Ancestors of Esther Lillian Frazee by Carlyle E. Hystad Ancestors of Esther Lillian Frazee by Carlyle E. Hystad Second Edition February, 2019 1 Ancestors of Esther Lillian Frazee Introduction Deep Roots in America This document is my effort to describe the information I have collected over many years regarding my mother’s ancestors. I have collected an enormous amount of information, with thousands of names and dates and places, which can be rather boring and meaningless and confusing. So I have attempted to present the information in a way that will be meaningful and useful, and maybe even intriguing, enjoyable, and educational. Esther’s father was Morris Clifford Frazee, and I have traced some of his ancestors back to the Pilgrims’ Plymouth Colony and beyond. And an ancestor was one of the first settlers of Staten Island in what was then New Netherland. Esther’s mother was Pearl May Finley, and I have traced several of her ancestors back to the Pilgrims’ Plymouth Colony, and at least four of her ancestors came over on the Mayflower. One ancestor is likely the only person to have lived in the Jamestown settlement in Virginia and subsequently came to Plymouth Colony on the Mayflower. And at least two of her ancestors survived shipwrecks while crossing the Atlantic! Esther’s Grandparents Esther’s father’s parents were Moses Robinette Frazee and Harriet Ellen Morris. Esther’s mother’s parents were Andrew Theodore Finley, and Mary Elizabeth Rose Smith. I have been able to obtain information on ancestors of all four grandparents. Initially I did not have any solid information on Andrew Theodore Finley’s ancestors. He claimed that he was an orphan and was raised by foster parents, and none of his descendants had any information about his family. But I discovered that his claim of being an orphan was not quite accurate; he knew and had contact with extended family, including his father, his grandparents, his brothers and others. I have obtained information on these relatives, although the information I have about Finley’s ancestors is much more limited than for the other three. I have information on all eight parents of the four grandparents (Frazee, Morris, Finley and Smith), and on fourteen of the sixteen grandparents of these four grandparents (Esther’s great, great grandparents). Twelve of these fourteen great, great grandparents were born in America, between 1753 and 1787. A few of Esther’s ancestors have been traced back as far as twelve generations, to the mid- 1500s. 2 I have identified the European country of origin for many of our ancestors. And the information provides a good basis for understanding the history of these ancestors in America. It shows the steady movement of these families from the Plymouth Colony, Massachusetts Bay Colony and the New Netherland Colony, and from later British colonial settlements in Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Virginia, and then moving west to Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Minnesota and North Dakota. Importance of Maternal Ancestors When doing genealogical research it is not an uncommon practice to focus primarily on the male line of the ancestors, such as Hystad and Frazee in my case, but each of the 87 family names I have identified (and all those not yet identified) are equally our ancestors genetically. And it is highly likely that our cultural inheritance has been influenced more by our maternal ancestors than the paternal side, because the mothers were more likely to influence their children’s practices and habits in language, food, dress, social interactions, education, etc. So Mary Smith, Harriet Morris, Abigail Wilson, Sarah Davis, Almira Cotton, Rebecca Wolcott, Alcinda Coudry, Ann Mills, Sarah James, and Priscilla Morris may be more important in shaping who we are, than Mr. Frazee, Mr. Finley, Mr. Smith, Mr. Morris, Mr. Wilson, Mr. Davis, Mr. Cotton, Mr. Wolcott, Mr. Coudry, Mr. Mills or Mr. James. Mainly American Although I have not been able to determine the country of origin of all of Esther’s ancestors, this seems rather irrelevant at this point, because all of her Frazee, Morris and Smith ancestors have been in America since before the United States gained its independence from Great Britain, and many go back nearly 400 years in this land. Other than Native Americans, it is not possible to be more “American” than these three grandparents, and very little of the unique culture of the “old countries” has survived those 400 years of Americanization. Myth or Reality During my childhood and beyond I was told various stories about our Frazee ancestors. Some of these came from my mother, some from her brother Morris, some from grandpa Frazee, and some from sources I’ve forgotten. The following pages provide answers to whether these stories are myth or reality. I was told that we have two ancestors who signed the Declaration of Independence, with the last name of Morris. It is correct that two gentlemen by the name of Morris signed the Declaration, and that we have two lines of ancestors named Morris, but are we descended from these famous Morris families? I was told that we were related to Jesse James of bank robbery infamy. We do have ancestors with the last name of James, including a William James. And Jesse had an ancestor named William James. Are we cousins of Jesse? 3 I was told or read somewhere that grandpa Frazee’s great grandpa (maybe more than one great) came to this country from France with General Lafayette during the Revolutionary War and fought the British while serving as an officer under Lafayette. Did we lose our ability to speak French somewhere along the way? I was told that we had some Dutch ancestors. We did have ancestors who lived in the early Dutch colony called New Netherland, in what is now New York, New Jersey and Deleware, and part of Connecticut. But were they Dutch? And did they wear wooden shoes? I was told that we had some Scottish ancestors, or did they just like to drink Scotch? I was told that Indians were still scalping people when our ancestors were settling in America. Did any of our ancestors lose their scalps? Or did any of our ancestors scalp Indians for the bounty money? This book will also answer such other intriguing questions as: Did any of our ancestors fight on the “Patriot” or the “Loyalist” side in the War for Independence? What roles did our ancestors play in the Civil War? Why was one of our ancestors sentenced to death and hanged by the authorities in one of the Puritan colonies in America? Why was one of our ancestors the basis for a character in a Shakespeare play? History of European Colonization of America When European countries began their efforts to colonize the Western Hemisphere after Columbus “discovered” the Hemisphere in 1492, there were fifty million to over one hundred million people living in the Hemisphere (according to current best estimates), from northern parts of North America to the southern tip of South America. It is estimated that about 40% of these Natives lived in North America. Native Americans had established cultures, economies and governmental systems throughout the Hemisphere, including almost all parts of what is now the United States. In the first decades after European contacts in the Hemisphere, the native population plummeted due to the death toll from European diseases, particularly smallpox, for which the natives had no immunity. European colonists liked to pretend that these lands were mainly vacant and were theirs for the taking, or that “savages” were occupying some portions of the land and they should be exterminated, forced to move elsewhere, or “civilized”, to make way for the advanced people of Europe. White supremacy (or English supremacy) was generally accepted by the British colonialists. Our ancestors were part of this forced European colonization of land inhabited by Native Americans. There is no evidence that our ancestors included any Native Americans, based on DNA analysis as well as historical records; they were all Europeans. 4 To understand when and why our ancestors came to America, it is helpful to have an overview of the history of the major waves of early immigration to America. The population of the colonies that later became the United States grew from zero Europeans in the mid-1500s to 3.2 million Europeans and 700,000 African slaves in 1790, when the first census was taken after the United States colonies gained independence from Britain. At that time, it is estimated that three-fourths of the population was of British descent, with Germans forming the second-largest free ethnic group and making up some 7% of the population. The first major group of settlers, between 1620 and 1640, were about 20,000 Puritans who emigrated from England, most settling in the New England area of North America. In an event known as the Great Migration, these people became the Yankees of New England, who later spread out to New York and the Upper Midwest. From 1609 to 1664, some 8,000 Dutch settlers came to New Netherland, which later became New York, New Jersey, Delaware and part of Connecticut. Between 1645 and 1670, after the British Parliament overthrew the monarchy, about 45,000 Royalists and/or indentured servants left England and settled primarily in the colonies south of New England, including Virginia and the Carolinas, From about 1675 to 1715, the Quakers made their move, leaving the Midlands, North England and Wales behind for Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware. The Quaker movement became one of the largest religious groups in early colonial America.