I think that most people enjoy sharing their family stories. My father often shared one or two of his favorite family stories. He was a child and he believed the stories his grandparents passed along. He didn't remember any details or even if details were known.
When we learned of these stories as children, we wanted to know a little more. So the desire to connect these stories to our family and maybe even verify them or debunk them has persisted in the background of my family history research since childhood.
Our family was said to be related to Rebecca Nourse who was convicted and hanged for witchcraft during the Salem Witch Trials.
What I eventually found were twisted branches in my family tree that led to the litigants of one of the most important historic landmark US Supreme Court cases, Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857).
Wow! Jaw-dropping! This was awesome turned up to eleven!
Follow me to the other side of the thingamadooley and I'll tell you how I stumbled along the path that led to Dred Scott and the landmark decision.
So how is a New England itinerant woolen mill dye shop worker's family connected with another Vermont family whose relative ends up owning a slave? Not just any slave, but one of the most well known slaves in US history, Dred Scott. Well, it's complicated. And there were more than a few stumbling blocks along the way.
My father lost his parents very early in life. He was 5 when his mother died and 8 when his father died. He lived with his maternal grandparents for several more years. He had no knowledge of his grandparents' family history other than the stories he heard.
So this is where the path begins. I had a total of five names in this part of the family tree.
My father's maternal grandfather:
William Henry Walker.
My father thought he might have been born in Putney, VT or maybe Bernardston, MA, or maybe somewhere in CT. His guess for his birth year turned out to be way off.
I didn't live in New England back then, so visiting the town halls and the libraries wasn't easy. I found no records of his birth anywhere.
A roadblock.
I searched the few census records that were available online at that time. Do you have any idea of how many William Walkers there are in New England? The early search engines didn't offer any way to list the hits by relevance back then. Eventually, as more records became available and the search engines got better, I found my family and tracked them as they worked in various New England woolen mills. William Henry Walker was consistently listed as born in Vermont in about 1853. I determined that his parents were:
Edward Walker and Mrs. Sarah Walker.
Edward Walker was born in 1822 in Vermont which was useful information, but it also meant that I wouldn't be able to find his or her parents' names. Family members weren't listed by name prior to the 1850 census.
A roadblock.
I had a few more clues. William Henry Walker's wife, Catherine Burns, was born in Walpole, NH, according to my father. The vital records of Walpole were destroyed in a fire in 1853-54 or so. Again, no records could be found. It turns out that there was only one Burns family in Walpole ever. So Owen Burns had to be Catherine's father according to the town records. Yes, the famous Ken Burns lives in Walpole now. He isn't related. Putney, VT is directly across the Connecticut River from Walpole, NH. Another useful clue. So I visited several town halls on the VT side of the river.
I found an index card for the death of Edward Walker in the Rockingham, VT town hall that had been sourced from cemetery records in Saxtons River, VT, a village within Rockingham, VT at the time. Three children and his wife Sarah were in the index, too. But no records for my ggrandfather, William Henry Walker. Off to Saxtons River. The center cemetery was easy to find. And there they were! The dates on the index cards matched.
I took the effort to visit the cemetery. There is a method to my madness. I often find other family members and wives and cousins buried in the same cemetery, sometimes together. Sometimes you can get the wife's birth name if she and her husband are buried in her family section. This din't work out in this case. All I know is that his wife is named Sarah. Do you have any idea how many women were named Sarah in those days? Again, no marriage or birth records that provided an answer.
But I noticed a Nourse/Faulkner family monument in one corner of the Saxton's River Cemetery. I thought it might be a clue to the connection to Rebecca Nourse, the convicted witch. But I didn't find anything online that provided a connection.
A roadblock.
Then I had a flash of brilliance. Since there weren't very many pages of census records for this small village, I decided to search Ancestry for Sarah with every unique last name I found in the census. I got a hit on several Sarahs in town, but then Sarah Wheeler popped up in someone's Ancestry tree with the exact birth and death dates as found on her monument. I had found my gggrandmother's maiden name even though there were no other records available.
This breakthrough led to some additional connections. It turns out that one of the Nourse men had married two of Sarah Wheeler's sisters. The first sister had died and Mr. Nourse married another sister.
I had found the connection to my family story.
William Henry Walker (my ggrandfather) had two different aunts who married Mr. Nourse. With some additional research, this Mr. Nourse is, in fact, a direct descendent of Rebecca Norse. So my father's family story is partially true. Our family is related to Rebecca Nourse by marriage, but we are not directly related (by blood). It's clear that my father knew of his grandfather's aunts named Nourse.
A delay.
I had been researching an entirely different family line and stumbled across a reference to the Nourse family. I noticed that one of the Saxtons River (Rockingham) individuals was listed in this book. This document included a few more Nourse families. Then I saw a record for Clarissa Nourse who had married a Dr. Calvin Clifford Chaffee. Listed with Dr. Chaffee was his second wife, Irene Sanford.
A note included with Irene Sanford's death said that her obituary stated that she was the owner of Dred Scott. I checked and double checked everything. This turned out to be absolutely true every way I looked at it.
That was one of my biggest attacks of awesome I've ever had.
Irene Sanford is the wife of my 3rd cousin four times removed.
The surprises are the best part of family history research.