The American Revolution: my Dana connection

Our house in Ballarat is two blocks from Dana street, named after Henry Edmund Pulteney Dana (1820-1852), commander of the native police corps in Victoria, who was responsible for collecting the first gold licence fees in Ballarat in 1851. Henry Dana was the brother of my third great grandmother Charlotte Champion Crespigny née Dana; he was my fourth great uncle.

The Dana family is a notable American family, and when in 1989 Greg and I spent a few days in Massachusetts, we visited some places there connected with my Dana forebears.

This was through the kindness of my great aunt Nancy Movius née Champion de Crespigny (1910 – 2003), sister of my paternal grandfather. Nancy, born in Australia, had married an American and settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

My great aunt Nancy, her dachshund Cobber and me being licked on the nose. Cobber means friend or mate in Australian English and Cobber the dachshund was indeed a very dear friend.

Some of our Dana forebears lived in this area, from as early as 1640. Nancy shared my interest in our family history, and during our visit she drove us to the nearby town of Concord, where, it is said, “the shot heard round the world”, the first shot of the American Revolutionary War, rang out on 19 April 1775. 

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  Orchard House

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  Wayside Inn

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  Grist Mill

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  Old North Bridge

I took no photos this day but recorded in my diary: Drove to Concord saw bridge where first soldiers were killed in Revolution, also Alcott House. Had lunch at Wayside Inn – also saw mill where flour and corn still ground.
Photos from Wikimedia Commons: Orchard House, Concord, Massachusetts. Home to Louisa May Alcott and her sisters – photo by user victorgrigas 2013 CC BY-SA 3.0; The Wayside Inn Sudbury and the inn’s grist mill – photos by user Dudesleeper CC BY 2.5 and CC BY-SA 3.0; Old North Bridge Concord, 1956 replica bridge in the Minute Man National Historic Park. Photograph by National Park Service retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.

Actually, there is some dispute as to whether the first shot of the Revolution was fired in Lexington or in Concord.  In the centenary celebrations of the beginning of the Revolution at Lexington on 19 April 1875, Richard Henry Dana (1815 – 1882 my second cousin five times removed) claimed that “the first shots fired back by our troops at theirs” were fired on the Green at Lexington.

The battle of Lexington, April 19th. 1775. Plate I.” In: “The Doolittle engravings of the battles of Lexington and Concord in 1775.” The first of four engravings by Amos Doolittle from 1775. Doolittle visited the battle sites and interviewed soldiers and witnesses. Retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.

As they neared Lexington, the report came to them that some five hundred men were under arms; and I am not disinclined to reconcile their testimony with the facts, by the consideration that they heard the roll of our drums, and perhaps saw the flash or heard the report of our signal-guns, intended to call our men together, and thought them a defiance ; and perhaps officers in the centre or rear might have thought them hostile shots. But the front knew they had not been fired upon, and saw the short, thin line of sixty men with arms at rest. Pitcairn, when he rode up to them, and ordered them to surrender their arms and disperse, knew they had not fired. He was not the man to talk after hostile shots. Pitcairn has had the fate which befalls many men who carry out orders that afterwards prove fatally ill-judged. When he ordered our men to surrender their arms and disperse, he was executing the orders of his commander-in-chief and of his King. If Britain was in the right, Pitcairn was in the right. Twice they were ordered to surrender their arms and disperse; and twice they refused to obey, and stood their ground. Then came the fatal fire; and why not? General Gage had been authorized to use the troops for this very purpose. He was authorized to fire upon the people, if necessary to enforce the new laws, without waiting for the civil magistrate. He had resolved to do so. Had that volley subdued the resistance of Massachusetts, Pitcairn would have been the hero of the drama. Was he to leave a military array behind him, and not attempt to disarm and disband them? If they refused, was he to give it up? I have never thought it just or generous to throw upon the brave, rough soldier, who fell while mounting the breastworks at Bunker Hill, the fault which lay on the King, the Parliament, the Ministry, and the commander-in-chief. The truth is, the issue was inevitable. The first force of that kind which the King’s troops found in martial array was to be disarmed and disbanded; and, if they refused to obey, they were to be fired upon. Both sides knew this, and were prepared for it.

Hudson, Charles & Lexington Historical Society (Mass.) (1913). History of the town of Lexington, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, from its first settlement to 1868. Boston and New York Houghton Mifflin company. pp. 284-5 retrieved from archive.org

The Battle of Lexington, 19 April 1775, Oil on canvas by William Barns Wollen, 1910. National Army Museum, London. Retrieved through Wikimedia Commons.

I have a further Dana connection to the beginning Revolutionary War.

One of Richard Henry Dana’s cousins (and my first cousin seven times removed) was George Dana (1742 – 1787), a Sergeant in Captain Jonathon Gates’ Company of Minutemen, which marched from Ashburnham on the Lexington Alarm of 19 April 1775.

The Lexington Minuteman. Photograph by user Daderot CC BY-SA 3.0 retrieved from Wikimedia Commons

Sources

• Edward Tabor Linenthal (1991). Sacred Ground: Americans and Their Battlefields. University of Illinois Press. p. 36.
• Dana, Elizabeth Ellery (1956). The Dana Family in America. Wright & Potter Printing Company, 32 Derne Street, Boston. p. 482.
• Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors in the Revolutionary War volume 4 page 388 retrieved through ancestry.com
• Stearns, Ezra S (1887). History of Ashburnham, Massachusetts, from the grant of Dorchester Canada to the present time, 1734-1886 : with a genealogical register of Ashburnham families. Pub. by the town, Ashburnham, Mass. pp 139 – 145 – retrieved through Hathitrust and p. 674 retrieved through Hathitrust

Related posts

• George III: my part in his downfall
• Trove Tuesday: Nancy de Crespigny at Salt Creek 1936
• D is for Daniel
• S is for Shrewsbury
• A search for the arms of the Dana family

George III: my part in his downfall

Tomorrow, 4 July, is Independence Day in the United States. I am proud to say that I have a family connection to the events it celebrates.

My eighth great grandfather Richard Dana, born in England – quite possibly in Manchester – in 1617, crossed the Atlantic about 1640 and settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Around 1648 he married an American girl named Anne Bullard (1626 – 1711), who was born in Massachusetts. Between 1649 and 1670 they had eleven children. I am descended from Richard’s son Daniel (1663 – 1749) and grandson Richard (1700 – 1772).

My sixth great grandfather Richard Dana appears to have been the first of the family to graduate from a university – Harvard. He became a notable lawyer and politician, a magistrate, and a leading figure in the agitation against British imperial government. He was a founding member the Sons of Liberty, and led Massachusetts opposition to the Stamp Act of 1765.

The bloody massacre perpetrated in King Street Boston on March 5th 1770 by a party of the 29th Regt. Engraving by Paul Revere. Image retrieved from Wikimedia Commons. Richard Dana served as a member of the committee that investigated the Boston Massacre in 1770.

I have written several times about Richard’s oldest son, my 5th great grandfather Edmund Dana (1739 – 1823).  As a young man he travelled to Edinburgh to study. He married in Edinburgh in 1765 and became a clergyman in England with the support of his wife’s family. He did not return to America

On July 4, 1776, the 13 American colonies claimed independence from England, an event which eventually led to the formation of the United States. Each year on Independence Day, the fourth of July, Americans celebrate this historic event.

Edmund Dana’s brother Francis (1743-1811) has a prominent place in this period of American history. In 1773 he married Elizabeth (1751 – 1807), daughter of William Ellery, who became one of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence.

John Trumbull’s 1819 painting, Declaration of Independence, depicting the five-man drafting committee presenting the Declaration of Independence to Congress. Image retrieved from Wikimedia Commons. Among those depicted is William Ellery. The image can be found on the back of the U.S. $2 bill designed in 1976. The original painting hangs in the US Capitol rotunda.

Francis Dana became a leading lawyer and a close associate of George Washington. In 1775 the Continental Congress sent Francis Dana to England in an unsuccessful attempt to reconcile the differences leading to the Revolutionary War. He returned the following year and reported to General Washington that a friendly settlement of the dispute was impossible. Dana’s opinion helped influence the adoption of the 1776 Declaration of Independence. He was elected a delegate to the Second Continental Congress on 10 December 1776, where he signed the Articles of Confederation in 1778. He was sent as Ambassador to Russia in 1780. The future President John Quincy Adams served as his secretary. Again a member of Congress in 1784 and a leader of the Federalist Party, Francis Dana later joined the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, where he served as Chief Justice from 1791 to 1806.

Some of the signatures on the Articles of Confederation including Francis Dana who was one of six who signed on behalf of Massachusetts Bay and Francis’s father in law William Ellery who was one of three who signed on behalf of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. John Hancock also signed on behalf of Massachusetts; Hancock is remembered for his large and stylish signature on the United States Declaration of Independence, so much so that the term “John Hancock” has become a synonym in the United States for signature.

Notes

with apologies to Spike Milligan

• Dana, Elizabeth Ellery (1956). The Dana Family in America. Wright & Potter Printing Company, 32 Derne Street, Boston

Related posts

• A search for the arms of the Dana family
• D is for Daniel
• S is for Shrewsbury
• Wroxeter and Shrewsbury 11 May 2019
• W is for Whitehall

Sweetened condensed care

One of the stories from her childhood in Berlin that my mother told me when I was a girl was about her first taste of sweetened condensed milk. She had never had anything like it.

The milk was part of a ‘CARE Paket’ received by her paternal grandparents, Fritz and Anna Boltz, in 1947 or 1948, when she was about eight years old. She vividly remembers opening the parcels in their apartment. There were at least two packages, both gratefully received, in them sweetened condensed milk and sweetcorn in tins, and cocoa, and corned beef, which she found less interesting. My mother does not recall any of her friends’ families getting such parcels. She remembers the name ‘CARE Paket’.

CARE is a relief agency founded in 1945. The acronym was first from “Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe” then, from 1993, “Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere”. The CARE Package was the original unit of aid distributed by this humanitarian organization.

CARE -Paket 1948: from the collection of the German Federal Archive (Deutsches Bundesarchiv) retrieved through Wikimedia Commons Attribution: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-S1207-502 / CC-BY-SA 3.0

 

The first CARE packages were so-called ‘ten-in-one rations’ of the US Army during WWII, originally meant to provide ten soldiers with one meal. Each package contained:

• 9.8 pounds of meat and offal,
• 6.5 pounds of cornflakes, oatmeal and biscuits,
• 3.6 pounds of fruit and pudding,
• 2.3 pounds of vegetables,
• 3.9 pounds of sugar,
• 1.1 pounds of cocoa, coffee and other beverage powder,
• 0.8 pounds of condensed milk,
• 0.5 pounds of butter,
• 0.4 pounds of cheese,
• a pack of cigarettes, some gum

Most CARE parcels were sent to their European relatives by Americans. It seems a family would have paid $10 to send such a package (about $US143 in today’s value or $AU210). Except that they would have been from her father’s side of the family, my mother does not know anything about her American cousins.

Nearly ten million packages reached West Germany from 1946 to 1960; three million went to West Berlin, many at at the time of the Berlin Airlift, from June 1948 to May 1949, when the city was blockaded by the Soviets.

Berliners watching a C-54 land at Berlin Tempelhof Airport, 1948. From Wikimedia Commons United States Air Force Historical Research Agency via Cees Steijger (1991), “A History of USAFE”, Voyageur, ISBN: 1853100757; USAF photo 070119-F-0000R-101

My mother lived in Zehlendorf, in the American sector of Berlin. She remembers watching the planes land during the airlift. More than 1500 flights a day landed at Templehof in the month of August 1948 alone, delivering 4,500 tons of cargo.

My mother in about 1947

My mother in 1947

Sources

• “CARE’s History.” Care International, www.care-international.org/who-we-are-1/cares-history.
• A Youtube video of the memories of another CARE package recipient: https://youtu.be/e4jduR842RA
• Schaum, Marlis. “CARE Packages Prevented Starvation in Post-War Germany: DW: 14.08.2011.” DW.COM, Deutsche Welle, 14 Aug. 2011, www.dw.com/en/care-packages-prevented-starvation-in-post-war-germany/a-15313828.

 

Related posts

• Z is for Zehlendorf
• G is for great grandmother from Germany
• V is for Vizefeldwebel

 

Z is for zealot

My ninth great grandfather Charles Chauncy (1592-1672) was a non-conformist Divine, at one time imprisoned for his views by Archbishop Laud, who emigrated to America and later became a long-serving President of Harvard College.

Harvard president Charles Chauncy

In “Highways and Byways in Hertfordshire” (1902), H. W. Tompkins mentions Charles Chauncy in connection with Ardeley Bury:

To mention Ardeley, or to think of Ardeley Bury, is to call to mind the Chauncys, a good Hertfordshire family, whose talents were exercised in several spheres of usefulness. First, though not foremost from the standpoint of literary or historic importance, was old Charles, somewhat renowned in his day as a Nonconformist divine. Where he was born I am unable to say ; he was baptised in the church here on 5th November, 1592. He was an indefatigable reader and student, and was eminent as an oriental and classical scholar. For some time he gave the benefit of his learning to the townsmen of Ware ; but managed to fall foul of Archbishop Laud, as so many pastors did, and was summoned to appear before the High Commission Court on two occasions. I believe the precise nature of his misdemeanours, theological or political, is known to the learned, with whom I leave them. However trivial we might deem them now, they were heinous offences in the eyes of Laud, and Charles Chauncy was deprived of his living and placed in prison. I am sorry to remember that he was but a weak-kneed brother, and presently, finding that to him, at least, stone walls did make a prison, he submitted in the most abject manner before the mitred bigot. For this humiliation he never forgave himself. In 1637 he landed at Plymouth in New England, where he became for a short time an assistant pastor, going from thence to a town called Scituate. There he preached for several years, and then, the Puritans having triumphed over their enemies, the men of Ware besought their pastor to return. But his work now lay elsewhere. He was almost on the point of embarking for England when he was invited to become President of Harvard College — a position for which he was eminently qualified — and in November, 1654, he was installed as the second President of that now famous institution. At Harvard he laboured for the rest of his life, and dying there in 1672, was buried at New Cambridge. He was a rare and racy preacher of the old sort, whose mouth uttered quaint sayings in abundance, and who kept tongue and pen alike busy. The Plain Doctrine of the Justification of a Sinner in the Sight of God, was one of his productions — doubtless a pithy, profitable, and long discourse, which probably no man or woman now in Hertfordshire has ever read, and which rests in a few libraries in a repose almost as deep as the bones of its author.

Charles Chauncy graduated from Cambridge in 1613, and became a fellow of his college, Trinity College, and professor of Hebrew and Greek. In 1627 he was appointed Vicar of Ware, Hertfordshire, and from 1633 to 1637 vicar at Marston St Lawrence, Northamptonshire.

Chauncy had Puritanical opinions that placed him in opposition to the church hierarchy, including its most senior member, the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud. He asserted in a sermon that “idolatry was admitted into the church” and he opposed, as a “snare to men’s consciences” placing a barrier – the altar rail – around the communion table. He was suspended by Archbishop Laud for refusing to perform his duty to read from the pulpit the “Book of Sports”, which set out permissible Sunday recreations. He was brought before the Court of High Commission in 1629 and again in 1634. In 1634 he was imprisoned. He made a formal recantation in 1637 which – it is said – he later regretted.

In 1638 Charles Chauncy emigrated to America. From 1638 to 1641 he was an associate pastor at Plymouth, Massachusetts. However, the Plymouth church community was dissatisfied with Chauncy’s advocacy of baptism of infants by immersion. From 1641 to 1654 he served as pastor at Scituate, Massachusetts. From 1654 until his death in 1672 he was President of Harvard College.

Charles Chauncy and his wife Catherine Chauncy nee Eyre (1604 – 1667) had six sons and at least two daughters. All six sons were said to have been “bred to the ministry and graduates of Harvard”. I have previously written about Ichabod, their third child and second son.

I think Charles Chauncy is close to the definition of a zealot: a person who has very strong opinions about something, and tries to make other people have them too. Chauncy only seemed to compromise reluctantly.

Related post

I is for Ichabod

Source

• Tompkins, Herbert W (1902). Highways and byways in Hertfordshire. Macmillan, London ; New York viewed through archive.org https://archive.org/details/highwaysandbywa03griggoog/page/n10

S is for Shrewsbury

My fifth great grandfather Edmund Dana (1739 – 1823) was born in Charleston, near Boston, Massachusetts to Richard Dana (1700 – 1772), a lawyer and a prominent local politician, and Lydia Dana nee Trowbridge (1710 – 1776). He was their second child.

Edmund entered Harvard in 1756 and graduated in 1759. After a brief apprenticeship with a local doctor, he travelled to England, never to return. By 1764 he was at Edinburgh, perhaps he was studying medicine and science at the university.

The Reverend Edmund Dana (1739-1823) A miniature in the possession of my father.

 

At Edinburgh Edmund Dana met the Hon. Helen Kinnaird (abt. 1749 – 1795), daughter of Charles (1723-1767), sixth Baron Kinnaird of Inchture, and his wife Barbara Kinnaird nee Johnstone (1723 – 1765). Edmund and Helen were married on 9 July 1765 at the church of St Cuthbert in Leith, Edinburgh’s port, a few miles from the city.

The couple moved to London where their first three children were born.

On 18 December 1768, at a ceremony in the Chapel Royal of Whitehall, Edmund was ordained a deacon of the Church of England. Two months later he was made a priest and appointed as Vicar of Brigstock Northamptonshire with the chapel of Stanion in the Diocese of Peterborough.

In a letter to his father Richard, written soon after his appointment to Brigstock he explained his new situation and his decision to abandon his medical studies:

My living has been magnified beyond measure, but I have great privileges in it [wh[ich] no other person ever had upon acc[oun]t of its being upon an Estate of Mr Pulteney. I really understood before I took the gown that whatever deficiencys it labor[e]d under Mr Pulteney w[oul]d make good.

In effect, therefore, Edmund had accepted the assurances of his wife’s family, notably of his wife’s uncle William [Johnstone] Pulteney (1729 – 1805), that a career in the church would be assured and well paid. The parish of Brigstock itself was controlled by the Crown through the Bishop of Peterborough, but Edmund’s letter indicates that the land was owned by William Pulteney and that his basic salary would be supplemented. Given the influence of his wealth and position, it would not have been difficult for Pulteney to persuade the bishop to find a place for his niece’s husband.

In November 1772 the Reverend Edmund Dana took up new duties as Vicar of the parish of Wroxeter in Shropshire, in the diocese of Coventry and Lichfield. Wroxeter is a village five miles east of Shrewsbury. William Pulteney had first entered Parliament in 1768 as member for Cromartyshire in Scotland, but he had substantial interests in Shropshire and had also contested the seat of Shrewsbury. Successful at the 1775 election, he held the borough until his death in 1805. Because of the property William Pulteney held, he was patron of several livings in the area: that is, he had authority to name the priest who would head the parish as rector or vicar. The previous incumbent at Wroxeter, Robert Cartwright, had died, and the vacancy was free for Pulteney to nominate his nephew by marriage.

Edmund Dana and his family  settled in the region of Shrewsbury, and William Pulteney continued his support. In 1775 the living of Aston Botterell became vacant through the death of the former Rector Nehemiah Tonks, and Edmund Dana was appointed his successor.

In 1781 Edmund Dana received two further appointments as Rector: to Harley and Eaton Constantine. Both parishes were in the diocese of Coventry and Lichfield and both lay southeast of Shrewsbury, Eaton Constantine just two miles from Wroxeter and Harley a couple of miles further. The livings were formally in the gift of a certain John Newport, but Newport was under age and William Pulteney was his official guardian.

Helen continued to bear children: thirteen, nine girls and four boys, in twenty-one years. Three died in infancy. Helen died at Shrewsbury on 17 April 1795, aged about forty-five, and was buried at Wroxeter on 22 April. She and Edmund were married three months short of thirty years; he did not marry again.

Though Edmund Dana had no previous contact with Shropshire, the patronage of William Pulteney gave some status to the newcomer. Wroxeter is a notable parish: a short distance east of Shrewsbury, it occupies the site of the ancient Roman town of Uriconium. Some time after his arrival, Edmund Dana became a local magistrate.

An early supporter of the great engineer Thomas Telford, William Pulteney arranged for him to work on the refurbishment of Shrewsbury Castle during the 1780s, and a few years later had him appointed Surveyor of Public Works for the county, where he constructed roads, bridges and canals. Edmund Dana was a member of the trust concerned with roads and streets, so the two men were at least acquaintances. When Telford was commissioned to construct a new prison in the city, close to the castle, Dana had Telford construct a passage from the castle, across the line of the present-day railway, to the main entrance of the prison and then some distance along the River Severn. The route became known as The Dana, and local custom applied the same name to the prison itself.

Lancasterian School with Castle and Dana path. Before construction of the Railway Station in 1848. Shrewsbury Museums Service (SHYMS: FA/1991/125). Image sy8896

Former HM Prison Shrewsbury viewed across the road named The Dana at the end of May 2014. The prison constructed during 1787-1793, closed in March 2013.

 

Some sources claim that Edmund Dana lived in Castle Gates House, close to the entrance to the castle, and it is possible that for a while he did. From the time that he arrived there, however, all his children were born and baptised at Wroxeter, and his wife Helen died and was buried there.

abbreviated family tree showing William Pulteney, Helen Kinnaird, Edmund Dana, William Pulteney Dana (his son who was jailed),  granddaughter Anna, and great- nephew Richard Henry Dana Jr

 

In 1856 Edmund’s great-nephew Richard Henry Dana Jr (1815 – 1882), grandson of Edmund’s brother Francis, visited England and spent three days at Shrewsbury. On the first day he met his cousin Anna Penelope Wood nee Dana (1814 – 1890), Edmund’s grand-daughter. Anna’s husband William Henry Wood escorted him on a tour of the city. Richard Dana was shown the Dana Terrace, “principal walk of the castle, and named from the Rev Edmund Dana, who planned it.” He also saw an old house with black timber cross-beams, where the future King Henry VII was said to have spend the night on his way to defeat Richard III at Bosworth in 1485. There was no mention, however, of Edmund Dana living in the city and, since Anna Penelope Wood nee Dana was nine years old and living near Shrewsbury when her grandfather Edmund died in 1823, she probably would have remembered it if he had.

Richard Henry Dana’s diary entry for the following day, Sunday 10 August, records how he accompanied Mr and Mrs Wood to Wroxeter, where they attended the evening service. In somewhat romantic style, he tells how:

Wroxeter is a fair specimen of the old English parish Church, parsonage and village. . . The church stands in the midst of the graves of the villagers, and the vicarage opens into the Church Yard. In this vicarage, lived and died, Edmund Dana, my grandfather’s only brother. Here he officiated from 1766 to 1823 – a period of fifty seven years. Here he brought his beautiful noble bride, a peer’s daughter, in the bloom of her charm, and here he laid her, under the stone of the chancel, at middle life, the mother of twelve children, loved and honoured by all. Here he lies by her side, and here most of this children are buried. . . . . Here grew up, here played, here walked and studied, and loved, and married, those beautiful daughters, whom Mrs President Adams [ Abigail Adams nee Smith] says were the most elegant women she saw in England, and whom George III called the roses of his court.

He goes on to describe the church itself, with the tombs of Edmund Dana, his wife Helen, and several of their children, placed before the chancel.

Wroxeter Church, Shropshire. Watercolour. Artist: J. Homes Smith. Shrewsbury Museums Service (SHYMS: FA/1991/071/40) image sy1325

Richard Henry Dana remarked that the Wroxeter local bridge, a Roman column in the churchyard, and several trees were named in memory of Edmund Dana who had died 33 years earlier, while the old people of the parish still call him the “old gentleman”, and look upon the present rector, who has been here twenty years, as the “new vicar”, and complain of his innovations.

Excavation at Uriconium by Francis Bedford Retrieved from Wikipedia. Original from the Victor von Gegerfelt collection, Volume K 1:3, Region- och Stadsarkivet Göteborg.

Related posts

• J is for jail: Bankruptcy of William Pulteney Dana

Sources

• research by my father, Rafe de Crespigny
• Dana, Richard Henry, Jr and Lucid, Robert F. (Robert Francis),1930-, (ed.) The journal. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1968.
• Thorne, R.G. “PULTENEY, William (1729-1805), of Westerhall, Dumfries and The Castle, Shrewsbury.” History of Parliament Online, The History of Parliament Trust, https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1790-1820/member/pulteney-william-1729-1805.
• http://shrewsburylocalhistory.org.uk/street-names/the-dana

I is for Ichabod

One of my 8th great grandfathers was Ichabod Chauncy (1635 -1691), a Dissenter and Puritan, whose father, Charles Chauncy (1592-1672), was a long-serving President of Harvard College.

Harvard president Charles Chauncy

Charles Chauncy graduated at Cambridge in 1613, and became a fellow of his college and a professor of Hebrew and Greek. In 1627 he was appointed Vicar of Ware, Hertfordshire, and from 1633 to 1637 he was vicar at Marston St Lawrence, Northamptonshire.

Chauncy had Puritanical opinions that placed him in opposition to the church hierarchy, including its most senior member, the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud. He asserted in a sermon that “idolatry was admitted into the church” and he opposed, as a “snare to men’s consciences” placing a barrier – the altar rail – around the communion table. He was suspended by Archbishop Laud for refusing to read from the pulpit the “Book of Sports”, which set out permissible Sunday recreations. He was brought before the Court of High Commission in 1629 and again in 1634. In 1634 he was imprisoned. He made a formal recantation in 1637 (which he later regretted).

In 1638 Charles Chauncy emigrated to America, and from 1638 to 1641 he was an associate pastor at Plymouth, Massachusetts. However, the Plymouth church community was dissatisfied with his advocacy of the baptism of infants by immersion. From 1641 to 1654 he served as pastor at Scituate, Massachusetts. From 1654 until his death in 1672 Charles was President of Harvard College.

Charles Chauncy and his wife Catherine Chauncy nee Eyre (1604-1667) had six sons and at least two daughters. All six sons were said to have been “bred to the ministry and graduates of Harvard”. Ichabod was the third child and second son.

The unusual name ‘Ichabod’ appears to be an allusion to an Old Testament story. In 1 Samuel 4, the Philistines defeat Israel and capture the Ark of the Covenant. At this news the wife of the high priest Phineas falls into labour and gives birth to a son whom she names ‘Ichabod‘, conventionally translated as ‘the glory has departed’. Charles Chauncey was very likely giving expression to his rather strong opinion of the the lapsed and degenerate state of the Church of England.

Ichabod was brought to Massachusetts in 1638, when he was about three years old. In 1651, at about the age of 16, he and his older brother Isaac graduated from Harvard College.

Returning to England Ichabod Chauncey became an army chaplain to Sir Edward Harley’s Regiment at Dunkirk. However, in 1662, at the time of the Act of Uniformity, Ichabod was one of some 2,000 Puritan ministers who were forced out of their positions by Church of England clergy, following the changes after the restoration to power of Charles II. The Act of Uniformity prescribed that any minister who refused to conform to the Book of Common Prayer by St. Bartholomew’s Day (24 August) 1662 should be ejected from the Church of England.

With his clerical career at an end Ichabod took up the practice of medicine. On 13 October 1666 he was admitted an Extra-Licentiate of the College of Physicians. He settled at Bristol, Gloucestershire.

In 1682 Ichabod Chauncey was prosecuted for not attending church and was convicted and fined. In 1684 he was again prosecuted, imprisoned for 18 weeks, and was sentenced to lose his estate both real and personal, and to leave the realm within three months. He went to Leiden, Holland,and practiced as a physician there until 1686 when he returned to Bristol. There is a suggestion that Ichabod’s persecution may have originated in the private malice of the Bristol town clerk.

Ichabod married Mary King (c. 1646-1736) on 12 August 1669 at St Michael’s Bristol. They had eight children. Three sons survived him:

• Stanton, who died in 1707
•  Charles 1674-1763 (my seventh great grandfather, who became a London merchant)
• Nathaniel 1679-1750

Ichabod Chauncey died at Bristol on 25 July 1691 and was buried on 27 July at St Philip’s Bristol.

References

• Appletons’ Cyclopedia of American Biography, 1600-1889, Volume 1, Charles Chauncy, page 594 retrieved through ancestry.com
• Stephen, Sir Leslie, ed.; London, England: Oxford University Press; Dictionary of National Biography, 1921-22, Volumes 1-20, 22;Volume: Vol 22; Page: 230 retrieved through ancestry.com
• Farmer, John. A Genealogical Register of the First Settlers of New-England; Containing an Alphabetical List of the Governours, Deputy-Governours, Assistants or Counsellors, and Ministers of the Gospel in the Several Colonies, from 1620 to 1692; Graduates of Harvard College to 1662; Members of the Ancient and Honourable Artillery Company to 1662; Freemen Admitted to the Massachusetts Colony from 1630 to 1662; With Many Other of the Early Inhabitants of New-England and …, page 57 retrieved through ancestry.com
• Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 10, Chauncey, Ichabod, by Augustus Charles Bickley
• Munk, William. “Ichabod Chauncey.” Munk’s Roll Details, Royal College of Physicians, munksroll.rcplondon.ac.uk/Biography/Details/828.
• John Langdon Sibley (1642). Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Johnson Reprint Corporation. pp. 308–9.

D is for Daniel

One of my eighth great grandfathers was Richard Dana (1617-1690), a New England Puritan, who landed in Massachusetts in 1640. Richard married Anne Bullard in about 1648.

My seventh great grandfather Daniel Dana was born on 20 March 1664 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Daniel was the tenth of twelve children.

In 1661 Richard Dana had purchased a farm of 108 acres near the area later called “Oak Square”.  Daniel probably grew up here.

Dana Homestead in Little Cambridge from “The Dana Family in America” by Elizabeth Ellery Dana, picture opposite page 40.

Richard Dana and his family attended the “First Church” in the older part of Cambridge. Richard and his family crossed the Charles River each Sunday to attend church. Daniel was baptized in the church which was then in Harvard College Yard on 3 April 1664.

In 1689 Daniel served in the militia. In that year there was a revolt against the Governor, Sir Edmund Andros; Daniel may have played some part in this.

In 1694 Daniel married Naomi Crosswell.

They had nine children:

• Thomas Dana 1694–
• Caleb Dana 1697–1769
• Richard Dana 1700–1772
• Naomi Dana 1702–1726
• Timothy Dana 1705–1705
• Priscilla Dana 1706–1785
• Daniel Dana 1708–1713
• Ebenezer Dana 1711–
• Hepzibah Dana 1714–1789

Daniel had been a cooper and a farmer and worked as a surveyor of highways and as a tithing man. In 1715 and in 1723 he served as a selectman – on the local board of government. In 1736 he served on an important church committee.

On 10 October 1749, Daniel died, age 86, and was buried in the Old Burying Ground at Harvard Square, Cambridge . His headstone made of slate still survives.

Headstone of Daniel Dana who was buried in the Old Burying Ground at Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Image from FindAGrave, photographed by Bill Boyington and used with his permission.

DNA
Daniel was one of twelve children and he himself had nine children; his descendants number in the thousands.

In 2016 I found that my DNA matched that of several people also descended from Richard or Daniel Dana.

In the brief notes that follow:

– AncestryDNA, FamilyTreeDNA, GedMatch and MyHeritage provide DNA analysis services

– a centiMorgan (cM) is a measurement of how much DNA is shared. Higher centiMorgans, more shared DNA

– fourth cousins once removed commonly share from zero to  117 centiMorgans. The average in one survey was 28cM.

DS is my fourth cousin once removed. We share William Pulteney Dana (1776-1861) as a common ancestor. We share 38 centiMorgans of DNA across one segment. The amount of DNA we share is consistent with our relationship of fourth cousins.

AncestryDNA gives us limited information about our DNA matches. It does tell us though for perceived close matches who we share DNA with. DS and I share DNA with DV and EH who both descend from Daniel Dana’s son Ebenezer. 8th cousins have been found to share between zero and 50cM. The amount of DNA I share with DV and EH is within the range for 8th cousins and 7th cousins once removed.

Without more information about the segments shared I cannot make predictions that the shared DNA does come from Daniel Dana and his wife Naomi. If my matches uploaded their DNA data to FamilyTreeDNA, GedMatch or MyHeritage, those sites would give me information to see if the segments match. We could then infer using the principles of triangulation that our paper trail pedigree matches our genetic tree.

At this stage it seems likely, based on the information from AncestryDNA that we share DNA even though this information is not quantified.

I have two other DNA matches with Dana descendants. As we share only small amounts of DNA, AncestryDNA does not provide the information if we share this with any other matches.

With such distant common ancestors, it is quite possible that we share other ancestors that we have not yet researched and the shared DNA is attributable to another ancestor.

It would help enormously if AncestryDNA gave us more information about our shared DNA as do the other companies. Otherwise, if people who have had their DNA tested would be prepared to upload to the other companies, we would be able to understand more about our shared DNA and determine if we have correctly identified out most common recent ancestor and there confirm our paper pedigree with shared DNA. Uploads to FamilyTreeDNA, GedMatch and MyHeritage are free, no further testing or payments are required.

Although it is interesting that I can find that I share DNA with distant cousins who are descended from the same forebears, it does not tell me more about Richard Dana and his son Daniel. I have learned most from Elizabeth Ellery Dana‘s genealogy of the Dana family.

Sources

• Dana, Elizabeth Ellery The Dana family in America. Cambridge, Mass. 1956, reprinted 2018. It can be viewed online through archive.org at https://archive.org/details/TheDanaFamilyInAmerica
• “The Church in Harvard Square: The Church And College.” Harvard Square Library, 9 Sept. 2014, www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/congregational-polity/the-church-and-college/.
• Lucius R. Paige (27 May 2017). History of Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1630-1877, Volume 1. Jazzybee Verlag. pp. 194–. ISBN 978-3-8496-7722-0.
• “International Society of Genetic Genealogy Wiki ISOGG Wiki.” Autosomal DNA Statistics – ISOGG Wiki, International Society of Genetic Genealogy, 29 Nov. 2017, isogg.org/wiki/Autosomal_DNA_statistics.

Tropical Hotel – Kissimmee, Florida

This week’s Sepia Saturday prompt is an elegant view of a hotel.

In his 1910 book Forty Years of a Sportsman’s Life, Sir Claude de Crespigny (1847 – 1935), my fourth cousin three times removed, mentions his 1887 visit to the Tropical Hotel Kissimmee, Florida.

View of the Tropical Hotel – Kissimmee, Florida, 1890s, retrieved from State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory, https://floridamemory.com/items/show/26138

Sir Claude also mentions the Ponce de León Hotel, St Augustine, Florida. The hotel was  completed in 1887. Sir Claude would have been one of its first guests.

Ponce de Leon Hotel – St. Augustine, Florida, 1893, retrieved from State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory, https://floridamemory.com/items/show/147777

“Hotel Ponce de Leon, St. Augustine, Florida”, postcard about 1909, retrieved from Wikipedia

From Chapter 7 of his book:

In these days of universal travel it is a difficult matter to strike what may be termed new ground. Indeed, it is almost impossible, and the nearest approach one can make to novelty is to pick out the spots least frequented by those two ubiquitous specimens of humanity, the sportsman and the British tourist. Bearing this in mind, and having received an invitation from an ex-sailor, I determined on a short tour through Florida, with Cuba to follow. So having written to S— to meet me at Douglass’s Tropical Hotel at Kissimmee, set about collecting my impedimenta, and engaged a berth by the Cunard boat from Liverpool to New York. Of course there are many ways of getting to the Stars and Stripes, and the traveller can have his choice of which line he will elect to travel by. Mine fell on the Cunarder, and there was no cause to repent it ; everything on board was most comfortable, and with fine weather we made a rapid passage, arriving at Sandy Hook almost before we had well cleared the Mersey — at least so it seemed.

From New York there is again a choice of routes. You can take the luxurious vestibule train or the steamer to Jacksonville, where it will not be amiss to spend a couple of days at St. Augustine, in the palatial hotel, Ponce de Leon, built after the style of old Moorish architecture. From Jacksonville you will take the train to Kissimmee ; or, better still perhaps, the steamer down St. John’s River to Sandford, and then on by rail.

Arrived at Kissimmee, Mr. Douglass will, assuming that he is still in the land of the living, make you thoroughly comfortable in the Tropical Hotel at an exceedingly moderate outlay, and will put you in the way of obtaining either a steamer or boat to the best sporting ground, which is in the neighbourhood of Fort Bassenger and Lake Arbuckle.

On arrival at Kissimmee, I found all arrangements had been made by S— , who had also got punt and everything in readiness so that there was nothing for me to do but overhaul the shooting-irons and kit, and prepare for a start. While on the subject of shooting-kits, it may be mentioned there is no necessity to bring out cartridges, as a gun- maker in Kissimmee, called Farringdon, can supply every requisite ; and, what is more, is particularly careful in loading. When ordering cartridges I found American wood powder by far the best, and can recommend it strongly. Flannel is the best material for clothing, and a stock of quinine should not be forgotten. These, however, are details.

On Tuesday, December 13, we left St. Elmo at 7.15 a.m., arrived at the south end of Lake Tohopekaliga at 1 p.m., and passing quickly through the canal into Lake Cypress, and on through a second canal, came into Lake Hatchineha, just as daylight was vanishing. Here we were lucky enough to hit off a sandbank studded with oak copse, and dry wood being plentiful, soon had our camp fire under way, and supper. The whiff of tobacco, and glass of Bourbon whisky which followed the evening meal, were both mighty acceptable, for we had had nine hours’ hard rowing under a blazing sun, and were both fairly tired out. At least I can answer for it that it was with a feeling of deep satisfaction I curled myself up in my blankets for the night, and was quickly lulled to sleep by a chorus of frogs, with the occasional ” ouf, ouf! ” of a somewhat consumptive alligator.

Map showing Kissimmee and St Augustine, Florida

I was thinking of Sir Claude this week, following the sad news of a lion being shot for sport in Africa.  Sir Claude was an active hunter who killed many animals for his own amusement.

Rhino shot by Sir Claude Champion de Crespigny from opposite page 291 of Forty Years of a Sportsman’s Life

Trophies at Champion Lodge from opposite page 295 of Forty Years

I deplore game shooting. I can’t understand why people want to kill animals for sport, now or a hundred years ago.

An article by J A Mangan and Callum McKenzie in the International Journal of the History of Sport about the Shikar Club, offers some clues as to why Sir Claude was so keen on hunting:

Patriotism obsessed de Crespigny. He was of the view that every able-bodied Briton had an obligation to defend his country and could not be considered a ‘man’ till he had done so. He practised what he preached. He served in both the Royal Navy (1860–5) and the Army, (1866–70) and later, despite his advancing years, was keen to play an active part in the Boer War. Sporting pleasures and military duties, in his rigid opinion, went hand in hand. Hunting was an ideal training for warfare. He was dismissively contemptuous of all ‘gentlemen of England now abed’ types. He likened such ‘feather-bed aristocrats’, particularly those who declined military duty, to effeminate French aristocracy, and, considered they had no place in the English social hierarchy. His son’s military success was, in his certain view, the result of the family’s predilection for hunting: ‘Men who have been good sportsmen at home are the men who will do best and show the greatest amount of resource when on active service.’ (page 258 of Forty Years) De Crespigny was a pragmatist as well as patriot. Hunting was more than training for war, as noted elsewhere; it assisted military promotion and to this end, de Crespigny used it as a means of consolidating friendships with high-ranking military officials and useful politicians.

In Florida Sir Claude shot and wounded a moccasin snake, bagged half a dozen snipe (for eating), fruitlessly tramped after deer and turkey, but later seems to have shot some venison for eating. (pages 188-193 of Forty Years)

Reference:

• (2008) Imperial Masculinity Institutionalized: The Shikar Club, The International
  Journal of the History of Sport, 25:9, 1218-1242, DOI:
  10.1080/09523360802166162 retrieved through the State Library of Victoria eJournals service – link :http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09523360802166162

Similar text appears in Mangan, J. A. Reformers, Sport, Modernizers: Middle-class Revolutionaries. : Routledge, 2013. viewable in Google books https://books.google.com.au/books?id=xedSAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA186. Also in Mangan, J. A. and Callum McKenzie Militarism, Hunting, Imperialism: ‘Blooding’ The Martial Male. : Routledge, 2013. viewable in Google books https://books.google.com.au/books?id=9TmPAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA168

Note the article, and the books, incorrectly refers to Sir Claude as a Brigadier-General. The fourth baronet did not achieve that rank. His son, Sir Claude Raul Champion de Crespigny, the fifth baronet, was a brigadier-general.

B is for Buick

Continuing the story of Ernest Osmond Cudmore (1894 – 1924)
After the war, Ernest travelled back to Australia via the United States of America with his brother Arthur (1897 – 1974), who had served in the Australian army as a driver. Together they bought a Buick and travelled across North America.

20 Jul 1919, Page 42 – Oakland Tribune (Oakland, California) retrieved from Newspapers.com

20 Jul 1919, Page 46 – Oakland Tribune (Oakland, California) retrieved from Newspapers.com

The newspaper article does not mention Ernest’s leg. They arrived back in Australia in September 1919.

Back in Australia Ernest Cudmore took to riding to hounds. Also riding was his cousin Eileen Fitzsimmons (1896 – 1982). Eileen was Ernest’s first cousin once removed. Her grandmother was the sister of Ernest’s father. Eileen was a successful horsewoman. Her obituary says that she was the most successful horsewoman of her time.

Eileen and Ernest married on 23 December 1922 at Christ Church, South Yarra. They lived at Lilydale where Ernest had a farm.

Ernest continued to ride.

Sportsman’s Note Book. (1923, September 1). The Mail (Adelaide, SA : 1912 – 1954), p. 5. Retrieved from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article63782338

Ernest killed himself  on 26 September 1924.

AMATEUR RIDER’S DEATH. (1924, October 4). The Australasian (Melbourne, Vic. : 1864 – 1946), p. 25. Retrieved from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article140762165

The inquest found no reason for suicide. Though he had been anxious recently he had no financial troubles or any particular worries.

The inventory of assets associated with the administration of his estate showed that the 417 acre farm carried sheep, lambs, pigs, two store cows and a jersey cow and calf (he sold cream). The farm grew crops. There were horses: two hunters, one pony, 6 draught horses and one draught colt. The inventory included a comprehensive description of farm implements and all the household furniture. There was also a Sopwith Dove aircraft, badly smashed, valued at only 20 pounds.  His estate was valued at more than eleven thousand pounds.

Additional Sources

•  HUNTING. (1921, July 2). The Australasian (Melbourne, Vic. : 1864 – 1946), p. 24 Edition: METROPOLITAN EDITION. Retrieved  from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article140173103
• FOR AUSTRALIAN WOMEN. (1922, November 16). Table Talk (Melbourne, Vic. : 1885 – 1939), p. 5. Retrieved  from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article146457156  mentions the marriage and Eileen’s enthusiasm for following the hounds.
• Proceedings of inquest on the body of Ernest Osmond Cudmore dated 8 October 1924, number 1134 retrieved from the Public Records office of Victoria.
• Probate records held by the Public records Office of Victoria: Ernest O Cudmore Grazier of Coldstream died 26 Sep 1924. File number: 198/750 Records: VPRS 28/P3, unit 1488 and VPRS 7591/P2, unit 703

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