#109), wrote February 9, 1915:
I used to think I'd at some time get to work and make a thorough search to find out all the descendants...Well! It did not take me long to find out that I could not even afford the expense of it. I just can't do such work anymore...I get all mixed up, utterly confused and lost...
I was more fortunate that Uncle Obe. The number system enabled me to keep straight who was who, and information unavailable to him abounded for me 70 years later. Volumes unwritten in Uncle Obe's time are now carefully preserved in the Connecticut Historical Society and other libraries. Also, Uncle Obe could not know that relatives, close and distant had spent and would spend years gathering information. Many of those family historians never knew others were working on different portraits on the same large canvas. Fortunately much of that work was discovered, collated and saved by Caroline Knapp Savage, sister of my grandfather, Willis Isaac Savage (#115), who, as an historian for the Emma Willard Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution in Berlin, Connecticut, kept elaborate records. The rest was in libraries and historical societies. This chronicle, therefore, is a work of journalism with many family collaborators. An historian once said that history is mostly written from the top down, concentrating on the great and noteworthy first. Because of efforts in generations past, I was able to craft a family history that is of America one life at a time. If those in this chronicle would not be of the great and noteworthy to others, at least they were so to me.
I would like to thank Mary Close (Savage) Collins; Robert Thomas Collins; Yung Ja (Lee) Murdock; Paul and Agnes (Howard Savage) Griswold; Charles Wilfred and Ethel (Truss) Savage; Constance Sullivan (Mrs. James Francis Collins) Cain; Rev. Roger and Betsy (Roby) Manners; Alice Rankin (Mrs. Terrence P.) Gromley; Catherine Rankin Darling; Grace (Mrs. Charles) Howard; Richard Alden Howard; Arthur J. Howard; Clifford Earl Howard, and Iva Howard Feldtmose. Though this chronicle is specifically focused for my children, it also contains as well the heritage of my siblings and cousins, who all provided encouragement. I want to thank my sister, Tara; her husband, David Gordon, and their daughter Samantha; my brother, Bill; Sally Townsend; and their son Townsend Savage and daughter Caroline Sanders; and my cousins: Jim Collins, his wife Nancy (Michel), and their daughters Anna, Elizabeth and Margaret; Tricia Collins, Gino Scarano, and their sons, Dominic and James, and daughter Kathleen; Charles Savage; hi-s wife, Susan (Locke); and their son, Andrew James, and daughters Kimberly and Brittany; Emmy Savage, Mark Borthwick; and their son John Kenyon; Betty Collins; and Mary Collins, and her daughter, Julia Frances. Also, posthumous thanks to Annette Savage (Mrs. Sheldon) Roby for her faithful and illuminating correspondence; Caroline Knapp Savage, my grandfather's sister, for her family records, and Curtis Morgan, a distant Savage relation, for his handwritten history of Savage Hill and East Berlin. Each greatly assisted in gathering the information used in this chronicle. In researching this chronicle, I learned what a debt we all owe to those who maintain books, manuscripts, pictures, maps, orders of battle, regimental histories, diaries and the like in libraries and historical societies. Historians Will and Ariel Durant wrote:
If a man is fortunate, he will before he dies, gather up as much as he can of his civilized heritage and transmit it to his children. And to his final breath he will be grateful for his inexhaustible legacy, knowing that it is our nourishing mother and our lasting life.
Obtaining facts about the past and learning from them keeps our culture and heritage alive. Libraries and historical associations are sanctuaries. They help give meaning to the confusion and uncertainty around us, and enable us all to deliver our legacy to our children. Thanks to the staff, trustees and members of the American Association for State and Local History, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Connecticut Historical Society, the Stamford (CT) Historical Society, the Crawford County (PA) Historical Society, the Butler County (OH) Historical Society, the Society of the Descendants of the Founders of Hartford, the New Haven Railroad Technical & Historical Association, the Hawaiian Mission Children's Society, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and the Erie Lackawana Historical Society.
I owe a debt to many authors, but particularly to Albert W. Savage, Jr., for his extraordinary genealogical research, to David M. Roth, whose work, Connecticut - A Bicentennial History, helped place the lives of many of my early New England ancestors in context, to Richard I. Melvoin, whose work, New England Outpost - War and Society in Colonial Deerfield, helped detail the consequences of war on the frontier for a distant ancestor, and to David Hackett Fischer, author of Albion's Seed - Four British Folkways in America, whose work illuminated the subtleties of the complex society that is Britain. Also, thanks to Ellsworth Grant, author, historian and long-time president of the Connecticut Historical Society for his assistance, to Rev. Edith Wolfe of the Women's Board of Missions in Hawaii, and to Joe Wood, friend, geographer, and author of The New England Village, for appreciating this amateur's plain vision. Personal thanks as well to Carole Edwards, editor, and to Edward C. Norton, another afflicted with the "brehon's itch," for his encouragement and counsel.
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Ancestors Profiled in One Life at a Time
Part One - Founders & Settlers 1630-1709
1. Edmund Lockwood
2. Nicholas Knapp/Elinor Lockwood
3. John White/Mary Levit
4. Mary Betts/John Betts
5. Rebecca Olmsted/Thomas Newell6. John Coit/Mary Jenners
7. William Cornwell Jr./Mary Cornwell
8. Nathaniel Foote/Elizabeth Deming
9. WIlliam Mead
10. John Lothrop/Hannah House11. Timothy Stanley/Elizabeth Stanley
12. Samuel Lothrop/Elizabeth Scudder
13. Jeffrey Ferris/Mary Ferris
14. Paul Peck/Martha Hale
15. William Peck/Elizabeth Peck16. Thomas Kimberly/Alice Atwood
17. Elizabeth Foote/Josiah Churchill
18. Edward Shepard
19. Richard Watts/Elizabeth Watts
20. Elizabeth Watts/George Hubbard Jr.21. John Moss/Abigail Charles
22. John Close/Elizabeth Close
23. Robert Hibbard/Joan Hibbard
24. Peter Brown
25. William Potter26. Robert Johnson
27. John Reynolds/Sarah Reynolds
28. Matthew Beckwith/Mary Beckwith
29. John Parmalee/Hannah Parmalee
30. Samuel Boreman/Mary Betts31. Elizabeth Shepard/ThwaitStrickland
32. Edward Griswold/Margaret Griswold
33. John Cowle/Hannah Cowle
34. Edward Benton/Mary Benton
35. John Savage/Elizabeth Dubbin36. John Johnson Jr./Hannah Parmalee
37. Thomas Ranney/Mary Hubbard
38. Rebecca Newell/Joseph Woodford
39. Baltazar DeWolff/Alice Peck
40. John Mead/Hannah Potter41. Jeremiah Peck/Johannah Kitchell
42. John Wakefield/Ann Wakefield
43. Robert Royce/Mary Sims
44. Nathaniel White/Elizabeth White
45. Joseph Ferris/Ruth Knapp46. Peter Ferris/Elizabeth Reynolds
47. James Ferris/Mary Ferris
48. Joshua Knapp/Hannah Close
49. Abigail Stanley/Samuel Cowles
50. Hannah Churchill/Samuel Royce51. Hackalilah Brown/Mary Hoit
52. Martha Peck/John Cornwell
53. John Cole/Mary Cole
54. John Cole Jr./Rachel Cole
55. Isaac Boreman/Abiah Kimberly56. Marthas Coit/Hugh Mould
57. Hannah Wakefield/Edward Grannis
58. Francis Griswold
59. Edward DeWolff/Rebeckah Masuer
60. John Strickland/Esther Smith61. Robert Hibbard Jr./Mary Walden
62. Matthew Beckwith Jr./Elizabeth Beckwith
63. John Moss Jr./Martha Lathrop
64. John Savage Jr./Mary Ranney
65. William Savage/Christian Mould66. Ruth Ferris/Samuel Peck
67. Joshua Knapp Jr./Abigail Butler
68. Ebenezer Mead/Sarah Knapp
69. Benjamin Mead/Sarah Waterbury
70. Martha Cornwell/Richard Hubbard71. Samuel Mead/Hannah Mead
72. Abigail Royce/Joseph Cole
73. Elizabeth Woodford/Nathaniel Cole
74. Joseph Ferris Jr./Abigail Ferris
75. James Ferris Jr./Mary Ferris76. John Johnson III/Mehitable Grannis
77. Daniel White/Susannah Mould
78. Isaac Boreman Jr./Rebecca Benton
79. Deborah Griswold/Jonathan Crane
80. Peter Brown Jr./Martha Disbrow81. Charles DeWolff/Prudence Beckwith
82. Nathaniel Hibbard/Sarah Crane
83. Jonah Stricjland/Martha Hubbard
84. William Savage Jr./Sarah Savage
85. Ebenezer Mead Jr./Hannah Brown86. Benjamin Mead Jr./Martha Ferris
87. Theophilus Peck/Elizabeth Mead
88. Abigail Cole/Benjamin Moss
89. Jonathan Knapp/Mary Husted
90. Peter Mead/Hannah Mead91. Jonas Mead/Sarah Ferris
92. Charles DeWolff Jr./Margaret Potter
93. Josiah Bordman/Rachel Cole
94. Jonathan Hibbard
95. Thomas Johnson/Susannah White
Part Two - Militiamen, Merchants & Pioneers 1728-1818
96. Elisha Savage/Thankful Johnson
97. Simon DeWolff/Esther Strickland
98. Nathaniel Boardman/Eunice Moss
99. Seth Savage/Esther Prudence DeWolff
100. Benjamin Mead III/Mary Reynolds101. Joshua Knapp III/Eunice Peck
102. Nathaniel Hibbard Jr./Anna Mead
103. Edmond Mead/Theodosia Mead
104. Benjamin J. Knapp/Abigail Brush
105. Seth Savage Jr./Esther Boardman106. Obadiah Mead/Ruth Hibbard
107. Isaac Knapp/Theodosia Caroline Mead
108. Willis Seth Savage/Ulyssa Lois Moss
Part Three - Builders of the New Union 1840-1960
109. Henry Elliot Savage/Theodosia Caroline Knapp
110. Sinon Collins/Mary Langan
111. Patrick Howard/Susannah Lunney
112. Thomas Francis O'Connell/Catherine Sheedy
113. James Collins/Mary Kearney114. James Reynolds Howard/Mary Ann MaGee
115. Willis Isaac Savage/Louisa Close Howard
116. James Michael Collins/Alice O'Connell
117. Robert Thomas Collins/Mary Close Savage
118. Yung Ja Lee/Chung Kuk Kim
Epilogue
119. Robert Thomas Collins Jr./Sun Oak Kim
