So there we were in Cincinnati for the 2009 Christmas Holiday Season, when what before my wondrous eyes should appear but some remarkable research by daughter, Colleen, which reveals something of which I was completely unaware.
Quoting from just a tiny section of multi-page documentation:
“Hezekiah Newcomb married Jerusha Bradford on November 14, 1716. Jerusha was the great-granddaughter of William Bradford, who arrived on the Mayflower in 1620, and who was Governor of the Plymouth Colony for many years.”
Basically, everything is tracked without break from that point to Mabel (Newcomb) MacClasky, “Mother of Kathryn (1902), Isabel (1903), Jennie (1907), Isaac Dennison (1909) and Wilma Newcomb MacClasky (1912).”
Isabel (1903) was my Mother, Isabel M. Cavanaugh, headed for Heaven in 1998 in her 95th year of life, finally joining her husband, Donald Cavanaugh, after a full half-century of widowhood. “This is the longest time he’s been away”, said Mom, just weeks before their reunion.
The transcript Isabel’s granddaughter, Colleen, provided is utterly fascinating.
It includes all sorts of curious notations, including a four year-old falling into boiling soap (unpleasant consequences), a father acquitted of killing his son (details unprovided), and piracy at sea, courtesy of one Thomas Newcomb, cited as a “Soldier of the Revolution”, drafted into the American Army under George Washington on 23 August, 1777, at the age of 16.
There are fishermen, farmers, soldiers, merchants, surveyors, constables, judges, tanners, tavern owners, ministers, blacksmiths and wagon makers strewn throughout the pages of our ancestry. We are told of babies by the dozen, “troublesome Indians” by the score and at least one extramarital affair, balanced quite nicely by sworn testimony that old Hezekiah Newcomb (1693-1772)) led a “virtuous, pious and truly exemplary life” and “was almost never seen without a Bible in his hands.”
Thus I find myself tracked back to the Mayflower.
Depending on the mathematician, I would estimate there are probably only several million of us left.
I’m just hoping my drinking buddy Richard doesn’t find out.
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