52 Ancestors 2025: Written – Blasts from the Past

 

Finding something written by an ancestor is like uncovering buried treasure. Not only does it create a personal connection, but it also offers a unique window into history—a chance to see the past through the eyes of an ordinary person (unless, of course, your ancestor happened to be famous).

Some writings I've shared before, such as those of Rev. John Hale, a key figure in the Salem witch trials whose A Modest Inquiry into the Nature of Witchcraft remains a remarkable firsthand account. Another example is Jairus Abijah Bonney, who described his journey along the Oregon Trail.

A particularly rich source of ancestral writing comes from military pension records, especially from the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. These statements—often dictated to county clerks—detail hardships, illnesses, battles, and the testimonies of neighbors and comrades. Christian Fast recorded his capture and escape from the Delaware Indians during the Revolution. Civil War pension files for David Cassatt, Anthony Gilmartin, and Benjamin McWilliams also provide vivid snapshots of their lives.

But the richest writings of all belong to my 2nd-great-grandfather, Ben McWilliams. He chronicled his enlistment in the Union Army, his capture and imprisonment, his release, and his life afterward. We’ve already met Ben through his descriptions of Andersonville prison, his emotional homecoming, and even his return to everyday chores like hog butchering and barn raising. His account of the unbroken prairie is especially striking—typical of what many settlers saw when they first arrived in new territory.

Ben wrote all of this by hand. I remember my Uncle Jim typing the memoirs so they could be shared, and more recently I used ChatGPT’s OCR tools to digitize the original pages. Reading through his story, several things stand out. He describes the “Raiders” from Confederate prison camps who targeted other prisoners, such as a fellow prisoner from the early days, John McElroy. Ben wondered what became of McElroy; it turns out he survived the war and made his mark in print. He later became a journalist and wrote extensively about those same camps.

Ben’s writings also reveal what a hustler he was. In prison, he figured out ways to get extra rations and outwit illiterate guards. After the war, he worked wherever he could—as a collier, mason, fisherman, laborer—and eventually settled into farming and family life. He mentions numerous relatives whose names we can now trace on FamilySearch. He also recounts conflicts with local rascals, which may explain some of the legal records I’ve uncovered.

There is so much to learn from the written traces our ancestors left behind. It makes me wonder what kind of written legacy we should be leaving for those who come after us.

52 Ancestors 2025: Earliest Ancestor, or What Do April Showers Bring?

 

According to 23andMe, my earliest ancestors were in Africa—hunting, gathering, and surviving long enough to produce many, many generations. Over time, their descendants moved to northwest Europe and eventually crossed the Atlantic to the New World. As for named ancestors, one family researcher traced the des Marets (Demarest) line back to a 10th-century count and various Crusaders. But according to a post on a genealogy bulletin board, the hired genealogist may have followed a tenuous link to satisfy eager clients. So, rather than chase medieval nobility, I decided to focus on the earliest immigrant ancestor I could verify, and that search led somewhere more fruitful.

I already knew about Joris Rapelje, who arrived in New Amsterdam in 1624 with the earliest Dutch/Huguenot settlers, and I was familiar with several Puritan ancestors who came in the 1630s. But could some of the hints in the FamilySearch tree pointing to even earlier immigrants be accurate? It was time to trust—but verify.

In researching my Oregon Trail ancestor, Jairus Abijah Bonney Jr., I found a published genealogy that extended four generations beyond him. Since Jairus came from New England, I hoped to benefit from the region’s well-kept church and civil records. The line led to Jairus Abijah Bonney Sr., a Revolutionary War patriot, then to his father, Perez Bonney, and finally back to Perez’s grandfather, the immigrant Thomas Bonney. Born around 1604 in England, Thomas came to Massachusetts aboard the Hercules in 1634 and eventually settled in Duxbury.

Perez Bonney, born March 10, 1709, was one of the family’s early chroniclers; however, there’s some confusion in his account about how many American generations preceded him. So I turned to the lineage of his wife, Ruth Snow. Ruth was the daughter of James Snow and Ruth Shaw. James’s parents, Joseph Snow and Hopestill Alden, caught my attention. Joseph was the son of William Snow (born in England in 1627 and brought to the colonies as an 11-year-old indentured servant) and Rebecca Brown, who was born in Plymouth Colony in 1631. That name sounded promising. And indeed: Rebecca’s father was Peter Browne—a Mayflower passenger. As far as I can tell, he’s my earliest confirmed immigrant ancestor. Not bad!

But the name Alden rang another bell. Could there be more Mayflower connections? Sure enough, Hopestill Alden descended from one of the most well-known and prolific families in Plymouth Colony. Her father, Joseph Alden, was born in 1627 in Plymouth and was the son of none other than John Alden and Priscilla Mullins—both Mayflower passengers.

John Alden, made famous by his descendant (and my cousin) Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, was a cooper by trade. Whether or not he served as a messenger for Myles Standish is up for debate, but his role in the colony was significant. He arrived on the Mayflower as part of the crew but chose to stay, signing the Mayflower Compact rather than returning to England. He went on to hold several elected offices and was the last surviving signer of the Compact.

Priscilla Mullins had her own story of resilience. During the harsh winter of 1620–1621, she lost her parents and brother when she was about 18 years old. Despite this, she persevered and eventually married John Alden. Together, they had ten surviving children and many, many descendants and are my 10th-great-grandparents.

Much has been written about these early settlers. The ideals behind the Mayflower Compact, and the romanticized image of the first Thanksgiving (thanks in large part to Longfellow), still echo in our culture today. When I first began researching my family’s history in the late 1990s, I had a breakthrough with the lineage of Hannah Robbins Day, wife of John Jay Fast. Unlike many maternal lines, Hannah’s ancestry extended many generations into the early Massachusetts Bay Colony, linking me to several prominent New England families.

More recently, I discovered that the wife of Hannah’s son, William Marion Fast, also had deep New England roots. William married Louisa Jane Bolon in 1862, and her maternal line revealed even more connections to Plymouth Colony and the Mayflower. Another line in this side that was revealed is that of John Bigelow, who was reported to have sailed in the Winthrop fleet of Puritans that founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

A common theme among these New England ancestors is that they became farmers and gradually moved west after the American Revolution. Like many others, they followed familiar migration routes into Ohio, Illinois, and eventually Missouri. They were farmers and part of the fabric of their communities, but their American and New England roots ran deep.

Photo: Unknown author - https://collections.carli.illinois.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/nby_teich/id/21342, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=67029417

52 Ancestors 2025: Travel on the Oregon Trail

 

So many immigrant ancestors, so many westward movements—where do I even start when the topic for the week is travel? Should I talk about ocean crossings to the New World? Already covered that. Possible Mayflower connections? Still unconfirmed. The Wilderness Road to Kentucky? Done. Even wrote about our family’s move back east.

But while combing through the family tree for another travel story, I came across an ancestor who made not one but multiple big moves: first from New England to Ohio and Illinois, and then all the way to Oregon Territory. This is the story of my 4th-great-grandfather, Jairus Abijah Bonney Jr., who, fittingly, had not just one but two Biblical names.

Jairus was born on October 14, 1793, in Litchfield, Connecticut—just 17 years after the founding of the United States—to Jairus Abijah Bonney Sr., a veteran of the American Revolution, and Anna Brown. In 1814, the younger Jairus married Irena Larned in Litchfield. Not long afterward, the couple moved west to Ashtabula, Ohio, part of the Connecticut Western Reserve. Since Ohio had only recently become a state (1803), this move reflected the pioneering spirit that still burned strong.

Jairus and Irena had five children, including Lydia Louisa Bonney, my direct ancestor. Sadly, Irena died in 1827, leaving behind their young children. Jairus remarried, this time to Jane Elkins, and they moved again, this time to Fulton County, Illinois, where they had eleven more children. But Jairus wasn’t finished with big life changes.

A skilled millwright, carpenter, cabinetmaker, and cooper, Jairus was successful in Illinois. Yet when he heard tales of opportunity in Oregon Territory, he was inspired to go west again—this time on the Oregon Trail. He built his own wagon and stocked it with provisions, setting out in the spring of 1845 from Independence, Missouri, along with his second family and his brother, a doctor, Truman Augustus Bonney and his family.

At Fort Hall (in present-day Idaho), they encountered an agent for Captain Sutter of California who warned them that the trail to Oregon was “destitute of grass and wood” and plagued by hostile encounters with Native people. Persuaded, they diverted south to Sutter’s Fort in the Sacramento Valley.

They arrived in fall 1845 to find drought conditions, inflated prices, and land too expensive to afford. And since California was still under Mexican control, settlers were expected to become Mexican citizens. Feeling misled, the families set out again in spring 1846, this time on horseback, heading north to Oregon. With no established roads, the journey was rough, but they finally reached Oregon on June 16, 1846.

At last, Jairus and his family had arrived. His skills were in high demand, and he quickly found work as a cooper and millwright, while Jane worked for Governor Abernathy. In 1847, the family claimed a farm in the Willamette Valley, in what is now Hubbard, Oregon, where Jairus farmed until his death in 1856, three years before Oregon became a state.

This Oregon Trail tale comes from several sources found on FamilySearch under Jairus Abijah Bonney Jr. (LVHD-7FG), including an 1840s article from The Spectator and a set of recollections written by Jairus’s son, Benjamin Franklin Bonney, who was just seven years old when he made the journey.

And what became of my direct line? Lydia Louisa Bonney had already moved with her father to Illinois, where she married William Bolon in 1840. They didn’t go west again, instead staying in Fulton County, Illinois. Their daughter, Louisa Jane, married William Marion Fast and later became part of the Fast family migration to Barton County, Missouri after the Civil War.

Not quite the Oregon Trail, but still another step in the long pattern of westward migrations that mark my family’s story.

Photo Credits: 

Oregon Trail meme from Etsy

Trail map from Oregon Trail Center