The old Thomas and John

I found and started reading a genealogy from my mother's side (the Wallaces), and in there were a couple of twins, Euphalia and Orpha, who appeared three times. Once I think it was repeated from another, but basically the way they appeared twice in the first place was, both their parents were Wallaces on the same genealogy. Well, I'd seen that before in fact I saw it on the Leverett side. Here's the story.

Back in the early 1700s Knight Leverett became aware that he was the main inheritor of the Leverett name and was proud of it; he was a metalsmith but he took his boys, John and Thomas, to the Church to be baptized (unlike his dad and grandpa) and participate in the community.

When they grew up they went into the printing business. Knight had married a bookseller's daughter, and they more or less inherited her interests as well as her father's trade. As printers they ordered a ream of paper from Ben Franklin in Philadelphia, who they most likely knew from his Boston days (he'd grown up in Boston); the paper never made it to Boston, and he promised to send more. As an aside we know this mostly because Franklin's papers and letters were so assiduously saved and preserved.

But John soon went into the booming women's goods business, selling things like buttons, zippers, and bows, from the Town Dock, and pretty soon both boys were making a fortune. Coming into about 1750 Boston was prosperous and materialistic, and John was making money hand over fist at the Town Dock while Thomas was printing grammar books and every other kind of book that was being used throughout the colony.

John, being the oldest, got the family home where John the President of Harvard grew up, whereas Thomas bought an estate out in Medford where they made good rum. Both had lots of kids. John's oldest was named John, while Thomas's oldest was named Thomas.

John's fate took a turn for the worse when selling British goods became the wrong business to be in. Pretty soon his store had been caught on fire by a mob and in fact mobs were damaging British goods all over the place as in, Tea Party. John was forced to become an Overseer of the Poor, which is kind of like a social worker, but a job usually done by established business people. Thomas went on printing grammar books and making a fortune. Both sent their eldest to Harvard, and there they were, young Thomas and John, inseperable, in Harvard in the class that would graduate in 1775, the year of the revolution, when Harvard actually moved to Concord so as to lend their buildings to the soldiers.

Those had been tough years in Boston, and by the way my ancestor seems to have been there too, in the shadows, as I'm not directly related to either the young John (who would become known as John Esquire, as opposed to his father, Colonel John), or the young Thomas, Thomas the surgeon. When they graduated Thomas the surgeon joined the war, but he got captured on a boat. The prisoners were brought back to Brooklyn harbor by the British and treated so poorly that many of them died. So poorly that they made a movie about it, Ghost ship of Brooklyn Harbor or some such thing. It was terrible. He survived, came out, started being a surgeon again, then died early, probably from his prisoner-of-war experience.

Thomas, remember, had been from Medford. His father also died during the war. His stepmother had to unload a couplle of young children which may have included my ancestor who seemed to be in the shadows of Medford but I'm not sure. But what happened to John Esquire?

John Esquire had studied to be a lawyer as his cousin Thomas was studying to be a surgeon. His father the Overseer and his sick wife moved to Connecticut, and John Esquire went to Connecticut to help take care of his mother. His father died too. At one point he joined the war effort but it was later, and it was easier for him to survive, and he did. Finally they moved to Windsor Vermont where his mother had been from.

His cousin had died, but he, having a fortune, was able to just have kids and be a gentleman farmer up there in Vermont. He ended up having like thirteen. But his second wife was Thomas's young sister Hannah. Hannah had apparently inherited the printer's fortune from Medford and was quite wealthy. John Esquire and Hannah. never had to work. He had a big library and argued about baptism, which was the issue of the day. He took his children to church on Sunday in a carriage; his third wife was Congregationalist. He was Baptist.

What happened to the children he had with his cousin? You aren't supposed to marry your first cousin, but he did. I know that it was also somewhat common back in earlier days, like John the President's day. It had happened several times in our line. But to tell you the truth, I don't know what happened to those. They were the middle ones of the thirteen, like maybe five through nine. Not sure how it worked out.

Of the Windsor Vermont Leveretts several had positions in government and one or two were well-known. They kind of faded away after a while; I don't think there are still Leveretts around Windsor today although that Robert Leverett, a famous ecologist of the Berkshires, may be related. This is not our line so I kind of lost track. But it's interesting. Hannah had the fortune from the grammar books, and it alll went up there with Hannah and into a fabulous library of imported books on various topics.

Somehow marrying one's cousin went out of style. It wasn't such a big deal in those post-revolution days, I didn't even see anyone raise an eyebrow.