The Daunting Task of Finding Generations of Grandparents

This blog has covered a lot of topics over the years so I'll just remind those interested (or that just happen by), that I segued my Lighthouse blog into mostly family history because of inheriting at least a couple of thousand letters.  Most of the letters span from 1880-1930 to and from my great grandmother and her mother and grandmother as well as a variety of their other extended family members and friends. I also spent the last couple of years adding all my Great Uncle George's WWI letters (a separate blog linked here)  from "Somewhere in France."

My husband has been very supportive of this amazing history project and we have made several trips to New England to find relatives.  We started our search at Topsham, VT, then later went back another generation to Washington, NH and then an even further generation back to family in Dedham, MA.  After piecing together a lot of scattered information over the past couple of years and tracking down marriage and death certificates, I was able to document being a direct descendant of Francis Cooke who came to Plymouth, New England, on the Mayflower along with his son John in December 1620.  We have had a lot of fun tracking down and "visiting dead relatives" around New England over the last decade.  They are all really quite cooperative being "at home" when we drop in although they are not much for conversation.

Before 2006 I knew none of this. Our success with this endeavor is much due to the excellent record keeping of the Topsham, Vermont Town Hall which is where we began.  If we had started elsewhere we might have given up long ago.   Several years ago we documented the life and death of Rosina Healy Richardson and her husband Robert Richardson.  Their daughter Rosina Jane Richardson Stevens had lamented in a thin journal of the unexpected loss of her mother in June of 1872.  In the second entry of her journal she talked of having visited "the grave of my mother" and noted that a "stream ran by it."  When we visited the same spot year 146 years later the stream (Tabor branch of the Waits River) was still alongside, chiming over the stones in the river bed on its way to join the Connecticut River as tho no time at all had passed.

It seems like we are making progress as we hunt down relatives and documentation, but as we fill in blanks here and there, at the same time new paths keep opening up to us and what we haven't researched keeps expanding.  Every generation we add doubles the number of parents and so the more we know the more questions come up that need to be answered. The number of direct grandparents keeps expanding exponentially.  Here's how it works.

First generation 1 - just me
Second generation (my parents) -  2
Third generation (grand parents) -  4
Fourth generation (great grandparents) -  8
Fifth generation (g-g grandparents - 16
Sixth generation (g-g-g grandparents (In my case includes Rosina Healy Richardson, the lamented mother and her husband noted  above) - 32
Seventh generation - 64
Eighth generation  - 128 (we are starting to get a lot of grandparents)
Ninth generation - 256
Tenth generation - 512
Eleventh generation - 1024
Twelfth generation - 2048
Thirteenth generation - 4096
Fourteenth generation - 8192  (This is where Mayflower and Francis Cooke come in.)
Fifteenth generation - 16,384
Sixteenth generation - 32,768
Seventeenth generation - 65,536
Eighteenth generation - 131,072
Nineteenth generation - 262,144
Twentieth generation - 524,288
And look what happens at the Twenty First generation - 1,048,576

(To my surprise a distant cousin posted this exact mathematical information on Facebook since I had completed the math on this draft - altho hers was written so it looked like a conifer "tree."  Hers was much more artistic and creative in style, but the info is the same.

Not many of us family history addicts get past thirteen or fourteen generations no matter how far and wide we search (unless one discovers direct royal ancestry and that is usually well documented -- that hasn't happened to me so far), but there is no shortage of little branches that we can explore while looking for yet another elusive grandparent or a flock of grandparents, aunts and uncles.

This last October 2019 we went looking for details for another branch of the family.  Rosina Healy Richardson (the lamented mother referenced above) had passed away in June of 1872.  Rosina was married to Robert A. Richardson, the man whose face is featured in the photo above --taken on  his 80th birthday in 1885.  Robert's father was Robert Fletcher Richardson.  Robert Fletcher R was the son of Zechariah Richardson and Sarah Barnes.  We have not adequately confirmed the identity of  Zechariah's Richardson parents but we were able to establish the connection to Sarah's parents while visiting our living family in Merrimack, New Hampshire.  Sarah's parents were Captain Thomas Barnes and Rachel (Barrett) Barnes of Merrimack, NH.  Rachel lived about 4 years after her daughter's wedding and passed away in 1777 in Merrimack, NH. Rachel and her husband Capt. Thomas were land owners in Merrimack and there is a photo in the Merrimack History Book of their original home. It was later dismantled with plans to rebuild it elsewhere in town but that never happened.  Surprisingly, my brother and his family live only about two or three miles from the site of the original Town Hall of Merrimack and the cemetery where we found our great-great-great-great-great Grandmother Rachel (Barrett) Barnes.

After young Zechariah and his wife Sarah moved to Francistown NH they had several children, one of whom was Robert Fletcher Richardson born on October 17, 1778.  Robert Fletcher Richardson married Dorcas Hardy of Bath, New Hampshire.  Their son Robert A was also born in Bath, NH and later they moved to Topsham as well.  When we first visited Topsham Town Hall we hadn't know the maiden names for either Sarah or Dorcas so it has been fun matching records in these various locations.  Zechariah and Sarah, son Robert F and Dorcas and grandson Robert A and his wife Rosina all began elsewhere but all ended up buried in Topsham, VT.

Captain Thomas  Barnes, when widowed of Rachel Barret Barnes, later moved to Vermont and married again.  He is buried in Pomfret, Vermont.  Rachel is buried in the old Turkey  Hill Cemetery seen below.  Ancestry.com information indicates that there was a smallpox epidemic in Merrimack in  1777 so that might have been her cause of death. They must have been very interested and involved in the Revolutionary War that was underway at this time!  Following are pictures taken of our adventure in Merrimack.   Last photo is of the only Merrimack casualty in the Revolutionary War.

Original Cemetery in Merrimack ,New Hampshire

Original meeting house which was used until 1872 when a new building was built.  Fire destroyed the original building in 1896.

Here is an overview of the cemetery with Rachel's headstone being the closes on the right side of the photo.

Lichen loves to grow on this slate but other than that, these stones are very hard and have withstood almost 250 years of weathering.  Much better than other options! 

My husband knew our goal was to have a legible photo of the stone and so he had brought the little brush from my brother's home and off he went to work on it.  

Momento Mori

Erected in memory of Mrs. Rachel  Barns the wife of Captain Thomas Barns who departed this life April 26, 1777 AD, 53 years 2 months and 9 days.

(A Momento mori is a reminder that death comes to all and to live well the time allotted to you.)

Here is information above and below about meeting house and cemetery that is available at this location.

Merrimack only lost one soldier in the Revolutionary War.  Reuben Cumings, honored here, joined the military when 14 and fought at the Battle of Bunker Hill.  He was later promoted to drummer.  He died and was buried near Fort Ticonderoga.