Ancestors of Miles Hochstein (Great Great Grandfather)

Willard Day
(b. 1817 Marlborough/Marlboro, Vermont, d. 1885, Mesopotamia, Ohio)

Occupations: Blacksmith, and later in life (ca 1880) Cheese Maker

1880 Census Record for Household of Willard Day

The following census record almost surely is for our Willard Day. From it we learn that Willard Day, a Cheese Maker, (61) of Gustavus, Trumbull County, Ohio is married to Ester J. Day (41), and lives with his son Harland C. Day (15), his grandson Henry W. Beldon (11).

Of William we learn nothing, and of Jennie we also do not hear. Had they died?

Also residing in the household are a mother named Catherine Boyd (61) who because she is from the Isle of Man and 19 years older than Ester, may have been Ester J. Fear's mother. This is consistent with information from Adelle Andrews about Willard Day's second marriage to Ester J. Fear from the Isle of Man.

Three men who are factory workers, and one woman who is a servant also reside in the household in Gustavus.

Willard Day of Marlborough/Marlboro Vermont

Willard Day was born in Marlborough Vermont, but presumably married in Mesopotamia Ohio to a woman from that town. The modern spelling appears to be Marlboro, which is located in Windham County Vermont.

http://www.virtualvermont.com/towns/marlboro.html#about

http://marlboro.vt.us/

Later in life Willard Day resides in Mesopotamia Ohio, mapped on MapQuest here. It would appear to have a minimal modern existence.

LINK: A history of Trumball County.

The following document portrays the changes that took place during the lifetime of Willard Day in Trumbull County, in the townships of Mesopotamia and Gustavus where he resided. Since he arrived around (very aproximately) 1840 and died in 1884, it encompasses his lifetime in the area quite nicely. Noticably, both townships experienced a decline in population, perhaps related to the Civil War.

Willard Day...and the Murky Reaches of Time

Willard Day was one of my great-great-grandparents. Like most people on the planet I have 16 great-great-grandparents. (Marry a cousin and your children will have fewer. You do the math).

My interest in still earlier generations declines somewhat (although as I get into the genealogy game, not as much as it did once.). Still, there were, in principle, 32 great-great-great grandparents , 64 in the generation before that, and the historical and cultural connection declines almost as rapidly as does the genetic relatedness.

But for better or worse I am in possession of a geneaology by one Adele Andrews (1940), typed on yellowing paper. It traces my Day ancestry back an additional 6 generations prior to Willard Day, identifying almost every ancestor of Willard Day (why? I don't know. Apparently someone, perhaps one of his siblings, was interested in their parents' ancestors, and commissioned this genaology. Work presumably begin sometime in the 1930s. It was completed in 1940. It traces ancestors going back to the beginning of the 1600s, as well as many descendants following the generation of Willard Day's parents, down to and including my mother and her sister.

Among the ancestors are people with first names like "Experience Mitchell" (male) and "Thankful Nimms" (female).

There are people who are reported as prosecutors of witches (Joseph Ballard..."he was connected with the witchcraft prosecutions in Andover...", 1600s) and suspected witches.

Numerous land disputes with "Indians" are recorded, as well more than one masacre.

In fact, based on the Andrews geneaology, it is safe to say that the early colonial experience of my ancestors was a bloody and violent mess, fraught with land disputes, conflicts with native Americans, witch hunts, murders and massacres.

What it all seems to add up to, in short and to my surprise, is that I am connected to the whole colonial and Revolutionary shebang.

As a result, I can identify the names of a few people (about 32 individuals) in the early 17th century with whom I putatively share 1/1024 part of my genetic material. However for the vast majority of the 1024 people in the 10th generation before me, I have no information. The Jewish half of my family, which would potentially include up to 512 persons of the 10th generation previous to myself, presumably lived in the Jewish shtetls and urban communities of Eastern Europe. The German quarter of my ancestors, 256 of them in the 10th generation previous, presumably lived in and amongst the German states and communities. Who can imagine what connections might exist between those hundreds of people in that distant time?

Did they pass on the road somwhwere in Poland, a Jewish farmer and a German trader strangers to each other, only to find "themselves", in the form of their DNA, entangled in me, hundreds of years later?

The table above illustrates the number of ancestors, as it doubles with each generation, and their correspondingly decreasing relatedness to the current generation.

This large number of ancestors of course assumes pure exogamy, which is perhaps unlikely. People do marry second cousins and third cousins, reducing the number of distinct ancestors.

For the one branch I traced above as an example (all paternal ancestors of my great grand mother Emma Day Smith), it appears we've been reproducing at the rate of 3 generations per century since 1604. (Obviously, these calculations also assume the absence of "non-marital paternity" events... Insert your best guess about sexual mores across the centuries here.)

My children were both born in the 20th century, keeping the "three generations per century" principle intact for the fourth century in a row.

The earliest narrative information I have concerns one Robert Day and his wife. It reads as follows

Of course I have little to no information about the generations of my Jewish ancestors from Poland and Russia, and little information about my various ancestors from the German states on my mother's side.

What does all of this mean? I don't know. I think its primary meaning has to do with the nature of "documented lives." Documented lives are lived in documenting societies, and early colonial America was already such a society in 1600, carrying on the English traditions in this regard. The act of documentation of births, baptism, marriage and death, was partly a system of social control, but it also has made possible a form of personal historical memory, centuries later.

But it also bespeaks political power and economic power. Jewish Shtetls documented lives as well, but were powerless to resist the Nazi Holocaust, or to preserve their memories, except for a few scattered Yizkor books and community records. Likewise, I imagine that the principalities and states of Germany in the 17th, 18th and 19th century, also were documenting societies, and perhaps there is information to be found there in archives.

Historical memory requires both documentation and the institutional and political power to preserve records. Not all memories are possible.

For my part, my interest in these distant ancestors as individuals declines after the third or fourth generation, as they blend into the general picture of life in early America, life in the Jewish shtetles of Eastern Europe, and life in the German states in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. I read historical narratives of those times and places and find everything I need to know about my ancestory and past, which is as much cultural and historical as it is genetic and familial.

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