Building a good Public Ancestry.com family tree
How to create a good, basic, high quality Ancestry tree

Building a good Public Ancestry.com family tree <h4>How to create a good, basic, high quality Ancestry tree</h3>

The lack of quality of Public Ancestry.com family tree s is legendary, to the point many family historians consider them nearly useless. They tend to be so poorly sourced that we’ll bet you’ve checked out and found an ancestor’s name and a detailed birth and death date, but the only source is an Ancestry Member Tree, and when you click that tree, it’s another tree-only, and so on. The worst part of these poorly sourced trees is they often become considered “legitimate” sources because they are repeated so often!

So, we decided we’d be a part of the solution and walk through how we wish all Member Trees were sourced. We’re going to first talk about how sources, facts and citations all work together, how we choose to link them and then what it looks like on Ancestry.com.

Before we get started, please understand this one approach, and it’s our approach. We would never be calling out how someone else is approaching tree sourcing as “wrong”, and this approach isn’t necessarily “right”. It’s right for our research, and if every Member Tree we came across was sourced like this we’d be very happy.

Defining the elements of a good citation, fact, source and proof

Let’s start by defining what’s meant when we’re talking about facts, sources, citations, and the notion of proof.

Citations

Understanding citations, and beginning to enforce the standards you settle on, is one of the turning points as family historians evolve into serious hobbyists. We are HUGE fans of Elizabeth Shown Mills’ Evidence Explained (Link) but at it’s most simple a citation must be a breadcrumb that researchers after you can follow to confirm you work. A well written citation should allow anyone to copy the path to review information themselves.

Image of window message detailing a citation from Ancestry.com

Sources

Sources are straight-forward as well, for the purposes of this discussion. They are the pieces of information that indicate a fact about one your ancestors. Family bibles, Ancestry.com indexes, headstones, interviews with family members, etc. are all examples of sources that yield clues about your relatives.

Image of a Marriage fact attached to a Source in Ancestry.com

Facts

Facts and proof are a little trickier. They tend to both confuse, and be ignored, those newer to genealogy. At their most basic, facts are events that have been proven.

Facts at first seem obvious. If my birthdate is May 4th, that seems like a fact. But facts and proof are intertwined. How do you know my birth date is May 4th? Honestly, other than me telling you it’s my birthday, you don’t.

Even in this simple example, that it’s not your duty as the reader to prove my birthday, it’s my duty to prove that date because I’ve made statement that it’s a correct birthday. For me to do that I can attest I’ve celebrated that day my whole life, my Mom told me it was the day, and there are some family members who were there when I was brought home from the hospital. Additionally I have many Aunts and Uncles who remember my mother being pregnant during the time that corresponds with my birth, and I have photographs of her pregnant that were date stamped during that same time, as well as letters and photos (also stamped) after my birth. I also of course have my birth certificate, which was completed and certified near the time of my birth by the attending physician.

But facts get much fuzzier as we look backwards. For our African American ancestors who died in the late 1800’s, we might have only 2 Census ages to show when they were born. Going back further, we might be relying on various Family History collections that are quoting dates that are 8 levels removed from the original source documents, and those documents are long since lost to history. Of course no one is around to provide a statement that they were present at the time of birth, and rarely do we have historical accounts of our ancestors.

Proof

This leads us to consider how we “prove” “facts” for an ancestor who’s long since gone. In many ways there will never be definitive proof for many of the events in our ancestor’s lives. We’ll hear in court dramas that crimes need to be proven “beyond a reasonable doubt”, but for our hobby the Genealogical Proof Standard (GPS Defined) was designed to help guide us on this question. In the strictest definition of proof, the GPS describes 5 elements needed to argue that a fact is a fact. But we aren’t professional genealogists and the need to formally prove every fact isn’t required, however understanding the GPS will still helps guide us on how close we are to a proven fact, and when we have more work to do. For example, if we’ve just taken a few US Census entries and settled on an ancestor’s birthdate as “proven”, it’s likely we haven’t done a “reasonably exhaustive search”, and so we haven’t hit the first element of the formally proving a fact. That might be just fine for some facts, but just the beginning for others, and as hobbyists doing an Ancestry Member Tree that we aren’t required to be hyper-vigilant proving everything. However keeping the Genealogical Proof Standard in-mind should help you understand where on that spectrum you are.

What to do with Facts?

With the definitions out of the way, and with our basic knowledge of how to create Ancestry trees and ancestors in those trees, let’s get started by highlighting the best practices for sourcing our facts.

Each fact should have at least one source attached

The first key to a solid Ancestry tree is attaching a source for every fact attached to each ancestor. If there’s a fact asserted about an ancestor, but there’s no citation pointing to a source that lead us to attach the fact, no one can prove if it’s accurate or not and we increase the risk of passing bad information along. If we all followed this one rule then all Member Trees would have sourced and cited events and we’d all be able to get much further in our research.

Attach all sources to the preferred fact, or list a fact for each source?

How we decide to attach sources to facts plays a big role in our tree building, and there are two schools of thought on how to attach facts to sources online. The most common method is to attach all facts of the same type (say Birth) to the primary fact, even though Sources may not match that fact exactly. For example, our 3xGGF Wesley has facts that say his Birth was: 16 Dec 1837, Abt. 1836, Abt. 1837, Dec 1837, and Abt. 1838. Most people would be to set his primary date of birth as 16 Dec 1837, and attach all sources to that primary.

The other approach, and the one we use, is to attach each fact to each source as they are sourced. In this example we have chosen 16 Dec 1837 as Wesley’s Preferred birth date and we’ve attached the two sources that indicate that date: his obituary and his family bible. The 1850 US Census has Wesley’s birthday listed as “Abt. 1836”, and so we have an Alternate Fact for his Birth of “Abt. 1836”, with the 1850 Census attached as a source. The same for the 1860 Census and “Abt. 1837”. Repeating the process for each source until we have all known Birth dates (5 in Wesley’s case) listed, and each has the proper source attached.

Image of the records attached to the Death of Ephraim Tredawell

A lot of people avoid this approach because your ancestors will often end up with many events like dates of birth, where there can be only one, and because all the records can clutter an ancestor’s record. Alternatively, if all the records are tied to a single, preferred fact it becomes difficult researching which sources attached to a fact actually assert that fact.

As an example, as we did our research for this article we found our ancestor Ephraim Treadwell, and when we clicked through to review the sources attached to other’s Member Trees to confirm his place of death, we found each tree had a single Death date, with all sources of his death attached to that one date. A deeper dig showed this is how every of his Member Trees was sourced, and looking at his death fact, it indicates at first glance that every source supports that date of death and that his place of death is Fairfield, CT. However, none of the sources support his death location, and only some support his death day. To determine which sources support which facts, we had to review each source individually, and build a list on paper what each listed as a fact. It would have been MUCH easier if they had chosen to link each source to the fact as it was sourced, but by choosing to link all sources to the preferred death fact, we have to dig through each source to determine what those sources actually support.

In the end, we’re big advocates for showing what the sources support, with facts listed as they are asserted, as the best way to get a true picture of the facts that make up your ancestor’s record. Even when those facts aren’t precise or even correct.

Connect all facts, even when they don’t appear correct

We’ve found that only through the complete presentation of all records can you review and identify what facts are likely correct. Because of that, we prefer to present all our facts as they are sourced, and later interpret what’s likely accurate/inaccurate. If you’re editing out “mistakes” as you’re attaching sources, it’s very easy to make the facts fit your current understanding of your ancestor. It will also leave you blind later when you find a record that might support that “mistake” and you’re missing a new path to truth. This is within reason of course, and if you’re sure the ancestor died in 1767 but a records hint says there is a 1810 US Census entry for him, you can pass on that.

Sticking with our Tradewell family examples, Wesley’s father James Bennet Tradewell has records indicating a range of birth dates from 1790-1799. Originally we didn’t have a single solid record that indicated an accurate birth date, but most of what we had clustered around 1796-97. Seeing the range helped when we found a Family Bible entry for James that indicated 11 Aug 1796. Even though the bible entry was completed at some point after 1855 (meaning it was entered long after his birth and should be treated as suspect) we were comfortable accepting it because it fits the previously known range…which we can easily see in his “Timeline” view.

Image of the Birth records for James Bennet Tredawell

In the end neither choice is officially right or wrong, but we wanted to put this approach out there for your consideration. It can be counter-intuitive attaching facts that we are pretty sure are incorrect, but for us to better understand what’s correct we need to see the full picture so we can best interpret them to find the truth.

Building a good Ancestry.com family tree

The key to creating a good Public tree is this: make sure you have a source for every fact you attach to an ancestor, remembering that Members Trees are NOT sources. Let’s walk through how we can quickly get started with a new tree.

Start with what you know

We should start trees with what we know. If it’s a personal tree, adding parent’s information and what you’ve heard about grandparents is the perfect start. It’s ok at this point for there to be no sources attached to the facts, you’re just trying to get the outlines of your tree fleshed out with the data you know. Just because mom says grandma’s middle name was Marie, that’s fine to enter for now. If we’re building from a record that lists a new ancestor, it’s the same concept, in that we’ll use the information from the record as-is to start.

Let’s use our ancestor Hezekiah Treadwell (1707-1761) as an example for this process. This ancestor is in a “Working/Uncertified” tree of ours, meaning we haven’t proven the facts and there could be guesses in this tree. We first found Hezekiah as we were building out John Treadwell’s tree, with him listed as a child of John and Abigail (Minor) Treadwell in the Ancestry.com record “History and Genealogy of the Families of Old Fairfield, Vol. II Part II”. This is a good example of building a “skeleton” tree that we might build out quickly to get to a particular, known relative or when we’re building out new family connections as far as we can. They are skeleton because we won’t attach every source and do deep research right away, but we’ll go back later to flesh out these ancestors.

Image of Hezekiah Treadwll's Ancestry record

Review your “shaky leaf” hints one-by-one, with an eye towards accuracy

These hints are often only 10% of the records held by Ancestry, but if we’re just getting started on a tree it’s the perfect place to attach the most likely facts for an ancestor. But, just because something is listed as a “fact” on Ancestry, it doesn’t mean it’s either a fact or accurate. Take a few moments to understand the source, give it a quick “smell test” and decide what/how you’re going to use the source.

For example, there is a hint for Hezekiah that references “Connecticut, U.S., Church Record Abstracts, 1630-1920″ and it lists his father as “Jno Treadwell” and his residence on 9 Nov 1707 as Bridgeport, Connecticut. The record passes the first smell test: we think Hezekiah’s father was John, the location is about what we’d expect, and the date listed is within both of their lifetimes. However, when we clicked first on the hint, and then image of the original, we saw the record was actually for Hezekiah’s baptism. The church these records are taken from was in Bridgeport, but we can’t assume they were living in that town, and besides the baptism information is valuable and we would have missed it if we hadn’t reviewed the record completely. Don’t just assume what Ancestry is showing is correct.

Image of Connecticut, US, Church Record Abstracts for Hezekiah Treadwell

Image of baptism record for Hezekiah Treadwell

The same goes for Find a Grave. Hezekiah’s hints list a Find a Grave entry, which was exciting, but when we reviewed it there is nothing that attaches to an actual grave. It literally shows the Burial as “Burial Details Unknown”, and the Memorial is just a paragraph from the history book we’ve already cited. There’s no unique information in this “record”, and so we ignored it.

Image of the Find a Grave entry for Hezekiah Treadwell.

Filter out records that don’t provide value

Continuing with Hezekiah, the final two hints we’re provided reference the “Geneanet Community Trees Index” and the “American Genealogical-Biographical Index”. As a rule we try and avoid Index records where possible because they are derivatives of some other work, just one more generation removed from the original. In this case we have a couple of additional issues with these sources, First, there is no way to go back to the source for these indexes because they don’t specifically cite their sources. Second, the Geneanet Index is just a summary of the old public user trees from that old site and we’re trying to get away from unsourced public trees! Finally, the facts they list are also duplicated by other sources we’ve already attached so there’s no value to attaching these indexes.

Image showing two Ancestry.com record hints

Attaching Public Member Trees

Wait, weren’t we avoiding these trees?? Yes, but while we can’t depend on them for any facts we do want to link with other users who have our same ancestors in their trees, in case they do later attach a record of value and we want Ancestry to notify us.

When we review these Public trees, the first scan should be for any facts they have listed that we don’t and we can see that by the blue checks next to a fact. For Hezekiah, we see differences in his Birth, Marriage and Death records. Birth is easy to ignore because we know from previously attaching that date the record says he was born either in the towns of Fairfield or Stratford, so we used the county they are both in as his location and made a note of the two towns. The Public tree difference is the location of his birth is listed as Stratford, so that makes sense and we’re not accepting that fact, so we’ll leave the box unchecked. Similarly, the Death value is listing the date of the first court testimony regarding his will, and the court record doesn’t list a date of death. Given that it’s highly unlikely anyone would rush to court to swear in a Will on the same day someone died, we won’t be attaching that date to his death.

But the Marriage value is for an entirely new event, 28 years after his known marriage to Mehitable, and we’ll need to review the trees to understand their sources. Cancel the “New Information” screen, open Member Trees again in Hints, and select the ancestor’s record from the Ancestry Member Tree. That showed us the member’s tree, and when we scrolled down to the new Marriage record, we see it has no Sources attached. We’re not going to attach unsourced facts, so we know we can ignore this event.

Image comparing two entities for Hezekiah Treadwell from ancestry.com family tree

Go back to the Add New Information to Your Tree screen, and make sure no facts are attached on the left side. Now, when we click “Save to Tree” this Public tree will attach to Hezekiah, but it won’t attach as a Source for anything and we won’t propagating unsourced facts from other members’ trees!

Attach the facts to the sources

Finally we need to ensure all of our new Sources are attached to Facts, and we have to be careful here because we’ve accepted some hints for Hezekiah with the Source attached to him, but the Source won’t automatically be attached to any Fact. Additionally, Facts often won’t all be linked to the source, like when we accepted the “History of…the Families of Old Fairfield” record above it not only didn’t link to any Face, it didn’t create the listed death year at all. Make sure each of the facts listed in the record exist in the ancestor’s timeline, and attach the Source to each Fact right away. Skipping this step is how we end up with unsourced trees!

Image of source for Hezekiah Treadwell, not attached to any Facts

Image of source for Hezekiah Treadwell, not attached to Facts

You’ve got a strong Ancestry.com family tree…what’s next?

When we’re done we have created a new Family Tree for Hezekiah and Mehitable Treadwell, and their children, that is fully sourced and supported by those sources. This entire process took us less than 10 minutes to complete showing it doesn’t take much time to create an accurate record, even when you have 15 hints. Anyone reviewing your tree, including yourself when you come back later, will be able to easily identify all of the facts relating to this ancestor as well as all the records that support those facts.

If this is a direct ancestor you can do more work to build out their information. Start by running a search in Ancestry, and since you have a solid base of facts the search results will much more focused and likely to be an accurate match. Just attach new sources and facts as detailed above, and your tree will continue to be well sourced.

Our example, Hezekiah, is not likely a direct ancestor of ours but we are building his tree out as we hope to catch more DNA matches. Since we don’t need a full picture, and since we have solid Birth/Marriage/Death info and a complete accounting of his children we will leave his record as-is, and we’ll repeat the process for each of their children, then grandchildren, and great grandchildren, etc. (Matching unmatched DNA Hints by Casting a Wide Net)

In Remembrance: Leila Maude Smith

In this week’s “In Remembrance” we’re featuring Leila Maude Smith (1909-1918) who died on this date in 1918.

Leila was the youngest daughter of William Arthur Smith (1880-1954) and Alice Maude (Crippen) Smith (1884-1958) (a descendent of Israel Standish), born on 18 Jun 1909 when the family was living near Otisville, Michigan just outside Flint. She was the youngest of two daughters and William Arthur and Alice Maude (they variously went by either their first or middle names) were farmers.

The family had survived the Spanish Flu epidemic intact, but Leila died on 22 Apr 1919 of inflammation of the medulla oblongata at the age of 8. The death certificate said the cause of the inflammation was unknown, and today what’s called brainstem encephalitis is known to often be caused by Listeria infections. Tragedy struck the family almost exactly a year older when her older sister Cleah passed away at the age of 14.

The Smith’s adopted a child the wake of Leah and Leila’s deaths (Bill) thinking they could no longer conceive children of their own, but 6 years later Maude gave birth to their third child Elizabeth when she was 41 years old. The Smiths would later adopt another girl, Ruth.

Keeping a critical eye on our research
Sometimes the excitement of the find blinds us to records that don't match out ancestors

Keeping a critical eye on our research <h4>Sometimes the excitement of the find blinds us to records that don't match out ancestors</h3>

We’ve inherited a lot of family treasures since we became known as the group preserving the publishing our family history, but only one is on our desk at all times: A very old, unattractive portrait of Samuel FB Morse. The first great historian in our family was Myra (Tradewell) Morse (1870-1962), and she and her cousins spend decades building out a family tree we still use as a base today. She established our family line to her GGF Charles Edwards (1768-1811), who served as a soldier in the Revolutionary War so she could establish her Daughters of the American Revolution membership in 1904. She also established a link for her husband Elmer A Morse (1870-1945) (link) to his 2xGGF Samuel FB Morse, and this little portrait of the inventor of the single-wire telegraph and Morse code was venerated and displayed in the Elmer and Myra’s house proudly.

The only issue was, neither of those facts were true. A Charles Edwards might have been a soldier (still open for debate), but the link to that Charles was specious and called out by the organization in later years. Myra was a State DAR leader and lost her membership in the organization because they had re-evaluated her research and found it lacking what’s required as proof. Her daughter saved the day by identifying a new ancestor with qualifying service, getting her membership under that soldier, then Myra re-applied under the same ancestor and regained her membership. Also, there was no direct relation from Elmer to Samuel FB Morse (they are 4^th Cousins, Twice Removed). His 2xGGF was Samuel Morse, but they were born 50 years apart, in different States, never lived in the same State and our Morse died while telegraph Morse was still in his teens.

This is the kind of thing that pollutes the Ancestry.com algorithm and becomes cannon, and we almost plowed through doubt even as we thought we were being skeptical and reserved.

We keep Samuel FB’s portrait on our desk to remind us of how we can manifest results we want by bending facts in ways we aren’t even aware of. Myra did great work, there’s no way she just made this all up on purpose. And we were reminded of that this weekend when we followed that same path despite all of our efforts to avoid this.

It started Friday night, on Instagram, when one of my favorite creators Jen, The Formidable Genealogist (https://www.theformidablegenealogist.com/), posted an announcement that Ireland would drop (what we read as) the fully searchable 1826 Ireland Census at midnight. This was a massive breakthrough for us, and despite cooking dinner (with a glass of wine) we tried the site a few times to see if it dropped early. It did come online Friday night and we did some searching on the couch watching TV that evening.

The reason this was so exciting for us that the oldest Leonard ancestor, Michael (1799-1861), arrived in the US around 1830 with 2 young children and no record of a wife. John (1828-1891) and Ann (1829-1906) always listed their birth location as Tipperary, Ireland but we’ve never been able to establish they actually arrived or how the family looked at the time. Ann’s obituary said her “parents” arrived in the US when she was “just a child”, and settling in Quebec, Canada before moving to Lockport, New York. We know Michael remarried around 1841 in Lockport, and had 4 children with his new wife, and in the 1850 US Census Michael had moved to Wisconsin with John and Ann, his new wife, and the 4 children. The questions are numerous: Did he arrive with his first wife? If so, did she die before having any additional children? Were there additional children that we have no record of that didn’t make the move to Wisconsin? It all makes so little sense that we, along with a great researcher on Ann’s line, have never been able to gleen any fact about this family pre-1841, and we’ve hired professional genealogists in Canada to help attempt to establish Michael’s arrival details (he likely arrived in Quebec, not the US and moved).

With that backdrop, it was exciting to have a census just 2-4 years before Michael’s emigration, and we woke up Saturday morning and immediately searched and we found 162 Michael Leonard’s captured in the census! Narrowing to just Tipperary, and found 7 Michael’s, but only 2 were close enough in age to possibly be ours. The 17 year old was still living with his parents, and his record wasn’t of any value. But another was 32, and it stopped us in our tracks.

Image of a table listing Michael Leonard's from Tipperary County, Ireland in 1926 — A list of all Michael Leonard’s in Tipperary

He’s obviously 5 years older than our Michael, but given the uncertainties of the time that is not entirely unreasonable. He lived with his father-in-law and his aunt, as well as his wife Mary but it was the children that made us gasp. Michael and Mary had John (age 6), Mary (age 4), and Annie (age 2). These ages don’t match entirely, but they are in the range and reviewing all of the Michael’s within the age range throughout all of Ireland, we didn’t find another John and Ann siblings. This felt huge, not proof per se but a huge lead that could mean we were going to break down a brick wall. If we squinted hard enough we could chalk all the dates up to the fog of history, this matched the family pattern we we’re desperately searching for, and with no other matching pattern from that critical year we were pretty certain this was our family!

It wasn’t until we started typing up this finding to share with our newly hired genealogists that reality smacked us in the face: this wasn’t the EIGHTTEEN twenty-six Irish census, it was the NINETEEN twenty-six census. A full 100 years later than we’d read it, well after Michael, his children, and many of his grandchildren had passed away. This census had zero value to our research.

32 year-old Michael Leonard and his family, from the newly released 1926 Irish census…NOT our ancestor!

Once we misread the original IG post, the various 1926 designations escaped us. When we found a record that MIGHT work, we mentally twisted it until we were pretty sure it did work. Had that been an 1826 census we would have started treating that as a valid record despite knowing better. Sure, it could be a thread to pull, and we would have shared with our researchers, but it proved nothing and shouldn’t go any further until we knew it did. This is the kind of thing that pollutes the Ancestry.com algorithm and becomes cannon, and we almost plowed through doubt even as we thought we were being skeptical and reserved.

And it happened as we were staring at Samuel FB Morse trying not to repeat the mistakes of our predecessors.

In remembrance: Elizabeth Frost

This week’s In Remembrance highlights one of Antigo’s forgotten matriarch’s, Elizabeth J (Frost) Boerner, who died on this date in 1943.

Elizabeth was born 4 Aug 1861 in Shiocton, Wisconsin to Asahel Frost (1828-1897) and Rosetta (Newell) Frost (1829-1892) at a time when Shiocton was a booming logging town. Asahel was a farmer and later a carpenter and Elizabeth was the middle of 9 children. Both the Frost and Newell families trace their arrival in North America to the early 1600’s and they largely followed the pattern of several generations residing in Massachusetts and/or Connecticut, then migrating to New York after the Revolutionary War for 1-2 generations, then on to Wisconsin.

She married John J Kupps in Shiocton on 16 Mar 1876 when she was 16 years old, and he was 27. Unlike Elizabeth’s family line, John was born in Bohemia and he and his parents arrived in the US only about 20 years before his marriage. He worked as a laborer in the lumber industry, which was winding down in Shiocton, and they moved to Bryant (in NE Langlade County) in 1885. Bryant, and which was the next logging hot spot in Central Wisconsin.

John and Elizabeth had two children, Emma Marrion (Kupps) Leonard (1879-1953) and Kathryn (Kupps) Driscoll (1882-) before moving to Langlade County. John was hired by T.D. Kellogg in Antigo in 1891 and the family moved into town soon after.

Elizabeth was widowed in 1899 when John passed away at the dinner table after, as the local paper put it: “a severe fit of coughing. Arising from a table he passed through the kitchen and reached the outer door when his strength apparently failed. He stopped to rest on the steps and leaning his head back on his wife’s lap, he quietly and silently passed away.” Family lore, shared by Emma’s granddaughter Peggy, has it that John had stopped off at the tavern unexpectedly for a few and when he returned home well after dinner Elizabeth refused to make him a plate, so his mother (who was visiting) agreed and Elizabeth went upstairs angry. John subsequently choked on dinner because he was so drunk, and suffocated. His official cause of death was heard disease, so we can take the story for what it’s worth!

Elizabeth raised her daughters alone until Emma married Dan Leonard in 1902 (In remembrance: Dan Leonard), and Kathryn married Jess Hawkings in 1904. She lived with Dan and Emma until remarrying Louis Boerner (1850-1935) around 1906. Louis was also a widower, and a Naturalized citizen originally from Germany, who brought two children into the marriage: Erma and Edward (adopted from the State Home when young). The Boerner family was well known in Antigo, and Louis’ father owned the main daily newspaper. He was a furrier and well regarded as his was about the only fur store in town at a time when fur was very common.

Her stepson Edward was killed in action in WWI, and she lost Louis in 1935. Her Grandson Floyd Leonard (1906-1941) was killed in Egypt one week after WWII was declared. Elizabeth died after a long battle of what was then called “Bright’s Disease”. We now know it as Chronic Nephritis, and is usually a byproduct of high blood pressure and heart disease, which are mentioned on her Death Certificate.

Chart detailing ancestors of Gerald F Leonard — Family tree of Elizabeth (Frost) Boerner to Michael’s Leonard GGP

Patriotic Service in the Revolutionary War
Honoring Israel Standish (1721-1802) and his stand on principles

Patriotic Service in the Revolutionary War <h4>Honoring Israel Standish (1721-1802) and his stand on principles</h3>

With the arrival of the 250^th Anniversary of the founding of the United States there’s renewed interest in all our patriot ancestors, and the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) have been helping us establish the genealogical lines to those patriots for well over 100 years. The most common route to establishing a patriot ancestor is establishing them as soldiers in the Revolutionary War, and we have 20 or so DAR ancestors who followed that pattern. But we want to examine one ancestor who highlights a lesser-known path to being recognized as a patriot by the DAR: Patriotic Service.

Patriotic service covers those nascent Americans who didn’t pick up arms to fight the British, but still provided material support for the revolution. This could include providing funds or supplies to the Continental Army, or signing an oath of allegiance or a petition to support the cause.

In 1777 the US Revolution wasn’t going particularly well for the States. The siege of Boston had been broken in 1776, but the ousted British troops had sailed to New York and established control over the city, soon driving General Washington’s army off of Long Island and then out of New York completely. The British had captured a large number of prisoners of war from various battles and established their largest prisons in the New York city area. The largest, and most notorious was the Sugar House on Manhattan but the prison ships anchored off Long Island held just about as many POW’s. Conditions in these prisons can only be called horrific. There were no sewage systems, the food was rotten and there was very little of it (for example a standard ration at the Sugar House was 1 pound of rotten meat and 4 pieces of moldy bread every 4 days), there was no furniture to sit or lie on, on land prisoners would sometimes receive 30 min. of fresh air a week but often times they would just be granted turns standing and breathing out the windows for 10 minutes. On the ships, due to the waste-based diseases, it was almost impossible to come out of the holds for air…and if a prisoner could make it up the ladder the deck was usually so slick with excrement it wasn’t possible to stand (The Prisoners of New York). Mortality rates for captured Revolutionary soldiers was 75%, and the descriptions of their conditions can only be matched by the description of the conditions on the ships that traversed enslaved humans across the Atlantic for centuries.

It’s under this cloud of mistreatment that 32 men from Connecticut signed a petition to the newly formed General Assembly of Connecticut on 5 May 1777, pleading for the body to interve on the behalf of citizens of that State who were being held in New York. The petitioners are clear they are in favor of the revolution, and call those who risked their life for the cause as “noble”, but they are clearly pained by the conditions of imprisonment calling it: inhumane, barbarous and deplorable. However, they are also honest that they have no idea how to accomplish any solution since they know we can’t effectively pressure the British. They do however voice the opinion that if the Assembly can figure out how to accomplish this, the “Army [will] soon be supplied with a number of men sufficient to repel our enemies”.

Text of the petition for prisoners, 1777
To the Honourable the General Assembly of the State of Connecticut to be convened at Hartford within and for said State on the Second Thursday of May 1777.
Whereas. Since the commencement of the present unnatural War, it has so happened that great number of our Friends who have nobly ventured their Life for the Defense of our Injured Country have unfortunately fell into our Enemies hands and by them are held captive and prisoners of War and treated in the most inhumane and barbarous manner many having been stripped of their clothing, exposed to the weather and denied a sufficient supply of food for the support of life and under which suffering many of our Respectable and Worth friends have lost their life: and others who still survive are yet in the same deplorable circumstances in New York and on Long Island. Suffering under the insults of the enemy and destitute of necessities and clothing or money to purchase that necessities of life; all which are so publicly known that they are undeniable facts.
Whereupon we the subscribers inhabitants in the State aforesaid pray this Honorable Assembly to commiserate and take into consideration the disgusting condition of our Friends in captivity as aforesaid who are belonging to this State and in your wisdom devise some method for the support and relief when we know not how it can be effected without some exertion of the public and which if done by your Honour and publicly known among the people. We humbly conceive would be a very great inducement to other voluntarily to insist and engage in the cause of our country and our Army soon be supplied with a number of men sufficient to repel our enemies, or in some other way grant relief.
As your Honours in your wisdom shall judge most reasonable and just and you memorialize as in duty bound shall memorialize as in duty bound shall coc. (?) Pray. Dated in Connecticut this 5th day of May 1777 (Link)

Michael’s 7xGGF Israel Standish (1721-1802) was living in Preston, Connecticut when he was one of the 32 signatories to this petition. He was the great grandchild of Mayflower passenger Myles Standish, so he likely had at least some notoriety (not as much was we’d think today, but that’s for another day!), and he was an established farmer in his mid-50’s. His children lived in Preston as well, and he had at least 10 grandchildren under 5 years of age at the time living near him. Even a simple petition asking for something to be done to save the son’s of Connecticut from the horrors of British prisons was a deeply treasonous act. He had publicly attached himself to the cause of revolution, and he would have likely lost all that mattered to him, if not his life, had the rebellion failed.

Image of signature of Israel Standish — Israel Standish standing ten toes on principle and putting his name down on paper!

And at the time, the Americans (outside of Boston) hadn’t shown much capability of defeating the British. His farm was just to the East of New York (and just across the sound from Long Island, which was easily crossed) and it was firmly under the control of the enemy. He was influential and known enough to be included in joining the petition, and doing so left him no chance for him to deny where his loyalties lied, so this was a significant act of defiance even though on the face it seems like a simple enjoinder. We can guess there would have been an effect on his neighbors. Those loyal to the cause of freedom stood up and be known as such, and there was a group on one the other side equally loyal to England, however those in the middle would have likely felt swayed by their neighbors risking everything to publicly support a United States free of the crown.

So in someways these acts of Patriotic Service had impacts as strong as those who served militarily, which is why the DAR recognizes the “simple” act of signing a petition as worthy of veneration for having served the cause of liberty.

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