Curiosity about Names and the Second Great Awakening

 

The grave of Cassandra and Asher Bliss

When I first began working on my genealogy, I hit a lot of brick walls pursuing people by name. One example is my great-great-grandmother Cassandria Hooper Harrington Rogers Kauffman. I couldn't find any Harringtons that fit on census records in the Worcester area. I couldn't find a birth record for her or for her brother. And I never have, sadly. So I pursued Hooper. No luck. Finally, on a trip to New England, I consulted with a librarian at the New England Historic Genealogical Society. She didn't find anything but had another idea. Cassandria might well have been named in HONOR of someone. And it seems to have been the case.

Cassandria and Winslow Brainard Rogers were married in the Holden BAPTIST church, despite the fact that his grandfather was a founder of the local Methodist church. There may well have been a conversion, perhaps by his parents at the time he was born W. B.'s letters back from the Civil War are peppered with references of having Bible study or prayer meetings with his comrades. Cassandria is referred to in her obituary as "a godly woman". What was going on here? It was a phenomenon called The Second Great Awakening.

The Second Great Awakening occurred around the country between 1795 and 1835. Think Henry Ward Beecher, Lyman Beecher, Timothy Dwight, and even Joseph Smith.

"Many churches experienced a great increase in membership, particularly among Methodist and Baptist churches. The Second Great Awakening made soul-winning the primary function of ministry and stimulated several moral and philanthropic reforms, including temperance and the emancipation of women"

Primary themes were:

• All people are born sinners
• Sin without salvation will send a person to hell
• All people can be saved if they confess their sins to God, seek forgiveness and accept God’s grace
• All people can have a direct and emotional connection with God\
• Religion shouldn’t be formal and institutionalized, but rather casual and personal 

If all this sounds suspiciously like Jonathan Edwards, you'd be right. He was considered the father of this movement.

It occurred in three phases, the later ones marked by the popularity of tent meetings, camp meetings, and revivals. There were waves of itinerant preachers who traveled all over New England and upstate New York. It is entirely possible Cassandria's mother and father, Joseph Herrington and Nancy Green, attended one of these meetings. Cassandra Hooper Bliss and her husband Asher were on the circuit. And  Cassandra was a local girl, she grew up in Oakham and Boylston, Massachusetts.

“One of the families that welcomed the Hooper daughters warmly was the Whites [the subject family of the book]. Cassandra was a committed evangelical Christian, and from her arrival in 1830 she and her sisters Avis, Lydia, and Eunice were frequent visitors to the White’s elegant parlor, while matron Mary and her daughters returned those visits to the Hooper’s humble home. The nature of the visits is clear, as they were frequently made in company with the minister’s wife and other active evangelical women. Cassandra had apparently embraced evangelical Christianity before her arrival in Boylston; her younger sister Avis was “received to our Communion” along with eight other converts in March 1834; her sister Lydia made her public confession in October the same year. Though the family had fallen on hard times, their religious commitment marked them as genteel and pious folk and secured their respectability among Boylston’s better sort.

“Then, with no warning or advance preparations, Mary White made a surprise announcement in her diary. At the close of the afternoon service on the Sabbath of September 2, 1832, thirty-year-old Cassandra Hooper was married to a Mr. Bliss, and the couple left almost immediately to serve as missionaries to the Seneca Indians. They would continue in that work in western New York for the rest of their lives."-From A Crisis of Community by Mary Babson Fuhrer

The second bit of confusion was the origin of Winslow Brainard's names. For a while, my mother was convinced that we were somehow descended from John Winslow, of Mayflower fame. She was disabused of that idea by a genealogist or historian who could find nothing linking us to him. Again, I suspect he was named in honor of two people who figured in the Second Great Awakening.

Octavius Winslow was a prominent evangelist and Baptist minister. Although he died early, his ideas made it to America and he was revered among the revivalists.

David Brainerd was a missionary to the Native Americans. He might have been forgotten altogether, but a biography of him by Jonathan Edwards was reprinted many times and boosted his influence. One of those periods of influence was during the Second Great Awakening. James Brainerd Taylor, his cousin, enjoyed popularity as an evangelist and was said to have been inspired by David's example.

I consider this a good example of when NOT to make assumptions in doing research about your family. There could be many needless dead ends in your research when you make the facts fit the theory and not the reverse. There's no way to prove my theory, of course, but I suspect I have unraveled this particular bit of family history.

Taking Care of Business in Litchfield, Maine

courtesy of the Litchfield Historical Society, Litchfield, Maine

     This is the old "town house" for Litchfield where town meetings were held after 1840. Before that time, the meetings were held in the home of a Mr. Nickerson. I know this because I've been trolling the old minutes of town meetings again looking for ancestors. Of course, I found them.

     I expected to find my Smith relatives first as the place was once "Smith Plantation", but to my surprise I found a Richardson ancestor. Abijah Richardson started out as the town constable, but rose rapidly in the town to become the moderator of the town meetings and town treasurer. Here is a sample of the minutes from 1797. Of course Maine was still part of the state of Massachusetts at that point. You will see Abijah's name, but I think you'll also recognize the name of the candidate for governor.

     I kept trolling the records because the custom in those days was to incidentally record town minutes and birth, marriage and death records all together. Pretty soon all the Smith relatives showed up as well in a variety of town offices including a number of years as selectmen. It was the names of some of the town jobs that got me looking further.

Courtesy of Litchfield Historical Society

     Ok, so the surveyors of highways and collector of highway taxes is pretty straightforward. My ancestor Elkanah Baker was elected to that post among others. After that, I had to look around on the internet for some information.

Tything men collected alms for the church, but they also had a variety of other duties as described in the New Hampshire History Blog:
"It was the tithing man's duty to detain and arrest Sabbath travelers, unless they were going to or from church or to visit the sick or do charitable deeds. His job was also to keep the boys from playing in the meeting-house, and to wake up any who might fall asleep during meeting."
They carried something called a church stick with a large knob on one end and feathers on the other. Sleepers would either get a sharp rap with the knob or a tickle, depending on gender.
Surveyors of Lumber made sure that the townspeople were getting their money's worth at the sawmill. They had to be experts in the measurement of lumber and assure that it was good grade.
Fence Viewers inspected new fences and settled disputes over older ones. They also settled disputes where livestock had escaped their enclosure. Since so many of the boundary fences in New England are hand-made fieldstone walls, this was a very important job. Many of those walls stand to this day. Robert Frost was right.
Culler of Staves inspected lumber which was often used for payment of taxes in lieu of cash.
"Great quantities of staves were taken by the town in payment of taxes assessed upon the inhabitants; and these must all pass through the hands of the culler. Persons might, of course, at any time make staves from timber taken from their own land; but timber for this purpose might also be taken from the common, under certain regulations."
Hog Reeves In the very rural South, it was not uncommon to turn loose hogs to forage in the woods and be recollected in the fall. Not so in New England.
"Owners of hogs were responsible for yoking and placing rings in their noses, and if they got loose and became a nuisance in the community, one or more of the men assigned as hog reeve would be responsible for performing the necessary chore for the owner; who could be legally charged a small fee for the service. There were punishments and fines established for not having hogs yoked and failing to control animals."
Field Drivers This was another job involving roaming livestock. A quotation from Massachusetts law describes it best.
"Every field drive shall take up horse, mules, neat cattle, sheep, goats or swine going at large in the public ways, or on common or unimproved land within his town and not under the care of a keeper; and any other inhabitants of the town may take up such cattle or beasts going at large on Sunday, and for taking up such beasts on said day the field driver or such other inhabitants of the town may in tort recover for each beast the same fees which the field driver is entitled to receive for taking up like beasts."
On the page above I can see several of my Smith relatives filling these jobs.
There was also a full page of descriptions of ear notching to identify livestock. It got very creative, but I'll save that for another post.
Oh, and I forgot to mention that this blog passed the three year mark on June 2. Happy Blogiversary
to me!