Mightier Acorns

Looking for the link from Harlow Wells to Thomas Wells

Our story thus far:

I have been examining the evidence I have connecting my grandmother, Alberta (Tuttle) Clark back to our possible ancestor, one of the founding families of the Providence Plantations in what is now Rhode Island. We started with her father, Alfred Tuttle, and I feel confident that we have solid documentary evidence connecting him to his mother, Florence (Hart) Tuttle, her mother, Hattie (Wells) Hart, and Hattie’s father, Harlow Wells.

Unlike everyone else we’ve looked at to this point, none of Harlow’s records name his parents, and only one record gives us a precise place of birth: Brandon, NY.

Normally, I avoid looking to online trees for clues. They are almost always unsourced and rarely include enough information to help you get around a brick wall. But I’m out of options, so as long as I take a critical approach, maybe I can learn something useful.

I found three member trees on Ancestry that named Harlow, all supported by the source records we already looked at; his FamilySearch profile lists 22 sources, but none we have not already seen; and he had an existing profile on WikiTree which cited “Family records” and a couple of the sources we have already seen. All of these trees name his parents as Thomas Wells and Cyrena Whitford, but none of the sources tie them to Harlow, specifically. Lastly, Thomas and Cyrena each have memorials on FindAGrave, which include (unsourced) names of their children. (There are no photos of their markers, either, which I would be curious to see.)

Next, we’ll take a look at the evidence we have for Thomas and Cyrena, and see if we can rule out or confirm that Harlow is one of their children. We have Vermont Vital Records for Thomas’s birth (which names his parents) and for the 1819 marriage of Thomas and Cyrena Whitford in Bridport, Addison County, Vermont. Thomas and Cyrena moved to Brandon, Franklin County, New York, around 1824 – as is supported by U.S. Census Records and an entry in A history of St. Lawrence and Franklin counties, New York: from the earliest period to the present time by Franklin Benjamin Hough (page 484).

I hope to someday learn what “family records” the information came from, but for now, I’m going to take the list of children named in their FindAGrave memorials as a starting point. Those children are:

• Melissa

• Alonzo

• Harlow

• Julia

• Olive

• Eunice

Thomas’s will and probate documents aren’t as informative as I would have hoped, but they do name his son, Alonzo, and a grandson, Arthur Horrigan, as the heir of his late daughter, Eunice. Melissa’s 1886 Massachusetts death certificate also names her birthplace as “Brandon, NY” and her parents as “Thomas Wells” born in “Bridgeport, VT” and “Irene” born in “Crown…” (probably Crown Point, NY… but we’ll get to that in next week’s post).

Thomas’s family appears in Brandon in the 1830 and 1840 Census, as well, and while those records don’t name anyone other than the head of the household, what we do know about this family maps well onto the household enumerated in the census:

Thomas Wells in 1830: Brandon, Franklin, New York

Thomas Wells in 1840: Brandon, Franklin, New York

Conclusion:

This evidence isn’t 100% convincing and still doesn’t confirm a direct relationship between Harlow, Thomas, and Cyrena. I was unable to find obituaries (except for Alonzo’s, which did not mention his family by name), records, or other books like local histories or genealogies that named them. But the information that we do have seems to fit together. If Harlow was born in Brandon, New York, then it seems likely that Thomas and Cyrena were his parents.

If we learn any new facts or find any new sources, we will have to re-evaluate, but for now, I’m going to accept this connection and take one more step up the ladder.

I’d love to hear from you, especially if you’re one of the folks who put your work into one of the online trees I looked at this week, or if you’re descended from any of Harlow’s siblings. You should also subscribe so you can continue the climb with me: