Ancestors of Morris Robinette Frazee by Carlyle E. Hystad Ancestors of Morris Robinette Frazee by Carlyle E. Hystad First Edition March 2008 1 Ancestors of Morris Robinette Frazee Introduction Deep Roots in America This document is my effort to describe the information I have collected over many years regarding the ancestors of my mother, Esther Frazee, and her siblings, Alice, Morris, and Vance. 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. Morris’ father was Morris Clifford Frazee, and I have traced some of his ancestors back to the Pilgrims’ Plymouth Colony. And an ancestor was one of the first settlers of Staten Island in what was then New Netherland. Morris’ 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. And 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 his ancestors survived shipwrecks while crossing the Atlantic! Morris’ Grandparents Morris’ father’s parents were Moses Robinett Frazee and Harriet Ellen Morris. Morris’ 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. Until recently I had not found 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 recently discovered that his claim of being an orphan was not quite accurate, 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 grandparents of these four grandparents (Morris’ great, great grandparents). Twelve of these fourteen great, great grandparents were born in America, between 1753 and 1787. A few of Morris’ 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 on only 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 Cowdery, 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. Cowdery, Mr. Mills or Mr. James. Mainly American Although I have not been able to determine the country of origin of all of Morris’ ancestors, this seems rather irrelevant at this point, because all of the 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 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 savage Indians were still scalping people when our ancestors were settling in America. Did any of our ancestors lose their scalps? Or were they already bald? This book may also answer such other intriguing questions as: Did any of our ancestors fight on the “Patriot” or the “Loyalist” side in the Revolutionary War? 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 Immigration to America 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 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. 4 Between 1645 and 1670, some 45,000 Royalists and/or indentured servants left England and settled primarily in the colonies south of New England, including Virginia and the Carolinas, when the British Parliament overthrew the monarchy. 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. Germans migrated early into several colonies but mostly to Pennsylvania, where they made up a third of the population by the time of Independence. Between about 1710 and 1775, around 250,000 Scotch-Irish left Ulster (the northern province of Ireland) and settled in western Pennsylvania and the mountainous areas of the colonies of Virginia and the Carolinas, including what is now known as West Virginia and eastern Kentucky and Tennessee. The majority of African slaves were brought to the future United States before it gained independence. The numbers remain murky, but it is estimated that some 300,000 slaves arrived in the colonies before Independence, and some 100,000 were imported in the period between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. The slave trade was outlawed in 1808. And between 1700 and 1770, about 50,000 European convicts were shipped to North America. Most of these gained their freedom after serving a few years as indentured servants. Most of these were sent to the southern colonies, where labor was in greatest demand. In the first half of the 1800s, at least 500,000 Germans immigrated to the United States. About 20,000 came in the years 1816-1817, fleeing a famine, and about 60,000 fled to America after the failed Revolutions of 1848. About 1.8 million Irish immigrated to the United States and Canada during the Great Potato Famine of 1845 - 1850. Sources of Information There have been many sources for the information I have collected over the years. The most important are: - A Frazee bible that was passed down through several Frazee generations and was in the possession of Morris R. Frazee when I saw it. It contained family names and some dates, going back to Morris’ great, great grandparents, Moses Frazee and Priscilla Morris. - A document provided to me by May Smith Hystad (Alfred Hystad’s wife), who was Morris’ cousin and a descendant of Morris’ great grandparents, Samuel Smith and Almira Cotton. The document tracked the Smith family back to the Plymouth 5 Colony, and I have been able to verify almost all of the information in that document. - Information provided to me by Shirley Thompson, Morris’ niece, who had received papers from members of the Morris family, with information on the Morris family going back to Colonial times in Pennsylvania. - The United States Decennial Census records, which I initially searched in the National Archives in Washington, DC, and subsequently searched online through Ancestry.com. These records provide key information on family relationships, births, deaths, place of residence, etc. for the years 1850 through 1930 (the latest Census available to the public). Census records for 1790 through 1840 show names and location of heads of household only, and are not useful for determining family relationships, but are helpful to verify location of family heads at ten year intervals. - Many reports on the results of private genealogical studies, primarily focused on an individual’s ancestors, obtained from many sources, including the Library of Congress, the Daughters of the American Revolution Library, the Mormon Church libraries, many World Wide Web sites, and from personal correspondence with distant cousins. - The work of the General Society of Mayflower Descendants, which has produced detailed records of many of the descendants of the Mayflower passengers, through at least the first five generations. This work makes it easy to trace ancestors to the Mayflower if you are able to connect your ancestors to any of the hundreds of thousands of descendants documented through the first five generations. It is estimated that there are now about 30 million descendants of the Mayflower passengers, so this is not a particularly exclusive group. Readers should keep in mind that this research is a work in progress, and new or different information may be discovered at any time. Although I have included here only the genealogical information that I am reasonably confident is accurate, we are dealing with information that spans hundreds of years, and it is likely that some of it may be incorrect or misleading. Readers should also keep in mind that even when authentic documentation shows parent and child relationships, such relationships may not be genetic, particularly regarding relationships between father and child. Modern DNA studies have shown that in some communities over 20 percent of documented father-child relationships are not supported by DNA evidence (in some cases not even the mother knew for sure who was the father). Of course there is a much greater level of certainty in mother-child relationships, but cases of undocumented adoptions by families, particularly of babies born of other family members out of wedlock, are not impossible. Because of this uncertainty, some genealogists have gone to DNA testing to track family relationships, which seems to me to be a bit obsessive. Readers are encouraged to continue this research effort, to find missing links, to add new historical perspective, or correct errors. You will discover that doing genealogical research is a very interesting way of learning history. 6 Presentation In the subsequent chapters I will trace our ancestors from their earliest days in America up through their arrival and settlement in McKenzie County, North Dakota, where Morris was born in 1914, and where his last living grandparent died in 1932. In some cases I start with information available about the lives of these ancestors before they came to America. Rather than taking you backwards through time, I will try to follow the tracks that took our ancestors from Europe to North Dakota over a period of over 300 years, from the early 1600s to 1932. The history of our ancestors is also the history of much of the European settlement of America I have not provided the sources of specific data presented, because it is very time- consuming and very boring. But if any reader is interested in the source for particular data, I will be happy to attempt to provide the source. This paper was originally written about my mother, Esther Lillian Frazee, but the same information applies to her sister, Alice Irene Frazee, as well as to her two brothers, Morris and Vance. 7 Chapter 1: An Introduction to Morris’ Parents & Grandparents This chapter provides a brief introduction to Morris’ parents and grandparents, for those younger readers who are not familiar with them. In later chapters you will learn much more about them and their ancestors. Morris’ father, Morris Clifford Frazee, came to McKenzie County, North Dakota, probably in the summer of 1906, and acquired 160 acres of land in what was then pretty much an uninhabited grassy plain. He came by railroad from Chicago to Williston, and then walked or hitched wagon rides, to explore available public lands south of the Missouri River. He was late in deciding to make a homestead claim, because most of the best land in the country that was available for homesteading had already been claimed. The more fertile lands in Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and eastern North Dakota were long gone. He also was a little late in life to be setting off by himself to attempt to start a farm from scratch in the barrens of western North Dakota. He was already 37 years old when he decided to stuff his soft office job in Illinois and head west. Morris Clifford did not care much for his given name, and he usually went by his middle name, Clifford, or just his initials, M.C. He also didn’t care much for his age. For many years he claimed he was at least five years younger than he really was. Only when he was pushing 90 years did he feel it was preferable to admit his real age. Morris Clifford’s father was Moses Robinett Frazee. Moses was born and raised in Ohio, and worked on a farm in his youth, but then spent most of his working years at various jobs on the railroad. Moses had grown up on the family farm in Ohio, and helped his brothers run the farm after his father died at a young age. His ancestors were among the first settlers in what is now Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and Ohio. His earliest ancestors in America were in the Plymouth Colony by 1629. Although Moses grew up on a farm, his son Morris Clifford grew up in town, while Moses worked as a railroad conductor, and Morris Clifford had almost no first-hand experience with farming. At least not until he tried to survive as a farmer in western North Dakota. Morris Clifford’s mother, Harriet Ellen Morris, was the youngest child of a large family. She grew up on a farm in Ohio, where her father had settled after moving from Pennsylvania. Her ancestors were among the first settlers in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Ohio. Her ancestors were in America before the War for Independence. Harriet Ellen Morris married Moses Frazee in 1861, when she was 19 years old. She bore four children, two girls and then two boys, and had the job of raising them pretty much on her own as Moses was traveling about the mid-west on some of the many passenger trains which were the primary mode of transportation at the time. They moved to Illinois when the kids were still young, and lived there until Moses 8 was ready to retire from railroad work. They then moved to a small farm in southern Indiana, and Moses died there in 1905. Meanwhile the boys had grown and left home and were on their own, but the two daughters continued to live at home (and they later came to McKenzie County). After Moses died, Harriet Ellen moved to McKenzie County where she lived out her remaining years. Morris’ mother, Pearl May Finley, came to McKenzie County, North Dakota when she was 20 years old. She came with her parents when her father homesteaded 152 acres adjoining the Frazee homestead, in 1906 or1907. The family, including her mother and younger sister, moved from a farm a short distance north of Fergus Falls, in Otter Tail County, Minnesota. Pearl was used to the hard work of farm life, but was disappointed with the move to North Dakota. She missed the trees and lakes of Otter Tail County, but mainly she missed the attention she received from the young men in Otter Tail County, which was a bustling place compared with the barren plains of McKenzie County. Pearl’s father was Andrew Theodore Finley. He had come to Otter Tail County when he was about 20 years old, all the way from the far northern part of New York state, right on the Canadian border. He probably caught rides on freight trains, because he almost certainly did not have money for passenger fare. He had been working as a “servant” and farm hand for a farm family in St. Lawrence County, New York, since he was a small lad. His father apparently had abandoned Theodore and his two brothers after their mother died. Andrew Theodore apparently wanted to distance himself from his father, and his grandparents, who continued to live in St. Lawrence County. Upon arriving in Minnesota, he found work as a farm hand in Western Township, Otter Tail County, just down the road a piece from the Samuel Smith farm. Andrew Theodore did not use his first name most of his life; he went by Theodore or A.T., possibly because his father’s name was Andrew. Theodore Finley’s grandfather came from Ireland in the early 1800s, and his grandmother was from Canada. His ancestors are the only ancestors of Morris who came to America after it gained independence from Britain. Pearl’s mother was Mary Elizabeth Rose Smith. She was the daughter of Samuel and Almira Smith, who had a farm in Western Township, Otter Tail County. The Smith family had come to Minnesota from Indiana, and prior to that had come from Ohio, and Connecticut and Massachusetts. They had been in America since the beginning of British settlements in America, and her ancestors were already well-established in Plymouth Colony when some of the Frazee ancestors arrived there. Mary Smith married Theodore Finley in 1885, and they farmed in Otter Tail County, where their three children were born. They moved to McKenzie County in about 1906, and broke sod to start a new farm and new life. They lived their last years in McKenzie County, where Theodore died, a broken hearted man who knew that he had killed his beloved Mary Elizabeth Rose. 9