An Adventure in Genealogy in Three Chapters

Prologue

Paul Rhetts (born in 1946) is my late father's cousin.  My grandfather Walter T. Fisher (1892-1991) was the eldest son of Walter L. Fisher of Chicago, Illinois.  His youngest sibling of the seven children was Ruth Fisher (1910-1990), born when my grandfather was already away at Harvard.

Ruth married a man named Charles Rhetts (1910-1971); they had three children, the middle of whom was Paul Rhetts, my first cousin once removed:

Paul is a published author on genealogy, and what I would call an extreme genealogist.  He has a family tree of our family on Ancestry.com and which he also manages with an application on his home computer.

Paul kept in touch with my uncle, Frank Fisher (1926-2020), and sent him various genealogical artifacts over the years.  About ten years ago Frank set about the process of decluttering and sent to me all the genealogical materials that Paul had sent to him.  Among them were a few significant items.

Tangled Branches

Paul created two volumes, both titled Tangled Branches, one each for his maternal grandparents and my great-grandparents, the Walter L. Fisher mentioned above and his wife Mabel Taylor (1867-1953).  Each contains the family tree of the individual.

The one for Mabel takes her family tree back 18 generations.  The one for Walter takes his family tree back an incredible 30 generations.  And I am given to understand that in each case the depth of the included tree was limited by the capacity of the bookbinding machinery that Paul had access to (Paul is a book publisher specializing in New Mexico topics).

The Poster

Paul created a wall poster 51.5 in. by 30 in. of the family trees of this same couple, going back to their 7 times great grandparents, in other words, nine generations back from them, 12 from me.  Walter's mother's line only goes back 7 generations, after which it became untraceable (see the light green entries in the image below), but the trees of the other three parents (blue, pink, yellow) go back the full 9 generations, which takes them all the way back to pre-colonial European ancestors.  The ancestors of Mabel's mother, Abigail Snow(1825-1878) (yellow) have been particularly well documented.

I have had this poster in a mailing tube ever since I received it, bringing it out occasionally to inspect it or to show it off.  I really should figure out how to frame it for safe display.

Chapter 1

I had brought the poster out to show to our grandchildren Liam and Sonia when they visited us over the Fourth of July weekend in 2020.  In examining the poster myself, I noticed that there was a Dummer in colonial times among the entries.  I realized that I knew about my Dummer ancestors to some extent, but they were the ancestors of my grandmother, Katharine Dummer (1892-1961)!  All the ancestors on this poster are the ancestors of my grandfather!

This is not particularly surprising.  Among the large families and relatively small populations of the northern American colonies, with the constant migrations west, families lost track of their ancestries over relatively few generations, and there were many, many "tangled branches," as Paul put it, over the many succeeding generations. Nevertheless, I was excited to stumble across this heretofore unrecognized (by me, at least) common ancestry of my grandfather and grandmother.  I set about documenting it by adding all the connecting links into my own family tree on Ancestry.com.

Here is where we come to understand the difference between a fairly typical amateur armchair genealogist like me and an extreme genealogist like Paul.  I think it was about 7 years ago, when I retired for the first time in 2013, that I acquired an Ancestry.com account like Paul's and began my own "Fisher and Applegate Family Tree."  I have spent time with it off and on, especially in the 2 1/2 years that I was retired before returning to work at the HIV registry at the New York State Department of Health.  In all that time my tree had grown to include about 1,825 people, and with the people I added as part of this episode it now stands at 1,850 people.

Paul's tree, which is called RHETTS-FAMILY-TREE-2017, now stands at 126,652 entries.

He undoubtedly knows the oldest entries, but I have never asked him about them or looked them up on his tree.  Something to do in retirement.

Anyway, once I noticed this Dummer connection, I started entering the missing entries from the poster into my tree on Ancestry.com.  Eight year old Sonia helped me by reading the information off of the poster while I typed:

Chapter 2

As we entered data about our ancestors in the Snow family, Sonia noticed the repeated use of the name "Isaac" over the generations.

"Maybe they were named after Isaac Allerton," she said.

"Who is Isaac Allerton?" I asked.

"He was on the Mayflower.  I played Remember Allerton, his daughter who came over with him, in the 2nd grade play that our class researched, wrote and performed before school closed."

"Huh!" I said, "Could be!  Although I think Isaac was a pretty common name in those days."

As Sonia looked some more at the poster while I typed, she suddenly exclaimed, "Hey, there's Constance Hopkins!  She came over on the Mayflower too!  My friend played her!"

Sure enough, there in our family tree was Constance Hopkins and her father Stephen Hopkins, both Mayflower travelers:

To make things easier, Paul had followed every name he could with the ship the person came over on, and the year of the voyage.

We did the math and found that, according to this poster, Constance Hopkins was Sonia's 10 times great grandmother.  Sonia was very excited to tell her teacher and friends.  Hopefully she will be able to, as I understand Ms. Malone is continuing reading sessions online with her second grade students into the summer.  Yay, Ms. Malone!

Before the kids went back, I got onto the page of The Mayflower Society, and entered our lineage preparatory to applying for membership.  What a hoot!

Chapter 3

I shared all this with Paul after the kids and Virginia returned to Somerville.  He enjoyed the story, but he had some not-so-exciting news:

"Charles, at the time I did the big poster I believed that John Snow 1781 was the son of John Snow 1762 and Thankful Purrington. However, I have always had a problem with that in that I could never find any proof/docs that John 1781 was their son. That is why on my Ancestry tree and on my computer/Family Tree Maker I do not show the names of John 1781’s parents. I just don’t know. On my official tree John 1781 ends with him as a brick wall.  If we could find any proof of John1781 as son of John 1762 I’d gladly drop the brick wall and make the connection that I showed on the big poster."

Oh, well!  We bow to science and facts in this family, or to the lack of documented facts in this case.  I haven't told Sonia, I may just let it ride for now.  Also, the Mayflower Society may have some information that they feel will confirm that link; we'll find out in a few weeks.