NO BUNK!

I haven’t had a chance yet to read the article in the Smithsonian
Magazine yet that’s been the cause of some excellent blog posts
from fellow genealogy bloggers. So I won’t comment directly
on it until I do. But I will voice my thoughts on the theory that
“Genealogy is Bunk”. It seems to me that implies that it's a waste
of valuable time and effort.

To me, it’s been the exact opposite.

I have a degree in history and I'm an avid reader, but I’ve learned
things I never knew about while tracing my family history:



- I learned about the families from Massachusetts that
settled in Nova Scotia after the British took control of Acadia
from the French while researching my Colburn/Colborn
ancestors.


- I learned that French-Canadians exiled from their homes
lived for a time in the home of an ancestor in Andover, Ma.
while researching my Abbott ancestors.


-I learned about the early Mormon church in Massachusetts
while researching an unknown cousin named Varanes Libby
on a website run by Connell O’Donovan about Elder Walker
Lewis, a black man ordained as a Mormon elder around 1843.
I also learned more about the early textile mill industry that
Varanes worked in at other websites.


-I learned about Canadian privateers and a distant relative
named Benjamin Ellenwood while researching my Ellingwood
line.


- I learned about early Colonial American justice researching
the death of Ruth Perley Ames and the trial of Elizabeth and
Jonathan Ames for murder.


There are things I learned for those posts that I didn’t include
when I wrote them because of space and time. But I learned
something new in each of those instances and I’ve learned from
reading the blogs of my fellow genea-bloggers.


By tracing my genealogy, I’m learning about people and history.


Isn’t that what the Smithsonian Institute is all about?

VARANES LIBBEY(LIBBY) Pt2

The story of Varanes Libbey strikes me as being characteristic
of that era in the history of New England. Hundreds of men and
women left the family farms and the hill country to come to work
in the mills of Massachusetts. Men could earn from .88 cents to
around 3.50 a day in wages depending on their performance at the
job. Women were paid half that amount. That was still the best
wage available to a woman worker for that era. Mill workers would
work 12 hour days,6 days a week but anyone raised on a farm was
used to working all day everyday already. And the Lowell Mills
were originally intended as a sort of grand social experiment as
well as an industry so there were libraries, boardinghouses and an
expectation of proper moral behavior on the part of the workers.


Little wonder that Varanes and others like him left the farms for
work in the textile mills. Better money and in some cases better
living conditions. Eventually the noble intentions of the mill
owners were pushed aside for profits, but for a time it was a good
oppurtunity to make your way in the world.


Varanes was about 25 when he was made a Branch President of
the LDS Church in Lowell. That would seem to indicate he must
have been a serious young man with qualities that would lead to
his appointment. Yet only two months later he was replaced in the
position and apparently left the church shortly afterwards.



The next record I could find of Varanes was in the Adams &
Sampson Boston Street Directory of 1865:

“Libby Varanes porter, 28 India, house at Chelsea”


So Varanes left the mills at some time or another as well as the
Church. I have to wonder why he just didn’t go back home to the
family farm? Was it gone? Had one of his sisters married and her
husband taken over the farm in his absence? Did he actually
return home but left it once more to seek his fortune elsewhere?


Was there even in fact a farm left to go home to in the first place?


Or was it because of the suddenly controversial nature of the
Mormons as the doctrine of polygamy was introduced and the
New England church was rocked by accusations concerning the
conduct of William Smith, the brother of Joseph Smith? Certainly
that would have been a topic of gossip and speculation among
“proper” New Englanders. Was Varanes made to feel that he
could not go home again because of his former association with
the church?



Whatever the reason, by 1865 the 46 year old Varanes worked in
a building on India Street, along the Boston waterfront but lived
over in Chelsea across the Mystic River. He was still living there
at Walnut St. on the 1880 census as Connell O’Donovan’s
research discovered.

Working as a porter must have been hard work, but I like to think
that Varanes enjoyed being part of life on the Boston waterfront at
a time when it was still bustling with ships and visitors from far off
exotic places.


Quite a journey for a boy from Bethel, Maine.


This is why I’m now hopelessly addicted to genealogy. You never
know what new story you will find about one of your ancestors!

VARANES LIBBEY(LIBBY)

I’ve described here before how I occasionally pick one name from
my family tree and do a quick Google to see if I can find anything
about them that I haven’t found before. Lately I’ve been doing
this at the Google Book website.

About a week ago I was looking for more confirmation of the
marriage of John Ellingwood (Ellinwood or Ellenwood in some of
the records) to Zerviah Abbott and my googling brought me to the
book A Genealogical Register of the Descendants of George
Abbot, of Andover: George Abbot, of Rowley, Thomas Abbot of
Andover, Arthur Abbot, of Ipswich, Robert Abbot, of Branford
Ct., and George Abbot of Norwalk, Ct.

Which, for interests of time and my aching fingers, will henceforth
be referred to in this piece as the Abbot Genealogical Register or
AGR.

On Page 71 I found “Zerviah A.” listed among the children of
Jonathan and Mehitabel Abbott(they were both Abbotts by birth
descended from George Abbott and Hannah Chandler and were
3rd cousins) and her marriage in 1789 to “John Ellenwood” of
Bethel. I looked through the list of their children and compared
it to what I already had here, adding the names of spouses and
children I hadn’t know about to my files. Among them I found
listed my ancestor John E., his marriage to Rachel Barrows and
the names of their children includes my 2x great grandfather
Asa F. Ellingwood.

(Asa would marry Florilla Dunham in 1850 and it’s through them
that I’m related to Tim Abbott and Chris Dunham.)


While adding the names of Zerviah and John’s children to my files
one of the entries caught my interest. Their oldest child Sarah is
listed in the AGR as marrying a Thomas Libbey of Newry and
having a son with the name Varanes. It certainly was one of the
more unusual names I’ve run across among the family and it
made me wonder what had become of Varanes Libbey. So I
googled his name. There wasn’t much online on Varanes but there
was a surprise.

I found Varanes on a website on the early history of the Mormon
Church in Lowell Mass. that was compiled by Martha Mayo and
Connell O’Donovan. There are brief biographies of the church
members and Varanes is under the name Varanes/Varanus/
Veranus Libbe (or Libby):


“Born about 1819 in Maine or New Hampshire to Samuel Libby
and Sarah Stevens Ellenwood of Saco, York, Maine. Married Ann
Smith in 1842 (in Lowell?) Worked as a manufacturer and "white
washer" in the Lowell mills. Baptized in Lowell by Wilford
Woodruff on October 16, 1844 (along with Mary Thornton), and
almost immediately was made Branch President. By mid-
December 1844, he was replaced as Lowell Branch President by
travelling missionary Elder Jesse W. Crosby. He probably left
the Mormon Church about that time as well. Varanus and Ann
had three daughters: Lydia, Emma, and Charlotte.

Lydia A. Libby was born September 27, 1843 in Lowell. She never
married and lived with her parents the rest of her life, becoming a
dress maker to help support her family.

Emma Priscilla Libby was born June 2, 1849 in Medford,
Middlesex, Mass. She married Hugh Martin of Nova Scotia,
Canada in November 1869, and they also lived with her parents,
Varanus and Ann Smith Libby. Emma and Hugh Martin had one
daughter, Elizabeth E. Martin, born about 1872 in Lowell.

The last of the three daughters, Charlotte W. Libby, was born
about 1854. In 1870, she is living at home in Chelsea.

By the 1880 Census, the extended Varanus Libby family (except
Ann Smith Libby who had apparently dead) was all living
together on Walnut Street in Chelsea, Suffolk, Massachusetts
along with Ann's brother Elijah R. Smith.”
http://people.ucsc.edu/~odonovan/lowell_members.html#augustus

This was naturally all new to me since I hadn’t even known of
Varanes’ existence until an hour before I read this entry. I’m fairly
sure my Dad knew nothing of it. But his grandmother Clara
Ellingwood had died while both her sons were quite young so it is
possible that they’d never heard about their cousin Varanes.

I emailed Connell O’Donovan for permission to quote from his
website and research which he graciously gave.In his reply says
that he feels Varanes’s departure from the Latter Day Saints might
have been part of the upheavals over the doctrine of polygamy.
He included information that will appear in an article he hopes to
publish next year and which I’ll not mention here until it does
appear but there will be further mention of Varanes in it.


I’ll have some more thoughts on this in the next post.