52 Ancestors 2026: More than a Name – Days in a Life

 

My New England families have always intrigued me, and I’ve been fortunate that many of their lives during colonial and early American times have been the subjects of extensive research. I could even tie this into last week’s prompt, A Spot on the Map. There are lots of spots on maps of northwestern Europe, especially the British Isles, and what became the United States that are significant in my nomadic family. But I’m choosing one spot that is important to my New England family—Jericho, Vermont—and one family name: Samuel Day, father and son.

The elder Samuel Day was born in 1748 in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and grew up in Massachusetts and Connecticut. He married Eunice Fay on June 16, 1772, and a month later, on July 15, Samuel Jr. was born. When war broke out in 1775, the elder Samuel joined the Patriot cause as a minuteman. Whether he served after that is a matter of conflicting records, but we know that by the end of the war he had become a Vermonter, living near the Massachusetts border in Whitingham, Vermont. Between 1800 and 1804, the family decided to move north to Jericho.

Being on the frontier, Jericho was a target of Indian raids, and one of the founding families, the Browns, suffered greatly, with family members being captured and ransomed. With peace, however, the farms were safe. By the time Samuel Day moved to Jericho, Vermont had become a state and settlements were expanding.

Meanwhile, Samuel Jr. was still in Connecticut, where he married his first cousin, Elizabeth Munger, in 1793 and remained there until after the 1800 federal census, when the family moved to Jericho. Samuel Jr. put down roots and got into the ashing business, making potash and lye from tree ashes, borrowing money to get started and expand his business.

Both Days then experienced hard times. Samuel Sr. became a widower when Eunice (Fay) Day died in 1808. In 1809, Samuel Jr.’s note came due, and when he could not make the payment, his property and goods were seized and sold. The young family may have stayed with Samuel Sr. for a while, but then Samuel Jr. was “warned out” of town.

As an aside, much of this information comes from the writings of Mary Richmond, who writes:

"Warning out of town" was a procedure used by local governments to rid their jurisdictions of undesirable people. What had Samuel done to warrant being labeled undesirable? The bad debt had been paid. There must have been more.

Did Samuel abuse Elizabeth? Was he often drunk? Did he owe debts to many people? Was he dishonest or a thief? Were his older boys a problem in the community? Did he have undesirable friends, maybe Indians, who aggravated his neighbors? Had he been practicing medicine and running afoul of local laws or other, more qualified doctors? There may be no way to ever know.

We do know more about the practice now. New Englanders in the early 1800s had inherited from their Puritan forebears the idea that communities had a responsibility to care for their members, but there were limits to their generosity when people became a financial risk. That appears to have been the situation with the Samuel Day Jr. family.

Samuel, Elizabeth, and their family ended up in Madison County, New York, where the Munger family had moved. Unfortunately, Elizabeth died in 1812 at the age of 38. As was common at the time, Samuel quickly remarried, this time to Hannah Robbins, who was ten years his junior. They had 11 children together and moved westward through New York State. Their daughter Hannah Robbins Day was born in Genesee County, New York, and the family eventually ended up in Huron County, Ohio, where Samuel Jr. became Dr. Samuel Day and practiced medicine.

Dr. Day died in 1839 at the age of 67. His second wife, Hannah, lived until 1845. Their daughter Hannah Robbins Day, of solid New England stock, married John Jay Fast, who was from solid German stock. They moved west and became the patriarch and matriarch of the Fast family of Barton County, Missouri.

And what about the family back in Jericho? Samuel Day lived to the ripe old age of 81, dying in 1829. Samuel Jr.’s brother Benjamin prospered in Jericho, and his son Hiram Benjamin married into the founding Brown family.

Two generations of Days, two very different experiences in Jericho, Vermont. For Samuel Sr., Jericho was his final home, and he lived out the rest of his life among friends and family. For Samuel Jr., however, Jericho was a place of misfortune. Yet he and his family were able to head west, reinvent themselves, and make their marks in New York and Ohio. Eventually, their descendants did the same in Missouri.

Picture:

Image generated by Google Gemini

52 Ancestors 2026: A Spot on a Map – The Ghosts of Verdella

 

As I’ve mentioned before, the various branches of my family settled in Barton County, Missouri, within a decade or so after the end of the Civil War. Union Army veterans mixed with Confederate sympathizers and families of bushwhackers. There may have been some hard feelings, but within a few decades, families were intermarrying. There are a lot of places in Barton County to choose from, but one that stands out is Verdella, which was in the center of Barton City Township.

At its height, Verdella was a collection of stores, a church, and a school, but it was also at the center of my family’s life in the late 1800s and early 1900s. This 1886 plat is a snapshot in time.

At the southeast corner (Section 22) of the crossroads was the farm and orchard of my 2nd-great-grandfather, B.C. (Ben) McWilliams. He had returned from the Civil War, and after his travels took him from the Appalachian Mountains of Pennsylvania to Iowa, he settled on a farm and tilled the rich soil of the Missouri prairie.

Going east and a little north, in Section 10, past the Mayfields, was the 160-acre farm of my great-grandfather, David Cassatt. Across the road, from Ben in Section 15, was the 40-acre Krimminger farm. Heading west and then north, in Section 7, at the very edge of the township, was the farm of my 2nd-great-grandfather, S.D. Reed. The Reed farm was divided in two by the Nevada and Minden Railroad. Heading south and then a bit west from Verdella were the farms of John Jay and (William) Marion Fast, my 3rd- and 2nd-great-grandfathers.

For me, this helps ground my family—and their farming neighbors—in a specific place. It is also interesting to see the various landowners and compare them with the list of people who opposed Ben’s request for a Civil War pension.

Forty-four years later, in 1930, there had been many changes. There was no longer a McWilliams farm in Section 22, but the Cassatts had expanded their holdings. According to family lore, David had accumulated enough money to buy additional land and eventually handed the farms off to his three sons, Orville, Virgil, and Bascom. We can see their lands in Sections 9, 10, and 11. Bascom continued the family broom-making industry.

The Reed farm had become Barton City, another collection of houses, stores, a church, and a school. The town changed its name to Hannon and, according to family lore, was named after S.D.’s wife, Hannah (Brown) Reed.

It appears that the Gilmartins had moved to the township and established themselves in Sections 22 and 27. The Fasts were able to acquire additional farmland in Sections 32 and 33 for the children of Marion Fast, including O.T. Fast. Another landmark in the region was Bryan School, in Section 26, just down the road from the Fast farm. My grandmother and her family lived on part of the farm, and my mother taught at the school in the 1930s before moving east to the city.

Just like most of rural America, the shops and businesses in these small towns have closed and the farms have been consolidated. The Nevada and Minden Railroad was absorbed by the Missouri Pacific Railroad, and then abandoned. But the history is still there to discover. Through maps, census records, and family stories, we can uncover the ghosts of the past and learn more about our families—and American history.