Posted on

King Philip’s War

Wheeler’s Surprise and the Siege of Brookfield, August 2–4, 1675

King Philip’s War was an armed conflict between the Native Americans of New England and the English colonists that lasted from 1675 to 1678, named after the Wampanoag chief Metacomet, who was known to the English as “King Philip.” It continued in northern New England – primarily Maine – even after Metacomet was killed in 1676, until a treaty was signed at Casco Bay in April of 1678.

Proportionately, it was one of the most devastating wars in the history of North America. More than half of New England’s 90 towns were assaulted by native warriors. For a time in the spring of 1676, it appeared that the entire English population of Massachusetts and Rhode Island might be driven back to a handful of fortified seacoast cities. 1,200 homes were burned, 8,000 cattle lost, and vast stores of foodstuffs destroyed. One in ten soldiers on both sides was injured or killed.[...] read more

Posted on

Stott ancestors, Bronx division

Tippett’s Creek in Spuyten Duyvil, the Bronx. From The Art Journal: Volume 7; Volume 13, 1861, James S. Virtue, London & New York

In this installment we meet some of Grandma’s more colorful English ancestors, some of whom who ended up in the Bronx, then considered part of Westchester. In the 1640s, Westchester was a border zone between two colonies with very different cultures and politics: New Netherlands and New England. The region even had two opposite names. The Dutch called it “Oostdorp” or “East Village,” because it was their easternmost settlement in the area. To the English trickling in from Connecticut and Long Island, it represented a western outpost, and they called it “Westchester.”[...] read more

Posted on

Alice Wilson’s Ahnentafel

The first Ahnentafel, published by Michaël Eytzinger in Thesaurus principum hac aetate in Europa viventium, Cologne, 1590

An Anhentafel (German for “ancestor table”)  is a scheme for numbering ancestors in strict sequence so that one can easily calculate relationships. The base person is number 1. Each father is assigned a number exactly double that of his child. Mothers are assigned a number equal to that of their husbands, plus 1.

So to navigate through the list: pick any person, note the assigned number, and you can find his or her father by doubling that number. The mother, if known, will be one digit higher and right next door. Likewise, to find anyone’s child, halve their assigned number and ignore any remainder. (Numbers missing from the sequence mean that we haven’t found that ancestor.)[...] read more