#25 Royal Descents, Notable Kin, and Printed Sources: Figures in American Folklore
Gary Boyd Roberts
Published Date : March 11, 1988
After a three-month hiatus
I return to this column, and to my faithful readers, and wish to discuss one of
the three major topics in my new book. Notable Kin Volume Two is
available from Carl Boyer, 3rd or the Society's Sales Department for
$30 plus $3.50 postage and handling. This new volume completes my examination of
the range of the "A New England family published in NEXUS "Notable Kin"
columns, 1986-95. The first major topic - tycoons - is followed by coverage of
15 American artists, 12 "Yankee Inventors" and eight antiquarians, plus eight
genealogists, associated with NEHGS.
The next six chapters cover the
overall topic of American folklore - descendants and "kin of kin" of Pocahontas,
sources for and descendants of the Salem witchcraft victims of 1692, "Nantucket
Soup," then classic "Figures in American Folklore," Texans, and creators and
depictors of the American West. Hollywood, the topic and seven chapters that
follow, and tycoons, the preceding topic and first three chapter of Volume
Two, may be subjects of later columns. "Figures in American Folklore" covers
"Johnny Appleseed," "Buffalo Bill" Cody, "Wild Bill" Hickok, showman P.T.
Barnum, the midgets C.S. Stratton ("General Tom Thumb") and his wife, born Mercy
Lavinia Warren Bump, alleged murderess Lizzie Borden, serial killer Herman
Webster Mudgett, and outlaws Jesse and Frank James. Appleseed - John Chapman,
1774-1845 - was a Trumbull descendant and a fourth cousin once-removed of John
Quincy Adams through the Fowle family of Charlestown (I added Appleseed and his
kinsman, Benjamin Thompson, Jr., Count Rumford, to the George Fowle genealogy by
E.C. Fowle, which we published in 1990). Appleseed has other presidential
cousins via Richardsons and Morses.
The great-grandparents of "Buffalo
Bill" Cody were Philip Cody and Abigail Emerson, this last of the Ipswich
Emersons that also produced the philosopher and poet, plus Presidents Fillmore
and Taft. Hickok, a second cousin four times removed of former President Bush,
was descended from the Butler, Daggett and Mayhew families of Martha's Vineyard,
from Rev. John Robinson of Leyden, and from the Dwights of Northampton,
ancestors of four presidents of Yale, two first ladies (Ellen Wilson and Nancy
Reagan), Mrs. Rudyard Kipling, and various other figures treated or mentioned in
these books. Via their mutual ancestor, Thomas Sherwood of Fairfield,
Connecticut (died 1655) Barnum and his discovery and protege, "General Tom
Thumb" were half fifth cousins twice removed, and Stratton, like Hickok, was
descended from a sister of Scituate founder Timothy Hatherly. Mrs. "Tom Thumb,"
one of whose middle names was Warren, had five Mayflower lines - from
Billington, Cooke, Doty, Hopkins and Richard Warren. Like Hickok and George
Bush, she was a Mayhew descendant (three times over).
Lizzie Borden was a
patrilineal cousin of Gail Borden of Borden Milk, and of Canadian Prime Minister
Sir Robert Laird Borden. She, Sir Winston Churchill through his mother, and
playwright Tennessee Williams were all descended from the immigrant Thomas Cooke
of Portsmouth, R.I., subject of the two-volume 1987 genealogy by Jane Fletcher
Fiske of the Register. Mudgett, serial killer of "Murder Castle" during
Chicago=s 1893 World=s Fair, whose victims are said to
total over 200, was descended from many of the founding families of Hampton,
N.H., including Batchelder, Sanborn, and Dearborn (this line was brought to my
attention, in fact, by our own David Curtis Dearborn - a remote cousin).
Mudgett was also a Coffin descendant, and distantly related to all of the
figures listed in my chapter on "Nantucket Soup." The mother=s mother=s mother=s mother of Jesse and Frank James
was Rachel Dorsey of the well-known Maryland family ancestral also to Jane
Schwerdtfeger of the Education Department. Several of Rachel=s immediate ancestors were also
forebears of the Duchess of Windsor, who is thus a sixth cousin, a half sixth
cousin, and a seventh cousin once removed six times over of Jesse and Frank
James.
"New England and Texas" covers the
Allen-Baldwin-Rice-Farish-Howard Hughes clan in Houston (associated with Rice
University, Exxon, and Hughes Tool), the H.L Hunts of Dallas, Stephen F. Austin,
founder of the Austin Colony, and the King-Klebergs of the King Ranch. I also
cover Gail Borden of Borden Milk, mentioned above (a Roger Williams descendant),
"Shanghai Pierce" the Texas cattleman born in Little Compton, R.I., who
introduced Brahman cattle to Texas, a brother-in-law of desert artist Georgia
O=Keeffe, and Republican Senator John
Tower, with a nod to young Governor George Walker Bush, a likely presidential
candidate.
William Marsh Rice was born in Springfield, Mass., and was
descended from Governor Thomas Dudley and Dr. Richard Palgrave among immigrants
of royal descent. Two great-nieces were Libbie Randen Rice, wife of William
Stamps Farish, Jr., president of both Humble Oil Company (now Exxon) and
Standard Oil of New Jersey; and Ella Botts Rice, first wife of billionaire
aviator, movie producer and recluse, Howard Robard Hughes, Jr. Rice=s sister-in-law, the grandmother of
Mrs. Farish and Mrs. Hughes, was the daughter of an early Houston mayor and a
niece of the wife of Houston founder Augustus Chapman Allen. There are
connections "back east" to Kingman Brewster of Yale, and "out west" to the
Tunneys of California. Mrs. H.L. Hunt, wife of the oil baron, and mother of
Bunker, Nelson, Lamar, Margaret, and Caroline of the Mansion in Dallas, was born
Lyda Bunker, of much Nantucket ancestry (at least Bunker, Coffin, Folger,
Gardner, Hussey, and Starbuck, most several times over) and a descendant of
James Chilton of the Mayflower. Mrs. Richard King, long-time matriarch
of her husband=s ranch, was born Henrietta Maria
Morse Chamberlain, a descendant of Richard Warren and Gov. William Bradford of
the Mayflower, and of Barnstable founder Rev. John Lathrop, an ancestor
of Grant, FDR and Bush.
Stephen F. Austin of the Austin Colony was
descended from the Austin of Charlestown, Huggins of Hampton (N.H.), Adams of
Newbury, and Nicholas Allen of Dorchester families. President R.B. Hayes was a
third cousin once removed. Shanghai Pierce was a Rogers, Alden, Cooke, and
Warren Mayflower descendant, shared Fobes and Mitchell ancestors with
the late Princess of Wales, and her sons, and was royally descended through the
great Anne (Marbury) Hutchinson of Boston, Rhode Island, and New York. A second
cousin of Pierce was the paternal grandmother of cinema genius Orson Welles. The
industrialist Robert Ralph Young of Fort Worth, who in 1954 wrested control of
the New York Central Railroad from Morgans and Vanderbilts, married Anita Ten
Eyck O=Keeffe, Georgia=s sister, also a Lathrop and
Mayflower Fuller descendant, of royal lineage via Edward FitzRandolph
of Mass. and N.J. John Tower belonged to a Louisiana branch of the Tower family
of Hingham, Mass. Millard Fillmore was a third cousin twice removed and other
presidential ancestors were Morse and Fiske. If elected in 2000, George Walker
Bush, like his father before him of Yankee, mid-Atlantic and Southern ancestry
(the first two legacies reinforced by the ancestry of former First Lady Barbara
Pierce Bush) is probably related to over half of the American people (I have not
yet traced the ancestry of his wife).
I shall cover "Molders and
Mythologizers of the American West," plus Nantucketers, the descendants of
Pocahontas and of the 1692 witchcraft victims, in my next two columns. I hope
readers find this series enticing. Both for the surprising inclusion of such
folkloric notables in the "New England family," and for the intrinsic interest
in these figures themselves, I thought a distillation of this portion of my new
book would be of general interest to readers.