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A Walk Back In Time

Reflections
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Perhaps you’ve heard the phrase “a walk back in time?” A few years ago, I had the opportunity to better understand the meaning of this phrase. Let me explain.

After a little family history work some time ago, I discovered it was possible to visit nearly all the gravesites in one of my Pilgrim John Howland family lines. Starting with my father, I could visit nearly every grave in this line going all the way back to the Pilgrims John Howland and Elizabeth Tilley.

John Howland and Elizabeth Tilley were my 10th great-grandparents and these walks to my ancestors’ graves provided a unique glimpse into the past and became a true walk back in time for me. 

My strolls, through a variety of cemeteries in southern New England, not only showed me where these folks were buried but they also taught me something of how they lived, where they lived, and who they were. These people, after all, were my ancestors, and they played a role in influencing the person I am today. Perhaps, you have also taken such a stroll?

Let me share with you the story of how I discovered these gravesites and also how I came to better understand some of the lives in this one Howland family line.

My research really began some years ago with conversations with my father. While I wasn’t terribly interested in family history or genealogy back then, I did listen carefully. My father had a keen interest in genealogy research and he regularly visited the gravesites of our ancestors. He would often share with me his finds discovered at the different cemeteries. His interest sparked my interest some years later.

A few years ago, as I realized I might be able to visit all the gravesites in this one particular Mayflower line, I was intrigued.

With this knowledge and interest, I began my quest to see if it were actually possible to visit all the gravesites back to John and Elizabeth Howland. I decided I would start with my father’s gravesite and work my way backwards in time. It was truly a walk back in time.

As you can imagine, my research was done both online and in the field. I knew most of my ancestors were buried on Cape Cod well into the fifth generation back and I also knew where they were buried. This was the easy part. It was the seven generations beyond these which caused some challenges. Of course, I used Ancestry and Find-A-Grave for my initial online research but while these research sites are helpful, they are not without significant limitations. Visiting each cemetery was a must.

The gravesites from my father through my third great-grandparents were all easy enough to find as I had previously visited them. I started with these individuals. All the graves, except one, were on Cape Cod and the off-Cape ancestor was buried in a family plot in nearby Providence, Rhode Island. I visited these graves, photographed the stones, and paused to consider what life was like for each ancestor. 

I knew the details of my father’s life, of course, and my grandmother and my great-grandmother but it was while visiting my second great-grandmother, Ellen Gray Waterman, and her father, my third great-grandfather, Charles Thatcher Gray, both buried in the West Barnstable cemetery, that some previously unknown facts struck me as interesting and even touching.

As I stood beside my second great-grandmother’s grave on a cool spring day, some elements of her life came to my mind. Ellen was born in Barnstable, Massachusetts in 1832 and died in the1502ef4a-893d-4f65-9703-046e8c36fe59 same town about 50 years later in 1883. Death records in Massachusetts indicate her relatively short life was sadly truncated by a tumor accompanied by dropsy. Dropsy, I was later to learn, was either a form of edema or possibly a general wasting away of the body. The tumor, of course, was likely cancer. As I stood near her grave, I thought especially of Ellen’s last years.

Earlier in her life, Ellen moved with her husband, Charles Henry Waterman, to New Jersey and because of poor health returned to her parents’ home in Barnstable. It was there she died.

In my mind’s eye, I imagine her father (her mother having died a few years earlier) caring for his daughter as her life slowly slipped away. I imagine all the struggle and heartache this passing might have entailed.

Nearby to Ellen’s grave, directly beside it in fact, I found her father, Charles Thatcher Gray. In the census data I reviewed, I discovered Charles was a blacksmith. I find knowing an ancestor’s occupation quite interesting and I wondered to myself if my third great-grandfather, Charles, labored nearby at a local blacksmith shop still maintained today for historical purposes in Barnstable. 

What struck me most, however, was the date of Charles Gray’s death. He died in August of 1883. This was just seven months after his daughter’s death. Charles’ wife had also died a few years previously and I wondered if the death of his wife and then the challenges of caring for his sick and dying daughter lead to Charles’ own death. I wondered if his body and soul were just too weary to go on after the stress of the last few years and he passed away from a broken heart shortly after his daughter’s passing. 

These were the kinds of stories that came to mind as I made my way through so many New England cemeteries.

From Charles Thatcher Gray, I followed the genealogical path up to Charles’ father, Joshua Gray. This ancestor and his story also piqued my interest. He was a captain of a packet ship which sailed between Yarmouth and Boston and the son of another captain, Joshua Gray, a Revolutionary War Officer. I found this all fascinating.

From Joshua Gray, packet ship captain, I followed the line to Mary Hedge and her husband Captain Joshua Gray, Revolutionary War Patriot. I found these graves in the Ancient Cemetery in Yarmouth Port, MA. “What was life like for a woman in the Revolutionary War,” I thought to myself as I discovered these graves? Also I considered, “In what battles did my fifth great-grandfather, Joshua Gray, participate in the Revolutionary War?”

From there, I visited the graves of Mary Gorham in the Ancient Cemetery, Yarmouth Port, MA and James Gorham, Jr. in Cobb’s Hill Cemetery, Barnstable, MA. This was followed by a visit to James Gorham, Sr. in Lothrop Hill Cemetery, Barnstable, MA. Unbelievably, all of these ancestors were in a direct line to John Howland and Elizabeth Tilley.

This last visit had a unique and mystifying feature to it. On the morning I found James Gorham, Sr’s grave, I wasn’t looking for him at all and was actually driving with a friend to an unrelated family activity when we came upon the cemetery where he was laid to rest. 

In the past, I had driven down Rt. 6A on Cape Cod thousands of times and never gave the cemeteries dotting this highway much thought. Now, I knew each old hill and green expanse contained copious distant aunts, uncles, and cousins. More than that, many contained the graves of my great and great-great-grandparents.

As I looked at my driver, I mentioned we were nearing Lothrop Hill Cemetery. She knew from past experience what was coming next and before I could make the request she said, “No, we’re already running late. We’re not stopping.” “Please,” I implored like a petulant child. “I’ll only take a quick look so I can get the lay of the land. Nothing more. Ten minutes. Tops.” She begins pulling the car over to the side of the road and while applying the brakes she says strongly, “Ten minutes.” 

I scrambled out of the car, practically before the tires stopped rolling along the asphalt, and ambled across the busy street and into the dewy grass of this ancient and sacred hill.

As promised, I was only going to walk briefly among a few rows of headstones, look at some names, and generally get the lay of the land. I often do this. My first visit to a new cemetery usually involves a brief “overview walk” allowing me to gauge the scope of the task before me and to better understand the layout of the grounds.

No sooner had I walked among two or three rows of this significantly large cemetery when I felt an invisible tug towards the center of the graveyard. A tree caught my interest and I thought I’d go have a look. On my way, I stopped and looked at a couple of stones but my attention was 500 hundred yards ahead and I knew the clock was ticking. Given my time constraints, going too far didn’t make a lot of sense but I continued making my way there. As I walked, I was inextricably drawn to a line of stones far in the distance. I followed this intuition.

a7df19d7-f2bb-4aef-ba36-9b35ee61ea45You might well guess the end of this story. That’s right. I walked right up to a stone, looked down, and much to my surprise and delight, there was James Gorham, Sr.’s headstone. I was stunned but also elated. After taking a few hurried pictures, I quickly made my way back to the car, under the original ten-minute expectation, where I found my waiting friend. “You’re not going to believe this…” I said.

From James Gorham, Sr.’s gravesite I made my way to the grave of his mother, Desire Howland. I was told she was buried in Cobb’s Hill Cemetery but over time her stone had succumbed to the elements. I visited her cemetery but never found her grave nor did I find the grave of her husband, John Gorham, my ninth great-grandfather, who died as a result of wounds suffered in the Great Swamp Fight in King Phillip’s War.

Finally, I visited John and Elizabeth’s memorials. First, I visited Elizabeth’s clearly marked gravesite in East Providence, Rhode Island and then I took a trip to visit John’s memorial. I’m led to believe that John’s exact burial site is unknown to history but he is likely buried somewhere on Burial Hill near his memorial stone. I culminated my gravestone search here at John’s memorial. 

Visits to both of these final sites brought to completion a summer of joyful discoveries and connections with my Howland ancestors. I, indeed, learned something of how they lived, where they lived, and a little bit of the fabric of each person’s life. 

After all was said and done, I visited Pine Grove Cemetery in Brewster, MA; North Burial Ground, Providence, RI; Bayview Cemetery, Sandwich, MA; West Barnstable Cemetery, Barnstable, MA; Ancient Cemetery, Yarmouth Port, MA; Cobb’s Hill Cemetery, Barnstable, MA; Lothrop Hill Cemetery, Barnstable, MA; Ancient Little Neck Cemetery, East Providence, RI, and Burial Hill Cemetery, Plymouth, MA.

This article was previously published in The Howland Quarterly, The Mayflower Compact, and The Mayflower Quarterly Magazine.

A Sense of History

Reflections, ,

e02d9f8a-2cc8-4e33-823b-0f6be2ae4a05Recently, I began the process of reviewing and confirming my family connections to Francis Cooke, a passenger on the Mayflower. This process reminded me of how I view history, how I make sense of it, and how I find myself in the unfolding narrative of time.

How do you make sense of history? More specifically, how do you view American history? Is there a unique perspective coloring your understanding? For me, I view it through the lens of my own family. I’ve discovered through genealogy research my family was involved in many significant events in our country’s past. This personal perspective makes these days of old come alive. The good, the bad, the inspiring, and the questionable all intrigue me.

When I begin the review process for a possible colonial ancestor, I begin with the known facts from my genealogy research and slowly walk backwards in time. Initially, events are quite concrete and known but as I walk back in time I become less certain about the details and my imagination begins to craft a story. It’s an exciting process!

I begin with myself and my own presence in time. I pause at this juncture and ask myself the following question, “Where do I come from?” Perhaps at some point in your life you’ve asked the same question?

From this place and with this question, I commence my walk backwards into history. In this case, I start with my father. I consider his experiences in the tail end of World War II and his experiences in the Korean War.

My mind is drawn into my father’s moments on the battlefield when incoming mortar fire pins him down in a foxhole. I can feel the cold. I can see the thick spring mud covering his boots. I experience some share in the terror. And for a moment, I am there with him.

As I continue back in time, I think of my father’s mother, my grandmother. She always told us a story of the 1938 Hurricane in Providence, Rhode Island. It was one of the fiercest and deadliest hurricanes in Rhode Island history.

As I review my grandmother’s dry genealogical data this moment in time floods my consciousness. Again, I am present as my grandfather frantically awaits the return of his wife, trapped by the rising water and billowing wind in downtown Providence, after a trip with family members to visit her aunt. This moment in history, captured in so many newspaper articles and newsreels, is made personal and real by my grandmother’s involvement in this event.

This connection continues as I review the facts of my great-grandmother, Mary Louise Waterman. She married Richard Edward Raybold and they courted in Sandwich, Massachusetts. A story, handed down in my family, has my great-grandfather, as a young man, seeing my great-grandmother, as a young woman, walking down Main Street in Sandwich with a “lithe step” and thinking he’d like to get to know this attractive young lady. I further see them courting on August evenings with a walk to the beach perhaps making their way to the bay over the recently constructed boardwalk.

As my great-grandmother matured she became involved in the suffragist movement with her cousin Elizabeth Cady Stanton and I see them working together with their fellow suffragettes pursuing a women’s right to vote. Once secured, my great-grandmother exercised her right to vote for the rest of her life.

As I go further back in time, a sense of my imagined history begins unfolding as the concrete becomes blended with more mythical considerations. Surely, I know my great-grandfather and great-grandmother were married in Sandwich as their marriage certificate assures me of this fact. Moreover, their graves, so lovingly tended in Bayview Cemetery, confirm their connections to Sandwich. The greater details of their lives, however, become understood only in my imagination.

This imagined view of history, my own family history, becomes more operative and amplified as I walk down the genealogical line which brings me closer to Francis Cooke. In the distant mists I know a few facts but the details become less clear and my mind ventures toward the idealized and the imagined. A few concrete facts become identified and my mind crafts a partly conjured up narrative to accompany the facts.

For example, I know my great-great-grandmother, Ellen Gray, was born and died in West Barnstable, Massachusetts. I also know she moved to New Jersey with her husband in her twenties, she became ill, and she returned to Barnstable only to die young from what appears to have been cancer. I also know her father died shortly after his only daughter passed away.

From these meager facts, my imagination creates a story. I join Ellen, a cherished daughter of her father, Charles Thatcher Gray, as she returns home to West Barnstable after being stricken with a fatal illness. She is tenderly cared for by her father and mother in their family home in West Barnstable. I further imagine the difficult death and passing a woman with cancer would have endured in the late 19th century.

Lastly, the fact that Ellen’s father died only a few short months after his daughter’s death in 1883, makes me wonder if my third great-grandfather didn’t die of a broken heart after witnessing the sad death of his only daughter, Ellen, my second great-grandmother. In my mind’s eye, I sit at his bedside as he passes away.

The Civil War then captures my attention and I see my family involvement on the Union side of this brutal war. I see my 2nd great-uncle, William Wood, dying in Virginia of yellow fever leaving a wife and two small children. Further down in history, I see bits of the War of 1812 and a great-grandparent, Nathan Benjamin Johnson, the husband of Mary Johnson, battling his way through this engagement with the British.

Some time earlier in history, the facts show Major Isaac Johnson, my sixth great-grandfather and husband of my sixth great-grandmother, Mary Kingsley Willis, leading troops against the British in the Revolutionary War with the 3rd Company in the Massachusetts Militia. The military records confirm he was commissioned February 7th, 1776. Taking this fact, I envision my great-grandfather Isaac reading the recently published “Common Sense” to his chilly troops in March searching for motivation to continue this rebellion. I am there in my imagination.

The Revolutionary War leads me back further into the colonial period and the French and Indian Wars unfold on the horizon. I join my ancestors participating in these engagements in the northern woods of New England.

And then the tragic confrontation identified in history as King Phillip’s War unfolds which pitted the natives of Southern New England against the European colonists.

This sad chapter in New England history ended fifty years of positive relations between the Native peoples and the European colonists. I wonder how my very own ancestors engaged with the Native Americans and can only assume they were as aggressive towards their original neighbors as any European was at that time.

Of all the tragic events of early colonial life, this one captures my imagination the most. What would have happened if Governor Josiah Winslow, my first cousin ten times removed, and Metacomet, the Native American leader, could have come to a mutually beneficial agreement rather than declaring war upon each other’s people? Perhaps so many of the horrors that subsequently unfolded in this nation between Native and European could have been avoided if a different choice was pursued?

And finally, my imagination encounters Francis Cooke and I consider what it was like for my tenth great-grandfather to experience the New World for the first time. Again, the cold, and the hardship become experiences I feel in my bones. In addition, I share in his joy as he celebrates his ability to worship in freedom in the New World. I enter these moments briefly and then return to the present. I remind myself that what he was and what he did, in a small but real way, impacted who I am. Ideologically, spiritually, politically, and even genetically his life formed my life.

It’s true, most everyone views history from their own personal perspective. Some see American history through the lens of the native peoples, some see it through the lens of enslaved people, some see it through the lens of individuals in a war for independence. As I say, my perspective is a personal one influenced greatly by my own family’s involvement in America’s past. These recently discovered personal connections make history come alive for me. Vibrantly alive.

Finally, it seems to me, from these kernels of fact and imagination we can learn much from each other and craft a present and future founded on truth that leads to justice. We share a present, and with some luck, we shall share a future. Perhaps knowing where we come from and how we view the past can help us walk forward in a more harmonious way? How do you view history? More specifically, how do you look at American history? Is there a unique perspective that colors your understanding? Why is it important to you?