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 2025: Cousins, or Keeping It All in the Family

 

The theme of “Cousins” can go in many directions. I’ve already written about both well-known (Artistic) and lesser-known (Divergent Journeys) cousins and their connections. When you descend from colonial immigrants who arrived in the 1600s, you naturally end up with a large collection of notable (and sometimes notorious) relatives. Years ago, Ancestry put out an app called We’re Related, which used user-submitted trees to identify famous cousins. While many of those links were questionable, the app did provide leads. Thanks to that, I’ve explored possible connections to people as diverse as Abraham Lincoln and W.E.B. Du Bois. I also seem to share distant ties with numerous Puritan families, which makes being able to trace links to cousins like Nathan Hale, Grover Cleveland, or either President Bush surprisingly common.

But instead of diving into a celebrity cousin rabbit hole, I decided to explore a different—and perhaps more interesting—angle. You may remember my 8th- or 9th-great-grandmother, Susannah Shattuck, and the couple Edward Fay and Sarah Joslin, who not only had memorably-named children but were themselves second cousins once removed. That cousin connection was taken one step further a couple of generations later.

My 4th-great-grandfather, Samuel Day Jr., was born in 1772 in Connecticut. He was the grandson of Edward and Sarah (Joslin) Fay. In 1793, he married his first cousin, Elizabeth Munger, who was also their grandchild. The couple soon moved to the new state of Vermont, the fourteenth in the newly formed United States.

Today, first cousin marriage seems surprising or even taboo, but in early America it wasn’t prohibited, and in rural communities it was relatively common. It wasn’t until the mid-19th century that the practice was seriously questioned, and much later still before genetics helped explain the associated risks. Even then, people seemed to recognize that marrying close kin could lead to undesirable traits, though they lacked the scientific framework.

Samuel and Elizabeth’s life in Vermont was difficult. Samuel worked by cutting and burning trees to make potash. But by 1809, financial trouble overtook them. Samuel was unable to repay a debt, and the sheriff seized and sold his land, home, and possessions. By then, the couple had eight children, the oldest just 14, and the youngest under a year.

To make matters worse, that same year the family was "warned" out of town. Under Vermont law, towns were responsible for their indigent residents—unless those residents were transients or posed a financial risk. Despite having lived in Jericho for 14 years and owning property, Samuel’s misfortunes and large family apparently led the town’s selectmen to deem them a burden. Being warned out didn’t require them to leave, but it did mean they could no longer count on public support if they needed help.

FamilySearch shows that their last son may have been born in Vermont in 1811, so the family may have remained for a short while longer. But by early 1812, they had relocated to Madison County, New York, where Elizabeth died, leaving Samuel with little money and a household of children.

Samuel did marry again but this time not to a cousin. At age 40, he wed Hannah Robbins, who was just 20. Together, they had 11 more children, including Hannah Robbins Day, who married John Jay Fast, who became a prosperous farmer and the patriarch of the Missouri Fast family.

Samuel died in 1839, and Hannah followed in 1845. Samuel’s life spanned from the American Revolution to the early years of the Republic. Like many New Englanders, he migrated within New England, then to New York, and finally to Huron County, Ohio. He wasn’t alone in this path—his father-in-law, Ephraim Munger, and other Munger family members likely made the same journey. Samuel, who acquired the title “Dr.” somewhere along the way, is buried in Day Cemetery in Huron County, Ohio, along with Hannah and many other Days.

Though his Vermont community warned him out, Samuel wasn’t truly alone. His extended family and faith in kinship likely helped him weather hard times. These families built communities wherever they went. While the history books may spotlight the “great men (and women)”—some of whom may be our cousins—it was ordinary people like Samuel and Elizabeth, struggling, moving, adapting, and building, who truly laid the foundations of this country.

Note: The author is indebted to Mary Richmond, who wrote a series of stories posted on RootsWeb that described what was known about the Day, and associated, families.

Photo: First Vermont Flag