unless you get out this way on a trip, but I hope you will meet Rita before long. I enclose several snapshots. Please write and let us know what you are doing. Love, George
Also enclose check. Please have the florist put flowers on Mother's grave on her birthday, Oct .22. No name. Perhaps she will know.
"Of course she'll know," said the girl.
An American family history customarily has two beginnings: the one, not always so easily determinable as the other, has to do with the earliest progenitor and his arrival on this soil; the other, about which there are no doubts, has to do with the first member of the clan to distinguish himself. So many family records were destroyed by fire or the plow that guesswork has been a considerable factor in most family histories that go back beyond the War of the Revolution. Few family Bibles, tax rolls, church records of pre-Revolutionary times survived the numerous fires. An overturned candle, a glowing ember from the hearth would start a fire, and there was nothing to stop it; nearly everything in a household or a church was highly flammable, and only the lucky citizens got out alive, with their lives and nothing else. They, and their neighbors if they had any, could stand outside and watch the burning of their possessions. The farmer with his plow and the surveyor with his transit were unsentimental about disturbing buried bones and their identifying headstones; furrows had to be straight, roads had to be built where they had to be built and the road-builder would make a curve around a solid rock but not around a long-dead citizen's remains. The materials used in building and furnishing jails were more effectively fire-resistant than those thought suitable for the private residence, but prison records were often inaccurate and in any event not sought after by the descendants of the men and women recorded. Thus it was that flame and cast iron obliterated the provable line between many an early ancestor and his living, proudly curious namesake. George Bingham Lockwood and his brother Penrose were agreed that while the Robert Lockwood who emigrated to Watertown, Massachusetts, in 1630 and later settled in Fairfield, Connecticut, was in all probability their first American ancestor, their claim could be disputed by numerous other bearers of the name whose connection was, in a manner of speaking, fireproof. They had better reason to believe that their Eighteenth Century ancestor worked on the Conestoga wagon and was slain by Indians or other hostile persons. They had evidence to show that a Lockwood worked on the Conestoga wagon, lost his life in violent fashion in Central Pennsylvania, and was survived by several sons. Presumably, and almost logically, at least one of those sons settled in Nesquehela County, and when George Bingham Lockwood and his brother Penrose claimed descent from the Nesquehela County Lockwoods, they were on safe ground. Their father, Abraham Lockwood, was the son of Moses Lockwood, who was born in Nesquehela County, and there were many family Bibles, church records, and gravestones to support that claim. Actually there were, in the brothers' childhood, many living residents of Swedish Haven who had known Moses Lockwood when he arrived from Nesquehela County, and Moses Lockwood was almost surely the grandson of John Lockwood, who was born in 1761 and miraculously escaped death at the hands of the Indians who killed his father. George and Penrose Lockwood readily conceded that the 1630 Watertown Lockwood might not be their kin; and they privately admitted that the 1761-Indian-murder John Lockwood was not incontrovertibly proven to have been their grandfather's grandfather. But Moses Lockwood was certainly their grandfather - unfortunately born in 1811 rather than in the previous century - and the first to gain distinction, which he did by making a great deal of money. When he died he left a fortune of more than $200,000 in Swedish Haven real estate, coal-dredging
Also enclose check. Please have the florist put flowers on Mother's grave on her birthday, Oct .22. No name. Perhaps she will know.
"Of course she'll know," said the girl.
An American family history customarily has two beginnings: the one, not always so easily determinable as the other, has to do with the earliest progenitor and his arrival on this soil; the other, about which there are no doubts, has to do with the first member of the clan to distinguish himself. So many family records were destroyed by fire or the plow that guesswork has been a considerable factor in most family histories that go back beyond the War of the Revolution. Few family Bibles, tax rolls, church records of pre-Revolutionary times survived the numerous fires. An overturned candle, a glowing ember from the hearth would start a fire, and there was nothing to stop it; nearly everything in a household or a church was highly flammable, and only the lucky citizens got out alive, with their lives and nothing else. They, and their neighbors if they had any, could stand outside and watch the burning of their possessions. The farmer with his plow and the surveyor with his transit were unsentimental about disturbing buried bones and their identifying headstones; furrows had to be straight, roads had to be built where they had to be built and the road-builder would make a curve around a solid rock but not around a long-dead citizen's remains. The materials used in building and furnishing jails were more effectively fire-resistant than those thought suitable for the private residence, but prison records were often inaccurate and in any event not sought after by the descendants of the men and women recorded. Thus it was that flame and cast iron obliterated the provable line between many an early ancestor and his living, proudly curious namesake. George Bingham Lockwood and his brother Penrose were agreed that while the Robert Lockwood who emigrated to Watertown, Massachusetts, in 1630 and later settled in Fairfield, Connecticut, was in all probability their first American ancestor, their claim could be disputed by numerous other bearers of the name whose connection was, in a manner of speaking, fireproof. They had better reason to believe that their Eighteenth Century ancestor worked on the Conestoga wagon and was slain by Indians or other hostile persons. They had evidence to show that a Lockwood worked on the Conestoga wagon, lost his life in violent fashion in Central Pennsylvania, and was survived by several sons. Presumably, and almost logically, at least one of those sons settled in Nesquehela County, and when George Bingham Lockwood and his brother Penrose claimed descent from the Nesquehela County Lockwoods, they were on safe ground. Their father, Abraham Lockwood, was the son of Moses Lockwood, who was born in Nesquehela County, and there were many family Bibles, church records, and gravestones to support that claim. Actually there were, in the brothers' childhood, many living residents of Swedish Haven who had known Moses Lockwood when he arrived from Nesquehela County, and Moses Lockwood was almost surely the grandson of John Lockwood, who was born in 1761 and miraculously escaped death at the hands of the Indians who killed his father. George and Penrose Lockwood readily conceded that the 1630 Watertown Lockwood might not be their kin; and they privately admitted that the 1761-Indian-murder John Lockwood was not incontrovertibly proven to have been their grandfather's grandfather. But Moses Lockwood was certainly their grandfather - unfortunately born in 1811 rather than in the previous century - and the first to gain distinction, which he did by making a great deal of money. When he died he left a fortune of more than $200,000 in Swedish Haven real estate, coal-dredging
Similar Books
