Nearly nine years ago, I spent a small amount of time exploring my maternal grandmother’s side of the family, and I fell into a rabbit hole. What I found led to an ancestor who settled in Providence, Rhode Island, and founded the First Baptist Church there along with Roger Williams and 11 other charter members.
I was very excited by this, and I spent some time learning about that 11th-great grandfather and drafting a post for my blog. The trouble is that this particular palm tree did not have a lot of substantial evidence supporting each connection - but at that time (2015) I was just beginning the major project that would become my Callin Family History (available for purchase at that link if you are inclined to own 800 pages of my work), so I did not take the time to investigate.
We’re going to take the time to investigate now. Week by week, we will build a ladder up the side of that proverbial palm tree, and inspect each family for evidence and records as we work our way back to the mid-1600s and the Providence Plantations.
The caveat here is that someone likely took a shortcut or made a mistake when they built the unsupported online tree that I found in 2015. At some point, I expect to discover that I’m not related to this ancestor at all - or that I am through some more obscure relationship than “direct ancestry” - and when that happens, I’ll show you the mistake, and we’ll figure out what the real story is together.
But, we’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.
Today, we begin with the lowest rung on the ladder: my maternal great-grandfather, Alfred Tuttle.
Alfred James Tuttle was the son of John Jackson Tuttle and Florence Mabel Hart, born on 25 Nov 1892 in Rockaway, Morris County, New Jersey. Alfred was the oldest of 12 children, and John supported his large family by working as a machinist and mechanic. During World War I, John worked as a tool-maker for the International Arms and Fuze Company in Bloomfield, New Jersey. Alfred registered for the draft on 5 June 1917 and indicated that he had already served 3 years as a bugler in the New Jersey Infantry.
Less than two weeks later, on 27 Jun 1917, Alfred married my great-grandmother, Edna Lyle Frey (1895-1985).
The records that we have do a pretty good job of “proving” all of this, and they are the sort of records that most people should have easy access to. U.S. Census records show young Alfred and his siblings living with his parents; Social Security and World War records document full names and birth dates; and they were members of the First Reformed Church (a Dutch Reformed Church) in New Jersey, which has records of most of their major life events.
Alfred died in New Jersey when I was less than a year and a half old, and I wouldn’t expect to have any memory of him, but my mom and grandma told me about him when I was growing up.
Conclusion: this is a pretty solid connection - and a very good place to start our climb.
As always, I encourage you to take a look at the WikiTree profiles I’ve made for the folks in this post. Let me know if you’re a cousin - I’m pretty sure I know all of my 1st and 2nd cousins (everyone descended from Alfred and Edna) but say hello just so I know you’re reading!
And if you want to follow along as we ascend this particular ladder: