Heartbreak of Genealogy

When I first started on this road to searching ancestors, a lot of work had already been done in 1901 by a distant cousin, Edwin Towne, who, without the aid of computers, published a scholarly epic entitled The Descendants of William Towne of Salem, Massachusetts. He managed to dig up Towne family ancestry all the way back to William Towne and Joanna Blessing Towne and their family that could have consisted of up five children ranging in age form 2 to 10 who emigrated from England to Massachusetts in about 1630, just ten years after the Pilgrims had landed at Plymouth.  William and Joanna are my great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandparents on my mother's side.

Then, in 1981, my cousin, Gladys Shepard Evans, originally of Plainfield and later, Sacramento, CA, created a hand-typed genealogy of our specific Townes, based in part on the book and on her own research.  Finally, the killer, was being introduced to genealogical research by a friend, Jeri Lyon, who showed me how to do things at the Library of Congress, the National Archives, the National Genealogical Society Library in Virginia, and at a Mormon Library.

In the early 1990's, I put together an extensive genealogy using a DOS-based computer program and thankfully, printed a summary of each of over 950 individuals in that database.  I say thankfully, because because somewhere along the line, the actual database has been lost.  Occasionally, I would look at old floppy disks to see if I could find it, but to no avail.  This past winter, as I let my 67-year old bones escape cold weather, I began recreating the database, this time using a Windows-based program and doing frequent backups.

That new genealogical database now has over 1900 names in it, many of whom are very distant cousins, some of whom are related, not to me, but to my children.   When my first wife and I were first married, she told me that she only met her real father once and then she was surprised that the Daddy she'd known wasn't her father.  Recently, I decided my now grown children needed to know their roots.  For a fellow who managed to remain lost to his own daughter, he certainly left a trail.   In a few short weeks, my son and daughter, John and Shannon, have gone from knowing only their real grandfather's nickname to knowing their fourth great grandfather's full name.  Ain't genealogy fun?

As a man who was raised in New Hampshire, I often feel that southerners look at me as just another Damned Yankee, but I'm not the first of my family to move from New England to Georgia.   My second great grandfather, Ephraim Downer was born in Vermont in 1825, but in November of 1864, he moved to Georgia. The move was not necessarily by choice.  At age 38 he'd enlisted in the Vermont Militia as a replacement for someone else, and then in a battle at the Weldon Railroad in Virginia, was taken prisoner by the Confederates and eventually ended up at Andersonville Prison in south Georgia.   As soon as he was "paroled", he hightailed it back to Vermont.   This was never a family story, but it is now, the result of genealogical research.

William Towne, my 7th great grandfather that I mentioned in the opening paragraph, and wife Joana brought eight children into the world, four boys and four girls.   Two were born in Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1639 and 1648, the older ones were all born in England.   Three of the four females have been the subject of a number of scholarly dissertations, some dreadful books, a couple of movies, and a television show.  You see, Rebecca Town Nurse, Mary Towne Eastes, and Sarah Towne Cloyce all lived a few miles northeast of Boston near the town of Salem.  All three were accused of Witchcraft, the two older sisters were indicted, convicted and hanged, Rebecca on July 19th, 1692 at age 72, and Mary on September 22nd of 1692 at age 58.  Sarah, as the story goes, was never indicted, but spent nearly a year in jail, and following release, was paid three sovereigns for her troubles.  Some of my research shows that two years earlier, Massachusetts began producing paper money "none under five shillings nor exceeding five pounds in one bill" so we are left to wonder what exactly she was paid.  The fourth sister, Susannah Towne Hayward, had died at age 61 in
Bridgwater, Massachusetts on April 15, 1686, but even if she had lived, the distance between Salem and Bridgewater, some 52 miles or so, would most likely have kept her out of the courts.  It was their brother Edmund Towne who continued the family line that today includes me and my children.

My paternal grandmother, Florence McNamara AKA Grandma Mc, was the daughter of William Henry Harrison Downer and Martha Jane Garfield Downer.   I'd guess that William's family thought a lot of the US President who served the shortest, just 32 days, but it is the name Garfield that has my attention.  When I was growing up, my grandparents lived in a large brick farmhouse with a front staircase that led to the second floor.  On the wall at the head of the stairs hung some sort of  certificate with photographs that seemed to indicate that President James A. Garfield was in our family.  It's a rather curious fact that he served the second shortest time as President, just 200 days.  I've traced and traced, but to date, have found no evidence that I'm related to him.  In fact, while we do not seem to have a connection to Garfield through my Grandmother McNamara's family, the President's mother was Eliza Ballou Ingalls, a name that appears in my Towne side of the family.  How ironic it would be to find out that I'm related to the President through my mother's family.

The Heartbreak of Genealogy indeed.  Tracking family names that go nowhere, Finding great aunts who were hanged for being witches.   Finding that a great grandfather had gone off to war as the (probably) paid replacement for someone else, who was captured, spent time as a POW, then returned to Vermont to live another 35 years with a disability pension from the government.   There are other stories, too.  A distant relative who disappeared from the family only to show up in a reform school.  An uncle wounded in WWII in the Pacific, another uncle, not mine, but my children's, wounded in early June in the fighting the followed the D-Day invasion.   A noted pitcher in the minor leagues who apparently threw out his arm before making it big. Families landing in Massachusetts less than twenty years after the Pilgrims.  Another early settler, coming across a boat of a friend that had been attacked by Indians, counter attacked, killed some of the Indians, capturing at least one alive, and returned to the Connecticut shore and reported the skirmish, apparently setting off the Pequot War.   A Towne relative who developed a style of bridge construction that became known as the Towne Lattice Style - his design was used on the Cornish-Windsor Covered Bridge, the longest, all wood, covered bridge in the country - only to have his invention hijacked by spelling errors in history - the plaque at a covered bridge near my Georgia home is described as being of the "town lattice style."

Recently I found that my grammar and high school sweetheart was, in fact my third cousin. I've found that my first wife, mother of my children, is my 8th cousin, so my children are also my 9th cousins.  I've found that I'm related to people with names that sound the the Meriden phone book of the 1920's.

For people living in Meriden and Plainfield, some of the names I've mentioned may be familiar.  I am Jim McNamara, son of Basil and Dot McNamara who lived in the house on the hill above the Meriden Fire Station.  My paternal grandparents, John and Florence McNamara, lived in the brick farmhouse across the bridge from the Baptist Church, and my maternal grandparents, Elmer and Stella Towne, lived in a house on High Street that Elmer built himself when he was in his early 70's.   Dad's brother John still lives in Meriden and Mom's sister Emma lives in Plainfield.