English Entanglements

With 512 7th Gr-grandparents, we’re bound to find something upsetting about our forebears when we dig deep. For me, it’s the Wethereds that are the most troubling. 
Before coming to Boston, the Wethereds lived in London, by the very center of its civilian power: Guildhall. The affiliated church, St. Lawrence Jewry, designed by Christopher Wren, is where my 6x great-grandfather Samuel Wethered and his siblings were baptized. 

My 7th gr-grandfather Samuel who lost his savings in the South Sea Bubble, can be found in the records of The Royal African Company as working on the Gold Coast of Ghana in 1696 at a slave trading castle. In 1697 he was reported to be a deserter (Runn from ye Ship). However, there is no reason to believe that he left due to moral principles regarding slavery, if you take his children’s lives as evidence.

1697, Record from the Royal African Company (detail), London

My 6th gr-grandfather Samuel, in 1720, before he came to Boston, is listed by The Royal African Company as a Freeman of the Company, meaning he was a freelance slave trader. Lewin Wethered, his younger brother, went to Ghana and died there after working only seven months as a writer for the Royal African Company.

1720, List of Freeman (detail) of the Company, Royal African Company, London

Coming to America, the family picked up where they left off. They were entangled in slavery until the conclusion of the Civil War.

Every Stone Where it Belongs

The fence is Joe O’Sullivan’s, as is the stone wall below. But long ago, the Lynches were here and most likely, piece by heavy piece, it was they who built these rows of rocks. They are not like the ornamental patio walls I see growing all over my town — tight and tidy.  These are the necessary and practical get-these-rocks-out-of-the-way-and-define-a-boundary type. Here in Southwestern Ireland there are rocks everywhere. Big ones, light grey — many of which are covered with lichen in patterns that resemble maps of Ireland’s townlands. In this field, there are also scattered piles within the borders for the many extra stones with no purpose — other than to get out of the way for the planting of potatoes.

For days I walked the perimeter of this field. Around and around, passing up choices for sketching. A drawing can be well made, but still not successfully representative a feeling, an impression, or a family history. Choosing what to draw is the most important choice I make. The hand serves the head….and the heart. I always ask the viewer with my artwork, “Do you see what I mean?” In the end, this pair of struggling trees, with the mountains back on the left, and Dingle Bay to the right, seemed to say it all. The hardest part was putting every stone where it belongs.

Parked by the Johnsons

Oxford Junction, Cumberland, Nova Scotia Canada (Former Johnson Land Grant)

Arriving in 1774 in Halifax, Matthew Johnson, along with his wife Anne Ash, settled on this land in Oxford Junction, Nova Scotia. They were from Northumberland, England and part of a movement of new settlers (following the expulsion of French settlers by the new colonial power – England). The Johnsons were 5th great-grandparents of mine. I used historical references to situate me on his original plot, where I found this big old logging truck. 

1791 Tax List, River Philip, Nova Scotia, Canada

Solo Scot

Westchester, Cumberland, Nova Scotia, Canada (Ralston Land)

My grandmother said her ancestors came from Scotland, but the truth is, most came from England. On the 1870 Canadian Census forms, ones origin (meaning ancestry) was declared, and almost all of my many Nova Scotia families listed themselves as English. One exception was the Ralstons. They were described as Scotch. Perhaps my grandmother was from a matriarchal family, culturally. Her mother’s mother was Lavinia Ralston. Or, maybe because she married into an Irish Catholic family, she kept her Englishness quiet. Brits were resented due to historic oppression in Ireland. Either way, I grew up thinking I was 1/4 Scottish, but have since discovered otherwise. I can skip the haggis.

William Ralston, my great-great grandfather, came to Nova Scotia from Scotland in 1817 along with two brothers, Joseph and John. They arrived in their early 30s and soon after, were married and settled in Westchester. The Ralstons owned the land where my drawing was made. 

Nearby and interwoven with the Ralstons were the Purdy family — also my ancestors. In the 1871 census, they’re listed as English, but that skips a giant period of history. In 1782, Gabriel Purdy came here from America, where his family had lived for generations — since 1632. He was Tory, having escaped from Westchester after fighting for the losing British side of the American Revolutionary War. Gabriel Purdy took with him a large contingent, including a number of slaves. At the time of his death, Gabriel had been married five times, had 17 children, 170 grandchildren and 52 great-grandchildren. Plenty of Purdys remain in the area 

Following Back

Long gravel roads wind through the hills around River Philip, Nova Scotia. My ancestors had plots of land up here that are easy to find on old maps, but hard to reach in reality. Rocks and black flies kept me from driving or walking to my destinations — turning me back around.

While my great-grandparents were immigrants to America, their forebears were immigrants to Canada. Researching these northern families brought plenty of surprises. The most consequential by far was finding that many of my Nova Scotian families were Americans for generations before they came here. The first wave were New England Planters, a group who moved north for land offered after the Acadian Expulsion of 1755. That’s when the Fillmores, Wethereds, Dixons and Eagers all settled near the Bay of Fundy. Another surge came following the American Revolution. Those who sided with the British found a haven in Canada. My Tory relatives included the Purdys who left Westchester, New York, and the Etters who abandoned their lives near Boston. 

Tracing those families back revealed that I had a much deeper and more complex relationship with American history than I ever knew. I thought my first immigrant ancestors arrived in the mid 1800s. Instead, they started coming just ten years after the Pilgrims landed. Ready or not, I learned I was the descendent of Puritans with a very long list of forebears who were the earliest white settlers of Massachusetts.

From Nova Scotia, I was turned back in time, and then back home to Massachusetts where many more drawings were needed to tell one last chapter of my long lost family.

Home of the Colburns

Colburn House, Collingwood Corner, Nova Scotia, Canada

Clinton Colburn left this home in Collingwood Corner, Nova Scotia, in 1894 with his neighbor Alberta Ripley and started a new life in America. They were both 21 and yet unmarried. My great-great grandparents Alex and Kitty (Wethered) Colburn raised Clinton and his nine siblings here — half of whom moved far away. Clinton emigrated to Providence, Rhode Island. Alice joined soon after. Thomas moved to Swift Current, Saskatchewan. Robert relocated to Three Hills, Alberta. And Ida moved first to Seattle, where in 1922 she owned The Yesler Way Theatre — an early movie house. She then moved to Ohio, and later ended up in Georgia. She divorced two husbands and outlived her third by fifteen years. The rest of the Colburn children settled nearby. Cora, the first-born daughter, died at age three when a horse-drawn carriage overturned while crossing a river.

1860-61 Census, Cumberland County, Nova Scotia, Canada

The old Colburn house was built by my great-great grandfather Alex who was a logger, a builder, and also the local funeral director. Unsurprisingly, he made the coffins. On summer visits as a child, my grandmother would lay inside some newly-crafted caskets to “test them out.”

Ripleys, Believe It or Not

Ripley House, River Philip, Nova Scotia, Canada

I was looking for Ripleys, believe it or not. A day earlier, on a tour of the neighborhood with a couple of kind locals — including 93-year-old Lloyd Weatherbee, a distant relative — I was shown all the houses along the rural road that were at one time associated with Ripleys. The next day, I drove back through the steady rain, shopping for the most picturesque subject to draw to represent the family for my research. If it would stop raining, I’d sit and draw. Any setting would do. Earlier, I consulted a map of historic land grants which revealed this was exactly the area where Robert Ripley, my 6x great-grandfather, first bought land in 1774. He and his brothers came from the tiny Yorkshire village of Ingleby Greenhow. These Englishmen were Methodists, not part of the Anglican majority back home, and they came to northern Nova Scotia along with other Methodists from their region, having been offered land by the Governor of Nova Scotia. After all these years, the houses associated with the Ripleys still stood on the original land of their old Yorkshire Grant.

1794 Survey of Original Land Grants, River Philip, Nova Scotia, Canada

It was this Ripley house that attracted me the most, although they were all big handsome homes. There was a huge wood pile across the street and because my ancestors were in the lumber business, I pulled over and took a look. Maybe I’d draw that. As I did, a young man pulled up to the house in a truck and since I was trespassing, I called over to introduced myself. I asked if this was indeed a former Ripley house. He said it was — and still is. He was a Ripley and he invited me in, out of the rain. There I met his parents and in a very short time, I met my great-great grandfather James Everett Ripley, as well, in the form of a huge formal portrait. I had hit the bullseye. This wasn’t just a Ripley house — it was the Ripley house of my direct ancestors. James had built it and my great-grandmother Caroline Ripley Colburn, his daughter, had emigrated from here to Providence, Rhode Island, in 1894. The Ripleys are still lumberers and farmers as they have been for many generations.

James Everett Ripley, 1831-1923

The End of Him

Fort Cumberland (formerly Fort Beauséjour), Aulac, New Brunswick, Canada

A cannon was fired from here at Fort Cumberland that killed my 5th great grandfather in a nearby bar. The wild story is told in the book The Siege of Fort Cumberland 1776, by Ernest Clark. 

Samuel Wethered was born in Boston, the son of a prominent tavern owner. In 1758, following service with the English military at Fort Cumberland (formerly Fort Beausejour) in Aulac, New Brunswick, he settled in Northern Nova Scotia, joining other newly-arrived New Englanders, including his bride, Dorothy Eager. Two Wethered sisters, Catherine and Sarah, also moved to this area by the Bay of Fundy. They married British soldiers.

Throughout the years, Samuel proved to be a troublemaker in the eyes of the government in Halifax. But during the Eddy Rebellion in 1776, he tried to play it safe. When a large group of local rebels wanted to join the American Revolution and unseat England from power in Nova Scotia by attacking Fort Cumberland, Wethered stayed neutral. He owned a popular tavern quite close to the Fort, which both British soldiers and local rebels enjoyed. The soldiers frequented in the daytime and rebels met there at night. Wethered profited by being caught in the middle. 

Drawing of Fort Beauséjour (Fort Cumberland), 1755

In time, Samuel agreed to a plot by the Brits. He would signal to them one night, by a candle in a window, that the saloon was full of rebels. He’d then flee, leaving it to bombardment by cannon fire, after which the British would rebuild his tavern. However, the plan went awry. 

Samuel Wethered had a pregnant slave who worked at the tavern and she lit a candle in a window incidentally, not knowing of the scheme. Cannons blasted and a fiery ball ripped through the tavern tearing off one of Samuel’s buttocks. In shock, the slave suffered a miscarriage. Samuel died a few months later, at 39. His tavern was later fully destroyed by the British, and his home and farm burned down by the rebels. Quite an end to him and his.

Royal Fencible American

Fort Cumberland, Aulac, New Brunswick, Canada

The story of my grandmother’s family, the Colburns, starts here in the barracks of Fort Cumberland in Aulac, New Brunswick, bordering Nova Scotia. Richard Colburn was listed as a “Private” here in 1783, serving with a local militia called the Royal Fencible Americans. The “Fencibles” were among the British defenders of the Fort from a local uprising in 1776. Where this 4th great-grandfather of mine came from before here, is uncertain. Some fellow ancestors are convinced he was from Massachusetts. Others think he was from Western New Brunswick. I’ve researched a lot of angles and now think he was born in England, but I can’t find definitive proof… yet. 

Nova Scotia map., 1755, Fort Cumberland: top “X”

What I do know is that this area, on the edge of the Bay of Fundy, is where a tangle of my ancestors formed a quarter of my family tree. They were Canadian and Protestant, not Irish and Catholic like the majority of my family. In and around this Fort, and throughout the region, were English Methodists, Scottish Presbyterians, and descendants of American Puritans— all of whom moved here for land offered to them and/or for religious reasons. Many of the families played roles in the Battle of Fort Cumberland — on both sides. One 5th great-grandfather, Samuel Wethered, died from complications of a cannonball strike. It was a big, messy family fight.

Chelsea Landing

Library Street (formerly Matthews Street), Chelsea, Massachusetts

Life in America for the O’Connors started here on Library Street, back then called Matthew Street. 

Daniel O’Connor, my great grandfather, arrived in the US on January 11, 1892 on the SS Umbria which landed in New York. He was joined in his voyage across the Atlantic by his younger sister, Maggie. She was eighteen and he was twenty years old. From there they made their way to Chelsea and joined older brothers Bernard and Frank O’Connor who had arrived the year before. Their sister Nellie was the first in the family to emigrate in 1889. She did so with her husband Patrick Murphy and two young children. They too started on this block.

Kate McMahon, my great-grandmother, emigrated later, in 1900. Just like the O’Connors, she came from the south side of Cork and moved into this block. She joined her uncle Michael Connolly and his wife Honora. 

1900 Census – Connolly and McMahon

While this is the exact place where my relatives first settled, these were not their homes. All the houses along this street were destroyed by the Great Chelsea Fire of 1908. By that time my relatives had moved to others places, but others were not so lucky. Over 1000 buildings were destroyed, 15,000 people were made homeless and nineteen people were killed by the enormous blaze .