New Web Site

Finally got the genealogy site up and running. Next task is to upload the photos and stories and add more to the front page.

www.fiske-bigelow.com

That's pretty much the reason why I haven't blogged in what seems like forever. I have almost 13000 people in my family tree, 200+ photos and lots of stories.

William R Travers

William Riggin Travers (July, 1819 – March 19, 1887) was an American lawyer who made a fortune on Wall Street. Along with John Hunter, in 1863 he founded Saratoga Race Course and served as its first president. Saratoga's Travers Stakes is named in his honor and is the oldest major Thoroughbred horse race in the United States. In 1884, William Travers became one of the backers of the Sheepshead Bay Race Track on Coney Island.

Travers was a partner in Annieswood Stable with John Hunter and George Osgood. The operation had considerable success both in racing runners and with breeding at their Annieswood Stud farm in Westchester County, New York. Their horse Kentucky won the first running of the Travers Stakes in 1864. One of their most famous horses was Alarm, considered one of the best sprint race horses in American Thoroughbred horse racing history.

Travers was a long-time president of the New York Athletic Club. On January 13, 1887 the club purchased Hogg Island in Long Island Sound and Pelham, New York shoreline from the estate of John Hunter and renamed it Travers Island in his honor.

A well-known cosmopolite and high liver, Travers was a member of 27 private clubs, according to Cleveland Amory in his book Who Killed Society?

William R. Travers married Maria Louisa, the fourth daughter of Reverdy Johnson. They had nine children. One of their five daughters, Matilda, married the painter Walter Gay and moved to Paris, France in 1876 where she remained until her death in 1943

Lineage: William R Travers 1819 was father to Louisa Travers aka Maria Louisa Travers 1848 who married James W Wadsworth 1877, James Wolcott Wadsworth 1846, James Samuel Wadsworth 1807, James Wadsworth 1768, John Noyes Wadsworth 1732, James Wadsworth 1677, John Wadsworth 1630, William Wadsworth 1594, William Wadsworth. Hannah Wadsworth 1750 was the 3rd great granddaughter of WW 1550. She married John Bigelow 1739

Reverdy Johnson - Senator, US Attorney General

From 1845 to 1849, he represented Maryland in the United States Senate as a Whig, and from March 1849 until July 1850 he was Attorney General of the United States under President Zachary Taylor. He resigned that position when Millard Fillmore took office.
A conservative Democrat, he supported Stephen A. Douglas in the presidential election of 1856. He represented the slave-owning defendant in the infamous 1857 case Dred Scott v. Sandford. Personally opposed to slavery and was a key figure in the effort to keep Maryland from seceding from the Union during the American Civil War.

He served as a Maryland delegate to the Peace Convention of 1861 and from 1861 to 1862 served in the Maryland House of Delegates. During this time he represented Maj. Gen. Fitz John Porter at his court-martial, arguing that Porter's distinguished record of service ought to put him beyond question. The officers on the court-martial, all handpicked by Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, voted to convict Porter of cowardice and disobedience.

After the capture of New Orleans, he was commissioned by President Abraham Lincoln to revise the decisions of the military commandant, General Benjamin F. Butler, in regard to foreign governments, and reversed all those decisions to the entire satisfaction of the administration. After the war, representing the riven points of view held by his fellow statesmen, Johnson argued for a gentler Reconstruction effort than that advocated by the Radical Republicans.

In 1863 he again took a seat in the United States Senate, serving through 1868. In 1865, he defended Mary Surratt before a military tribunal. Surratt was convicted and executed for plotting and aiding Lincoln's assassination. In 1866, he was a delegate to the National Union Convention which attempted to build support for President Johnson. Senator Johnson's report on the proceedings of the convention was entered into the record of President Johnson's impeachment trial. In 1868 he was appointed minister to the United Kingdom and soon after his arrival in England negotiated the Johnson-Clarendon Treaty for the settlement of disputes arising out of the Civil War; this, however, the Senate refused to ratify, and he returned home on the accession of General Ulysses S. Grant to the presidency. Again resuming his legal practice, he was engaged by the government in the prosecution of cases against the Ku Klux Klan as well as work compiling the reports of the decisions of the Maryland Court of Appeals.

In 1876, he fell from a balcony at the Governor's Mansion in Annapolis and was killed instantly. He is buried in Greenmount Cemetery at Baltimore. Prior to his death, Johnson had been the last surviving member of the Taylor Cabinet.

Lineage Reverdy Johnson 1796 was the father of Louise Johnson 1827 who married William Riggin Travers 1819. William R Travers 1819 was father to Louisa Travers aka Maria Louisa Travers 1848 who married James W Wadsworth 1877, James Wolcott Wadsworth 1846, James Samuel Wadsworth 1807, James Wadsworth 1768, John Noyes Wadsworth 1732, James Wadsworth 1677, John Wadsworth 1630, William Wadsworth 1594, William Wadsworth. Hannah Wadsworth 1750 was the 3rd great granddaughter of William Wadsworth 1550. She married John Bigelow 1739

James Wolcott Wadsworth Jr

James Wolcott Wadsworth Jr. (August 12, 1877 - June 21, 1952) was a U.S. Republican politician, grandson of General Wadsworth. A member of Skull and Bones, he graduated from Yale in 1898, and immediately entered the live-stock and farming business in which his father was interested both in New York and Texas.[1]He became active early in Republican politics, being elected to the New York State Assembly in 1905 (when 28 years old) and serving continuously until 1910. He was speaker of the Assembly from 1906 to 1910. He served in the U.S. Senate from 1915 until 1927, and as a United States Congressman from 1933 until 1951.

Wadsworth was a firm proponent of individual rights and feared what he considered the threat of federal intervention into the private lives of Americans. He believed that the only purpose of the Constitution was to and limit the powers of government and to protect the rights of citizens. For this reason, he voted against the Eighteenth Amendment when it was before the Senate. Before it went into effect, Wadsworth predicted that prohibition would result in widespread violations and contempt for law and the Constitution.

By the mid-1920s, Wadsworth was one of a handful of congressmen who spoke out forcefully and frequently against Prohibition. He was especially concerned that citizens could be prosecuted by both state and federal officials for a single violation of prohibition law. This seemed to him to constitute double jeopardy, inconsistent with the spirit if not the letter of the Constitution.

Lineage: James Wolcott Wadsworth Jr. 1877, James Wolcott Wadsworth 1846, James Samuel Wadsworth 1807, James Wadsworth 1768, John Noyes Wadsworth 1732, James Wadsworth 1677, John Wadsworth 1630, William Wadsworth 1594, William Wadsworth 1550. William Wadsworth 1550 was the 3x great grandfather to Hannah Wadsworth 1750 who married John Bigelow 1739.

James Samuel Wadsworth

Wadsworth was born in Geneseo, New York, to wealthy parents. His father was the owner of one of the largest portfolios of cultivated land in the state and young Wadsworth was groomed to fulfill the responsibilities he would inherit. He attended both Harvard University and Yale University, studied law, and was admitted to the bar, but had no intention of practicing. He spent the majority of his life managing his family's estate. Out of a sense of noblesse oblige, he became a philanthropist and entered politics, first as a Democrat, but then as one of the organizers of the Free Soil Party, which joined the Republican Party in 1856. In 1861, he was a member of the Washington peace conference, an unofficial gathering of Northern and Southern moderates attempted to avert war. But after war became inevitable, he considered it his duty to volunteer.

Despite his complete lack of military experience, at the outbreak of the Civil War Wadsworth was commissioned a major general of the New York state militia. He served as a civilian volunteer aide-de-camp to Maj. Gen. Irvin McDowell at the First Battle of Bull Run in July 1861. McDowell recommended him for command and, on August 9, 1861, James Wadsworth was commissioned a brigadier general of volunteers; in October, he received command of a brigade in McDowell's division of the Army of the Potomac.

From March to September 1862, Wadsworth commanded the Military District of Washington. During the preparations for Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan's Peninsula Campaign, Wadsworth complained to President Abraham Lincoln that he had insufficient troops to defend the capital due to McClellan's plan to take a large number of them with him to the Virginia Peninsula. Lincoln countermanded McClellan's plan and restored a full corps to the Washington defenses, generating ill feelings between McClellan and Wadsworth. Seeing no prospects for serving in McClellan's army, Wadsworth allowed his name to be put into nomination for governor of New York against antiwar Democrat Horatio Seymour, but he declined to leave active duty to campaign and lost the election.

After McClellan left the Army of the Potomac, and after the serious Union defeat at the Battle of Fredericksburg, Wadsworth was appointed commander of the 1st Division, I Corps, replacing Maj. Gen. George G. Meade, who had been promoted to command the V Corps. He was a dashing division commander, trim and vigorous at 56 years old, snow white hair with large white mutton chop sideburns, brandishing an officer's saber from the American Revolutionary War. He was widely admired in his new division because he spent considerable effort looking after the welfare of his men, making sure that their rations and housing were adequate. They were also impressed that he was so devoted to the Union cause that he had given up a comfortable life to serve in the Army without drawing pay.

Wadsworth's division's first test in combat under his command was at the Battle of Chancellorsville in May 1863. He made a faltering start in maneuvering his men across the Rappahannock River below Fredericksburg and they ended up being only lightly engaged during the battle. His performance at the Battle of Gettysburg was much more substantial. Arriving in the vanguard of John F. Reynolds's I Corps on July 1, 1863, Wadsworth's division bore much of the brunt of the overwhelming Confederate attack that morning and afternoon. They were able to hold out against attacks from both the west and north, giving the Army of the Potomac time to bring up sufficient forces to hold the high ground south of town and eventually win the battle. But by the time the division retreated back through town to Cemetery Hill that evening, it had suffered over 50% casualties. Despite these losses, on the second day of battle, Wadsworth sent two regiments to reinforce the defense of Culp's Hill.

I Corps had been so significantly damaged at Gettysburg that, when the Army of the Potomac was reorganized in March 1864, its surviving regiments were dispersed to other corps. After an eight-month leave of absence, Wadsworth was named commander of the 4th Division, V Corps. This speaks well for his performance at Gettysburg because a number of his contemporaries were left without assignments when the army reorganized. At the start of Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's Overland Campaign, Wadsworth led his division at the Battle of the Wilderness. He was mortally wounded in the head on May 6, 1864, and captured by Confederate forces.

Wadsworth died two days later in a Confederate field hospital. He is buried in the Temple Hill Cemetery in Geneseo, New York. The day before he was wounded, he was promoted to major general of volunteers, but this appointment was withdrawn and he received instead a posthumous brevet promotion to major general as of May 6, 1864, for his service at Gettysburg and the Wilderness.

Lineage James Samuel Wadsworth 1807, James Wadsworth 1768, John Noyes Wadsworth 1732, James Wadsworth 1677, John Wadsworth 1630, William Wadsworth 1594, William Wadsworth. Hannah Wadsworth 1750 was the 3rd great granddaughter of WW 1550. She married John Bigelow 1739.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807 – March 24, 1882) was an American poet whose works include "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and "Evangeline". He was also the first American to translate Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy and was one of the five members of the group known as the Fireside Poets.

Longfellow was born in Portland, Maine and studied at Bowdoin College. After spending time in Europe he became a professor at Bowdoin and, later, at Harvard College. His first major poetry collections were Voices of the Night (1839) and Ballads and Other Poems (1842). Longfellow retired from teaching in 1854 to focus on his writing, though he lived the remainder of his life in Cambridge, Massachusetts in a former headquarters of George Washington.

Longfellow predominantly wrote lyric poetry, known for its musicality, which often presented stories of mythology and legend. He became the most popular American poet of his day and also had success overseas. He has been criticized, however, for imitating European styles and writing specifically for the masses.

Lineage Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, son of Zilpah Wadsworth 1778, Brig. General Peleg Wadsworth 1748, Peleg Wadsworth 1715, John Wadsworth 1672, John Wadsworth 1638, William Wadsworth 1555. Hannah Wadsworth 1750 married John Bigelow 1739. Hannah Wadsworth was the daughter of Samuel 1716, Jonathan 1687, Joseph 1650, William 1594, William 1555.

Frederick Law Olmstead

Watertown is the smallest city to have a park designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, the celebrated landscape architect who created Central Park in New York City.

Frederick Law Olmsted (April 25, 1822 – August 28, 1903) was an American landscape designer and father of American landscape architecture, famous for designing many well-known urban parks, including Central Park and Prospect Park in New York City. Other project include the country's oldest coordinated system of public parks and parkways in Buffalo, New York, the country's oldest state park, the Niagara Reservation in Niagara Falls, New York, Mount Royal Park in Montreal, the Emerald Necklace in Boston, Massachusetts, Cherokee Park (and the entire parks and parkway system) in Louisville, Kentucky, as well as Jackson Park, Washington Park, Midway Plaisance in Chicago for the World's Columbian Exposition, Detroit's 982 acre Belle Isle park, the landscape surrounding the United States Capitol building, Piedmont Park in Atlanta, George Washington Vanderbilt II's Biltmore Estate in North Carolina, and Montebello Park in St. Catharines, Ontario




Lineage: Frederick Law Olmsted 1822, John Olmsted 1791, Benjamin Olmsted 1750, Johnathon Olmsted 1706, Capt. Aaron Olmsted brother of JO 1706 married Mary Langrell Bigelow.

Harlan Fiske Stone - Chief Justice of The US Supreme Court

Harlan Fiske Stone b. 1872 in New Hampshire. Supreme Court Chief Justice. Harlan Fiske Stone was born in New Hampshire on October 11, 1872. He grew up on a farm, and his dislike of farm work led him to attend college. After being expelled from Massachusetts Agricultural College, Stone enrolled at Amherst, where he excelled socially, athletically and academically. After graduating from Amherst in 1894, Stone attended Columbia Law School, graduating in 1898. One sign of his intellect was that Columbia almost immediately hired him as a professor after graduation. Like many other professors of law at that time, Stone both taught and practiced law. In 1910, Stone was named Dean of the Columbia Law School, and served in that capacity until 1923. That latter year, Stone became head of litigation at the white shoe (that is, fancy) New York law firm of Sullivan and Cromwell. The next year, Stone, a progressive Republican, was named Attorney General by Calvin Coolidge, who had become President after the death of Warren G. Harding. The next year Coolidge nominated Stone to the Supreme Court.

Stone quickly became one of the dissenters on the Court, often joining Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis D. Brandeis. During FDR's first presidential term (March 1933-January 1937), Stone usually voted to sustain New Deal legislation (some decisions of the Court unanimously held particular New Deal legislation unconstitutional), and when the Court was split, Stone was often in the minority. When the Court "switched" in 1937, Stone found himself in the majority. In 1938, Stone wrote the Court's opinion in US v. Carolene Products, which concerned the constitutionality of governmental regulation of economic matters. The Court readily upheld congressional action, but in footnote 4, joined by a plurality, Stone suggested a two-tiered standard of review of legislation. Economic legislation was to be reviewed deferentially by the Court. Legislation that affected discrete and insular minorities, or which impaired the democratic process itself, would be subject to a greater scrutiny by the Court. This rational basis/strict scrutiny dichotomy is commonplace in today's individual rights cases, and traces back to Stone's footnote 4. However, in Hirabayashi v. US (1943), the Court, in an opinion by Stone, affirmed the constitutionality of civil liberties restrictions on Japanese and Japanese-Americans in the US during World War II.

Between mid-1937 and early 1941, seven new members of the Court were named by FDR. The only remaining holdovers from the pre-1937 Court were Stone and Owen Roberts. In order to present an olive branch to the Republican Party, FDR decided to promote Stone from Associate Justice to Chief Justice after the retirement of Charles Evans Hughes in 1941, even though Stone was nearly 69 years old. Stone remained Chief Justice until his death on April 22, 1946, which is the shortest term as Chief Justice in over 200 years.

As a Chief Justice, Stone found himself with a fractious Court. Although most of its members had been appointed by FDR, they often found themselves at odds with one another. Felix Frankfurter and Robert Jackson detested Hugo Black, and William O. Douglas detested Frankfurter and found common cause with Black. Frank Murphy's abilities were derided by Frankfurter, and Black and Douglas had little respect for Owen Roberts. Stone did a poor job of managing these strong personalities.

Lineage Harlan Fiske Stone 1872, son of Frederick Lawson Stone 1836, Hannah Fisk 1810 was the mother of FLS 1836.

Ezekiel Albert Straw

Ezekiel Albert Straw (December 30, 1819–October 23, 1882), was an engineer, businessman, and politician from Manchester, New Hampshire. He was born in Salisbury, but moved with his family to Lowell, Massachusetts, where his father, James B. Straw, was employed at the Appleton Manufacturing Company. Ezekiel A. Straw, eldest of 7 children, attended schools in Lowell before enrolling at Phillips Andover Academy in Andover, where he showed an aptitude for mathematics.

Upon leaving Phillips Andover, Straw was hired in the spring of 1838 as an assistant civil engineer at the Nashua & Lowell Railway, then under construction. On July 4, 1838, he arrived in Manchester, New Hampshire, sent to substitute for a civil engineer at the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company who had become ill. The position soon became permanent. One of his first duties was laying out lots and streets for the new industrial city as envisioned by Amoskeag's cultured treasurer (president), William Amory. He also assisted with the construction of the dam and canal. In 1842, he founded the community's First Unitarian Society. Straw was sent by the mills to England and Scotland in November of 1844 to gather information and machinery for manufacturing and printing muslin delaines, which the Manchester Print Works introduced to the United States. In July of 1851, he was appointed agent (manager) of Amoskeag.

Straw was a Republican state representative from 1859 to 1864 and a state senator from 1864 to 1866. In his second year in the state senate, he served as its president. In 1869, he was appointed to the staff of Governor Onslow Stearns. From 1872-1874, he served two terms as Republican governor of New Hampshire. Straw was treasurer and principal owner of the Namaske Mill from its organization at Manchester in 1856 until it was purchased by Amoskeag in 1875, and director of the Langdon Mills after Amoskeag acquired it in 1874. He was a principal figure in creation of the Manchester waterworks, gas light company and public library. In addition, he served as president of the Blodget Edge Tool Manufacturing Company, New England Cotton Manufacturers' Association and New Hampshire Fire Insurance Company.

On April 6, 1842, he married Charlotte Smith Webster, who bore him 4 children before dying on March 15, 1852. Their son, Herman F. Straw, would become agent of the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company from 1885 until 1919. Ezekiel A. Straw was awarded an honorary Master of Arts degree from Dartmouth College in 1860. He died in 1882 at Manchester and is buried in Valley Cemetery.

Lineage Ezekial Albert Straw 1819 was the son of Mehitable Fisk 1800

George Leonard Andrews - Civil War General

George Leonard Andrews b. 1828 in Massachusetts. George Leonard Andrews (1828-99) was an American soldier, serving as a general in the Union Army during the American Civil War.

In 1851 graduated at West Point at the head of his class. For two years (1854-56) he was assistant professor of engineering at West Point. He then resigned from the service and was engaged in engineering work until the beginning of the Civil War, when he entered the Union Army as a lieutenant colonel.

He served in the Shenandoah Valley in 1861, took part in Pope's campaign in 1862, was raised to the rank of brigadier general in November, 1862, and bore a prominent part in General Bank's expedition to New Orleans. He was commander of the Corps d' Afrique from 1863 to 1865, and for "faithful and meritorious services in the campaign against Mobile" was brevetted major-general of volunteers in March 1865.

He was United States marshal in Massachusetts from 1867 to 1871, and was professor of French at West Point from 1871 to 1882, and of modern languages from 1882 until his retirement in 1892.

George Leonard Andrews married Sarah Bridge Fiske.

Harvey Fisk - Wall St. Financier

Harvey Fisk b. 1831 in Vermont. FISK & HATCH, BANKERS AND DEALERS IN GOVERNMENT SECURITIES, 1862-1885

Three achievements entitle the firm of Fisk & Hatch to have their name inscribed in the financial history of the United States. They were among the largest distributors of government bonds during the dark days of the Civil War and for the entire period of their business were known throughout the land for large dealings in government bonds. Secondly, they financed the construction of the western end of the first transcontinental railroad and marketed the United States subsidy bonds for the entire line. Thirdly, they financed the construction of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad from tidewater to Louisville, Kentucky. They temporarily suspended operations in 1873 but soon resumed business. The partnership was dissolved in 1885

Pliny Fiske - Banker

Pliny Fiske was born in 1860 in New Jersey. The oldster was Pliny Fisk and his fun began in 1881 when he graduated from Princeton to the investment banking house of his father, Harvey Fisk, who had made a fortune helping the Union finance the Civil War. Four years later Pliny Fisk became the firm's trader on the floor of the Exchange, was there christened by his bearded fellow-members the"apple-cheeked boy of Wall Street." But Broker Fisk soon cut a man-size figure. In a few minutes one afternoon he sold $2,000,000 worth of securities to Hetty Green—after the doorman had tried to eject her because of her shabby clothes. By the turn of the century he was head of Harvey Fisk & Sons, which was known in Wall Street as one of "The Big Four" (with Morgans, First National and National City Banks).

In 1901 Pliny Fisk had pegged the Government bond market at 110. One day, he happened to be standing behind the late Edward H. Harriman on the floor of the Exchange when Harriman, who had gone heavily short, attempted to break the market by a sudden offer to sell $500,000 worth at 90. Fisk promptly accepted, offered to take all others at 110.

When Harriman admitted he couldn't deliver, Fisk let him off for $50,000 but blandly extracted a promise that Harriman would try to compose his battle with J. P. Morgan Sr. over the Northern Pacific R.R., which was then depressing the market. Harriman was soon closeted with Morgan, and Pliny Fisk thereupon put every available dollar into the market. When peace was announced next morning, he had an overnight profit of $800,000.

Resource Material

Since I dove into the deep end of the genealogical pool last year I have found and some very helpful resources.

Wickam Skeith parish records which holds the birth, death and marriage records for the parish which is located in Suffolk County, England. Time period for these records is 1700-late 1800's

Genealogies of the Families and Decendants of the Early Settlers of Watertown Massachusetts by Bond. This is a very nice resource as it covers many families in detail from the first settlers of Massachusetts to mid 1800's. This is one of my resources for my Fiske and Bigelow lines. Since there are a handful of Warrens already in my lines I will most likely be adding them as well once I get caught up.

The Laupersville Family from The Dallenbachs in America. This covers Montgomery/Herkimer County in New York from 1710-1935. The primary name of course is Dallenbach, Dillenback or other various spellings but in close knit communities there is alot of intermarrying between families. That was true in the early Massachusetts colonies and it is true here as well.

Genweb One county may not take genealogy with the same amount of effort as the next county. In Jefferson County NY where I am from for instance has an abundance of information such as cemetary records for the majority if not all the cemetaries. There is information on pioneering settlers of the various townships. All in all it is a terrific site for information. Compartively, if you visit the genweb site of the county to the north you get mainly links to off site pages. Perhaps there is just not the same interest.

I have also found some very helpful information which has helped in solving one or two family questions in various newspapers mostly of which were obituaries. One of these is the Northern New York Library System which has copies of many local newspapers in seven counties in Northern NY. There are a few that date back to 1850's.

Another resource for newspaper archives is Old Fulton Post Cards which has a larger selection of newspapers

For the Fisk(e) surname there is the Fiske Family Papers and for the Bigelow surname there is the Bigelow Society so if you are doing any research on either of these two families at all these two resources are priceless.

Wall Street Financier

James Fisk, Jr. (April 1, 1834 – January 6, 1872), known variously as "Big Jim," "Diamond Jim," and "Jubilee Jim," was an American stock broker and corporate executive. Fisk was born in Bennington, Vermont. After a brief period in school, he ran away in 1850 and joined Van Amberg's Mammoth Circus & Menagerie. Later, he became a hotel waiter, and finally adopted the business of his father, a peddler. He adopted what he learned in the circus to his peddling and grew his father's business. He then became a salesman for Jordan Marsh, a Boston dry goods firm. A failure as a salesman, he was sent to Washington D.C. in 1861 to sell textiles to the government. By his shrewd dealing in army contracts during the Civil War, and, by some accounts, cotton smuggling across enemy lines (in which he enlisted the help of his father), he accumulated considerable wealth, which he soon lost in speculation.

In 1864 he became a stock broker in New York and was employed by Daniel Drew as a buyer. He aided Drew in his war against Cornelius Vanderbilt for control of the Erie Railroad, which resulted in Fisk and Jay Gould becoming members of the Erie directorate. Subsequently, a well-planned raid netted Fisk and Gould control of the railroad. The association with Gould continued until his death. They carried financial buccaneering to extremes, their program including an open alliance with Boss Tweed, the wholesale bribery of legislatures, and the buying of judges (all standard business tactics of the day.) Their attempt to corner the gold market culminated in the fateful Black Friday of September 24, 1869.

Fisk married Lucy Moore in 1854; he was 19, she 15. Lucy was an orphan, reared by an uncle, from Springfield, MA. She tolerated Fisk's many extramarital affairs and lived with a woman friend, suggesting the possibility that she was a lesbian.[1] Regardless, they remained close, with Fisk visiting her in Boston every few weeks and spending summers and vacations with her.

Josie Mansfield

In New York, Fisk had a relationship with Josie Mansfield, a show-girl and by many accounts a prostitute. Fisk housed Josie in an apartment a few doors down from the Erie Railroad headquarters on West 23rd Street and had a covered passage built linking the backdoors of the headquarters and her apartment building. Fisk's relationship with Mansfield scandalized New York society. Mansfield eventually fell in love with Fisk's business associate Edward S. Stokes, a man noted for his good looks. Stokes left his wife and family for Mansfield and Mansfield left Fisk. In a bid for money, Mansfield and Stokes tried to extort money from Fisk by threatening the publication of letters written by Fisk to Mansfield that allegedly proved Fisk's legal wrongdoings. A legal and public relations battle followed, but Fisk refused to pay Mansfield anything. Increasingly frustrated and flirting with bankruptcy, Stokes shot and killed Fisk in New York City on January 6, 1872. He is buried in the Prospect Hill Cemetery in Brattleboro Vermont.

Fisk was vilified by high society for his amoral and eccentric ways, by many pundits of the day for his business dealings, but was loved and mourned by the workingmen of New York and the Erie Railroad. During the Stokes trial, his quick assistance to the victims of the Great Chicago Fire was remembered in a song, "Jim Fisk (He Never Went Back on the Poor)."

(Actor Edward Arnold portrayed Fisk in the 1937 movie The Toast of New York, which starred Arnold and Cary Grant. The movie was a fictionalized account of the lives of Fisk and Stokes.)

New Hampshire Governor

Ezekiel Albert Straw b. 1819 in Massachusetts. Governor of New Hampshire. Straw served as a Republican legislator from Manchester (1859/64) and was a State Senator (1864/6; President of the Senate (1865/6). He served on the staff of Governor Onslow Stearns (1869) and in 1870 was appointed to the to the executive board of the Planning Commission for the 1876 Centennial Exposition to be held at Philadelphia. He was nominated for governor and won the election (1872); he was reelected in 1873

Lineage: Ezekial Albert Straw 1819 was the son of Mehitable Fisk 1800

Francis Skinner Fiske

Francis Skinner Fiske b. 1825 in New Hampshire. Civil War Union Brevet Brigadier General. He graduated from Harvard Law in 1846 and was in legal practice at the outbreak of the Civil War. He went to Europe 1849 and passing on to Asia, was imprisoned by the Arabs in 1850. he came home in the summer of 1850 after sailing around the globe. On April 30, 1861, he enlisted and was appointed Lieutenant Colonel in command of the 2nd Regiment New Hampshire Volunteer Infantry. For merit and leadership of his regiment at the Battle of Bull Run on August 29, 1862, he was brevetted Brigadier General of U.S. Volunteers on March 13, 1865. After the war he resumed his law practice and wrote articles for The New England Magazine until his death.

Connection To Noted 1800's Author

Helen Maria Fiske b. 1830 in Massachusetts. Helen Hunt Jackson was born Helen Maria Fiske during the first term of President Andrew Jackson, a former Indian fighter and advocate of removing Indians living in the eastern United States to the West.

She was a prolific writer, her initial literary efforts were devoted to children's stories, travel sketches, poems, novels, and essays under the pseudonyms "H.H." and "Saxe Holm." Her anonymous work included Verses (1870) and a novel Mercy Philbrick's Choice (1876), in which Emily Dickinson was part-model for the heroine. In time, Jackson would produce over 30 books and hundreds of articles. She most likely would have become better known without the pseudonyms, but popular convention of the time dictated that female writers conceal their true identity. However, once she began to author books about Native Americans or Indians (as they were generally known), she proudly used her full name.

Jackson became perhaps the most prolific woman writer of her era in the country. In 1874, the noted Transcendentalist philosopher, essayist, orator, and poet, Ralph Waldo Emerson, regarded her as "the greatest woman poet" and rated her poetry as superior to the work of almost all her American male contemporaries. This was, indeed, high praise from a very respected source and reflected her position as a national cultural leader. Jackson continued her struggle to redress Indian grievances and also returned to her earlier career as a writer of poetry, essays, and novels.


In 1884, based upon her earlier experience with the California Indians, she hurriedly wrote the popular, commercially successful novel, Ramona. The work, which has been reprinted frequently and adapted to screen and stage, was the highlight of her literary career. In 1886, the North American Review called the book "unquestionably the best novel yet produced by an American woman," ranking it with Uncle Tom's Cabin by her friend Harriet Beecher Stowe as one of the two foremost ethical novels of the century.

Notwithstanding such positive reaction, Jackson was disappointed by the public's failure to appreciate the work for its attempt to do for the Indians what Stowe had achieved for the slaves. According to the late California historian Walton Bean: This novel was often called the Uncle Tom's Cabin of California, but its most enduring effect was to create a collection of regional myths that stimulated the tourist trade. These legends became so ingrained in the culture of Southern California that they were often mistaken for realities. In later years many who visited "Ramona's birthplace" in San Diego or the annual "Ramona Pageant" at Hemet (eighty miles north of San Diego) were surprised and disappointed if they chanced to learn that Ramona was a (fictional) novel rather than a biography.

She is a member of one of my direct lines so I have not listed her lineage. To see her lineage please reference my rootsweb site.

Connection To John Hancock

John Hancock b.1737 in Massachusetts. Originally a merchant from Boston. Graduate of Harvard College in 1754. Signed Declaration of Independence. While merchants in England routinely paid duties on imports, the colonies not only evaded duties, but smuggled cheap sugar and molasses from the French West Indies, an enemy country, undermining their countrymen in the British West Indies. Hancock smuggled an estimated 1.5 million gallons of molasses a year on which he should have paid £37,500 per year, but which corrupt customs officers only collected £2,000 per year.

At first only a financier of the growing rebellion, John Hancock later became a public critic of British rule. On March 5, 1774, the fourth anniversary of the Boston Massacre, he gave a speech strongly condemning the British. In the same year, he was unanimously elected president of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, and presided over its Committee of Safety. Under Hancock, Massachusetts was able to raise bands of "minutemen"—soldiers who pledged to be ready for battle on short notice—and his boycott of tea imported by the British East India Company eventually led to the Boston Tea Party.

In April 1775 as the British intent became apparent, Hancock and Samuel Adams slipped away from Boston to elude capture, staying in the Hancock-Clarke House in Lexington, Massachusetts (which can still be seen to this day). There Paul Revere supposedly roused them about midnight before the British troops arrived at dawn for the Battle of Lexington and Concord, but Prescott was the one who actually informed Hancock and Adams. At this time, General Thomas Gage ordered Hancock and Adams arrested for treason. Following the battle a proclamation was issued granting a general pardon to all who would demonstrate loyalty to the crown—with the exceptions of Hancock and Adams.

On May 24, 1775, he was elected the third President of the Second Continental Congress, succeeding Peyton Randolph. From October 27, 1775 to July 1, 1776, his title was "President of the United Colonies". From July 2, 1776 to October 29, 1777, the title was "President of the Continental Congress of the United States of America".

He would serve through some of the darkest days of the Revolutionary War including Washington's defeats in New York and New Jersey as well as Great Britain's occupation of Philadelphia until resigning his office in York, Pennsylvania on October 30, 1777. He was succeeded by Henry Laurens.

In the first month of his presidency, on June 19, 1775, Hancock commissioned George Washington commander-in-chief of the Continental Army. A year later, Hancock sent Washington a copy of the July 4, 1776 congressional resolution calling for independence as well as a copy of the Declaration of Independence.

Hancock's signature on the United States Declaration of Independence

John Trumbull's famous painting is sometimes incorrectly identified as a depiction of the signing of the Declaration. What the painting actually depicts is the five-man drafting committee presenting their work to the Congress. Trumbull's painting can also be found on the back of the U.S. $2 bill.[10]

Hancock was the only one to sign the Declaration of Independence on the fourth; the other 55 delegates signed on August 2nd (see also "Lee Resolution" that declared independence on July 2nd). He also requested Washington have the Declaration read to the Continental Army. According to popular legend, he signed his name largely and clearly to be sure King George III could read it without his spectacles, causing his name to become, in the United States, an eponym for "signature".[11][12] However, other examples suggest that Hancock always wrote his signature this way. In January 1776, he was appointed commander in chief and major general of the Massachusetts militia. In July 1778, he led 6,000 of his militia in an failed attack on the British at Newport, Rhode Island.


Lineage: John Hancock 1737, John Hancock 1702, John Hancock 1671, Lucy Hancock 1713 dau of John Hancock 1671, Lucy Bowes 1736 dau of Lucy Hancock 1713, Lucy Clarke 1767 daughter of Lucy Bowes, Lucy Clarke married Reverend Thaddeus Fiske 1762

Post #1

I started work on my family tree back in 1999 after I had taken a week long trip to England where I visted London, Cambridge, Ely, and York. I started out with roughly 100 names and then I lost interest.

Here I am today. I got back into the family tree this past August with the same 100 I left off with and now have close to 9,000 names. I have uncovered some very interesting family along the way and I guess that is the purpose of this blog to share what I have found and hopefully share the information with others who are on the same journey.

I have started a file with the the famous and more noteworthy family members along with their lineage to one of my main family lines. It is called Barker Family Tree as that is my surname but I can only find my family back to England in mid 1700's. So needless to say there are a number of lines that have more names than Barker.