A Rude But Patriotic Awakening

Some residents of Lehi, Utah, are not happy with the city's early-morning Independence Day tradition.

Since the early 1900s, the city's firefighters have greeted every Fourth of July at 6 a.m. by setting off a series of 12 to 15 loud explosions, called salutes, throughout the city. The event is believed to honor a tradition that may have begun by city pioneers in 1876, the country's centennial.

In 1876, the town of approximately 1,200 observed Independence Day by firing 100 guns in honor of the number of years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

For a climactic finish, an anvil was fired by lighting a charge of black powder under it, causing a "clap like thunder." [Link]

The Great Father Was Not Decapitated

Anne Heyward remembers visiting the grave of her ancestor Thomas Heyward, Jr.—a signer of the Declaration of Independence—when she was a young girl.

Her first memory of visiting Heyward's graveside was in 1941. "My sister and I were very impressed," said Anne, 71. "We decided to call him 'The Great Father.' That night after we got home, our parents realized we thought the (bust) was his real head and they had buried the rest of him -- all except his real head. We had never seen a statue before." [Link]

Gerry Did More Than Mander

Elbridge Gerry is remembered most for inspiring the invention of the word "gerrymandering" by creatively redrawing the electoral map of Massachusetts to his party's advantage. One of his descendants wishes his other accomplishments were as well remembered.

Elbridge T. "Elbert" Gerry Jr., the great-great-great grandson of the former governor, took exception to the historical pigeonholing of his ancestor as an electoral usurper, pointing out that the late Gerry had signed the Declaration of Independence, was a Bay State delegate to the original Constitutional Convention, and represented the new nation in the XYZ Affair, a diplomatic spat with France that led to the two-year "Quasi-War."

Asked if he has been troubled by the mispronunciation of the family name - pronounced with the hard "g" sound, while "gerrymander" is typically pronounced with a soft "g" - Gerry replied, "Been trying to correct it for years." [Link]

So That's Where We Put It

Archivist Greg Jarrell was researching a Revolutionary War-era ancestor of a patron at the Georgia Archives when he found something he didn't expect: Georgia’s official copy of the Declaration of Independence.

“It was an oh-my-God moment — just awe struck, just thinking of what this document went through,” said Jarrell, 44, who also is a portrait artist.

Officials have determined the document is authentic. It will remain in a vault at the state archives until Georgia Day on Feb. 12, when it will be displayed along with the state’s Charter at the state capitol.

“It is absolutely stunning,” Jarrell said. “That is just the most amazing thing we have is this document. It is irreplaceable. It is a treasure. It is priceless.” [Link]

American Royalty (Or So They Think)

An article in the New York Observer lays out some of the illustrious family tree of the Mortimer clan.

The Mortimer family traces its origins to John Jay, the nation’s first chief justice. One of the current generation, Robert Livingston (Topper) Mortimer, that trusty husband of Tinsley, is the great-grandson of Henry Morgan Tilford, a president of Standard Oil, and he bears as well the name of Robert Livingston, a drafter of the Declaration of Independence.

One of the Mortimer cousins, Eva Pell, has recently finished a biography of the Pell and Mortimer families called We Used to Own the Bronx. She explains why I will never become her brother-in-law:

“We’re actually very un-America in spirit,” she said. “Horatio Alger would not be welcome in our family. And the idea is to inherit your money and not make it—and the longer ago, the better.” [Link]

She Might Not Be Right On the Button

Elizabeth Anne Gwinnett McLeod of Queensland, Australia, is "almost certain" that she inherited her middle name from Button Gwinnett of Georgia, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. I'm less certain.

McLeod and a cousin, Christopher Gwinnett Coote, both share the middle name that has been in her family for generations. But McLeod said she had no idea where it originally came from, or how she might be related to Gwinnett.

McLeod said she did not pass the name on to her daughter, but is beginning to regret that fact. After beginning to do some research, McLeod said she may have to try to convince her daughter to augment her own children’s names with Gwinnett. [Link]

Sorry If I'm Being Impolitic

Think you're related to Millard Fillmore? Then Political Family Tree might be the site for you.

I say "might be" because I'm not willing to fork over $29.95 to find out. For that subscription price, the site offers genealogies and biographies of "all U.S. Presidents, all U.S. Vice Presidents, and all Signers of the Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, and U.S. Constitution." They're beginning to add pedigrees of colonial and state governors, and promise "hundreds of other genealogies."

The family trees and biographies are given as PDF files, so you'll need to have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed. Based on the samples provided, the subscription price seems steep for the information offered (it goes up to $34.95 after Presidents' Day). Only paternal lines are traced "back to the boat," and even then with scant detail. Descending lines are not traced. No sources are cited, listed, or hinted at.

The pedigrees are useful in showing the genetic relationships that existed between the leading colonial families, but for anyone hoping to flesh out a family history will prove insufficient. Most of these families are well documented in print (families with illustrious members generally are), so a trip to a library with a good genealogy collection should be first on the to-do list.

Put "Subscribe to Political Family Tree" further down on the list—right below "Clean the gutters."

[tagged: genealogy]

Colonial Manor May Get Indoor Plumbing

From The Baltimore (Md.) Sun:

Historic estate plans stir debate

Doughoregan owners may allow development

By Larry Carson
Sun reporter
Originally published January 1, 2006

Howard County leaders are reacting cautiously to plans for developing part of Doughoregan Manor, the Colonial-era Carroll family estate, though a proposal to extend public utilities onto the land has drawn opposition.

The descendants of Charles Carroll, the only Roman Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence, have been talking with county officials since summer about their proposal to raise tens of millions of dollars to pay for restoration and preservation of their 1720 estate and its 20-room historic mansion, plus 30 other buildings on 892 acres, partly at public expense.

[snip]

The large estate has acted as a buffer to the intense development to the east and south, but some worry that if water and sewer lines breach its boundaries, dense development could follow in the western part of the county.

[snip]

[Read the whole story]

tags: genealogy, family history, family tree

The West Wing: Pseudo-Fact or Fiction?

On NBC's The West Wing, President Josiah "Jed" Bartlet claims that his "great-grandfather's great-grandfather was Dr. Josiah Bartlett, who was the New Hampshire delegate to the second Continental Congress, the one that sat in session in Philadelphia in the summer of 1776. . ." Setting aside the fictional status of Jed Bartlet, could this claim be true?

First question: Does Dr. Josiah Bartlett have any male descendants bearing the name "Bartlett" or "Bartlet"?

The seven volume Descendants of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence, by Frederick Wallace Pyne (Camden, Me.: Picton Press, 1997-) is now the standard source for dealing with such questions. Volume One shows that Josiah and Mary (Bartlett) Bartlett of Kingston, N. H., had thirteen children, four of whom were sons, two of whom died without issue. Succeeding generations contained few male Bartletts who married and had children. Six male Bartletts had issue in the third generation, but only two in the fourth generation. According to Pyne, only one great-great-great-grandson of Josiah Bartlett bore the name "Bartlett." He was John Wilkinson Bartlett of Illinois, who died Oct. 5, 2001, in Aurora, Illinois, at age 85 years. His obituary from the Beacon News in Aurora reveals that he had two sons at the time of his death—Hugh and John, Jr.—who are apparently the only Bartletts who can claim that their "great-grandfather's great-grandfather was Dr. Josiah Bartlett."

Second question: Why does The West Wing's Jed Bartlet spell his name with one "t", while his famous ancestor spelled it with two?

The one "t" spelling may have been common once, before the masses became literate and spellings standardized, but it is rarely found today. The Social Security Death Index lists 14,489 individuals named "Bartlett," but only 25 named "Bartlet." According to the U. S. Census Bureau, "Bartlett" was the 693rd most common surname in 1990; "Bartlet" ranked 58,594th. None of the known descendants of Dr. Josiah Bartlett used the latter spelling.