Selected Branches of the Redway Family Tree
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Selected Branches of the Redway Family Tree Eugene Cole Zubrinsky, FASG SELECTED BRANCHES OF THE REDWAY FAMILY TREE Selected Branches of the Redway Family Tree Eugene Cole Zubrinsky, FASG Ojai, California 2016 Gene Zubrinsky ([email protected]) is a retired community college sociology instructor and former professional musician. A Fellow of the American Society of Genealogists, he has contributed many articles to the leading genealogical journals and local-history magazines. Copyright © 2016 by Eugene Cole Zubrinsky Published and distributed by Eugene Cole Zubrinsky 559 Pala Drive Ojai, California 93023-3547 All rights reserved. CONTENTS PREFACE vii HOW TO USE THIS BOOK ix KEY TO TITLES AND OTHER ABBREVIATIONS xi JAMES1 REDWAY: FROM INDENTURED SERVANT TO YEOMAN 1 JOHN2 REDWAY, SURVIVING SON 7 CAPT. JAMES3 REDWAY AND HIS BROTHER PRESERVED 9 JAMES4 REDWAY AND HIS BROTHERS TIMOTHY AND SAMUEL 13 MOLLY5, JAMES, JOEL, COMFORT, AND PRESERVED REDWAY 25 CHAUNCEY6, AZUBAH, DANIEL, ALBERT, DAVID, ABEL, AND HARVEY REDWAY 43 CAROLINE7, ANGELINE, ALBERT, AND MARY REDWAY 61 ALBERT8 REDWAY II AND HIS COUSIN MARIAN(8) GRISWOLD 67 LAURANCE D.9 AND ALBERT III REDWAY; OLIVE(9) COLE 71 ELIZABETH/DORA10, ALBERT IV, EDITH, LAURANCE M., AND WILLIAM REDWAY; EUGENE(10) ZUBRINSKY 75 DAVID11, ALBERT V, KATHARINE, AND JONATHAN REDWAY; CAMILLE(11) ZUBRINSKY 79 INDEX 83 PREFACE As its title implies, this genealogy is not exhaustive. Chapter one presents a particular immi- grant of the surname Redway: James1, who, though of English heritage, arrived at Hingham, Mas- sachusetts Bay Colony, in 1637 as an indentured servant from Dublin, Ireland, and in 1644 became a freeholder in Rehoboth, Plymouth Colony, where he and many of his descendants remained. The following five chapters trace a single Redway line—John2, Capt. James3, James4, Preserved5, and David6—while also presenting each man’s siblings and information about the latters’ families. The remaining chapters follow two branches of the family: one, through David6’s daughter Mary (Redway) Griswold, ends with the family of my daughter, Camille (Zubrinsky) Charles; the other, through David6’s son Albert, ends with the respective families of the late David Dugald Redway (1949–2005) and his siblings. Living persons’ vital-event data are redacted to protect their privacy. David and I were in contact by post and telephone beginning in 1989, during the period (1988– 1992) in which most of my Redway research was conducted (there have been several targeted re- sumptions over the years since). I had not met this fine man, however, until 1990, when he (an Oregonian) and I (a Californian) rendezvoused in New York City, rented a car, and visited Red- way ancestral sites in upstate New York. In 1992, David provided me with a compilation pertaining to his branch of the family, which I had offered to incorporate into my work. Assisted in recent months primarily by reliable online sources and input from David’s daughters, siblings, uncles, and several cousins, I have confirmed, augmented, and updated his information—as, independently, I have that of my branch. HOW TO USE THIS BOOK For those unfamiliar with genealogical writing conventions or who might puzzle over a couple of my stylistic innovations, a number of clarifications will be useful. All children are listed with lower-case roman numerals; a preceding arabic numeral indicates that the child is carried forward to the following chapter as a parent. The superscript number follow- ing a person’s forename (or middle name/initial or nickname, if either or both are given) indicates the number of generations he or she is from the American progenitor. Generation numbers of Red- way descendants born with another surname are parenthesized. Since all children in a family belong to the same generation, only the first child in a list of siblings receives a generation number. Foot- note reference numbers are bracketed to distinguish them from generation numbers. An underscored middle name indicates that the person went (or goes) by it, rather than by his or her forename. In multi-name chapter titles (worded thus for quick reference), the names of those in the covered lineages are also underscored. The index lists every name but does not distinguish between text and footnotes. When specific vital-event dates are unobtainable from reliable sources, approximations are often made from other data (such as age at death for calculating a birth date) or from well-grounded assumptions (a two-year interval between births, for example, or 25 and 20 as the average respec- tive ages at which most men and women first married in early New England). A date preceded by about or ca. should be considered accurate within a year or two of the stated year; the word say accompanies less precise estimates. Most source notes are embedded in the text, virtually always in abbreviated form; see pages xi–xxxii for full citations. While most of the footnotes are discursive, when a string of citations is so lengthy as to jeopardize the flow of the narrative, it is made a footnote. Many early dates are presented with dual years—1685/6 and 1706[/7], for example. While the uninitiated reader might assume that such renditions lack precision, the opposite is true. Cor- rectly written, pre-1752 dates from 1 January through 24 March were recorded with dual years to account for the coexistence in England and its colonies of two dating styles: Old Style (year begin- ning 25 March, Annunciation Day) and New Style (year beginning 1 January, the historic secular date). When a date calling for dual years is recorded with only one—not a rare occurrence—it raises the question of whether Old Style or New Style dating was intended; 25 January 1706, for example, could be 1705/6 or 1706/7. The accepted practice is to present the incomplete date as recorded unless other evidence is found that reveals what the omitted year should be, in which case it is inserted in brackets (as above). Certain quoted passages from seventeenth- and eighteenth-century records contain the word ye, which in Early Modern English was an abbreviation of the. The y used in this manner had evolved from an older character, þ, called thorn; both were pronounced th. ❋❋❋ Most of us indulge a sense of pride when reflecting (selectively) upon our ancestors, particu- larly those, such as James1 Redway, who were among the first Europeans to reach these shores x Selected Branches of the Redway Family Tree and, as central characters in America’s founding mythology, command great prestige. Not wishing to diminish their personal qualities or the adversities they endured and often (but not always) over- came, I nevertheless perceive a common tendency to idealize our forebears as heroic figures of extraordinary fortitude, virtue, imagination, etc. Were they not instead mostly ordinary folk doing pretty much what they had to do, as have countless others over the millennia in rising to compar- able challenges? Caught up in the sweep of historical forces, did they not act largely according to the opportunities and constraints afforded by objective reality and their cultural predispositions? I believe so. Yet we often invoke them in defining ourselves (“I am of these remarkable people”), basking in an aura of our own creation. It is not unusual when taking credit by association that we also identify one or more attributes in ourselves that we ascribe to inheritance—a genetic legacy of the “good stock” from which we come or of a specific precursor several generations removed. We need not accept the proposition that nature trumps nurture to acknowledge that much about us is legitimately attributable to our genes. Contemplating a crazy uncle or other less-than-exemplary relatives, however, should quickly disabuse us of the good-stock notion. We are equally misguided in thanking (or blaming) a particu- lar ancestral group for bequeathing us traits—religiosity, a love of learning, or a propensity to gesticulate, dance, fight, or drink, for example—that, although culturally transmitted, we mistake as being physically “bred in the bone.” We are on similarly thin ice in supposing, for example, that our high cheekbones came from a Native American fifth-great-grandmother, or that musical aptitude runs in our family due to an antecedent who was a fifer in the Revolutionary War. There is an important distinction between a genealogical connection to a direct ancestor, based on demonstrated descent, and a genetic one, in which we carry some of that person’s genes. Because genes assort randomly, the more generations removed we are from a particular ancestor, the more likely it becomes that we carry none of his or her genes. As Donald Lines Jacobus, the father of modern genealogy, put it: [T]he prevalent notion that certain traits characterize a certain American family . is sheer non- sense. [T]he law of averages and the laws of heredity preclude the possibility that all, or even a majority, of the several thousand descendants of the first American ancestor will inherit one certain trait. And this is considering only descendants in the male line. [F]rom a different angle[,] [s]uppose that a living member of your family numbers among his ancestors from five hundred to a thousand immigrant ancestors – and that is a fair computation if he is wholly of early colonial ancestry [86 years after its first publication, this is a great underestimate]: what are his chances of inheriting a given trait from a single one of these forebears, even though that one be his ancestor on the male line? (Genealogy as Pastime and Profession, 2nd ed. [Baltimore, 1968], 92–93) (Ironically, we welcome horse thieves and the like into our family narratives—at sufficient remove, they are “colorful”—and ignore the genetic implications we might otherwise consider.) The foregoing observations are not intended to denigrate the labor of genealogical research (when conducted with rigor) or to devalue its fruits (when correctly apprehended).