Unusual Namesakes

People often named their children after ancestors, but sometimes they named them for people they admired who were no relation at all.  Quite a few times I have assumed an ancestor must be descended from a person who bore their first and middle names, only to find that they were actually named for an unrelated “local hero” I was not yet familiar with.  Often this turns out to be a respected minister, as was the case with my possible relative Conant Sawyer Norton (1846-1930), named for Vermont-born Baptist minister Conant Sawyer (1807-1890).

Some of the original name-holders below were nationally or internationally renowned in their time but are largely forgotten today, while a few remain household names but are not universally admired.  Others were only well known within a particular geographical area, or within a religious or other subculture.

Many American boys have been named after Founding Fathers and Presidents, and if you find a post-Revolutionary Benjamin F. or George W. in your tree, the middle name often turns out to be what you would guess.  I won’t count these as unusual, but I will count one “deep cut” Founding Father and one President.

Here are some of the less common namesakes I have seen in my research:

Catherine Livingston:  Quite a few Hudson River Valley, New York girls were named after major area landowner Catherine Livingston, including my ancestor Catherine Livingston Hamlin (1807-1852).  I am not sure which Catherine Livingston is meant, however, as there were several Catherines who were born into or who married into the very prominent Livingston family.

Clara Novello (1818-1908):  London-born Clara Anastasia Novello became famous as a teen for her clear and beautiful soprano voice, which inspired Charles Lamb to write a poem in her honor.  Quite a few music-loving British people named their daughters for her, including the parents of my relative Clara Novello Peace (1854-1925).

Painting of Clara Novello by Edward Petre Novello.

DeWitt Clinton (1769-1828):  This remarkable man served as a U.S. senator, as mayor of New York City, and as Governor of New York, and was also an avid naturalist.  He believed strongly in improving the country’s infrastructure and was the main impetus behind the Erie Canal.  Popular in the Northeast, especially in New York State, I have found several boys named for him.

My ancestor Bernard Oblenis’s license to take in boarders, signed by Dewitt Clinton as mayor.

Elbridge Gerry (1744-1815):  Many people know of Gerry only because the nefarious practice of gerrymandering was named for him, but I am not sure how much responsibility he bears for it.  The Massachusetts legislature approved the famously questionable redistricting plan for Essex County during his second term as Governor, but it is said that he signed the legislation reluctantly.

As a Founding Father, he served in the Continental Congress, and signed the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation.  As a congressman he helped draft the Bill of Rights.  He served on a diplomatic delegation to France and died while Vice President under James Madison.  Quite a few boys were named for him, including my relative, Massachusetts silversmith Elbridge Gerry West (1804-1845).

The original gerrymander, redistricting Essex County, Massachusetts.

Elmer Ellsworth (1837-1861): Elmer Ephraim Ellsworth became famous in the U.S. as a military drillmaster in the later 1850s.  He was the first Union officer to die in the Civil War, so that his name became a rallying cry for the North.  I have found a quite a few boys named for him, including my relative Elmer Ellsworth Degoosh (1859-1926).

James Knox Polk (1795-1849):  Polk ran for President of the United States on a Manifest Destiny platform and was popular with Texans who favored annexation to the United States, including the parents of my husband’s relative, James Knox Polk Jameson (1845-1935).  (This couple named their next child Buena Vista after the 1847 Mexican-American War battle.)

John Wesley (1703-1791):  Many Methodist parents named sons for the founder of their denomination, including the parents of the notorious criminal John Wesley Hardin.  Wesley was an Oxford classmate and friend of my relative Benjamin Ingham and my husband’s relative, California pioneer John Wesley Young (1832-1914) was named for him.  (Young was a descendant of Francis Clark, considered to be the first Methodist preacher in Kentucky.)

Plaque in Stroud, Gloucestershire. Photo by Acabashi via Wikimedia Commons.

Lorenzo Dow (1777-1834):  An extremely popular preacher who traveled throughout the United States and its territories, as well as in England and Ireland.  Longhaired and often disheveled, his eloquent sermons attracted huge crowds and his autobiography was a bestseller.  If you find a man in your tree named Lorenzo D., especially on the American frontier, his middle name is probably Dow.

Marquis de La Fayette (1757-1834): Quite a few American boys were named after this French nobleman and Revolutionary War hero.  Some were called, say, Marquis de Lafayette Jones, but most often parents just used Lafayette or even Fayette, as with my relative Lafayette Norton (1871-1891).

Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821):  I have no Napoleons in my tree, but I know people who are descended from a Napoleon Bonaparte Smith (1842-1934) of Russell County, Virginia.  (This Napoleon named a son after Lorenzo Dow, which is how I first learned of him.)

Wade Hampton (c. 1752-1835):  My husband’s relative by marriage, Baptist minister Wade Hampton Davis (1831-1890) was named for this extremely wealthy planter and slaveholder from South Carolina, admired by some for his military and political careers.  He was an officer in both the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 and served two terms in Congress.  If you find a Wade H. in a family with roots in South Carolina, he may be named for this man, though his son and grandson of the same name were also prominent.

Walter Raleigh (1553-1618):  Though John Lennon’s song “I’m So Tired” called him “such a stupid git” for popularizing tobacco, some people admire this imperialist explorer, pirate and politician.  I have only one relative named for him:  Walter Raleigh Robertson (1889-1951) of Iowa and California.

What rare or rare-ish namesakes have you found in your research?

The Mysterious Continental: Francis Bell (c. 1798-1866) of Clinton County, New York

The earliest evidence I have that that my Dad’s brick wall immigrant ancestor Francis Bell was in the United States is an 1825 notice in the Plattsburgh (Clinton County, New York) Republican saying that he had two letters waiting for him at the Post Office.  The 1850 census lists him as a shoemaker, and the 1860 as a farmer.  He is said to have died in 1866 though I can find no evidence.

Notice found in the Plattsburgh Republican at nyshistoricnewspapers.org.

On 6 Oct 1840 Francis became a citizen of the United States.  Unfortunately early naturalization records give little or no information regarding the person’s origin.  The only record I have found for this event says that Francis was age 40 and lived in Peru, a town in Clinton County, N.Y.

Francis Bell’s naturalization in a list found on FamilySearch.org.

The 1850 census lists his birthplace as “Holland,” while the 1860 says “Saxony,” and his children’s records all give their father’s birthplace as “Germany.”  He may have been born in the Netherlands, perhaps within the province of Holland, or in the Electorate of Saxony, a German state nearer to Poland than to the Netherlands.

Another possibility is that he was from Lower Saxony (Niedersachsen in German), a German state bordering the Netherlands.  East Frisia (Ostfriesland) is a region within Lower Saxony adjacent to the Netherlands.  Napoleon made East Frisia part of the Kingdom of Holland in 1806, a puppet state he created for his brother.  A birth there might explain why Francis would say he was born in both Holland and Saxony.

There is little chance of finding a baptism for Francis not knowing exactly where he was born, besides which I am not even sure of what his name was at birth.  Is Bell his original surname or is this an anglicized spelling of a German name like Böhl or Böll, or a translation of the German Glocke (bell) or Glockner (bell-ringer), or just an assumed name?  His parents may have called him Franz rather than Francis.

I do know that Francis married Susan Pray about 1826, likely the daughter of Daniel Pray and his wife Zuba Wickham.  They had at least six children:

• Francis Bell, Jr. enlisted in Co. K of the 47th New York Volunteers in 1863, giving his occupation as shoemaker.  He died in Smithville, North Carolina soon after the close of the Civil War and is buried in Wilmington, North Carolina at the National Cemetery there.

The gravestone of Francis Bell, Jr. at Wilmington National Cemetery in North Carolina.

• Marcelia married John W. Weatherwax.  Weatherwax comes from the German surname Wiederwachs, and if this family had arrived in New York at about the same time as Francis, I would look for his birthplace somewhere in the same region.  However the Weatherwaxes arrived about 100 years earlier, with other Palatines.
• Charles Frederick married twice and had a total of four children.  My Dad has a third cousin DNA match with a second cousin once removed in this line.
• Henry moved to Washburn County, Wisconsin as a young man and had a large family there.  My Dad has a third cousin match to a person in this line.
• George W. Bell married Marceline Duell and had a large family.  My Dad has three fourth cousin matches to people in this line.
• Delia married Calvin Luther Norton and is my Dad’s second great grandmother.

I am hoping that my Dad will eventually have a reasonably close DNA match with a relative of Francis’ in Europe, and that this will make his origin more clear.

Evening on the Ausable River by Arthur Parton.

 

Calvin Luther Norton (1844-1888): My White Whale

Calvin Luther Norton sits at the end of the stubbiest branch of our family tree and is only my 2nd great grandfather.  He should appear as a child in the 1850 U.S. Census, ideally with his parents, but I have never been able to find him.  His Civil War pension file is one inch thick but not very helpful.  Every so often I find a tantalizing clue (or a red herring), so that I feel I am always circling him but never getting much closer.

Other descendants have recently taken the AncestryDNA test, and I think the problem might soon be solved that way, though I haven’t been able to get very far with it yet.  A genealogist once suggested that I research all Norton families in the area where Calvin was born, and I did so even though there were quite a few, but I could never place him in a family.  I should ask male descendants with the Norton surname if they would take a Y-DNA test to at least narrow down which Norton family, if any, is the right one.

According to the records of the Vermont Soldiers Home in Bennington where he died 21 Feb 1888, Calvin was born 23 Aug 1844 in Keeseville, N.Y.  Keeseville is a hamlet straddling the Ausable River, half in Clinton County and half in Essex, just a few miles from Lake Champlain and within the confines of today’s Adirondack National Park.  Civil War documents consistently describe him as a farmer, 5’8”, with dark hair, fair skin and hazel eyes.

A birth in Clinton County is confirmed by the 1855 New York State census, where Calvin appears as “Luther C. Norton”, 10 years old, living with the widowed Elizabeth (Cornell) Allen in Oswego, Oswego County, N. Y., over 200 miles to the southwest of Keeseville on Lake Ontario.  The space for “Relation to the head of the family” seems to say “Nev.”  I believe Calvin is somehow a nephew or grand-nephew of Elizabeth, who was the daughter of Revolutionary War soldier Caleb Cornell (1756-1803) and his wife Martha Anson (c. 1765-1848).

After Caleb’s death Martha married Aaron Norton (c. 1750-1813), another Revolutionary War veteran, and Calvin may be descended from this man by an earlier wife.  A Cornell A. Norton, whom I suspect is a son or grandson of this Aaron, seems likely to be related to Calvin in some way.

For years I could not find Calvin in the 1860 U.S. census, but I now believe he is the “Luther Parrot” aged 16 living in Schuyler Falls, Clinton County, N.Y. in the household of Delia E. Cornell and her first husband, Horton Parrot.  Delia was the daughter of Silas Anson Cornell, a brother of Elizabeth (Cornell) Allen above, so that she is likely a cousin to Calvin in some way.  Delia was a very popular name in this Cornell family, I believe because it was the nickname of their ancestor Deliverance Gifford (1727-1759).  Besides Caleb and Delia, other unusual names favored by Cornell descendants are Godfrey, Govett, Guilford, Junius, Lafayette, Loyal, Narcissa and Rheuby.  Many American boys were named for the Marquis de Lafayette after the Revolution, so this name may have no family significance other than an association with the Patriot cause.

Delia (Cornell) Parrot left Horton in August of 1862.  Like many deserted husbands, he announced this fact in the newspaper so as not to be liable for any debts she incurred.  Their son Henry Douglas (1862-1940) would have been 2 months old at the time of the marital break-up, and was probably soon given into the care of John H. and Rheuby (Cornell) Fallon, Rheuby being another child of Silas Anson Cornell.  Henry Douglas used the surname Fallon throughout his life, and is mentioned in John Fallon’s will as “my adopted son Henry.”

Calvin enlisted in the Vermont Volunteers at Burlington, where he seems to have been living, on 22 Feb 1862.  He was 17 though he claimed to be 18, probably so that no parent or guardian would have to sign.  When asked for the name of his closest relative while in an army hospital in 1864, he answered Nathan Maxfield.  I began researching this man, and discovered both that he enlisted in Burlington on the same day as Calvin, and that he had married Delia (Cornell) Parrott since enlisting.  He was seemingly only a relative in the sense that he was the wife of Calvin’s probable cousin.  This suggests that Calvin had few living relatives by the 1860s.

Calvin had served the bulk of his three year commitment when he was captured at the Battle of Cedar Creek, Va. 19 Oct 1864.  He was transported to Richmond where he remained a prisoner until 15 Feb 1865.  He was held at both Libby and Pemberton Prisons, with scant rations under overcrowded and often extremely cold conditions.  This is likely where he contracted the lung and heart problems that would plague him the rest of his short life.

Calvin married Delia Bell 25 Jun 1865, only two months after being discharged.  Delia was the daughter of farmer and shoemaker Francis Bell and his wife Susan Pray of Ausable, Clinton County, N. Y.  The ceremony was performed by Methodist minister Lucius D. Gay at his home in Clintonville, Clinton County, N.Y.  I am sure that Calvin and Delia knew each other before the war—her brother Francis Bell lived and worked on John and Rheuby (Cornell) Fallon’s farm as of the 1860 census, and the Fallons’ son Silas Henry, Calvin’s contemporary and possible cousin, signed an affidavit in Calvin’s pension file saying that Calvin also worked on the Fallon farm before the war and was then able-bodied.

Calvin and Delia’s firstborn arrived 13 Aug 1867 in Peru, Clinton County, N.Y.  All of my family papers give this son’s name as Calvin Cornell Norton, but both his Social Security application and his death certificate give his middle name as “Colonel” and I am not sure what to make of that.  He was a literate person and I assume he would have known what his middle name was and how to spell it, so could it possibly have been Colonel, and if so, why?  Or was Cornell pronounced like the word “colonel” by the family and never written down so that he assumed his middle name was Colonel?  He lived until 1950 and my father’s family would visit his farm in Essex, Chittenden County, Vt. fairly often.

The Norton family circa 1931.  Calvin Colonel Norton is the older gentleman with the dark coat seated left of center.  My grandfather Thurber is the dark haired gentleman standing on the right.

Calvin and Delia’s second child Lafayette A. Norton was born 24 Mar 1870 in probably Clinton County, N. Y.  I have never found a record that gives his middle name, and he may have had an additional first name–his father’s gravestone says “Erected by his sons C. C. and C. L. A. Norton.”  He was killed 13 Jan 1891 in a tragic quarry accident in Essex, Essex County, N.Y., when ice caused the brake to fail on the gravity railroad used to lower stone 900 feet down to Lake Champlain for shipping.  The loaded car raced down the slope, causing the empty car going up to fly into several men, killing Lafayette and three others instantly. He is buried in the Hinesburg Village Cemetery with a gravestone that includes the words “How we miss him.”

Lafayette Norton about 1890.

Their third and last child was my great grandmother Mary Ann Elizabeth “Libbie” Norton, born 1 Feb 1873 at Willsboro, Essex County, N. Y.  She would marry tinsmith James Milford Thurber in Hinesburg in 1890, and would name one of her daughters Rheuby Mae.

Mary Ann Elizabeth Norton about 1890, possibly on her wedding day.

Calvin was last enumerated in Hinesburg, Chittenden County, Vt. in 1880, where he was a farm laborer.  The spaces where the birthplaces of his parents should be listed are blank, and I think it is likely he was orphaned at a young age and did not know much about his parents. Lafayette and Mary Ann Elizabeth are at home, but Calvin Colonel is attending school and working in the home of a Taggart family eight miles away in Charlotte.  I cannot find any other connection to these Taggarts.

Calvin’s death notice from the Burlington Weekly Free Press 24 Feb 1888 found on Newspapers.com.

So this is the simple version of where my research stands–I have also spent a lot of time researching associated families. Besides working the DNA angle, I should also look for the records of the Hinesburg, Vt. Grand Army of the Republic Post to which Calvin belonged, also known as Post 37 or the Cummings Post.  I have been told that many of these groups produced short biographies of all their members, usually including their parents’ names.  I would also like to take a trip to the Keeseville area to visit repositories there.

Calvin’s gravestone at the Hinesburg Village Cemetery.