Genealogists urge each other to talk to their oldest living relatives and record their memories as best they can. This is difficult for a lot of people to do - the researchers might be unsure of themselves, or their relationship with their relatives might not make interviewing them in their old age a comfortable experience. I know I ran into a problem with my Grandma Alberta when I asked her to share her memories because she couldn’t remember a lot of facts (names/dates/places/etc.) and she considered other kinds of stories and anecdotes to be “gossip” and she didn’t want me spreading gossip about her family.
Fortunately for me, a man named William Whitford did not share Grandma’s sense of concern about collecting stories about family and writing them down. William was 81 years old in 1862 when he was persuaded to document everything he could recall about his Whitford ancestors and their descendants. In 1939, Walter John Coates typed up copies of William’s manuscript to share with genealogy researchers, and in 1998, Coates’s transcript was published by a small press run by the late Don Shaefer in Fayetteville, Arkansas. You can read a digital copy if you log into FamilySearch.org and follow this link.
Here is William’s account of how his cousin, Green Whitford, came to Shaftesbury, Vermont, from Rhode Island in 1781 and married his wife, Anna Pierce:
Green Whitford (Son of Thomas)
Cousin Green came to my father's (Peleg's) in Shaftesbury, Vt., in 1781, I think; I have heard my mother tell an anecdote about him. Clothen Pierce lived a short distance from my father's. Mrs. Pierce was standing at the door or looking out at the window when Cousin Green with another young fellow was passing the house, going to my father's for the first time from Rhode Island. Says Anna to her mother (for that was her name); "There goes my husband." Her mother asked which one. She answered, "The one with [the] red plush jacket," which was my cousin; and as she predicted, so it turned out, for in less than two years they were married, and their eldest daughter, Jimima, was married the same day that I was to a man by the name of William Conelly.
pg. 4
If you found that difficult to read, so did I. His phrasing made the story hard to follow, and he alluded to several facts that are either mentioned elsewhere in his text or are simply things that he figured a reader would already know. For example, he calls Mr. Pierce “Clothen” here, but in two places on the same page uses his correct name, “Clothier.” If I were Mr. Coates, I might have been tempted to “fix” William’s syntax and spelling a little bit:
In 1781, my cousin, Green Whitford, came to my father’s house in Shaftesbury, Vermont, from Rhode Island. Green and his traveling companion passed by the house of Clothier Pierce, a close neighbor. Mrs. Pierce and her daughter Anna saw them and Anna said, “There goes my husband.” Her mother asked which one, and Anna indicated Green by saying, “The one with [the] red plush jacket.” As she predicted, they were married in less than two years. Coincidentally, their eldest daughter, Jimima, married a man named William Conelly on 25 Dec 1800 - the same day I was married.
But the important thing is that William recorded his memories!
Thanks to this passage, I can begin piecing together the facts in Green Whitford’s biography. I haven’t been able to find a marriage record for his marriage to Anna Pierce, but some other facts are supported by documentary evidence.
My cousin Green had a large family of children, went to Puts Creek, New York, near his brother Constant, where he was quite a bear hunter; was treed by one on one of his hunting excursions, and had to remain out on the tree all night. Had some ten children by his first wife. Their names, as far as I now recollect them, were Jimima, Clothier, Hiram, Thomas, Sylvenus, Alden, Dimmas, Celia, and Anna.
I determined that “Puts Creek” is a reference to “Putnam’s Creek,” which is located just north of Ticonderoga, New York. Census and tax records found on Ancestry show Green in Brandon, Rutland County, Vermont, in 1788; in Hampton, Washington County, New York, from 1799 to 1801; and in Crown Point, Essex County, New York, in 1803 and 1810. You can see where these places are on this map - and Shaftsbury, Vermont, is another 45 miles south of Hampton:
If you recall last week’s post, I determined that Cyrena Whitford was probably born around 1800 in Crown Point, Essex County, New York. Other researchers identified her parents as “Greene Whitford and Anna Clothier Pierce.” And here we have a family member’s contemporary account of Green Whitford marrying Anna Pierce, and documents placing the family in Crown Point at about the right time. But William didn’t list “Cyrena” among Green and Anna’s children in that second paragraph above. He did, however, provide this memory of their daughter, “Anna”:
Anna married Thomas Wells of Bridgeport [sic], went to St. Lawrence County; there lived and died. I visited him once, had rather a hard place to get a living in, I thought. Had quite a family, most of them girls.
pg. 5
Technically, Thomas lived in Franklin County, to the east of St. Lawrence County; but if William’s memory could turn “Cyrena” into “Anna” it seems reasonable that he would get the county name wrong, too.
Conclusion:
Once again, we’re leaping to accept the tenuous threads of evidence that tie Harlow Wells, Thomas Wells, and Cyrena Whitford to Green Whitford. I don’t like relying on an old man’s memory and a chain of assumptions to prove my family connections - but considering how remote some of these places were at the time these people lived there, sometimes an old man’s memory may be all we get.
There is one other tiny, interesting tidbit of information in the records that feels important, even though on its own it doesn’t tell us much. William may have forgotten Cyrena’s name, but she did have a sister named Anna. Anna married Leonard Sherman and moved “to the West” - and the 1876 death record for Anna Whitford Sherman names her father, Green Whitford. That death record is found in the Wisconsin, Death Records, 1867-1907 on FamilySearch; her place of death is recorded as Fort Atkinson, Jefferson County. The same Fort Atkinson where Harlow Wells and his family appeared in 1870.
Taking all of this nebulous evidence and trying to determine what the whole story is might be difficult - but the challenge is what makes this such an interesting hobby. One day, I (or another researcher) will find a record that makes sense of it all.
Until then, I’m going to continue working from the assumption that I’m on the right track. So next, we’ll look for Green Whitford’s parents. Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss out!
And if you’re a descendant or just a fellow researcher interested in these folks, drop a comment and say hello:
The hunt is the exciting part! Good luck as you continue your adventure!