Growing with America—Colonial Roots

By Joseph Fox

Our Fox ancestry was covered in my earlier book, Growing with America: The Fox Family of Philadelphia. Now we turn to Ruth Martins side of the family. She had colonial ancestors in New England, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia with names such as Alden, Wolcott, Lay, Carbery, Hite, Manning, Blair, Warfield, Dorsey, and Neale. They all converged on our nations capital when it was first being built.

Rather than repeat what others have done, this book attempts to bring many of these ancestors to life by examining, in some detail, their timeline and life circumstances. A personal letter, a detail in a will, or even some good DNA detective work can move that curtain hiding a vista of the past. I wanted to try to understand the challenges these people were facing, so different from today but still the same human responses at play. I have not hesitated to speculate as long as this is truly identified as speculation.

It became evident that there were a number of overriding themes I wanted to cover: (1) the convergence of many diverse traditions and religions, (2) some personal stories that interested me, including some memoirs never before published, (3) discoveries resulting from genetic testing, (4) the familys interaction with slavery and the Civil War, and (5) recognition of earlier family research, setting the record straight where necessary.

With the advent of full genome testing, it became possible to trace relationships in all branches of the familynot just the Fox male line or the all-female line. While quite haphazard in going back this far, this did tend to confirm what the books said about mothers family. Most significantly, however, it led to contacts with a few very knowledgeable people and to some fascinating new speculations.

In a way, this is a sequel to the earlier book since more Fox family information has been uncovered both via genetic testing and by personal contact.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 4, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524548520

Joseph Fox

Joseph Mickle Fox, III, is a professional chemical engineer and a graduate of Princeton University, where he was a junior year Phi Beta Kappa in 1943 and received his Masters Degree in Chemical Engineering in 1947. Now retired, he worked for 19 years for the M. W. Kellogg Company (now part of Halliburton) Research Laboratory and for 26 years as a Process Design Manager for the Refinery and Chemical Division of Bechtel Corporation. His special expertise lies in the area of alternative fuels and he continues to consult occasionally on gas-to-liquid technology. He is the author of three patents and over 20 technical articles, the best known of which are a survey of Methane Valorization and a report on Fischer-Tropsch Reactor Selection. Active in chemical engineering society affairs, he was a Director of the National American Institute of Chemical Engineers from 1972 to 1976 and served as chairman of several local sections of the Institute. The son of a Pennsylvania Railroad civil engineer, he is the ninth member of his family to bear the name Joseph Mickle Fox. He, his brother and two sisters grew up in the east and midwest wherever the Pennsylvania Railroad operated trains but his family always considered Philadelphia their home base. He married Betty Larkin Fox of Rock Island, Illinois, in 1948 and they soon settled in New Jersey. He moved his wife, Betty, four sons and two daughters to Lafayette, California, in 1966 as a result of transferring from Kellogg to Bechtel. Betty died in 1992 and he remarried in 1996, this time to a widow with three sons, Shirley Mutchler Pugh. Fox has been an art docent at the Oakland Museum of California since 1994. He has served as Chair of the Art Steering Committee and volunteered for many years as writer and editor for the Docent News and as a member of the Docent Website Committee. Fox has been interested in genealogy as a hobby since 1974 when, on assignment in London he discovered Fox relatives living in Cornwall. In 2004 he started the Fox Y-DNA Surname Project at Family Tree DNA and has served as its administrator ever since. The project now has over 300 members. His report summarizing some significant Fox Project findings was published in the Fall, 2016, issue of the Journal of Genetic Genealogy. His outdoor hobbies are tennis and swimming and he remains an active member of St. Perpetuas Roman Catholic Church, in Lafayette, where he helped organize the Seniors Activity Group (SAG) and has been active in the Social Justice Committee. He and his wife Shirley are Elderhostel enthusiasts.

Book preview

Growing with America - Colonial Roots

Joseph Fox

Copyright © 2016 by Joseph Fox.

Library of Congress Control Number:      2016916435

ISBN:                  Hardcover                        978-1-5245-4854-4

                            Softcover                           978-1-5245-4853-7

                            eBook                                978-1-5245-4852-0

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Rev. date: 05/10/2018

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CONTENTS

Preface to First Revision

Preface

Acknowledgments

PART ONE

Ancestry of Annie Carbery Lay

Chapter 1:     The Lay Family

Two Spinster Genealogists

From Stonington to Saybrook in Connecticut

Asa Lay’s Story Reviewed

The Memories of Mary Catherine Lay

Kitty’s Research Notebook

Chapter 2:     The Carbery Family

A Confusion of Information

New Discoveries

Catholics in Colonial Maryland

Chapter 3:     Carbery Tradition and Speculation

That Trip to America

Back to Ireland

A British Point of View

Chapter 4:     The Mattingly Family

Ann Carbery Mattingly’s Miracle

The Mattingly Men and Their Problems

A Temporary Farewell to Ann Carbery Mattingly

Chapter 5:     Our Unknown Grandmother

The Mysterious Anne Euphemia Roach (1842–1919)

Neales and Roaches

The Mannings

The Laceys, the Pancoasts, and the All-Female Line

More on the Laceys

The Hite Family

Chapter 6:     Mary Hite’s Story

A Key Piece to My Puzzle

1754–1771: Childhood at Hopewell

1772–1777: A Minister’s Wife

1778–1787: Mary’s Ten Years as a Widow

A Reunion in Moorefield

Mary Manning, Schoolteacher

Mary’s Second Marriage

1789–1810: Raising Another Family

1810-1815 The Boarding House

A Visit to West Virginia

Grandchildren

A Reprise: Facts versus Speculations

George Hite’s Inheritance and His Letters to Madison

The Carbery Connection

Chapter 7:     A Catholic Renaissance

Catholics in Washington DC in the Early 1800s

Our Ancestors in Washington DC

Mixed Marriages and Religious Conversions

Resistance to Catholicism

The Catholic Lay Family of Washington

Conclusion

Chapter 8:     Paeonian Springs and the Manning Family

The Loudoun Valley

Euphemia Lacy Manning’s Family

The Paeonian Springs Company

Difficult Times: The Life of Jacob Hite Manning

Marble, the Lincoln Memorial and Eudora

Chapter 9:     Back to Norway

Norway and the Lay Family

Abraham Lincoln at Norway

The Thomas Wolcott Lay Family and Norway

PART TWO

Ancestry of Augustus Warfield Martin

Chapter 10:   Martin Family Origins

Deciphering a Family Record

Judge William Blair

John Martin

Chapter 11

The Blairs of Fagg’s Manor

Early History of the College of New Jersey

A Good Target for Y-DNA Testing

Chapter 12

The Martin Children

Dr. Samuel Blair Martin: The Old Defender

Chapter 13:   Off to California

The Old Defender’s Children

The Sutter’s Fort Hospital Doctor

The Other California Martin

That Other Baltimore Physician

Chapter 14:   Dr. James S. Martin Back East and Married

Warfields and Hawkins and Dorseys and Griffiths

The Martin Family Wives

Family Connections in Brookeville, Maryland

Married Life and the Move to Brookeville

A Bicentennial in Brookeville

Chapter 15

Another Mixed Marriage

A History of Mixed Marriages in Maryland

Our Grandfather Augustus Warfield Martin (1862–1918)

Life in the Martin Family

Anne Warfield Martin (1893–1973)

Doctor James Lay Martin (1892–1977)

Chapter 16:   Cousins Near and Far

Warfield Martin (1929–2002)

Lay Martin (1927–1996)

Second Cousins and Beyond

Chapter 17:   Slavery and the Civil War

On the Fox Side

On the Martin Side

The Carbery and Mattingly Families

The Civil War Generation and Later

Where Are We Now?

PART THREE

Genomic Testing

An Overview

Chapter 18:   Autosomal Genome Testing

Some Technical Background

My Approach

Checking Mother’s Ancestry

X Chromosome Matches

Three Challenges

The Unknown Dorsey Connection

More on the Ann Arundel and Howard Counties Relationships

The Mary Hite Manning Connection

The Chestnut Ridge Conection

Chapter 19:   Fox Ancestry from Autosomal Testing

Fox Side Summary

Cooper-Fox DNA Matchup

Smedley-Fox DNA Connections

The Baird Family Connection

Chapter 20:   Baird Family Relationships

William Mercer Baird and Richard Fanning Loper

Baird-Loper Religious Affiliations

Chapter 21:   More Fox Ancestry via Y Chromosome Testing

The Fox Y-DNA Surname Project in 2016

A New Haplotree for R1b-L1/S26 (2016 Version)

The Abbevlle, SC, Foxes – Matthew Fox Descendants

Our Ancestral Gladiator

Further Y-DNA Testing Results as of April 2018

A New Representation of the Human Genome is Adopted

A New Haplotree for R1b-L1/S26

A Fox-Clarke Match in Lycoming County, Pennsylvania

A Comparison of Third Cousins, Twice Removed

The Sir Stephen Fox Connection

How Far Back Does our Fox Common Ancestor Connection Really Go?

Where Do We Go from Here?

List of Illustrations

List of Tables

APPENDICES

Appendix 1:   Colonel Asa Lay’s Revolutionary War Story

Family Background

Corporal Lay

Lieutenant Lay

Aide to Baron von Steuben

Back into Battle

Captured by the British

Release by British and Recovery

Captain Lay returns to his Regiment

Sarah Wolcott Lay’s War Experiences

Asa Lay Returns Home and Becomes Colonel in the State Militia

Sarah Wolcott’s Story

Appendix 2:   The Lay Family Ancestry via Colonial Dames Papers

Alden

Bull

Denison

Thompson

Stanton

White

Goodwin

Drake

Wolcott

Appendix 3:   Aunt Kitty’s Memoirs

Mary Catherine Lay Great Aunt Kitty (1864–1953)

Earliest Memories

Memories of Norway and Her Grandfather Lay

Her Father, Tom Lay, Captain in the Revenue Marine Service

Her Debut and Life in the South

Captain Tom Lay in Retirement

Aunt Kitty’s Personal Travels: A Summary

Melrose Plantation

Appendix 4:   Norway’s Involvement in the Civil War

The Army Medical Center and Walter Reed Hospital

Present Site of the Walter Reed General Hospital

Reed’s Washington Residence

The Story of Norway

Fort Stevens

The March on Washington

Appendix 5:   Timelines

William Blair

Mary Hite Manning Bushby

Euphemia Lacy and Manning Timeline

James Forrest Manning Timeline

Jonathan Roberts Timeline: From His Journal Plus Family Letters

Adelaide Talbot Hook Gilmore Timeline

Appendix 6:   Memorial: Aunt Anne Martin

Introduction

A Very Special Kind of Person

Social Whirl.

Martin and Martin

Summer Home

Progressive Illness

Indomitable Will

Catholic Evidence League

Personal Characteristics

Finale

Testimonials

Appendix 7:   Shorter Memorials and Obituaries

Samuel Blair Martin

A Veteran Gone

Dr. James Stansbury Martin

William H. Martin

William Nathaniel Roach

Dr. Frank Martin

Dr. Lay Martin

Dr. Lay Martin Fox

Warfield Martin

Stanley Mason Babson Jr.

Samuel Mickle Fox III

Elizabeth Amelia Fox

Appendix 8:   Wills and Will Summaries

Will of George Smedley

Will of John Edge

Will of William Blair

Will of Jacob Hite Dated March 7, 1770

History of Jacob Hite’s Will

Letter George Hite to James Madison

Will of John Hite

Will of Thomas Hite

Will of Israel Pancoast

The Will of Rev. Nathaniel Manning

Will of Euphemia Manning

Will of Edward Fitzgerald

Will of Captain Thomas Wolcott Lay

Will of Captain Thomas Carbery

Further History of the Thomas Carbery Will

Will of Mary Susan Mattingly Lay

Will of Ann Carbery Mattingly

Appendix 9:   Addendum to Growing with America: The Fox Family of Philadelphia

Corrections to the 2006 Print Edition

Other Changes and Additions That Can Now Be Made

Other Additions to Chapter 22, Fox First Cousins

Other Additions to Chapter 22, Fox Second Cousins

Appendix 10:   Descendants of George Fox, MD, and Sarah Downing Valentine

Endnotes

Preface to First Revision

A revision to this book in 2018 has become necessary because of new insight into our Fox ancestry derived from Y-Chromosome testing of Haplogroup R-L1/S26 members using the BigY test. We now have 7 related Foxes tested and the new results help clarify our relationships to each other and to Sir Stephen Fox. An addition to Chapter 21 covers the new material.

This is the proper time to update because FamilytreeDNA (FTDNA) has, as of October 2017, begun using an updated build of the human genome for comparison purposes. They have now updated 99% of previous tests and are reporting all results in the new build and in a much more detailed fashion. It will be some time before Haplotree analysts can adjust. We have plans for a very comprehensive analysis of all of all the raw data available, including other vendors. All this will take some time to come to fruition.

A new Haplotree for R-L1/S26 is presented along with age estimates which help clarify our line of descent. This is based on 49 BigY test results from before October 2017 plus one new one for Michael Temple Fox, my third cousin twice removed. His results came in after the new build was adopted but FTDNA has provided some new tools that make possible a good interpretation of close matches like our Fox results. Indications are that the present R-L1/S26 Haplotree will remain valid in the new version though new subclades will be added as new test results come in.

Some new autosomal matches are now reported in Chapter 18, starting on page 314. One close paternal side match and one close maternal side match show the possibilities of this type of testing. Both were unexpected and reveal some previously hidden family ties.

I have also taken advantage of this opportunity to correct some obvious errors in the earlier version of the book. Most of these were typographical but some new information on Mrs. Bushby’s Boardinghouse has been added to Chapter 6.

Preface

When my father, Joe Fox from Philadelphia, married Ruth Martin from Baltimore, they joined two widely different Colonial American traditions, ancestries that for the most part have been well documented by others. Rather than repeat what others have done, this book attempts to bring many of these ancestors to life by examining, in some detail, the timeline of known facts and the circumstances under which they were living their lives. A personal letter, a detail in a will, or even some good DNA detective work can move that curtain hiding a vista of the past.

While time is a river, relentlessly flowing in one direction, life is a tidal estuary with movements to and fro. We all change as we mature, and the world becomes more knowable if we look back occasionally at what our ancestors were up to. Bringing them back to life has been rewarding to me, and I hope that someday someone will think back on me in the same manner.

The Fox side of the family was discussed in my earlier book, ¹ Growing with America: The Fox Family of Philadelphia. It was mostly Quaker in origin, though our grandmother Fox was a Philadelphia Catholic. Now we turn to Ruth Martin’s side of the family. It turned out that our mother had Pilgrim ancestors in New England; Quakers in New Jersey and Pennsylvania; Catholics, Anglicans, and Presbyterians in Maryland; and German Lutherans, Quakers, Anglicans, and Methodists in Virginia and West Virginia. They all converged on our nation’s capital when it was first being built. There, all these opposing religious backgrounds merged into our mother’s deep Catholic faith.

I wanted to try to understand the challenges these people were facing—so different from today, but still the same human responses at play. Timelines can often give some useful hints. I have not hesitated to speculate, or let others do so, as long as this is truly identified as speculation.

As my research progressed, it became evident that there were a number of overriding main themes I wanted to cover: (1) the convergence of many diverse traditions and religions; (2) some personal stories that interested me, including some memoirs never before published; (3) discoveries resulting from genetic testing; (4) the family’s interaction with slavery and the civil war; and (5) recognition of earlier family research, setting the record straight where necessary.

Like my earlier book, this one is a voyage of discovery enhanced by genetic testing. Looking at Mother’s four grandparents, the family situation ten years ago was as follows:

Dr. James Stansbury Martin. Truly a fascinating man when you get to know him. Little detail was known about his trip to California during the gold rush and his mother, Ruth Hawkins, was a mystery. The Martin family was well known in Baltimore and well documented by fourth cousin Frank Martin, but the family bible of our joint ancestors, John Martin and Elizabeth Blair, provided clues that needed exploring.

Lucretia Griffith Warfield. From a very closely knit family group with many intermarriages, her ancestry was abundantly covered in Joshua Dorsey Warfield’s The Founders of Anne Arundel and Howard Counties, Maryland but was really hard to decipher. A prime target for genetic testing because of endogamy, some surprises were inevitable.

Thomas Wolcott Lay. Previous family researchers had concentrated on the Lay family of Connecticut, with its Mayflower connection, and on the Catholic Carbery family of Maryland and Washington DC. Even so, there was still much confusion regarding early Carbery family history, and the Mattingly family was just being untangled.

Anne Euphemia Roach. Great-Aunt Kitty had a few facts squirreled away in a hidden notebook, but Annie Roach was truly a mystery to her great-grandkids. This was certainly an opportunity to learn something new, and perhaps genetic testing could provide some answers.

With the advent of selective autosomal genome testing by companies such as 23andMe and Family Tree DNA, it became possible to trace relationships in all branches of the family—not just the Fox male line or the all-female line. Autosomal testing, while quite haphazard in going back this far, did tend to confirm what the books said about Mother’s family. Most significantly, however, it led to contacts with a few very knowledgeable people and to some fascinating new speculations.

The most conclusive genetic testing discoveries, however, were in the Fox family line where five DNA relatives were found who connected to us through Grandmother Fox. A genuine coup was achieved via advanced Y chromosome sequencing of two British Foxes and two American Foxes, testing that tied down their most probable common ancestor within a few generations. Several chapters are therefore devoted to the Fox family, and an addendum to the earlier book is provided in appendices 10 and 11.

The book is divided into four main sections:

PART ONE covers the Lay and Roach families.

PART TWO covers the Martin and Warfield families.

PART THREE covers genetic testing and the Fox family.

PART FOUR is a series of appendices, including several extensive family memoirs, newspaper articles, wills, memorials, and obituaries not readily available elsewhere plus the addendum to my Fox book. The general rule followed is that if the document is readily available in print, it is not included, but the source is clearly indicated.

Though it is jumping the gun a bit on our story, it may be helpful to summarize the known ancestral situation by providing some pedigree charts for our family:

Figure 1a takes things back seven generations, in most cases, to the year 1700 or earlier. The main exception is our Fox grandmother Margaret Loper Baird, whose ancestors were in America by 1800.

Figure 1b takes the ancestry of our mother’s second great-grandfather Richard Lay back another seven generations to ancestors coming to New England in the early 1600s, mainly from Britain.

Figure 1c takes the ancestry of our mother’s great-grandmother Catherine Manning back another five or six generations. Her ancestry was also pre–Revolutionary War but much more varied, as is apparent on the diagram.

Readers may want to refer back to these charts as they work their way through the book.

Mother had an amazing set of connections to well-recognized names in every region of the American British Colonies: John Alden and Priscilla Mullins with the Mayflower Pilgrims; the Blair family who helped found Princeton University; the Carbery family of St. Mary’s County, Maryland, who helped build our nation’s capital city; the Manning family who had connections to both Princeton and Brown Universities; the Hite family who pioneered settlement of the Shenandoah Valley; and the Martin family that included several ship surgeons and captains. Mother’s family could also claim the first American-born Catholic nun, Elizabeth Carbery, who became Sister Terese of the Carmelite Order at Port Tobacco, Maryland. Her second great-grandmother, Ann Carbery Mattingly, was the subject of Nancy Schultz’s 2011 book ² Mrs. Mattingly’s Miracle.

Most of Mother’s ancestors were moderately well-off Easterners. They were a very mixed lot when it came to slavery and the Civil War. Some had many, most had a few, but a significant number were actively opposed to slavery. There were also a few women who managed to live their lives quite independently at a time when this was not easy, and they have been given special recognition.

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Acknowledgments

First of all, let me give thanks to a few close family members for their interest and input. My wife and children have read and commented on parts of the book as have my sisters, Anne Carbery Fox and Margaret Warfield Fox Rawls. Mardy and Anne have helped with the editing and also supplied copies of key documents. I am especially indebted to my son, Thomas Downing Fox, who for many years maintained an online family tree that led to contacts with some very knowledgeable genealogists, cousins like Frank Martin and Harry Crittenden Mercado. Beth Martin, wife of my first cousin, Warfield Martin, has also been very helpful in supplying family documents as has Emily Graham Lay Paramanova of Palo Alto, California.

Mardy Rawls, Tom Fox, Skippy Loran, and my deceased brother Lay Martin Fox have all participated in my autosomal genetic testing efforts, which have led to many confusing leads, some success and a few very useful contacts. Among these contacts were Ellen Stine Miller and Nancy Bushby on Hite Family connections and Alfred Young on the Roach family. Ellen Miller and Mary Lay Stephenson, Tamara Anderson, and several others have provided me with guest access to their excellent online family trees, and this has been extremely helpful.

About a dozen or so years ago, I started investigating our Carbery-Mattingly ancestry in earnest via the Internet. Most helpful were Mary Anne Cook, a descendant of Eleanor Carbery Sewell and Elizabeth Culhane, a descendant of Ann Carbery Mattingly’s son John. Sister Miriam John, a member of the Carmelites of Port Tobacco, also had key information because of her interest in Elizabeth Carbery, the first America-born Catholic nun. Most recently, I have consulted extensively with Linda Reno, genealogist for St. Mary’s County, who has been a great help in resolving conflicting information.

I also owe thanks to Nancy Lusignan Schultz for allowing me to quote from her excellent 2011 book, Mrs. Mattingly’s Miracle: The Prince, The Widow, and the Cure That Shocked Washington City.

Several Lay family second cousins have been helpful in exploring Lay family relationships: John Jake Carbery Lay, Charles Francis Lay, James Dominic Dom Lay, and Dottie Sue Lay, all grandchildren of Annie Carbery Lay’s brother, Richard Edward Lay. Jake has a very nice Lay family tree on the Internet. ³

Various Internet postings have been of great help in gaining access to published information and books. It would be folly to try to name them all, but the names Rita Ellis and Jerry Jackson (on the Pancoast family), George Smedley, and William Mattingly come first to mind.

On the Fox side of the family, Penna North, a third cousin once removed found by testing at 23andMe, has been a very welcome source of information on the Baird family and clued me in to our connection to Richard Loper. Sylvia Skippy Bates Loran, a second cousin once removed, was referred to me by my second cousin, Dr. Samuel Mickle Fox, who sent her a copy of the Fox book. Skippy’s mother was his sister. As a result, we now have an excellent online Fox-Loran family tree at MyHeritage.com. ⁴

The Fox Book addendum, already available on the Internet, ⁵ would have been impossible without the interest and cooperation of many family members. My brother and sisters were avid readers of the first book and helped me fix my mistakes. A number of people commented and added details to the addendum as it was being prepared. I’d specially like to mention family members Michael Temple Fox, Charles Pemberton Fox III, Sara Bayard Fox, Kristen Houser Rivers, and Randy Houser. Skippy Loran and her My Heritage Web site were also a big help.

PART ONE

Ancestry of Annie Carbery Lay

The family of our grandmother’s father, Thomas Wolcott Lay, has been well researched by others including some professional genealogists who prepared a number of successful Colonial Dames applications for female family members. A typical Colonial Dames medallion is shown on this book’s cover. Pulling all this together without repeating old stuff was a challenge that I’ve approached by telling it from the viewpoint of two spinster family genealogists who did all the real work.

What was a real eye-opener, however, was the ancestry of our grandmother’s mother, Anne Euphemia Roach. Sketchily treated by her daughter (one of those spinster genealogists), Anne Euphemia Roach had a fabulous set of ancestors. Her great-grandmother Mary Hite now has a chapter of her own since she provides so many clues to how these diverse ancestries came together in Washington DC at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

Chapter 1

The Lay Family

Two Spinster Genealogists

It seems appropriate to dedicate this first chapter to two spinster ladies who developed an interest in the Lay family history. One of them has left a personal memoir, which while a bit overdone, brings the Thomas Wolcott Lay–Annie Euphemia Roach family to life in a highly personal way. Between them, they left us a fascinating description of the Revolutionary War exploits of Col. Asa Lay and a well-researched family tree of Asa Lay’s ancestors.

The first of these, our grandmother Martin’s elder sister, Mary Catherine Lay (Great-Aunt Kitty), was a very familiar figure to us Fox kids. Born in 1864 in Washington DC, she lived until she was eighty-nine but never married. Grandfather Martin died in 1918, and by the time we Fox kids came along, our grandmother and Great-Aunt Kitty had moved in with Mother’s sister, Anne Martin. Buxom and short, Aunt Kitty was always a shadowy presence in our lives, but we kids did not get to know her well. Turns out she could have told us a lot had she been so inclined.

Aunt Anne Martin (who has her own story in appendix 6) kept a boardinghouse on Roland Avenue in Baltimore. Daisy Cook, her wonderful black helper, prepared the meals, and Aunt Kitty was usually at the table whenever we paid a visit. She was also present during the summer vacations we spent at the cottage our grandmother and Aunt Anne owned on Gibson Island,a This cottage was on a hill overlooking the sandspit where the Magothy River joins the Chesapeake Bay.

We knew that our aunt Kitty spent a great deal of time down in Washington DC, researching Lay family history. She left us some useful family documents, including a seventeen-page family tree, one page of which is shown later when we get to the Carbery family. Published in 1960 by Aunt Anne Martin, this was a joint effort by Aunt Kitty and cousin Marian Shriver MacSherry. Aunt Kitty did the Lay and Carbery families, and Marian McSherry did our Shriver cousins. The Shriver connection is quite remote, tracing back six generations to our fourth great-grandfather, Thomas Carbery. Marian, however, was a dear and close friend of Mother’s family, and they treasured the connection between them. The Lays are traced back to the Mayflower, the Carberys to the early Catholic settlement in Maryland.

That seventeen-page pamphlet is a great thing to have but is just a bare-bones family tree with little or no documentation. No dates are given for about half the entries, locations are seldom mentioned, and they are generally lacking source material. Information on the Martin family consists of one page copied from the family bible of our great-grandfather, Dr. James Stansbury Martin.

There was an earlier spinster lady, however, who took it on herself to preserve family history and left copious notes. This was Emily Emmie Elizabeth Lay, born in 1828 in Westbrook, Connecticut. Most of the Lay family still lived in this area of Connecticut, along Long Island Sound just west of the Connecticut River delta. Her father was Steuben Lay, named after Baron von Steuben, the German general who helped General Washington train his army. As a child, Emmie Lay had heard her father tell of the wartime exploits of her grandfather, Col. Asa Lay. She may well have felt some personal involvement since Asa Lay had been in charge of a brigade assigned to protect Baron von Steuben. At age twenty-three, she took it on herself to write Asa Lay’s Revolutionary War story, which is reproduced in appendix 1. It is recommended reading since it sheds some intimate light on the Lay family at a very significant time in our history.

Emmie Elizabeth Lay later wrote as follows: I find in my journal, Oct. 17, 1851, that I spent an evening with my uncle, Edward Lay, and we talked of his father, Col. Asa Lay. I inquired of him if he thought the anecdotes related by my father were correct even in detail? He answered without hesitation in the affirmative adding that he had often heard his father relate the same.

This handwritten story was passed on from generation to generation. Aunt Kitty found it in the journal of her uncle, Richard Gregory Lay, and made the copy that is the source for appendix 1. These two spinster ladies must have known of each other—cousin Emmie was only thirty-six years older than Great-Aunt Kitty—but I doubt that they ever compared notes. I’m sure Kitty would have said so if they had.

Emmie Lay continued to be the definitive Lay family genealogist, working with her nephew, Rev. E. C. Starr, to put together a Lay family history in 1895. This document, based on family records and discussions, was used by Edwin Hill to prepare and publish a Lay family history called The Descendants of Robert Lay of Saybrook, Connecticut. ⁶ Originals of Emmie Lay’s documents can be found in the library of the New England Historic Genealogical Society of Boston. She died in 1903 at age seventy-five, in nearby Guilford, Connecticut.

Rounding out this history are two Colonial Dames applications, authors unknown, tracing the Lay family and providing background on them and their wives including the link back to John Alden and Priscilla Mullins of the Mayflower. These have been somewhat abridged, combined, and reproduced in appendix 2.

A photo of a painting entitled The Mayflower Compact, 1620 by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris is shown in figure 2. It shows passengers including Carver, Winston, Alden, Standish, Howland, Bradford, Allerton and Fuller signing the Mayflower Compact on board the ship on Nov. 11, 1620. The Pilgrims had found they had landed in unsettled territory rather than in Virginia, and this was their original governing document.

The story of how John Alden met and proposed to Priscilla Mullins was told in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1858 poem The Courtship of Miles Standish. Standish apparently sent his roommate, John Alden, to carry his marriage proposal to Priscilla Mullins, and her response was, Why don’t you speak for yourself, John. Longfellow, another descendant, claimed that this story was a family tradition. True or not, this became an American tradition and was commemorated in the statue created by John Rogers (1829–1904) that is depicted in figure 3. Copies were in much demand in the late 1880s.

So where does all this leave us? The Mayflower Story is so well known that there is no need to cover it further, but Asa Lay’s war exploits and the Edwin Hill’s Lay Family history need to be put in perspective, so let’s take a look at them from a twenty-first-century point of view.

From Stonington to Saybrook in Connecticut

Asa Lay was a fourth-generation descendant of Robert Lay (1617–1689) who came over to Lynn, Massachusetts, in 1638 and became one of the patentees of Saybrook, Connecticut, in 1647. His descendants were Puritans, and they married into some important New England families—the Denisons, Stantons, and the Grinnells, the last a Huguenot family who supplied the connection back to the Mayflower. Most of these families lived along the Long Island coastline from Little Compton, Rhode Island, westward to Stonington, and then to Saybrook, both in Connecticut. Stonington is an old whaling port right on the border with Rhode Island while Saybrook lies just to the west of the mouth of the Connecticut River.

One of several brothers who came to America, Robert Lay appears to have done quite well for himself. He owned large tracts of land in both Essex and Westbrook, just to the north and west of Saybrook. He may well have been a trader since the street he lived on in Essex was called Lay’s Cart Lane, and he had his own wharf on Essex Point. In December 1649, he married Sarah Fenner, widow of John Tully, who had come to Saybrook with her brothers after her first husband died. Her son John Tully Jr. got a name for himself as a teacher and compiler of almanacs.

Asa Lay had some other influential ancestors. Two of them were George Denison (1618–1694) and Thomas Stanton (~1620–1670) of Stonington. Stonington and neighboring New London were noted whaling ports, and while fishing must have been important to the local economy, there is no mention of these families being involved in fishing. They were good with boats, however, as Asa Lay’s story confirms. They were traders, and traders owned ships. There are now local museums occupying a Denison homestead in Mystic, Connecticut, called Pequotsepos Manor and a Stanton-Davis homestead in Stonington, Connecticut. Shown in figures 4 and 5, the resemblance between these two buildings is striking.

Thomas Stanton first landed in Virginia in 1635; moved up to Hartford, Connecticut; and then became one of the first planters in Stonington and a trader with American Indians and the West Indies. He was known for his facility with the Indian languages and became the official interpreter for Governor Winthrop.

George Denison, though born in America, had gone back to England to fight with Cromwell in the English civil wars after his first wife (our ancestor) had died. He remarried and brought his new bride and family to Stonington, remaining a man of action. Described as more brilliant a soldier than Miles Standish, he played an active role in the Indian uprising of 1675–78 known as King Philip’s War. In emergencies, George Denison was always in demand, and this was no exception.

While the Wampanoag were initially helpful to the Pilgrims, they and other Algonquin-speaking tribes became irritated that their land was increasingly being developed into farms and villages. Metacomet, their chief (called King Philip by the English), distrusted the settlers, and they distrusted him. When the settlers cut off trade with the Wampanoag, Metacomet assembled a group of like-minded tribes and began attacking the colonists. King Philip’s war affected mainly northern Connecticut and Massachusetts. The local Indians near Stonington were Pequots. They had been soundly defeated in the Pequot wars of 1636 and 1637, and they now took the side of the colonists against their old Indian enemies. Figure 6 is an artist’s etching of the attack on Metacomet’s fort originally published in Harper’s Magazine in 1857. Several of the Denisons are thought to have participated. ⁷

There were multiple connections between the Denisons, the Stantons, and the Lays. First, George’s daughter Sarah (by his first wife) married Thomas Stanton Jr. in 1659, and their daughter Mary Stanton married Robert Lay Jr. in 1679. Second, Robert Lay’s daughter Phebe married George Denison’s son John (by his second wife) in 1667. Intermarriage between these families then continued for some time with children and grandchildren marrying cousins.

Robert Lay III did not follow this trend, marrying Mary Grinnell of Little Compton in 1703. Mary was the daughter of Daniel Grinnell and Lydia Peabody, Lydia being the daughter of Elizabeth Alden and the granddaughter of John Alden and Priscilla Mullins who had come over in 1620 on the Mayflower. Robert Lay III moved Mary to Westbrook, Connecticut, where he set himself up as the tavern keeper.

Mary was a charter member of the Congregational Church in Westbrook as was her mother, Lydia Peabody Grinnell. This church dates back to 1726 and was known as the Second Church of Saybrook before Westbrook was incorporated in 1840. An artist’s depiction is shown in figure 7; it was where many of the Lay and Denison families worshiped.b The following list documents many of the Lay family marriages performed there and shows the closeness of some of these connections: ⁸

A Catalogue of Persons joined in Matrimony by William WORTHINGTON, Pastor

John WATERHOUSE & Lydia LAY, 3 Nov 1730–31

Jeremiah LAY & Prudence BELDEN, 20 Mar 1739–40

Benjamin MORRILL & Phebe LAY, 1 Jun 1740

No marriages were recorded after this date until the ordination of Rev. John DEVOTION, 26 Oct 1757.

Reuben CHAPMAN & Sarah LAY, 28 Jan 1759

George WRIGHT & Anna LAY, 1 Oct 1760

Ezra CRANE & Prudence LAY, 27 Nov 1760

Daniel LAY & Mercy CHAPMAN, 15 May 1763

Job KELSEY & Sibil LAY, 1 Dec 1763

John HULL & Phebe LAY, 27 Sep 1764

James LAY & Abagail BUSHNELL, 19 Nov 1767

Robert ELY & Jerusha LAY, 28 Apr 1768

Deacon Robert LAY & Elizabeth DENISON, 24 Jun 1768

Enoch MURDOCK & Mary LAY, 9 Nov 1768

Johnathan LAY & Abagail LAY, 5 Apr 1769

Daniel LAY, Jr., & widow Hannah KELSEY, 14 Jan 1779

Asa LAY & Sarah WOOLCOTT, 18 Apr 1770

Jonathan LAY, Jr., & Ann MURDOCK, 9 Jan 1772

Abraham MURDOCK & Hannah LAY, 3 Feb 1772

Robert LAY & Desire WOOLCOTT, 3 Mar 1772

Jeremiah LAY, Jr., & Statia BUSHNELL, 8 Mar 1773

Daniel LAY, Jr., & widow Hannah KELSEY, 14 Jan 1779

Ezra LAY & Mehitable KELSEY, 31 Mar 1785

Simeon LAY & Hitty DENISON, 24 May 1786

Nathaniel LAY & Phebe WILLARD, 22 Jul 1789

Jedediah POST & Abagail LAY, 1 Apr 1790

Jonathan BUSHNELL & Betsey LAY, 31 Oct 1796

John Hart FOWLER & Phebe LAY, 1 Jul 1797

John POST, 2d, & Deuse LAY, 22 Mar 1798

All of these Lays were committed Puritans, but the first to become a preacher was Robert Lay IV, who for forty years was deacon of the Westbrook Congregational Church. His brother Daniel Lay (1712–1782) married Anna Bull, and they were Asa Lay’s parents. Daniel inherited farming land in Westbrook from his father. He brought his wife Anna there in February 1734–35, cleared land, and set up a homestead, which he called Chestnut Hill. Asa Lay and his family were farmers, solid Puritans, but not particularly wealthy or influential.

Asa Lay’s Story Reviewed

Asa Lay’s story begins early in 1775 with Daniel Lay calling his sons together, telling them that war with the British was imminent and that of his three sons, the youngest, Asa, was the fittest to serve. All were apparently living on their share of the Chestnut Hill property, and the others could help his family survive while he was gone. Asa was then twenty-six and married, his third child, Richard, our ancestor, being but three months old. On April 20, right after the British were repulsed at Concord and Lexington, Asa was on his way.

He enlisted in the Sixth Connecticut Regiment and on May 8, 1775, was made a corporal. While he had never fired a gun, he was tall, handsome, and agile and had the bearing of a soldier so he must have impressed his officers. His captain was Dr. John Ely of Saybrook, a personal friend of the Lays; and when Ely was named a colonel, he moved into Ely’s regiment, quickly becoming orderly sergeant and then adjutant. His regiment had the responsibility of building forts along Long Island Sound—his home territory.

After defeating the British in the Siege of Boston in March of 1776, Washington moved his troops to defend New York, an important port city that he knew they would try to take. The British obliged, landing on Long Island on August 22nd, shortly after America had declared independence. Five days later, they started a pincer attack. On the back cover, Lord Stirling’s First Maryland Regiment is counterattacking the British in order to allow Washington’s troops to retreat. Only a courageous stand by the intrepid Maryland four hundred in the battle of Brooklyn Heights permitted Washington troops to escape up to White Plains, New York.

Asa Lay next shows up in the Battle of White Plains on October 25th, where, as adjutant in Colonel Ely’s regiment, he is sent to call in the pickets. In Emmie Lay’s story, she says he was commissioned first lieutenant on January 1, 1777, and began serving in Capt. Elisha Ely’s company, Sixth Regiment, Connecticut Line, Continental Army. The Sixth Regiment was then commanded by Col. William Douglas, but he fell ill and Col. Return Jonathan Meigs took over in May 1777. On May 23, following the orders of General Parsons, Meigs fought the Battle of Sag Harbor.

This battle made Meigs’s reputation. Colonel Meigs and 170 men left Guilford, Connecticut, for Long Island in thirteen whaleboats and two armed sloops with an extra sloop to bring back prisoners. They surprised the garrison in Sag Harbor, destroyed military armament, killed several of the British, and took ninety prisoners without losing a man.

The Sixth Regiment stayed in the vicinity of White Plains for the next couple of years, wintering at West Point during the winter of 1777–1778 and at Redding, Connecticut, the following year. Lieutenant Lay was not always with them, and his story tells of a number of special assignments. Somewhat arrogant and impulsive, he was always a thorn in the side of the British if we can believe his story.

When Baron von Steuben came to America in the fall of 1777, he requested a bodyguard, and Asa Lay was put in command of a thirty-man personal detail. He went with General von Steuben to Valley Forge in February 1778 and saw the difficult situation that existed there. Asa recounts accompanying Steuben to a meal with General and Mrs. Washington—she being quite garrulous while Washington listened and laughed at her comments.

The army training program that Von Steuben instituted at Valley Forge proved itself in the Battle of Monmouth that next summer when Washington’s troops fought the British to a standstill. Lieutenant Lay led a successful bayonet charge, a technique that Steuben had emphasized. Asa Lay was impressed with General Steuben and his methods and, after the war, named his next son after him. Figure 8 is a formal portrait of Baron Friederich Wilhelm Von Steuben in military uniform. The original painting was done by Charles Willson Peale in 1780.

We don’t know Asa Lay’s part in the battle of Sag Harbor, if any, but it certainly gave him an idea. Several of his stories that Emmie Lay relates have to do with boats crossing Long Island Sound or the Hudson River. Living near the sound, he was apparently an accomplished boatsman. In fact, his capture by the British in January of 1779 was on a secret mission from Connecticut to Long Island. Blown back on land by a gale, he and his thirty men hid under their boat until the British discovered them. His men were soon exchanged for British prisoners, but Lieutenant Lay was put in prison at Flatbush, Long Island, for over a year.

Asa Lay suffered greatly in confinement, fell ill, and was put on parole in the autumn of 1780. He knew his family was in a bad way since his pay was in arrears. According to his story, he made his way to Morristown where Washington was encamped and made a personal plea to the general. Washington was impressed, and Asa Lay was made a captain in his regiment by the Continental Congress, retroactive to May 1780.

Still feeble, he ended up in Danbury, Connecticut, where his wife Sarah and his brother-in-law Joseph Denison had to come to bring him home. After three months, he had recovered but was never quite the same man. He went back to train his own troops in the Fourth Connecticut Regiment, proving to be a strict disciplinarian but an excellent officer, well liked by his men. Emmie Lay tells several stories to this effect.

The war had moved south by this time with the end coming at Yorktown in October 1781. Some Connecticut troops were present, but Captain Lay was still back in Connecticut setting up highly successful raiding parties on Long Island. Capt. Asa Lay remained active in the state militia after the war and was promoted to lieutenant colonel on May 31, 1786, by Governor Oliver Wolcott.

Reading Emmie Lay’s story, one gets the impression that while Asa Lay could embellish a tale in his old age, he was really the thorn in the side of the British that he claimed to be. There is little question that his abilities were recognized at that time but forgotten by history, except in his own family.

Emmie Lay’s story also reveals a lot about his wife and the family he had left behind during the war. Sarah Wolcott had married Asa at the age of seventeen, and she was only twenty-two when he left for duty. As could be expected, things were not easy: food was short, and the winters were extremely cold. She was not a farmer and depended on others for food. Yet somehow she held things together with the help of her eldest son, Asa, and her brother-in-law Joseph Denison who had married her husband’s sister Anna and lived nearby.

Short and stout but quite good-looking, Sarah came from a very religious background and was a dedicated Puritan. Her father, Josiah Wolcott, had apparently abandoned his family after his first wife died in 1760. He moved down to Newark, New Jersey, where he remarried. Sarah, eight years old, was adopted and raised by the minister of Saybrook’s West Parish, the Reverend John Devotion. (Yes, that’s really his name.)

Sarah’s parents had some interesting ancestors, too. Josiah Wolcott was a great-grandson of Henry Wolcott and Elizabeth Saunders, a wealthy Puritan couple from Lydeard St. Lawrence, Somerset, England, who had brought their family to New England in 1630. He was the owner of Galdon Manor in Tolland, and one researcher has traced the Wolcotts back fifteen generations to the eleventh century in Wales. ⁹

The Wolcotts first settled in Dorchester, but soon moved on with other Pilgrims to occupy Indian lands in the vicinity of Hartford, Connecticut: towns named Windsor and Wethersfield. The first settlers had obtained the right of settling there from the Plymouth Company and also, quite honorably, made a deal to purchase land from the local Indian tribes. Later, settlers were squatters who did not worry about such details, and this eventually led to King Philip’s war.

Windsor is situated along the Connecticut River at the northernmost point where it is still navigable to large ships. Many of these early settlers traded with the Indians for furs, which they then exported abroad, including to the West Indies. Some of the Wolcotts were quite prosperous and became influential in state and local government. Josiah was a second cousin to Oliver Wolcott, signer of the Declaration of Independence and later the governor of Connecticut. It appears, however, that Josiah’s side of the family was not wealthy.

Sarah Wolcott’s mother, Lucy White, also traced back to very early settlers of the Hartford area—names such as Goodwyn, Crow, Drake, and White. John Drake came over in 1630 on the Mary and John in company with the Wolcotts and could trace his name back to the Norman invasion.

Asa Lay and Sarah Wolcott went on to have nine more children. Our ancestor, Richard Lay, married Anna Woodward, daughter of Rosewell Woodward of Guilford and granddaughter of Rev. John Woodward of Norwich; Harvard, class of 1693. ¹⁰ They raised six children in Connecticut but had only one son who carried on the family name. This was Richard Lay Jr., who became a lawyer and moved to Washington DC, where he married Mary Susan Mattingly in 1834. We’ll get back to him later.

Asa Lay died of a fever, caught while being a Good Samaritan. This was in 1814 at age sixty-five. Sarah lived until 1840, dying at age eighty-seven, and was personally known to Emmie Lay, her granddaughter. Asa Lay’s story, reproduced as appendix 1, is a fascinating bit of family history, well researched and well written. We owe Aunt Kitty a word of thanks for preserving this story.

The Memories of Mary Catherine Lay

Great-Aunt Kitty also left us a written memoir of her life experiences, the earlier portion of which is reproduced in appendix 3, along with a summary of her later travels. This document is really quite revealing since it tells the story of an educated and literate woman who traveled a lot but always depended on others for support. This is the definition of a bluestocking, which is what she calls herself. She did get a job for a time as a companion and governess for the Hertzog family at the Magnolia Plantation in Louisiana, but this was exceptional. In those days, an unmarried daughter (and there were plenty of them around) could not be expected to find a job and was generally cared for by relatives. Aunt Kitty was the sole beneficiary of her father’s will—and took full advantage of this.

Kitty did lead a very active life, traveling all over the United States after her father died in 1912. This comes as a surprise to her grandnieces and nephews who still remember her as a lady who was afraid of her own shadow. Several family photos that include Aunt Kitty are referred to in chapter 8 when we get to the Thomas Wolcott Lay family.

Her story gives us some personal information about herself and her relatives that is really quite remarkable in attention to detail, and she has been quoted frequently in this book. Even as a child, her family never stayed in one place for long, and this may have given her that hunger for travel. While she writes well and her story is interesting, it has limitations as far as genealogy is concerned. It should be recognized that these memories were mostly written long after the fact. As was the case in the family tree she produced, information on dates, locations, and even names are haphazardly presented. A critique has been added at the end of appendix 3 that may be helpful.

Kitty’s Research Notebook

Kitty also left a notebook that has just recently come into my possession. In these notes, she does recognize her mother’s connections back to the Hite and Manning families and even speculates correctly on the Hite-Manning marriage. These notes would definitely have helped move my research along faster, but then I might have missed finding some very wonderful research partners. Her speculations on the Martin family, however, are completely off base.

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Chapter 2

The Carbery Family

A Confusion of Information

The Carbery family of St. Mary’s County, Maryland, was important to Ruth Martin’s heritage because it supplied the main Roman Catholic influence. I use the spelling with one r because that’s what our family always used and it apparently was the spelling used in the south of Ireland where the Carberys originated. Their later history is well documented because it included a mayor of Washington City, Thomas Carbery, whose portrait is shown as figure 9. His sister, whose miraculous cure from cancer made all the headlines, was our third great-grandmother.

The early Carbery history is less well documented but quite intriguing, particularly if some of the oral tradition and speculation is taken seriously. Admittedly, every genealogist to come along seems to have interpreted some of the facts differently. Three consecutive generations of men were named John Baptist Carbery, and they and their multiple wives are easily confused. This made the early Carbery history a real challenge.

In the 1960 family tree published by Aunt Anne Martin, Aunt Kitty and Marion MacSherry had shown the immigrant as John Baptist Carbery, born in Ireland in 1660, who came to St. Mary’s County, Maryland, in 1690, married Elizabeth Guibert, widow of Thomas Turner, and died in 1728. They showed his son John Baptist Carbery (1707–1778) marrying Eleanor Thompson and their son Thomas Carbery (1758–1820) marrying Asoneth Simmons. The latter were Aunt Kitty’s great-grandparents, so she said.c A copy of the Carbery page is presented in figure 10, and the level of detail can be seen as limited.

In contrast to this, the biography of Mayor Thomas Carbery, done by Allen C. Clark in 1916, ¹¹ says that his great-grandfather, John Baptist Carbery, was born in Ireland about 1700 and came to America in 1730 by way of Boston, Massachusetts, continuing on to St. Mary’s County, Maryland. It agreed with Aunt Kitty on most everything else, including the children of Thomas Carbery and Mary Asonath Simmons, except that Clark provided dates of birth and death where Aunt Kitty did not. He also showed Mary Thompson as the name of Thomas Carbery’s mother instead of Eleanor Thompson. Both had access to the Carbery family bible, which was in the possession of Richard G. Lay, Aunt Kitty’s uncle, but is now missing.

A dozen or so years ago, I started investigating our Carbery ancestry in earnest via the Internet. I found a number of peopled who had spent quite some time at this and were most helpful, but the more we exchanged notes, the more confusing the early Carbery history became. This was despite a proliferation of wills, court proceedings, land transactions, and the fact that a number of books had been written on the