Tuesday, October 22, 2019

deep in the middle of the seventeen hundreds, it's all i can do to get up and do some of the carpentry work i've been trying to accomplish around here. today i put plastic on a screen, sheltering my shed from the winter, and i think it works pretty well, although it may not hold up all winter. i may put plastic on the inside of the screen as well as outside, and i'm working on ceilings, and insulation, and walls, trying to get it ready for winter. but also trying to use up, and get out of there, all the scraps of insulation and wood that have been hanging around. it's my pride, really, that i do the whole thing with scraps, but it's also because i'm not so good at it, so i learn as i go, and i won't waste my poor skills on brand new lumber.

deep in the seventeen hundreds you have this guy riverus, or riverius, depending on whom you ask, and this guy's mother was supposedly a leverett. he lived in new haven, but she was from boston, and everyone was pretty sure she was born in 1736, even had a date, though i forget which one. born in 1736 in boston, in the family of knight the metalsmith, and died 1756, in woodbridge connecticut, home of the sperry farms. well the sperry farms were used to hide out some regicides, two guys that were guilty of killing king charles I, so that adds a little bit of intrigue to the story. and this guy, nicholas sperry russell junior, apparently married mary ann leverett, and had riverus/riverius before she died. riverius by the way named one of his boys leverett russell, so that adds a little weight to the fact that she at least existed. but, as it turns out, lots of people in connecticut were naming their sons leverett, for whatever reason. i haven't found the reason.

the thing is, you tend to look for reasons. people name people for reasons, but they also leave town for reasons. why would this mary ann leave boston, and go and have a baby, and die in the process, out there in the part of new haven connecticut that would one day become woodbridge connecticut? it could be that this nicholas dude just breezed through boston and won her heart and took her out there, ok. but she could also be a missing link in the sense that if she felt she had to leave town, there might have been a reason. if she had a baby in about 1652, at the age of 16, they would have every reason to kind of forget about her and she might have snuck out of town in order to start over again.

now the thing is i have use for someone who had a baby in about 1652, namely a john w who would become known as a half brother, or actually to be more exact he would be a cousin to the people whose family he apparently was raised in. if he was truly born in 1652 or thereabouts, he would have to have gone to the house of colonel john, who was twenty five, or thomas, who was twenty-two, but neither of these were married. perhaps he grew up in knight's house, though knight died right then in the 1750's sometime. when colonel john married mary, and had john esquire in 1758, perhaps john w was already six, and just started going by the name william. as a half brother he would actually just be a kid that the family raised, knowing that his true mother wasn't able to do it, as she had left for connecticut and died.

just fishing here. i have to come up with a reasonable explanation, somehow, of how two johns came around to having two williams, and the thing is, the second of those williams wasn't born until 1773, and the first one, the grandfather of our joseph, was born in boston, yet died in needham in 1792. he would be the guy who gave up the city and became a farmer. if the father was born in 1773, the grandfather had to be born before 1757, I figure, to be sixteen when he had his son william. but i haven't worked out where that william could have come from.

out in the shed i construct walls, ceilings, plastic on doors, that kind of stuff. it gets cold. i need to prepare for winter. winter, here in the mountains, is no small shakes. i'm hoping we'll be ok. we've kind of been beating the cars to death.

kind of like a connecticut winter, i figure.

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