In The Name of the Lord

November 02, 1631, The Lyon, the first ship of three hired by Rev. Thomas Hooker and the Braintree Company of Braintree, Essex County, England, arrives in Boston Harbor.  Immigrants aboard were prepared to do battle with the savages in the name of the Lord.   Among those landing were William Westwood, and Deacon Stephen Hart.    These were very wealthy men.  William Westwood, although only thirteen years old, held title as Yeoman.  They were the first to settle Braintree Massachusetts, but soon there after formed Newtowne, which today is Cambridge.  Rev. Thomas Hooker had been invited by the Puritans to come from England to be their pastor.  Approximately 350 Immigrants arrived in the Braintree Company to the shores of New England.  They brought with them smallpox. During the twelve week voyage many died of smallpox and were buried at sea.  When they arrived, the smallpox quickly spread and was wiping out the Native American Indians.  The puritans saw this as Gods work to clean the new land of the savages.

May 14, 1634, Deacon Stephen Hart was admitted as a freeman in Cambridge.  Then in 1635 he moves with Rev. Hookers group to and area now called Hartford.  He was one of the original proprietors and built his home near the ford he discovered where you could cross the Connecticut river at a low stage of the water.  Thus the town was named "Hartsford," which soon just became Hartford.  Born in 1605, Hart was now thirty years old, and along with Hookers group had taken much of the cleared pasture and meadow from the Indians. On March 04, 1635, Westwood takes the freemans oath at Newtown, and on September 05, 1635 was sworn in as constable of the Plantation Connecticut.  Then by March of 1636 Westwood was given a commission to govern the people of Connecticut in the first court. The first general court had great power.  It acted as both the court and the legislature under the Mosaic Laws of the Church.

July 1636, on Block Island just off the coast of Connecticut, members of the Narragansett tributary tribe kill Captain John Oldham.  In retaliation, John Endicott sets sail out of Boston for Block Island and he and his men spend two days setting fire to the Indian huts, destroying food reserves and shooting their dogs.  By winter of 1636 the Indians return the white mans attack, and besiege Fort Saybrook and attack the Wethersfield settlement.

In the winter and early into 1637 Westwood and his court declare war on the Pequot Indians.  On the 10th of May Captain Mason set sail down the river with three ships and seventy men.  Then on May 26, 1637, under the command of Captain John Mason the Puritans joined with 90 men from the Mohegan and Narragansett tribes to surround the Pequot Village of Misstuck (Mystic).  Within one hour 700 men, women and children are put to death by sword and burned to death as the entire village was burned.  On there return the Puritan soldiers were granted a lot known as a Soldiers field.

Why am I telling you this story about The Pequot War?  Because Deacon Stephen Hart is my ninth Great Grand Father and he was there killing the Pequot Indians and burning down Misstuck village in the name of the Lord. 
He had a daughter, Mary Hart who married John Lee.  We are descendants from this branch of the Lee family.  Not from Robert E. Lee of  the Virginia Lee's, but that story is for another posting.

Here is the pedigree which links me to Deacon Stephen Hart, my 9th Great Grand Father, the proprietor of Hartford Connecticut, and to the Lee family descendants of John Lee.

Deacon Stephen Hart (1602 - 1683)

is your 9th great grandfather

Mary Hart (1631 - 1710)

Daughter of Deacon Stephen

David Lee (1674 - 1759)

Son of Mary

Jedediah Lee (1697 - 1749)

Son of David

Elias Jedediah Lee (1723 - 1795)

Son of Jedediah

Daniel Lee (1753 - 1806)

Son of Elias Jedediah

Ede W Lee (1791 - 1867)

Son of Daniel

Dorothy Ann Lee (1824 - 1885)

Daughter of Ede W

Helen Desdemonia Rider (1857 - 1927)

Daughter of Dorothy Ann

William Rider Howie (1882 - 1965)

Son of Helen Desdemonia

Donald James Howie (1927 - 2005)

Son of William Rider

Richard Scott Howie

You are the son of Donald James 

I want to thank Google for making available on Googlebooks the Lee Family Genealogy 1634 - 1897 By: Leonard & Sarah Marsh Lee.  The book is more than 700 pages, but if you get a chance, at-least read the introduction. 

 

Masonic Compass

I recently started looking to cemeteries to help me in my family research.  This has brought me huge success.  The day is here when you don't have to travel around the country looking for the cemetery, and then wander around a cemetery for hours on end with disapointment and frustration that you were not able to locate your ancestor.  

I have found a couple of websites where you can travel to virtual cemeteries.  The premise is an all volunteer system.  You volunteer to go to cemeteries near your home and take photos, and someone else does the same for you. Just this past holiday I received my first request to find a family plot here in Texas near my home.  I was given the GPS coordinates of Longitude and Latitude and I headed out on my quest. 

I found the family plot, and if you know me, you know that I had to talk to someone and ask questions for sure, right? Well the family cemetery plot was on private land, on a huge cattle ranch on the north shore of Lake Travis.  Back in the mid - 1800's the area was known as Travis Peak.  The area is still mostly rolling hills covered in Cedar and Oak trees.  Very beautiful place that will probably in my life time be swallowed up by the growth of the city of Austin.  Well, me having a jeep, I just drove right on in to the ranch.  I met the current resident of the ranch and we talked briefly about the history of the area, and the original family, it was great!  I explained I was there to photograph the family cemetery plot, so he showed be the way, and he went on about his day.

The cemetery was on a bluff over looking a beautiful valley with a creek in the bottom.  It was enclosed within a rusty old white painted iron fence that had since been knocked over by the 150 plus years of cattle.  Directly in the center of the plot and surrounded by a few family headstones was a newer granite monument.  On the top of the monument for this family was the Masonic compass. 

I have seen this compass symbol everywhere in my family research, and have to say that I am very ignorant regarding this organization, which peaks my interest all the more.  My knowledge I guess is limited to the book and movie by the same name, The Da Vinci Code, and I had a friend in college who is a Mason.  

Since many of my ancestors were Masons in Quebec Canada and were from the Golden Rule Lodge in Vermont at Owls Head, which is in Newport.  I decided I need to began my inquiry into this secret society.  I thought I should start small first, and find out why the Masonic Compass appears on the headstones. 

I first discover that like any organization, people branch off.  Besides Masons, I also find there are Freemasons, and The Scottish Rite.  I decided this would be too much work, I do not want to write a PHD thesis here. The one thing I find they all have in common is the Masonic Compass.

One of the most common symbols of The Masonic Temple, Freemasonry, and the Scottish Rite is the symbol of the crossed compass and set-square. The compass and square are architect's tools, and symbolize God as the architect of the universe, among other things.

As measuring instruments, the tools represent judgment and discernment.

The compass, which is used to draw circles, represents the realm of the spiritual- eternity. It is symbolic of the defining and limiting principle, and also of infinite boundaries.

The angle measures the square, the symbol of earth and the realm of the material. The square represents fairness, balance, and firmness, which is reflected in phrases such as "on the square" and "squared away." Something that is squared is something that is stable, a foundation for building upon.

 Together, the compass and square represent the convergence of matter and spirit, and the convergence of earthly and spiritual responsibilities. The two symbols together form a hexagram, forming a union of the earth with the heavens, matter and mind. 

What I take away from this, is the union between life, and death, and the joining of the two through the cycle of life on earth with that in the heavens.  Seems very appropriate now to me.

Howie Family Cemetery

Vieux Cimetiere de Pike River

The year was 1976, I was just a young boy when I traveled with my mother and father in a 1968 Blue Datsun pickup truck with a camper shell on the bed. We drove across country heading out from Albuquerque New Mexico in search of our family history and to see the United States.  We made many stops along the 3,000 mile journey that summer, and had great adventure.  When we arrived in Vermont we first went to the home where my father lived as a young boy before his mother died.  The home was built by his father and held great memories for my father, as well as historical interest.  From there we tried to locate family members, and a cemetery with no luck, we left without ever finding where his parents, my grand parents or any other family were buried or still living.  Now lets fast forward 34 years, to 2011.  You and I can now travel the internet highway of the worldwide web, and thanks to volunteers like David J. Ellis, with a click of our mouse we are able to visit these far away cemeteries.  The photos and all the information I post here today, I want to thank and give credit to David J. Ellis.  The information has been of great value in my family research.   I had been contacting Churches in the area with no luck, then I found on the website www.internment.net the following text in italics which explains the story why.

This cemetery is located in a field 300 meters north of the village store. Access is from Ch. des Rivières.

The earliest burial was in 1828. The cemetery was originally a multi-denominational Protestant cemetery but was associated with the Methodist Church building, which was erected nearby in 1858 and catered to all denominations. That building, but not the cemetery, was sold in 1915 and subsequently dismantled. The cemetery was often referred to in the village as the “Protestant Cemetery” or the “Methodist Cemetery”. The first official name was the “Pike River Burying Ground” and later the “Pike River Protestant Cemetery”. It has also been referred to as the “Cemetery on the Hill”, the “Cemetery in the Field”, or simply the “Old Cemetery” but, contrary to occasional claims, not as the “Loyalist Cemetery”.
Due to township boundary changes, the cemetery has at different times been part of the Township of Stanbridge, of the Seigniory of Noyan, of the municipalities of Notre Dame des Anges and of Saint-Sebastien. A significant change of boundaries between the counties of Iberville and of Missisquoi in 1912 also affected the cemetery. The current ownership was established on the 5th of July 1932 by virtue of the “Loi des Compagnies de Cimetières”, or Bill C17. A more detailed history is held by Compagnie du Vieux Cimetière de Pike River.

This listing was compiled by M. Jef Asnong, a member of the Cemetery Company, by surveying the markers. To supplement damaged or missing markers, it incorporates information from partial listings made in 1927 by M. Pierre A. Saint-Pierre and 1960 by Alfred Rousseau. Cross verification against the 1960 listing was performed by David Ellis, a member of the Cemetery Company, and discrepancies found were verified against the actual markers.
Markers are numbered sequentially across all rows from the South West corner to the North West corner, then continuing in the next row. Rows are numbered from West to East. Different faces on the same monument are signified by the letters "A", "B" etc. and different individuals on the same face by ".1", ".2" etc. Some individuals appear more than once, often on a monument and also on an individual marker. When an individual appears on two markers, the information on both markers is not always consistent.

This listing is a joint effort of Jef Asnong and myself in the summer of 2005. The cemetery is in good condition, although in need of some fence work.

- David J. Ellis

Again, Thank you to Mr. David J. Ellis and M. Jef Asnong.

There are many of our ancestors in their final resting place here at the Pike River Cemetery.  One epitaph that I found very touching was for Mary Jane Howie (1860), the daughter of Thomas Howie (1831 - 1902) and his wife, Jane Frances McMillan (1840 - 1915).  Inscription:
Gone is little Mary Jane - From her mother and me - An angel loved her when she smiled - She was Mary Jane, our only child.

Click on the top blue link or Howie Family Cemetery to go to Find A Grave.

Or click here for a list of those buried here.