Tag: Amy Johnson Crow

52W Mark V – Week 19: Violate Stockwell

Violate Stockwell (1794-1880)

I’m amazed – it feels like it’s been months since I last posted, but I see it’s only been three weeks. Yay me.

I am, however, eight weeks behind in the  52 Ancestors Challenge. When I commented on that fact a week ago on Amy Johnson Crow’s Facebook group, Generations Cafe, her only response was “You know what I’m going to say.” Of course I did! I even have the receipt to prove it.

October 2024. Not the first time I received that reminder.

So let’s get a move on and talk about my Great x4 Grandmother, Violate Stockwell. She was born on October 10, 1794 in Windham, Vermont, to Abraham Stockwell and Vilate (Violette? Vierlaty?) Gale, who were both originally from Massachusetts. They were third cousins. Even outside their common ancestor, Abraham and Vilate both had deep roots in colonial New England going back to the 1600s.

If I have fancy-pants ancestors or famous cousins, many of them are through Violate. Violate’s Great x4 Grandmother was Rebecca Towne Nurse, one of the accused who was convicted and executed by hanging during the Salem Witch Trials. Violate is also a descendant of the Putnam family, whose members included some of the accusers at Salem. As well, since it’s the Fourth of July (otherwise known as “Saturday” here) while I am writing this, I might as well point out that Violate is a direct descendant of Richard Singletary, who is my Gx 10 Grandfather. Richard is Barack Obama’s Gx9 Grandfather. So the former President and I are 1oth cousins once removed. As far as I know, he’s the only US President I connect to.

While Violate’s parents were from Massachusetts, they married in New Hampshire. I don’t know if they met there or in Massachusetts. Their first two of seven children were born was the third of seven children. Violate, Abraham and Vilate’s third child, was born in Vermont, as were the next three children. The youngest child was born in Hartford, Washington, New York. There was a 27-year difference between the eldest and youngest child. Violate was 23 and had been married for five years when her youngest brother was born. This may have foreshadowed the age span of Violate’s own offspring, for there was a 22-year difference between her eldest and youngest child.

Violate married William Burgess, Sr., on May 1, 1813, in Putnam, New York. While Hartford and Putnam are both in Washington County, they are over 40 kilometers apart, so I have no idea how Violate met her husband.

Violate and William had 12 children together. In fact, Violate appears to be the one who has had the most children of all the women in my family tree. Violate was 18 when she married and gave birth to her first child, Harrison, a year later. The next five children, including my Gx3 Grandfather William Burgess, Jr. were all born in Putnam, while the next five were born in nearby Warren County, New York. The youngest, Vierlaty (or Vilate!), was born in 1837, in Kirtland, Ohio, after Violate and William joined the fledgling Mormon church. Violate was 42 years old when she had her last child.

Extract from William Snow’s Journal, in which he writes about baptizing Violate and William, and two of their children.

Violate and William, along with their second and third oldest children (aged 14 and 18 at the time), were baptized into the church on December 2, 1832. This makes them amongst the earliest converts to the church, as Joseph Smith had only published the Book of Mormon in 1830. In fact, the church founded by Smith was known merely as the “Church of Christ” until 1834 when it was renamed as the Church of Jesus Christ and Latter Day Saints. They were all baptized by William Snow, who himself had only joined the church earlier in 1832.

Violate’s conversion, along with her husband and two children, came through her son Harrison’s involvement with the early Mormon church. According to Harrison’s diary, he first heard a Mormon missionary by the name of Simeon Carter in July 1832. Harrison converted and was baptized by Elder John S. Carter on Oct. 10, 1832 and confirmed as a member of the church by Elder Orson Pratt. Harrison described Violate as “a very gifted and talented mother and of a very religious nature.”

Violate and family joined the migration of Mormon adherents to Kirtland, settling there around September 1833. They remained there until about 1840, when they moved with the Latter Day Saints to Nauvoo, Illinois, which was to be a new Zion for the church.

However, tensions grew between the Mormons in Nauvoo and their neighbours elsewhere in the county, as well as the state. Matters culminated with the state revoking the city’s charter in 1845, followed by the expulsion of the Mormons in 1846. Brigham Young, by then the head of the church, called on church members to migrate west, beyond the western frontier of the United States into Utah, which was then still part of Mexico. Violate and family were part of that migration.

Due to the rushed departure from Nauvoo and the lateness of the season, in September 1846 the Mormons established a camp and waystation near what is now Omaha, Nebraska, known as Winter Quarters. While it essentially began as a refugee camp, it quickly evolved into a small organized town. Despite that, conditions were rough and there were waves of disease that took their toll. The Latter Day Saints vacated Winter Quarters by December 1848.

Violate and family were in Winter Quarters for most of its existence. Two of her children died during their time there. The family set out from Winter Quarters in 1848 destined for Utah, in a party of 662 individuals led by Heber C. Kimball, who was essentially Brigham Young’s right hand man. Violate and family arrived in Salt Lake City in September 1848 and settled in the 16th ward. Violate was 53 years old by that time.

Compared to the tumultuous events that marked Violate’s life from her conversion in 1832 to her arrival in Salt Lake City in 1848, the next 32 years of her life were relatively quiet. So much so that I have little indication of her activities, which presumably were centered around the home and domestic life.

Perhaps the most significant events during that time was Violate’s husband entering into a polygamous marriage in 1854 and the family’s move to Pine Valley, Utah in 1861 at the direction of the church. Coincidentally enough, the first bishop of Pine Valley was William Snow, the man who had baptized Violate into the church.

Violate died in Pine Valley on July 21, 1880, aged 85, having outlived nearly half of her children, and predeceasing her husband by only four months. Violate is buried at the Pine Valley Cemetery.

52W Mark V: Now What?

Happy New Year!

For the fifth year in a row, I’m going to participate in Amy Johnson Crow’s 52 Ancestors Challenge. For the first three years, I followed Amy’s prompts. However, for the 2024 iteration of the Challenge, I struck my own path and set my own prompts, as I explained this time last year. In Week 52 of last year’s Challenge, I indicated that I would likely return to following Amy’s prompts.

https://www.amyjohnsoncrow.com/52-ancestors-in-52-weeks-themes-for-2026/

However, after seeing the list of this year’s prompts, I decided they were not for me. While I appreciate that there are many new ideas this year, most of them do not speak to me. As well, for many of the prompts, I feel hard pressed to come up with something I haven’t covered before. So I’ve decided to once again strike out on my own and create my own set of prompts.

For me, what I came up with last year really worked for me. Not only did it help my achieve my primary goal of writing up my research, it unexpectedly helped me identify the many unexpected gaps in my research. As a result, I inadvertently participated in Yvette Hoitink‘s Level-Up Challenge! It also helped that I was able to divide my fourth through sixth generations of grandparents into four suits and 52 cards, keeping with my blog’s theme of 52 Ancestors.

I decided that I would write about the next generation of my ancestors. It would once again tie the whole year together and provide me with some focus. However, the seventh generation consists of 64 individuals, which precludes writing about one per week. This problem is partly resolved by the unfortunate fact I have yet to identify seven of my Gx4 Grandparents, but that still leaves me with 57 people to fit into 52 weeks.

Despite that problem, I’m going to forge ahead with the plan to write about my seventh generation of ancestors this year – my Great Great Great Great Grandparents. I’ll figure out how to fit 57 people into 52 weeks as I go.

Continuing with last year’s theme, this results in four “suits” based upon each of my four grandparents. The individuals I will write about are in the orange boxes.

Good luck to everyone participating in the 52 Ancestors Challenge this year!

52W Mark III – Week 52: Resolution

I never make New Year’s resolutions. In fact, I’m terrible at goal setting, although when there’s something I really want to achieve, I can set them. I just hate doing it. One goal I did set and, with this post, have achieved three times over, is completing Amy Johnson Crow’s 52 Ancestors Challenge.

However, I don’t know if I have it in me to do a fourth full year of the Challenge, at least not in the way I’ve participated for three full years. The Challenge is becoming more difficult and much more work; some weeks it almost feels like a chore. Despite that, it’s remained worthwhile and fun. Otherwise, I doubt I’d have carried through.

The hardest part has been thinking of fresh and new things to discuss, explore, and share. It’s becoming more demanding to thing about things I haven’t already covered before – sometimes more than once (including this very topic, most recently on Week 44). Several times during this year’s Challenge I thought I had come up with something entirely new, only to discover partway through or near completion that I had already written about the same thing. There have been many weeks when I’ve fallen behind because of the difficulty of finding something to write about.

For several months now, I’ve been giving thought about what to do for 2025. Maybe I’ll pick 52 ancestors and write about them. Maybe starting with “one” and working my way through “fifty two”, I’ll write about something associated with the number of the week. Maybe I’ll create my own prompts. Heck, it doesn’t even need to be a regular weekly thing – maybe I could do a monthly post instead.

I know I’m not alone with these thoughts. After having substantially completed this entry but before clicking “Publish”, I looked at what some of the other 52 Ancestors participants posted on Amy’s Facebook group, Generations Cafe. There, Julie Turner Holmansky of Roots & Rabbit Holes shared a post, “Week 52, Resolution: Changing My Blog Up in 2025.” The title alone spoke to me, and her experience and thoughts really spoke to me.

Whatever I do, it will need to be something that is still regular and structured; without it, I can see a future where posts become fewer and farther apart in time, until it just peters out. I don’t want to stop blogging about genealogy. Not only has it kept me writing, I feel like it’s kept me connected to the genealogy community when I shared my posts on Facebook and Bluesky.

That all said, I’ve signed up for next year’s challenge. I would like to see the list of next year’s prompts before making any concrete decisions. There’s still two full weeks for me to think about it, especially since I started Christmas vacation about 45 minutes ago!

Rather than ending on uncertainty, let’s end on a high note. I think I need to recognize my accomplishment of completing three years’ worth of weekly blog entries. That’s 156 posts, not counting the occasional incidental genealogy post outside of the 52 Ancestors Challenge. I did it!!

Whether I’m doing Amy’s 52 Ancestors Challenge or some other thing with this blog in 2025, I know that I want to keep up the good habit of writing about my genealogy that this challenge inspired.

52W Mark III – Week 44: Challenging

The prompt this week for the 52 Ancestors Challenge is “Challenging”. You know what is challenging? The 52 Ancestors Challenge, that’s what!!

Starting the 52 Ancestors Challenge was hard:

Three years in a row, I signed up for Amy Johnson Crow’s “52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks”. The first two times, that was as far as I got. Hopefully, third time’s the charm. Hence this blog, only a quarter century behind the times.

As I later described it:

I originally signed up for the 52 Ancestors Challenge for 2020, but did nothing afterwards. I signed up again for 2021, for which I also did nothing.

Somehow third time was the charm. I know there was something that spurred me on to actually do something for the 2022 challenge, but now for the life of me I can’t recall what that was!

Halfway through my first year actually participating in the Challenge, I wrote:

Holy smokes, we’re now halfway through the year. Moreover, with 26 installments, we’re halfway through this year’s 52 Ancestors Challenge! With that, I’ve managed to consistently blog for six months. While it has been a bit of a slog the last few weeks, I’m so pleased I’ve stuck with it and made it this far!

I persevered and successfully completed the year. Building on that success, I signed up for 2023 edition of the Challenge. Once again, I completed all 52 weeks. Not only that, but I turned my first year’s set of posts in to a book that I printed and handed out as Christmas and Hannukah gifts!

Buoyed by that success, I re-upped a third time, for the 2024 edition of the Challenge. With eight weeks to go, I’m confident I’ll successfully complete all 52 weeks.

However, I have to be honest. The Challenge is becoming more challenging. I’ve picked the low hanging fruit several times now. It’s getting harder and harder to write about things I haven’t already covered before – sometimes more than once. Many times this year I thought I had come up with something entirely new, only to discover partway through or near completion that I had already written about the same thing. This year seems to have a few reruns, as I really did not want to start over. In fact, just discovered that I’ve already sort of covered the topic of the challenge of participating in the Challenge.

As a result, for the last month or so I haven’t produced anything for the current week before the next prompt is posted. (Although, ironically, the one week I was ahead of the prompt, it was delayed!) I know what Amy would say about that, but I’d still enjoy it more if I could keep more current.

As I’ve said before, the primary purpose of undertaking this blog was to get myself to write more about my family history after decades of researching and compiling information. Even though this year has been more challenging, I am still achieving that goal and continue to find value in participating.

That said, I don’t think I have it in me to do another full year of the Challenge, at least not in the way I’ve participated for nearly three years. However, I will need to think of something that is still regular and structured; without it, I can see a future where posts become fewer and farther apart in time, until it just peters out. Fortunately, Amy recently posted (I can’t remember if it was in her Facebook group, Generations Cafe, or in her emails) that she was planning something new or different for 2025. I can’t wait to see what that might be!

In the meantime, having completed a second full year of posts, I once again created a family history book based upon the compiled collection of entries for 2023! I hadn’t planned on another print edition, but as I started working on the electronic version I began to feel the need to be able to hold it and read it the old fashioned way. So here it is, A Book of Ancest0rs – Mark II!!