My American Roots: My 11th GGFather was a founder of Southampton Long Island
Now, I don't say that to connect me to contemporary connections to wealth. He, was an "American" slightly after the pilgrims settled into Massachusetts. He is/was my genetic anchor in America.
What I am saying, my roots in N. America are old for a person of English descent. Old families have long histories. My 11th Great grandfather wasn't rich, but he was an influence in the community. As a not too careful outspoken guy, he was fined by the community for the use of fowl language while conducting civic business at least according to Banta, the person who wrote the geneology of his descendants in the 1920s.
When a history is that old, when the population was so small it's bound to make intersections with other people whose American related descendants did historical things.
Thomas wasn't a special guy, but the fact is his genes, at least some of them, are connected to me, and to a rather amazing array of people connected to American History... I don't make any claim to the prestige that he and some of his descendants earned. I'm just a technically birthright descendant into an ancestry that has pointers at some remarkable US citizens.
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Thomas after arriving in Massachusetts was not a happy guy. He was pointed at, and given a land holding in what is today Lynne. The "swampy" nature of his allotment he found an impediment to success. So he and six other men, bought a small coastal trading vessel and set off to start a new community in Long Island. When they arrived the land was held by Dutch settlers, that didn't stop them from interloping. And several of the founders were arrested for trespassing on Dutch holdings. Thomas and his colleagues backed off, taking up land further east on Long Island, land we know as Shouthampton. That's quite a mark in my personnel history of being part of the US.
He built a house that stood until the early 1900's. When it was razed it was the oldest frame house in New York. That building a house thing has been a family tradition, and across 11 generations, all of us have built a house, farmed and gardened and made a living, though later generations used the wealth of their success to finance, rather than build a dwelling with their own hands.
His family moved around, to Connecticut, to Manhatten, and up the Hudson valley, where his genes are widely spread through colonial families. While in Manhatten the family established a tannery, and acquired 2 slaves, a man and a woman. Later sold to settle the estate of a later grandfather. Terrible, yes. But more on that below
He had great grandsons who fought in the revolutionary war, at Monmouth, and one who as a teamster drove cannons from Ticonderoga to the Heights overlooking Boston. Those cannons drove the British away.
A generation later he had a grandson that died of exposure (circumstance uncertain) during the war of 1812. The family became Presbyterian and fiercely anti-slavery.
One of my distant cousins was Baxter Sayer a presbyterian minister, was instrumental in running a station on the underground railroad in New Jersey. One of his cousins twice removed, was Harriet Beecher Stowe, the little woman Abraham Lincoln said started the American Civil War.
One of his cousins, Edward Stalker Sayre, became a wealthy banker and an Ambassador for the US to Denmark.
Another, on the financial strength of her presumed inheritance did a thing seen in Downton Abbey she married into British upperclass, and gave birth to WInston Churchill. Yes, THAT!! WInston Churchill
And another was a carpet bagger who went south to make a fortune after the Civil War. He was the progenitor of the infamous Zelda Sayre, wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald.
And so the history making slowed greatly. The last real person of prominence was the Dean of the US National Cathedral in the late 1900'a
Things ran out of gas. And that's how I entered the world, at the end of long branching arc of American history. And I have done but a little to extend the trace of the family through US history.
I write this, not to brag or lay claim to fame I never earned by merely being a successful y carrying sperm
I write this because each of you is a part of history, and everyone of OUR descendants holds the possibility of great and unexpected things. Don't discount anyone, or their progeny.
American history isn't done being written, and very many of 'US' have the prospect of being connected to surprisingly great people and their accomplishments.
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