Move Over, Jerry Springer!

[Guilford Green, burial site of John Parmelee Jr.]

Do you remember those weird guests Jerry Spinger used to have on his show? The ones that married their own cousins and were having an affair with their in-laws? The ones that made everyone ask, "Where does he find those people?!" Well, he could have taped one of his shows in Guilford, Connecticut around 1660, and some of my ancestors would have been on it!

When my daughter and I took our genealogy road-trip this past June, we never dreamed we would stumble onto our own episode of The Jerry Springer Show. We had gathered all the information we could find in Woodbury, Connecticut, and were now working our way backward in time, following the parents and grandparents of our ancestors who had left other Connecticut colonies to found the town of Woodbury. One of these was Hannah Parmelee, my 6th great-grandmother, who had married Samuel Jenner II in Woodbury.

Most online genealogical records list Newtown, Connecticut as her place of birth. So Michaela and I had driven from Woodbury down to Newtown. At the Town Hall, we found that Hannah's father, Stephen Parmelee, is listed in Book 1 of the Newtown land records as one of its earliest settlers and landowners. But he did not arrive in Newtown until 1710, and Hannah was born in 1706. Clearly, she had been born elsewhere. Hannah's mother, Elizabeth Baldwin, had been born in Milford and her father was born in Guilford. Milford was closer to Newtown, so that was our next stop. I had to obtain credentials as a card-carrying genealogist in order to gain access to the town records in Milford -- only to return the next day and learn that Hannah had not been born there, either. So, next it was off to Guilford. And there we hit paydirt!

The people at the Guilford Town Hall directed us to the Edith B. Nettleton Historical Room at the Guilford Free Library, where the extraordinarily helpful staff went out of their way to assist us. We reviewed local and family histories, plat maps of the original township, cemetery records, and more -- including some information we never expected and weren't sure we really wanted to know.

Hannah was indeed born in Guilford in 1706. Her father, Stephen, had also been born there in 1669 -- the first of our Parmelee line born on American soil. The town began in 1639 as a plantation from the New Haven Colony. A plantation was essentially a spin-off of an existing colony. It established a separate charter and became a colony in its own right in the mid-1640s. Among its earliest settlers were John Parmelee Jr. (1612-1688), who arrived in Charlestown, Massachusetts in 1635 and was among the signers of the original Guilford Plantation Covenant on 1st June 1639. John would later marry Hannah Plaine and become the father of Stephen Parmelee, so John and Hannah are my 8th great-grandparents. This is where it starts getting weird.

When Michaela and I arrived in Guilford, we knew we had a mystery to solve about Hannah Plaine. There were several conflicting dates given for her birth and death in online genealogical records. Some showed her birth as 1594; others as 1621. Some had her dying in 1658; others in 1687. So various combinations had her lifespan as being 1594-1658, 1621-1658, and 1621-1687. Only the latter dates seemed plausible, since Stephen was born in 1669. So we had already concluded that there must have been two Hannah Plaines and that records showing John Parmelee's marriage to the older Hannah Plaine were erroneous.

Well, we were wrong!

Yes, there were two Hannah Plaines. And John Parmelee married them both! You see, William Plaine (1590-1649) was also one of the signors of the original Guilford Plantation Covenant. But it is likely that he came to America with his wife, Hannah (1594-1658) and his daughter, Hannah (1621-1687) to escape his past, because he had committed sodomy in England. Perhaps he could have gotten a fresh start in the New World and escaped prosecution for his crime, but he just couldn't keep his hands off young boys. So in 1649 he was tried and convicted of both the sodomy he had committed in England and the "corruption of youth" he had pursued in Guilford. He was hanged for his crimes on 1st June 1649 -- the first and only Guilford citizen ever executed for a crime. Yeah, weird!

John Parmelee's first wife, Rebecca, died in September 1651, when their son was but six years old, so John married the widow, Hannah Plaine later that same year. Hannah died in March 1658. Now here's where it gets really weird -- or "icky", as my daughter calls it. John married his step-daughter, Hannah Plaine, in February 1659. The two had nine children, including my 7th great-grandfather, Stephen.

So my 9th great-grandmother, Hannah (whose maiden name was probably Plum), was also my 8th step-great-grandmother. And my 8th great-grandmother was the step-daughter of my 8th great-greatfather. Can you hear me singing "I'm my own grampa" right now???

Move over, Jerry Springer! My ancestors are just as weird as your guests!

My Umpty-Great Grandparents

Despite my exalted status as a genuine, card-carrying genealogist, there are still many issues I wrestle with that are probably old-hat to more experienced members of the profession. One of these issues is what to call my "umpty-great" grandparents.

This dilemma arose fairly early in my ancestral research. On both my parents' sides of the family, I already knew my ancestors back to my own great-grandparents, so I knew their names and what to call them. As I worked my way backward on the Pellman side, I could get no further than my great-great-grandfather, William Henry Pellman, so again no problem. Thanks to the excellent genealogical work of my late cousin, Al Hadad, I had also compiled the list of Schimmels, Meiers, and Trums back to my great-great-grandparents in each line. The issue arose when I started tracing the Jenner side of the family and got beyond Moses Johnson Jenner, my great-great-great-grandfather. Saying or typing three "greats" wasn't all that problematic, but when trying to describe my Revolutionary War patriot ancestor, Stephen Jenner, I started getting tongue-tied. Stephen was my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather -- that's five "greats" -- and I tended to lose track of where I was, both typing and saying it.

When my daughter and I were preparing for our visit to his burial site, I remember how silly I felt saying, "We're going to try to find the grave of my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather who fought in the American Revolution," as I counted on my fingers. And it got downright ridiculous when I said we were also going to Woodbury "to find the grave of my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, Samuel Jenner I." Typing it just now I accidentally put in one too many "greats" and had to go back and delete it! First I tried abbreviating it to "gr-gr-gr-gr-gr-gr-great-grandfather," but that just sounded even siller -- as if I'd suddenly developed a severe stammer. Then I tried "my seven-times-great grandfather," but someone actually asked me, "What makes him seven times as great as your other grandfather?" So, I finally settled on "umpty-great" because more people seemed to understand what I meant, and I don't think they really cared whether he had five, six, or seven "greats" in front of "grandfather". They really only needed to understand it was a direct ancestor several generations before me.

Things reached a surreal level of ridiculousness when I learned that I was descended from Charlemagne and tried to figure out a meaningful way to explain that there should be 38 "greats" in front of grandfather! A single exclamation point seems inadequate to describe how ludicrous that seemed to me, so I actually considered following my previous sentence with 38 exclamation points for appropriate emaphasis. One thing I knew for certain: I wasn't about to say or write "great" 38 times in front of grandfather. No way!

The Internet hasn't been a great deal of help in resolving this problem so far. On various genealogy websites -- and I have visited hundreds of them -- I have encountered numerous forms of short-hand notation for umpty-great grandparents, including (for Charlemagne):

• "38-times-great-grandfather"


• "38x-great-grandfather"


• "38-great-grandfather"


• "38-g grandfather"


• "38th generation great-grandfather"


• "38th great-grandfather"


• and the extremely succinct "38ggf"

None of these seems entirely satisfactory. Each has pros and cons. 38ggf, for example, is compact and suitable for a short-hand notation while doing research, but seems a disrespectfully brief description to give a man of Charlemagne's importance. 38th great-grandfather is okay, but seems grammatically confusing, as if Charlemagne #38 out of what should be no more than four great-grandfathers. 38th generation great-grandfather is probably the most descriptive of the alternatives, but again seems technically incorrect, since Charlemagne is actually in the 39th generation prior to me. 38-g grandfather only saves four letters, so I would prefer to just type 38-great-grandfather and leave no doubt what that g stands for (I wouldn't want anyone thinking he only weighed 38 grams!). 38x-great-grandfather sounds vaguely like poor Charlemagne might be my ex-38th-great-grandfather -- as if I would kick him out of the family! And, while 38-times-great-grandfather seems to me the most technically correct shorthand, it still leaves the possibility that some of my non-genealogy-buff friends and family would get the impression that Charlemagne had been my great-grandfather 38 times. Would they wonder if he was ever going to try for 39?

So I'm hoping that some sagacious member of the genealogical community can give me some suggestions on satisfactorily resolving this nomenclature issue. If you have any suggestions, please leave them as comments to this blog posting.

Famous Cousin - Alec Baldwin

Yes, Alec Baldwin -- the Alec Baldwin -- is my cousin. I don't think he realizes it, though, because he never calls or invites me over for dinner. Of course, Daniel Baldwin, William Baldwin, and Stephen Baldwin are also my cousins. 11th cousins once removed, to be specific. I know, that's not exactly a close family tie. But it was, in its own way, one of the early landmark discoveries in my genealogical journey.

Alec was the first famous person to whom I found out I'm related. Sure, I understand that we're all part of the greater human family and we're all descendents of Adam and Eve, so anyone reading this is a cousin of one sort or another. But Alec was the first celebrity whose relationship I could actually trace genealogically. We are 11th cousins once removed because the most recent common ancestors we share were Richard Baldwin I (1503 - 1552) and Ellen Pooke (1507 - 1565). Richard and Ellen were my 12th great-grandparents and the Baldwin brothers' 11th great-grandparents, hence the "once removed" in our relationship. I guess that qualifies as a little more than six degrees of separation, but I still found it be be an intriguing discovery.

As I wrote in one of my earliest postings, I had long been told that I was descended from Dr. Edward Jenner, the discoverer of smallpox vaccine. As a child, the idea of being descended from someone really famous seemed especially cool to me. Well before I discovered the Baldwin connection, I had disproven the link to Dr. Edward Jenner. Dr. Jenner lived from 1749 to 1823 in Gloucestershire, England. I had discovered conclusive evidence that our branch of the Jenner family had arrived in America before 1700, so we couldn't possibly be his descendents, and at first that had been a bit of a letdown.

So perhaps it was a form of recompense that it is through the Jenner line that we have a common ancestor with the famous Baldwin brothers. Here's the line: me >> John A. Pellman >> Vivian Grace (Jenner) Pellman >> Almond Lewis Jenner >> Moses German Jenner >> Moses Johnson Jenner >> Timothy Jenner >> Stephen Jenner >> Hannah (Parmelee) Jenner >> Elizabeth (Baldwin) Parmelee >> Nathaniel Baldwin II >> Nathaniel Baldwin I >> Richard Baldwin III >> Richard Baldwin II >> Richard Baldwin I. 14 generations spanning a period of 350 years!

The discovery affected me in several ways. First, it personalized the fact that each of us is related -- and more closely than we might imagine -- to the people around us. For all I know, my next-door neighbor might be a cousin, too! Secondly, it aroused my curiosity about other surnames in my family tree and the possibility of relationships to other famous people -- Phelps (Michael?), Harding (Warren?), Burr (Raymond? Aaron?), etc. And finally, having traced one branch of our family tree back to 1503, I began to appreciate the fact that my ancestors had not merely witnessed history; they had helped shape history!

As I discovered a few months later, the Baldwin brothers were only the beginning. And, as famous as they are today, I would soon learn that I was descended from people of even greater fame and importance in the pageant of human history!

Creating Harmony

The town of Harmony is located in Chautauqua County in the southwestern corner of New York state (see red dot on the map at left). It is a tranquil rural community of about 2,000 people with a growing reputation for producing some of the finest maple syrup in the country. The earliest settlers began arriving in 1809, and the town was incorporated in 1816, at which time it was on the western frontier of the newly created United States of America.

I first learned of the town during a Google search for information on my 4x-great-grandfather, Timothy Jenner, son of Revolutionary War veteran, Stephen Jenner. By this time in our research, my daughter and I had decided that she would join the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) when she turned 18 and I would join the Sons of the American Revolution (SAR) now. By doing so, all my daughter would have to prove for her DAR application is her descendency from me, so by gathering all the documentation for my SAR application now, we would be killing two birds with one stone. As a result, the Jenner portion of our genealogical quest had shifted from merely knowing who our ancestors were to proving who they were -- a significantly more difficult task. We were looking for original documents, like birth certificates, marriage licenses, death certificates, or official town records that listed the parents of each of our Jenner ancestors. It only took a couple of days to learn that such records are sparse prior to 1900 and all but non-existent prior to 1850.

By this time, we had backtracked from my grandmother, Vivian Grace Jenner (born 1887 in Pleasonton, KS), to her father, Almond Lewis Jenner (born 1863 in Anderson, IN), to his father, Moses German Jenner (born 1833, location unknown). We had copies of their birth certificates or US Census records establishing their relationships, but we had not yet located any record acceptable to the SAR or DAR of the relationship of Moses G. Jenner to his father, Moses Johnson Jenner, or of Moses J. Jenner to his father, Timothy Jenner. So these were the focus of our research. And it was during this period of our research that we learned the history of American civil record-keeping.

Prior to the Revolutionary War, there was no federal or state government; only colonies and townships. Colonies were continually changing in size, name, and character during the period of colonial expansion from 1620 to 1750. For example, New Haven Colony in Connecticut started several "plantations" at nearby West Haven, East Haven, Guilford, etc. Initially, these plantations were subordinate to, and subject to the charters of, their sponsoring colonies. But, if they were successful and grew, they eventually separated into distinct colonies and were granted their own charters. With colonies being in flux, townships were the most stable level of governance, so the majority of civil record-keeping was handled by town clerks or, more often, by church clerks.

Churches were the center of social, civil, and economic life in the colonies. Most of the town charters that I have read include provisions that membership -- and regular attendance -- in the local church was mandatory for property ownership and citizenship in the town. This only makes sense. Colonial towns were often first settled by fewer than 50 people. Each new town was a dangerous excursion into the wilderness and its inhabitants were utterly dependent upon one another for their survival. It was absolutely essential that the settlers of each town be completely of like mind and harmonious in their relationships or the town would fail and its residents would die. All residents being members of the same church, sharing the same fundamental beliefs and values, was the best way of ensuring the harmony necessary for survival in a harsh and unforgiving environment. So, in addition to being houses of worship and centers of social life in the colonies, the churches also served as the centers of local government prior to the Revolutionary War -- and it was the job of the church clerks to record the births, marriages, deaths, and even deeds and other financial transactions of the towns.

Following the American Revolution and the establishment of state and federal governments, responsibility for civil record-keeping began to shift to agencies and offices of the government. Starting around 1790, when the first federal census was taken, church clerks turned their records over to town or county clerks, who became responsible for their maintenance thereafter. Until around 1850 the process was fairly haphazard, with no consistent methodology for maintaining and indexing previous information and no uniform method of recording new data. Some town clerks were much better than others at cataloging the information that was turned over to them, so many local records are woefully incomplete until late in the 19th century. Such was the case, it appears, with the birth records for Moses Johnson Jenner and Moses German Jenner.

Then, "once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, while I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly ..." from my tapping a Google search returned a hit on the History of Chautauqua County, New York, From Its First Settlement to the Present Time With Numerous Biographical and Family Sketches, by Andrew W. Young (1875). It was another Google Book, like the History of Ancient Woodbury, and it contained several paragraphs about Timothy Jenner and Moses Johnson Jenner!

Timothy Jenner and his wife, Ruth Hurlbut (Jenner), together with their son, Moses Johnson Jenner, were among the earliest settlers in Harmony, NY. They arrived in 1815, the year before the town was formally chartered, along with Samuel, Zaccheus, and Nathaniel Hurlbut. The Jenners and Hurlbuts had all come from Pittsford, Vermont (see black dot on the map at the top of this page). They bought lots in 1816 and 1817 and built homes on the south side of the town, not far from the settlement of Blockville. In 1817 Timothy, Ruth, and Moses were among the dozen founders of the Panama Baptist Church. Both Timothy and Moses went on to serve as the clerk of the church, keeping records of the births, marriages, and deaths of its members and the minutes of its earliest meetings. The Jenners and Hurlbuts were prominent throughout the early history of Harmony township, nearby Busti and Blockville, and other parts of Chautauqua County. Descendents of the original Jenner and Hurlbut families are still living in the area, and Michaela and I had the pleasure of meeting some of them when we visited the town (the subject of a future blog entry) in October 2008.

We are still searching for records to confirm that Moses German Jenner is the son of Moses Johnson Jenner. It appears that Moses J. left Chautauqua County in the mid-1820s, probably shortly after his first marriage (4 August 1825). He is not listed there on the 1830 US Census. In 1826, his parents were expelled from Panama Baptist Church for supporting women's suffrage. Perhaps Moses left in protest, so that his children's births were recorded in another township, if they were officially recorded at all. The earliest document we've found listing Moses G. Jenner is the 1860 US Census (his first as an adult) which places him in Indiana, but shows his birthplace as New York. There is some evidence that Moses Johnson Jenner was living with or near his daughter, Diantha, in Indiana at the time of his death in 1852. We know we are close to a breakthrough on our two Moses's. The records we are slowly collecting are being to "harmonize" with each other to form an increasingly clear and complete picture of the lives of these two generation of Jenner ancestors.

And my daughter and I have found that, as we discover more about the lives of our ancestors and begin to understand the sacrifices they made and the risks they took to create a new nation and lay the groundwork for freedom and prosperity for their descendents, the closer we grown in harmony with each other.

A Tale of Two Samuels

In my July 2, 2009 blog entitled "A Lamp Unto My Feet" I described how my grandmother's Jenner family Bible has led me to a number of wonderful genealogical discoveries in the past couple of years. It has also introduced me to several mysteries -- mysteries that have been both fascinating and frustrating to attempt to solve. The first of these great mysteries is the one I now call "A Tale of Two Samuels." It led us -- literally -- to the grave (pictured above) in Woodbury, Connecticut of Samuel Jenner, born circa 1650, died August 17, 1738.

In the family history section of my grandmother's Bible I found the following notation following the recorded birth information for my 5th-great-grandfather, Stephen Jenner: "Stephen was the son of Samuel and his father Samuel was born on the pasage [sic] to America." Reading this, we first believed that Samuel Jenner, father of Stephen Jenner, was our immigrant Jenner ancestor -- and he had actually been born while on the voyage to America! How cool was that?! But our excitement soon turned to befuddlement as we sought more information about Samuel Jenner.

A few hours of searching on Google and Ancestry.com soon provided a perplexing array of conflicting information:

1. Samuel Jenner had been born in 1669 in Charlestown, Massachusetts and died in 1738, or by some accounts in 1767, in Woodbury, Connecticut.


2. Samuel Jenner had been born in London, England around 1650 and died in Woodbury in 1738.


3. Samuel Jenner had been born in 1703 in Woodbury, Connecticut and died in 1767, or by some accounts in 1738.


4. Samuel Jenner had married Hannah Hinman in 1684 and had eight children -- with no Stephen among them.


5. Samuel Jenner had married Hannah Parmelee in 1728 and had 13 children -- with Stephen the last of them.

Over a period of weeks, my daughter and I sifted through a mindboggling collection of contradictory accounts. We found documentation of no less than five "Hannah Jenners" who might have been the wife of Samuel, with birthdates ranging from 1666 to 1732. We also uncovered five Samuel Jenners, but only three with plausible birthdates: 1650, 1669, and 1703. Those with birthdates 1739 or later simply couldn't have been the father of Stephen Jenner, who was born in 1749. Some of this information seemed highly authoritative, backed by the genealogical expertise of the Church of Latter-Day Saints no less, but most of it was based on no more than what we ourselves had: family folklore.

The process was immensely frustrating! I was frittering away night after night after night, often chasing a lead through the nightmarish labyrinth of the Internet for hours, only to reach another dead end -- and ultimately getting nowhere! Many nights I felt like Edgar Allan Poe, crying out in my despair, "Oh, the 'Net, 'Net, 'Net, what a torment has me beset!" instead of "Oh, the bells, bells, bells, what a tale their terror tells!" Several times I set the Samuel Jenner line of inquiry aside to concentrate on other branches of the family, only to come back to it a week or two later out of my compulsive resolve not to let it to get the better of me. It was maddening in the extreme, because it seemed so simple and straightforward on the surface, but was proving so difficult and convoluted in actuality.

But it was this very process that truly developed my understanding of genealogy. It revealed the patterns and traps into which so many erstwhile genealogists fall, as well as the reward that ultimately awaits those who remain steadfast and determined. And in the process it sealed my fate, dooming me to a fascination with genealogy.

Eventually, it dawned on me that this was a tale of two Samuel Jenners -- a father and son. I had been misreading the notation in my grandmother's Bible. What I had originally taken to mean, "Stephen was the son of Samuel and his [Stephen's] father Samuel was born on the pasage [sic] to America" turned out to mean, "Stephen was the son of Samuel and his [Samuel's; not Stephen's] father [also named] Samuel was born on the pasage [sic] to America." Once I grasped this distinction, the rest of the puzzle -- well, most of it, anyway -- fell into place.

Stephen Jenner was the son of Samuel Jenner II (1703 - 1767), who was the son of Samuel Jenner I (c. 1650 - 1738) , who was our immigrant Jenner ancestor. It would actually take several more months -- a topic for a separate entry that I will entitle "Who's Yo' Daddy?" -- to determine who the real parents of Samuel Jenner I were, and confirm that he and his mother (still another Hannah, for Pete's sake!) were the original immigrant Jenners in our family. But the mystery of the Samuels themselves was now solved, at last. In solving that mystery, I learned several valuable genealogical lessons:

1. Never assume that a specific name represents only one individual. Often, especially prior to 1800, several generations of ancestors will share a single name. In my case, there are at least four successive generations of John Baldwins and three of Geoffrey Dormers in the Jenner line alone! This false assumption led several sources to erroneously combine the lives of Samuel Jenners I and II into a single generation.


2. Never assume that an "authoritative source" has its facts straight. Not only did the LDS and many others have a considerable amount of erroneous information about Samuel Jenner in their records, but I later learned that even sources like Burke's Peerage contain occasional errors. Everything in genealogy has to be fact-checked -- even the experts!


3. Just because it's the "majority opinion" doesn't mean it's right! The majority of information about Samuel Jenner I in the genealogical record is actually wrong. Very wrong. I will post the details in "Who's Yo' Daddy?" This is a great lesson for life in general. The majority are followers; not leaders. So don't expect them to be right just because they are the majority.


4. Real genealogy isn't looking stuff up in record books and websites, then copying it by rote; it's genuine forensic science! It requires gathering evidence and and remaining skeptical while performing analysis, hypothesis testing, and both inductive and deductive reasoning. It resembles "CSI" or "Indiana Jones" much more than it resembles being a librarian or a county clerk -- and that's what got me hooked!

Blame It on Google!

On July 4th I wrote of my Revolutionary War hero ancestor, Stephen Jenner. It was the discovery that we had at least one ancestor who had fought in the American Revolution that truly sparked my interest in genealogy. Up to that point my interest had been more of a stubborn curiosity than a deeply rooted interest. I hate leaving loose ends, so I wanted to finish the project my daughter and I had started and discover who my immigrant ancestors had been and how and when they had come to America, even though the project itself had been submitted and graded months earlier.

In the earliest days of my research, my two main tools were Ancestry.com and Google. Each is a search engine with unique characteristics. Google searches a massive hodgepodge database consisting of every imaginable type of document or image, while the Ancestry.com database is limited to records directly related to genealogy. Both typically return hundreds or thousands of "hits" on a given name search, the majority of which are non-productive. So, one of the first lessons I learned in online genealogical research is how to narrow a search to produce fewer, but more relevant, search results. One of the simplest ways is to include the names of related family members with the target person's name to produce only the records of the target person or those with amazing coincidences. It was in performing such a search on Stephen Jenner that I made one of my most meaningful discoveries to date.

I had searched on Stephen Jenner plus his wife, Mary (Kirkham) Jenner, and eldest son, Timothy Jenner. This narrowed the search results only to those documents that contained all three of these names and thereby eliminated many Stephen Jenners to whom I am not related. One of the URLs listed within the first couple of pages on Google was link to a Google Book entitled, History of the Town of Pittsford, Vt., With Biographical Sketches and Family Records, by A. M. Caverly, MD. This book, written in 1872 by Dr. Caverly, who was then the town historian of Pittsford, had been out of print for over 100 years and was obscure even in its heyday. But, thanks to the miracle of Google Books -- a project to scan and archive millions of out-of-print books that began in 2005 -- it was now readily available and searchable online!

And in it I found the story of Stephen Jenner that I related in my post on July 4th.

The "Caverly," as I later learned genealogists refer to the book, is one of hundreds of similar local histories that were written by town historians all over the U.S. in the mid-19th century to memorialize the origins of their towns and the actions of the towns' founders. Each is a treasure-trove of vital information about the early settlers and prominent citizens of American towns and cities. The "Caverly" records that Stephen Jenner was one of the earliest settlers of Pittsford, Vermont. He arrived there with his new wife, Mary, in 1774, just five years after the town was first settled, with several other young families from Woodbury, Connecticut. The following year their first child, Timothy (my great-great-great-great-grandfather) was born there. After the war, he built one of the town's first sawmills, and by all accounts was a pillar of the budding community.

For the first time in my life history was something more than just a list of faceless names, places, and dates in a boring textbook. It was personal. It was family. The realization that my own ancestors had suffered and risked their lives to create our nation made history come alive for me in a way I had never appreciated before! And suddenly the issues in the 2008 election came into startlingly clear focus for me: politicians were making promises about whether to prop up or to tear down the principles and institutions that my ancestors had risked their lives to create and pass on to us.

This one discovery caused me to re-evaluate practically every political opinion I held. In addition, that single discovery ignited in me a desire to learn everything I could about the members of my own family who had risked and suffered -- and dared -- to create the country in which I live!

So, if you're tired of listening to me prattle on about my ancestors these days, don't blame me. Blame Google!

An American Hero

As I write this entry it is July 4th, 2009. I just finished celebrating the day with my daughter, elder son, daughter-in-law, and grandson. We had a lovely time, although little of our time together was spent in true reflection on the significance of this day. So it is fitting that this would be the day I post a tribute to a true American hero: my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, Stephen Jenner.

Step back in time with me to July 7, 1777. It has been just over a year since the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Although the colonies are at war with England, it is a special day in the Jenner household. It is Timothy Jenner's 2nd birthday, but from the sound of it you would think it was the 4th of July. Pops, cracks, and booms have echoed through the little town of Pittsford, Vermont all day. But it's no celebration -- not for the 4th of July or little Timothy's birthday. The fireworks-like sounds are the sounds of real musket and cannon fire reverberating from the town of Hubbardton, Vermont, about 20 miles east of Pittsford. Late in the day exhausted colonists fleeing from Hubbardton brought the news to Pittsford: British forces under the command of Gen. Simon Fraser caught up with retreating colonial forces following their defeat at Fort Ticonderoga at the outskirts of Hubbardton. In the ensuing battle, the entire town was razed, killing some 300 men, women, and children. And now the British were headed toward Pittsford!

Upon receiving the news the townspeople went quickly to work, loading whatever possessions they could manage onto any available conveyance -- mostly horses and a few carts and wagons -- then burying everything they could not carry so that it could not be used by the British. After hours of hard labor, late in the night, a weary 28-year-old husband and father, Stephen Jenner, helped his wife, Mary -- pregnant with their second son, Asa -- onto their only horse, placed a sleeping Timothy (my great-great-great-great-grandfather) in her arms, and led them as quietly as possible out of town under the cover of darkness. I can only imagine how they must have prayed that no British scouts were watching the roads out of Pittsford that night!

Through the night, Stephen led his young family away from the advancing British toward the nearest place he hoped they would find refuge: Mary's birthplace, Stevenstown, Massachusetts (now Salisbury, NH). It was at least a 100 mile journey on foot, and they stopped to rest as seldom as possible since danger could be lurking all around them. They made it safely to Stevenstown. Asa was born in December, 1777 and the family probably remained in Stevenstown until he was at least a year old before returning to Pittsford.

In March, 1780 the British forces were again threatening the area. On March 23rd, the alarm was given and every able-bodied citizen took up arms to defend the town. Stephen Jenner grabbed his musket, shot, and powder and reported for duty in the company commanded by his neighbor and friend, Capt. Benjamin Cooley, in Col. Ebenezer Allen's Vermont Militia. The company patroled the area for five days, then returned without having encountered British forces.

As far as we can determine, Private Stephen Jenner never fired a shot in the American Revolution, but he is still an American hero because of his personal hardship and sacrifice for the cause of American independence and his willingness to risk his life in the service of that cause. Last month, my daughter and I visited the town of Pittsford and found the grave of Stephen Jenner. His headstone (pictured above) bears this inscription: "He was born and bred in Woodbury, CT. At 23 years of his age he came to this town and established his home for life. At 25 years of age he was married to Mary Kirkham of Stevenstown, NY whom he left a widow, he also left 6 sons and 4 daughters. At 33 he became a Baptist in which faith he lived and ever supported the general character of an honest Man." I would be honored if my descendants would write the equivalent of me!

When my daughter located Stephen Jenner's grave, I was surprised to see that someone had recently placed an American flag at his headstone. As I stood looking at his grave, I teared up at the thought that 200 years after his death someone still cared enough to accord him this honor. We were almost certain there were no Jenner descendants in the area who would have done so. After several inquiries, we finally learned that the local American Legion post maintains a roster of all war veterans buried in Pittsford and that every Memorial Day a local Boy Scout troop places the flags at their graves in honor of their service. I am deeply grateful to both organizations for honoring all of these American heroes!

A Lamp Unto My Feet

Psalm 119 says, "Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path." This has certainly been the case with the Jenner Family Bible!

A few months after we completed my daughter's school genealogy project, my Uncle Bob came across my grandmother's old family Bible (from the Jenner side of the family) in the back of one of his closets. So, knowing my daughter and I were still working on our family's history, he packed it up with a lot of other old documents and photographs and mailed it to me. It provided our first significant breakthrough in our search for our immigrant ancestors. In the back of the Bible was a section in which births, marriages, and deaths were recorded for several generations of Jenners -- most of them in florid handwriting that was difficult to decipher. Dates of birth were listed for Almond Lewis Jenner (1863), his father, Moses German Jenner (1833), his grandfather, Moses Johnson Jenner (1799), his great-grandfather, Timothy Jenner (1775), and his great-great-grandfather, Stephen Jenner (1749). Following this list was the statement: "Stephen was the son of Samuel and his father Samuel was born on the pasage [sic] to America."

I immediately emailed my daughter with the news! We had learned that at least one branch of our family had immigrated to America before it was an independent nation! I can't honestly say that my daughter was as deeply affected as I was, but for me this was a life-changing revelation. It meant that one branch of our family dated back to colonial times and that, at least to some degree, had participated in the founding of our nation!

This inscription also identified -- at long last -- our immigrant Jenner ancestor: Samuel Jenner! However, it would be several more months before I truly understood which Samuel Jenner was being described in my grandmother's Bible. I was soon to learn that there were many Samuel Jenners in the colonial history of the United States, and how tedious it would be trying to sort through the vast storehouses of information and misinformation to identify the right one.

And little did I know then, how literally my grandmother's Bible would become a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path as I continued my ancestral search!

In the weeks and months to come, the listings in my grandmother's Bible would frequently light the path through the assorted Stephen and Samuel, and Timothy Jenners to determine which were my ancestors and which were members of other branches of the Jenner family. And eventually, when I began traveling in search of the burial sites and ancestral homes of my forebears, that Bible literally guided my footsteps to the right people and locations!