More Ancestry Excitement

I have been doing some work every week on all of my various family lines. I'm slowly trying to fill them all in- at least to get back to the first immigrant to America, if I can, and further back if possible. What I've found is that my family, on almost all lines has been in this country for a very, very long time. Most of them were here before the Revolutionary War, and some of the lines were from the very earliest European settlers to this country.

As such, it is not surprising that many of my lines trace back to the East Coast. I had long known that on the Barnard side of my family, we descend from Colonel Jonathan Buck, the founder of Bucksport, Maine. I later learned that the Buck family had come from Massachusetts before they settled in Maine. The Buck line had married into the Darling family, and the Darling family later married into the Barnard family. And so, one section of my family tree is full of Bucks, Barnards, and Darlings. I had a pretty fair amount of information about the Barnards and Bucks, but I had just begun to research the Darlings. So, I sat down to try and discover more about them. Boy, was I in for a surprise.

My G-G Grandparents, Bertha Elna (Wilkey) and Henry Knotts Barnard

Henry Barnard's grandmother was Julia Cobb Darling who married Enoch Barnard. Her father was Henry Darling, who married Eliza Cobb. Henry Darling's father was Eliakim Darling who married Ruth Buck.

After Eliakim Darling, for some time, I was confused. Some information had an Eliakim Darling Senior as his father, and some had a Thomas. It took me a while of digging around, but I've come to the conclusion that they are the same person. The records that name Eliakim Senior, and the records that name Thomas both say that he was married to Martha Howe, and that his son was the Eliakim who married Ruth Buck. And they all agreed on who his parents were. So, although I still don't know for certain which is his first name, I know I have the right man. Maybe he was Eliakim Thomas Darling. Who knows?

Anyway, once I'd made sure that he was my man, I could add his parental info to my tree. His parents were Jonathan Darling and Sarah Wardwell. This is where it got really interesting.

Sarah Wardwell was the daughter of William Wardwell, of Salem Massachusetts. William Wardwell was the son of Samuel Wardwell and Sarah Hooper, of Salem.

If you remember any of your history lessons on the Salem witch trials, those names might mean something to you.

Samuel Wardwell was one of the 19 accused, convicted and hanged for being a witch.
His wife, Sarah was also accused, but later released.

Samuel, himself, might have been spared the gallows, but he retracted his confession.

One of the (many) strange things about the Salem Witch Trials, is that the people who refused to admit to witchcraft were tried, convicted and punished. People who confessed were sent back to prison, many of whom avoided the death penalty because they were able to "wait out" all of the insanity. Samuel confessed, but recanted, and was held up to all as an example of what happened to those who tried to change their testimony after admitting to being a witch. No other person who confessed was hanged, save Samuel.

Samuel is also unique in that he actually is believed to have dabbled in some fortune telling. The other "witches" seem to have had no actual part in anything even remotely like sorcery, but it seems to be widely accepted that Samuel had often read fortunes as a bit of entertainment. Certainly, we know now that doing a palm reading, or looking at tarot cards, does not mean someone is "in league with the devil," but to the Puritans, it might have been too much evidence to overlook. Certainly, when Samuel recanted and said that he was not a servant of Satan, and he had not hurt the girls in any way, his pleas fell on deaf ears. Instead, they made an example of him.

To me, this is all just a shock. I never would have guessed, when I started researching my ancestry, that it would lead to so many fascinating discoveries. I mean- I learned about this in history books, read Samuel's name...never knowing that this was my 10th Great Grandfather. I did always have a morbid curiosity about the witch trials, but I can't attribute that to my lineage. I think a lot of people feel the same way. It was a horrible and horrifying part of early American life. But, if I have to be connected to this, I think I am glad it was through one of the people who were accused. They were innocent. The people who did the accusing, who did the hanging...those people were guilty of and accomplices to murder. I think if I had to face the knowledge of that, it would be a much worse feeling. Now, someday I hope to go to Salem and actually see his memorial- bring a flower for my innocent ancestor who was the victim of religious hysteria.

You can read more about Samuel Wardwell all over the internet. Here are some good links.
Read all about the Salem Witch Trials here at Project Gutenberg.
This link takes you to the Salem Witchcraft Papers, regarding Samuel Wardwell, then click on the links within to read the individual documents.
And his bio is here, click on the plus sign, next to "Full Essay" to read all of it.

Great Grandma, the Murderer?

I have recently been doing a lot of research into my family tree. I got a subscription to ancestry.com, I signed up with findagrave.com, and every tip I've gotten, I have followed up with my own personal research. What I have found has been more fascinating than I ever could have imagined.

It started with a few little finds, like- I thought my mother's side was heavily Irish, in fact, it is heavily Scottish, with just a little Irish thrown in for good measure. I discovered that my French ancestors on my father's side, left France because they were Huguenots, fleeing the persecution of them by the Catholics. Multiple ancestors fought in the Revolutionary War, multiple ancestors were founders of towns, and many many more were simply farmers, working the land.

One revelation, however, was a bit more of a shock.

On my mother's side, one of my great-grandmothers had the maiden name of Taulbee.
So I began searching for her parents. I found them easily enough, and in fact, was able to trace the entire Taulbee line right back to the first couple to have come to America. There is no record of their actual immigration, so it is speculated that they came from England, because they settled in the English, Puritan colony of Boston, Massachusetts, in the 1600s. Their names were John and Dorothy Talby. (Some records suggest her maiden name may have been Rawlinson, but that is not certain) They were my 11th Great-Grandparents.

Dorothy Talby was hanged for murder in 1638.

"Whoa." "I'm sorry...what??"

I had to look this one up for myself. It is true. The Puritans of Boston kept detailed records not only of the hanging, but of the events leading up to it.

From the Journal of John Winthrop:
"Dorothy Talbye was hanged at Boston for murdering her own daughter, a child of three years old. She had been a member of the church of Salem, and of good esteem for godliness, etc; but falling at difference with her husband, through melancholy or spiritual delusions, she sometimes attempted to kill him, and her children, and herself, by refusing meat, saying it was so revealed to her, etc.
 ...the church cast her out. Whereupon she grew worse; so as the magistrate caused her to be whipped. Whereupon she was reformed for a time and carried herself more dutifully to her husband, etc; but soon after, she was so possessed with Satan that he persuaded her...to break the neck of her own child that she might free it from future misery."

 To sum up, Dorothy gave birth to a daughter, which she named "Difficulty" in 1636. I think the name says a lot. It would appear that after Difficulty's birth, Mrs. Talby began to suffer from either post-partum depression or some type of delusional mental disorder. Whatever was actually wrong with her, we'll never know. But she begins to have episodes wherein she physically beats her husband, she often refuses to eat, and she becomes increasingly aggressive and potentially dangerous to her family.
The church was the authority in this time, and so it is they who "handle" the situation.
They excommunicate Dorothy in 1637, and order her to be temporarily chained to a post in the center of town. Eventually, she is sent back home, but her behavior becomes worse, not better.
 (What a shocker. Chaining mentally ill people doesn't work? What??)
When John Talby complains that she has become a danger to his life, she is sentenced to be publicly whipped. For a while, she seems better, but by 1638, her behavior is becoming strange again. She claims to have visions from God, and he instructs her to kill her child, and eventually she does so by breaking the toddler's neck.
When she is arrested, she confesses, but at her trial, she refuses to speak until the Governor threatens to press her to death if she does not enter her plea. (Pressing to death is a gruesome sentence that requires heavy stones to be laid onto the person until they are crushed. It is a long, and agonizing death, and the only person known to have suffered this fate was Giles Corey, who was accused of being a wizard in the Salem witch trials)
Dorothy confesses to avoid this horrific fate. She is sentenced to death by hanging. She begs the court to behead her instead, as she believes this death will be swifter and less painful. They deny her plea. She is hanged to death on December 6th, 1638.

Her husband, John is censured in the church in March of 1639, for "much pride, and unnaturalness, to his wife, who was lately executed for murdering her child.” (from a letter by Pastor, Hugh Peter) He later moves to Salem, and dies there in 1645. Three children survive- Anne, Stephen and John. Stephen is my ancestor, and he became the captain of a trading ketch, named the Adventurer.

Dorothy's case is very well publicized. She was the 3rd woman ever to be executed in the colonies. But her case is more famous than the first two because the records in those cases are lost, whereas Dorothy's is well documented. Oliver Wendell Holmes referenced the Talby case in his book Medical Essays. In Main Street, writer Nathaniel Hawthorne shows Dorothy Talby, "chained to a post at the corner of Prison Lane, with the hot sun blazing on her matronly face, and all for no other offence than lifting her hand against her husband."

When I first learned of all of this, I was shocked of course. I actually didn't want to tell my mother and my grandfather who their ancestor was. I was worried that they'd feel ashamed to have such an infamous murderer connected to our family. But then, I started to just feel very sorry for her. Poor Dorothy. In another time, in another place, she might have gotten help. At minimum, she would have simply gone to a mental hospital or jail for the rest of her life, instead of being hanged. Today, she might have seen a therapist before it ever got bad enough for her to end up killing her own child. And how much of her mental disorder was aggravated by her husband's ill-treatment of her, and by the church's misunderstanding of how to treat mentally ill persons? When you see her this way, what is there to be embarrassed of? Every family, if you search hard enough, will have some members with scandalous backgrounds. Its just a matter of odds. If you survey any large section of people, you are bound to find a criminal or two.Ours was just more well-known. The tragedy is that this is all she is known for. It would seem from John Winthrop's writings that for most of her life, she was considered an upstanding member of the community. No doubt she had good qualities.
To me, and my family, our ancestor will be Dorothy Talby- the unfortunate victim of misinformed Puritan doctrine. But to history, my great-grandmother will always be Dorothy Talby- murderer.