Research yields enthralling stories from a family’s strange history.
CARLETON YOUNG’s research has yielded enthralling stories from his family’s past
Two years ago on this page, I told some of the stories I had found while researching my family history. It had all begun with clearing out my parents’ house in Churchill after they had passed away. In their attic, I had been surprised to find an old wooden box jammed full of hundreds of letters written by two brothers fighting in the Civil War. After years of researching the two soldiers and visiting battlefields to walk in the footsteps of these ancestors from my New England grandfather’s side of the family, I eventually published the book “Voices From the Attic: The Williamstown Boys in the Civil War.” As a result of many favorable book reviews, I have remained busy in retirement by being invited to share my story with more than 200 different organizations around the country. I also continue to be interested in family history.
In my previous article, some of the stories that I told were about my Pittsburgh grandmother’s ancestors from Fayette County. My great-great-grandfather, Alpheus Wilson, returned home from the Civil War to work in the coal mines near Uniontown. A Pittsburgh newspaper headline later referred to his county as “Bloody Fayette” while reporting that Alpheus had been shot and killed by his son during a drunken family dispute.
Another Fayette County ancestor from that side of the family was Nettie Miller. At the age of 14, she had been orphaned and coerced into marrying 44-year-old Isley Tate. Tate was the leader of one side in a violent and deadly family feud against the Brownfields along the Pennsylvania/ West Virginia border in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Over the next 22 years, Nettie bore him 13 children. It became a nationally covered news story when three of those children were charged with ambushing and murdering their father. Nettie was implicated but never charged in conspiring in the murder of her husband. A year later, she married one of the Brownfields.
In my research, I had also found stories of great heroism. I learned that through my New England grandmother’s side of the family I am at least distantly related to Paul Revere, my fourth cousin, six times removed. A much more direct ancestor, my four times great-grandfather, James Harvey, fought against the British at Bunker Hill as a teenager. He was later singled out for his bravery in a speech by
Daniel Webster.
But I had also uncovered stories of treachery, criminal activity and several murders. I also made an ironic discovery on my New England grandparents’ family line. On one side of that family line is Susannah Martin, one of the 19 people hanged for witchcraft in Salem. On another side of that family line is my eight times great-grandfather, Henry Herrick, who sat on the jury that convicted her.
I concluded that earlier article by encouraging others to research their own family histories wherever that might lead because of the possibility of finding fascinating stories such as I had been finding. I never imagined what I would find by following my own advice and digging even more deeply into my family history.
Finding connections
Although Pennsylvania is known for its early Quaker background, I never knew my connection to that history until I began researching the ancestors of my Pittsburgh grandfather.
The Quakers had been founded by George Fox in England in the late 1640s and as the movement spread, they were soon facing persecution in England and other parts of Europe. Because the Penn family was owed a large amount of money by the Crown, William Penn, who had become a Quaker, made an alternative arrangement. In 1681, he received a charter to start a colony in the New World. His purpose was to create a safe haven for his fellow Quakers by offering toleration for all religious faiths.
During the year 1682, 22 ships arrived in Pennsylvania with more than 2,000 settlers. Some of my ancestors arrived on the first ships coming to this new colony. My eight times great-grandfather, Thomas Croasdale, his wife, Agnes, and six children arrived on one of those ships. My seven times greatgrandfather, William Smith, was a servant who arrived in Philadelphia on the same ship as William Penn.
About one-third of the passengers died of smallpox during that journey, but William Smith survived, married Thomas Croasdale’s daughter, Mary, and they built a house in 1686 in what is now Bucks County. Many houses had of course already been built in Colonial America by that time, but unlike all others, someone has always resided in that particular house from that early date until today. Their house is listed in the National Register of Historic Places as the oldest continuously occupied home in America.
So Thomas Croasdale’s daughter, Mary, was my seven times great-grandmother, but Thomas Croasdale also had another daughter, Alice, who married a Quaker named Thomas Potts.
Many of the leading families of New York were later composed of their descendants: the Schuylers (of “Hamilton” fame), the Van Rensselaers, the Roosevelts. I was astounded to find that I was distantly related to many of the famous members of these families after having spent my career teaching about them in my high school history classes. Teddy Roosevelt was my sixth cousin, three times removed. Eleanor Roosevelt was my seventh cousin, two times removed. Franklin Roosevelt was from the other side of the Roosevelt family line, so I am related to him only through his marriage to Eleanor, FDR’s fifth cousin, once removed.
Harrowing tale
Even more interesting to me was learning the story of another Quaker in my ancestry, this time through the line of my New England grandfather. William Penn gained a reputation for trying to establish better relations with the Native Americans in Pennsylvania than had occurred in many other colonies. Several decades later, Indian relations did not work out so well for my six times great grandmother, Elizabeth Hanson, who had settled in Dover, N.H.
In 1725, along with several of her children, she was taken captive by members of an Abenaki tribe who had come down on a raid from Canada. Her firsthand account of their harrowing ordeal, “God’s Mercy Surmounting Man’s Cruelty: An Account of the Captivity of Elizabeth Hanson,” became very well known in Colonial America. Almost three centuries have passed, yet the strength that she demonstrates in her heart-wrenching adventure has resulted in her story continuing to be published to the present day.
Elizabeth was at her home along with six of her children when 12 Abenakis suddenly entered. After ransacking the house, in order to show what they were capable of doing and to get the others to completely obey, they murdered and scalped 9-year-old Ebenezer in front of the other family members. When 4-year-old Caleb started crying, the Abenakis were afraid others might hear him. With a hammer-shaped weapon, they bludgeoned him to death. In her account, Elizabeth says that she forced herself to control her emotions for fear that otherwise the remaining children would all be murdered.
They were taken captive and then forced on a long march toward Canada. The captives included Elizabeth, two daughters aged 14 and 16, a 6-year-old boy and a 2-week-old baby girl. Elizabeth, already in a weakened condition from just having gone through childbirth, now had to endure a journey taking several months.
They were going overland with no roads, over mountains and through swamps. Also, the captives had very little food, surviving on berries, roots, tree bark or leftover scraps from animals that their captors discarded. Elizabeth also found that she was unable to produce much milk, so to keep the baby alive she had to find ways to get water into her.
Another problem was that the weather started turning cold. They had no warm clothing and had to sleep on the cold ground with nothing to cover them. Once they got to Canada, the oldest daughter, 16year-old Sarah, was sold to another tribe. That tribe later resold her to a French trapper to be his wife. Elizabeth and the remaining children then lived with their captors’ tribe for several months, facing many more difficult times.
One of the surprising things about her story is that unlike other captivity narratives of the time, after all she endured, Elizabeth searched for what she believed were humane and admirable qualities in her captors. As a Quaker, she believed that God’s spirit resided within every person. She relates in her account how her captors sometimes held the baby for her when walking and offered her and the children a hand when struggling to get over difficult places. When living among the tribe, Elizabeth made an error and one of the Abenaki threatened to kill her. She was saved by an elderly woman from the tribe who risked her own safety by intervening on her behalf and protecting her.
Elizabeth and the remaining children were eventually sold over to a French trading post. There, Elizabeth’s husband, John, was able to come north and pay a ransom for his family, although there was no way to now locate Sarah. They returned home to Dover, arriving a year and six days after being taken captive.
Elizabeth’s problems were not over, however. John could not reconcile having left his oldest daughter behind. My six times greatgrandfather decided to make one more attempt to find his missing daughter. During the journey, he made it as far as Crown Point, where he was stricken with a high fever and died. Elizabeth was left to run the farm and bring up the children on her own. And rather than bemoan her misfortunes, she concluded her story by thanking God for all the blessings that had occurred in her life.
As for her lost daughter Sarah, I had pictured in my mind her marriage to the French trapper as being something similar to Nettie Miller being somehow forced into her marriage with the much older, cruel and lecherous Isley Tate. I later discovered, however, that Jean Sabourin had been 22 years old, just five years older than Sarah by that point, and perhaps was simply trying to free her from captivity. He asked for her consent before purchasing her release from the Abenaki, brought her back to Montreal, and there they were officially married in a Catholic Church. They then built a house and started a farm just outside of Montreal. They had several children, and Sarah and her husband both lived into their 80s. I would like to think that maybe she did end up having a happy life. They built their home on a beautiful site that over several generations was developed into a large estate. The original home of Sarah and Jean Sabourin can still be visited as a historic site near Montreal.
But I had also uncovered stories of treachery, criminal activity and several murders.
Carleton Young is a retired history teacher from Thomas Jefferson High School. He also has taught as an adjunct professor at the Community College of Allegheny County, at the University of Pittsburgh and in the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. His email address is 1cwyoung2@gmail.com.