Category Archives: Land

Names

I’ve always liked the custom of passing down family names, even though my own mother named me after the Christmas songs being sung at the hospital when I was born.

The Hall family followed a rhythm of repetition when they named their children. The first three generations included four Johns, and one Jonathan, the Jonathan being a brother to one of the Johns. And there were three Marys, three Elizabeths, and two Sarahs.

In the fourth generation Asahel Hall and his wife Sarah Goldsmith gave birth to twelve children. Many of them “died young,” and in those days, because child mortality was so common, it was customary to name a surviving child after a brother or sister who had already died. So Asahel and Sarah bore two Aarons, three Asahels, and two Sarahs. The surviving Aaron (Aaron Hall, Esq), lived for seventy-two years, giving birth to his own sons Aaron and Asahel and his own daughters, Mary and Elizabeth. Here and there an odd name crops up. Asahel (itself a bit odd) and Sarah had a Mehitabel and Aaron an Electa.

My great-great-grandfather, Salmon Hall, had a younger brother Billious Kirtland Hall. He seems to have been named after a Dr. Billious Kirtland whose family plot is next to the Halls in the Wallingford Cemetery. I’m still trying to find out more about this family connection. The name Billious was never used again, as far as I know, but one of my mother’s favorite cousins as well as my brother shared the name Kirtland.

Salmon (pronounced Sal-mon) may have been a version of Solomon. Biblical names were popular. This photo, probably taken around 1860, may be my great-great-grandfather. My grandmother wrote on the back “Possibly Salmon Hall.” But recently my cousin Patti sent me photos of two portraits that used to hang in the farm living room. She refers to them as “The Eggheads,” and they may be Salmon and his wife Cornelia. It’s always nice to have a face to go along with a name, but for now I have one name and two faces that don’t appear to belong to the same person.

Possibly Salmon Hall

Possibly Salmon Hall

Also Possibly Salmon Hall

Also Possibly Salmon Hall

The last name of mysterious origin is Whirlwind Hill. I always thought it was named after the Wallingford Tornado of 1878, but in his book, “History of Wallingford, Connecticut,” Charles Davis says, “Whirlwind is that high land east of the late residence of Luther Hall, and west from Pistapaug Pond.”

Since Davis wrote his book in 1870, our hill couldn’t have been named after the 1878 whirlwind. I read somewhere that it had once been called “Wild Mare’s Hill,” but can’t seem to find that reference again. If anyone has any ideas or clues to the source of the name “Whirlwind Hill,” I’d love to hear about it. For now I’ll just let it conjure thoughts of wild winds, blowing trees, and houses flying over hill and dale.

At the top of Whirlwind Hill, May 2014

At the top of Whirlwind Hill, May 2014

On Friday: May Window

Wilderness

When I had a tooth pulled a few years ago I fussed and complained about it for days before and for days after. My great-grandfather William Ellsworth Hall didn’t make a very big deal about his adventures at the dentist. Nor did he say much about the start of the Civil War. Here’s what he wrote in his 1861 journal.

Saturday, April 20 – “Went to New Haven. Had 8 teeth out. Spent the night with Aaron.”

Sunday, April 21 – “Went in town to have teeth out. Had 8 out. Walk home. War news.”

Monday, May 6 – “Got my teeth. Came home.”

He may have complained about his teeth to his wife, but didn’t share his feelings in his journal. Sometimes it bothers me that the past reaches me in this consciously or unconsciously edited way. William was a busy man and penned only a few words each day. But he wrote what he thought were the essentials, and it’s fun for me to have these glimpses into his life.

Journal of William Ellsworth Hall, 1861

Journal of William Ellsworth Hall, 1861

The women and men who built the Hall farm were probably even tougher than my great-grandfather. The first settlers carved the town of Wallingford out of land “purchased” from Quinnipiac Indians Mantowese and Sawseunck in 1638. In his “History of Wallingford Connecticut” Charles Davis describes the purchase.

“Lastly, the said Theophilus Eaton, John Davenport, &c., accepting from Mantowese this free gift of his land as above do by way of thankful retribution give unto him eleven coats made of trucking cloth, and one coat for himself of English cloth, made up after the English manner.”

At the time of this treaty the Quinnipiacs in the area numbered about two hundred and fifty. By 1774, a mere four were left in Wallingford.

The original 1670 town plan for Wallingford shows the six-acre house lots (forty-two in all) mapped out on the “Long High Way” – the street that would eventually become Main Street. To the east of these lots, in the direction of the Hall farm, the planner wrote two words – “East” and “Wilderness.”

Charles Davis describes the challenges for the first settlers.

“Making a new settlement was quite a formidable undertaking…Wolves, in thousands, infested the new settlements. They killed the cattle, they stole and carried off the sheep, and did what they could by their unearthly howlings at night, to add to the horrors that thickened on the skirts of the wilderness. The moose, the deer and the bear roamed at will through the unbroken wilderness.”

Whether or not it was right for my ancestors to become owners of land that had belonged to Indians and animals that “roamed at will,” is a thornier issue than I can cover in this blog, but it does give me pause to remember that the land I think of as mine and ours was not always so.

When I visit Wallingford and take walks around the block that makes up Whirlwind Hill, I pass a lonely wooded area. It used to be the site of the Scard farm, but in just the few years since the house was taken down, the woods have reclaimed their place. I think about John the Immigrant’s three sons who were among the thirty-eight original settlers of Wallingford. How intrepid they must have been to clear the land one tree at a time to build their homes and their lives and their community. Farming was, and still is, an incessant battle against the forces of nature, and they worked daily to be good caretakers of their land.

In these woods I can almost feel the ancient presence of people and animals that walked and roamed among the trees before any of our family arrived. Someday these familiar acres may be wilderness again, and the thought humbles me as I continue on my way to the top of Whirlwind Hill.

"Wallingford Woods, Carol Crump Bryner, pen and colored pencil, 2012

“Wallingford Woods, Carol Crump Bryner, pen and colored pencil, 2012

On Friday: Seeing the Big Picture

 

At the Top of the Tree

Trees

Creating a family tree is a complicated business. The generations grow in number, names become confusing as they are repeated from family to family, and, to an outsider, the result can be just plain boring.  But there’s always a starting place – a first person – who is either at the bottom (on the trunk) or on the top of the tree.

I’ve always pictured our genealogy looking like the growing Christmas tree in the Nutcracker Ballet with the star family member at the top and the heirs and assigns adorning the branches below like ornaments lovingly collected over the years.

Our star, the Hall at the top of our tree, is John, The Immigrant. Sometimes called “The Emigrant” and sometimes “The Immigrant,” he was twenty-five years old when, in 1630, he left his home in Old England to come to New England. I’ve read that he traveled on the ship “The Griffin,” but haven’t been able to verify that. What I do know is that he got on a boat one day and left his home, never to return.  Did he bring with him on his journey a treasured pocket watch, a family Bible, a lock of a loved one’s hair? Did he hold close a letter, or a journal, or a map of this new land? Maybe his crossing was rough and his cabin small and dark. It can’t have been easy, and I wish I knew more details so I could have a sense of who he was, what he felt, and what he left behind.

Alexis de Toqueville said of the Puritans, “I think I can see the whole destiny of America contained in the first Puritan who landed on those shores.” It would be a good guess to suppose that John was a Puritan, and that he left England to pursue religious freedom.

But I also want him to be an adventurer, eager to cross an ocean and build a country. His travels took him first to Boston and then New Haven. He married Jane Wollen, fathered seven children, and in 1670 helped establish the town of Wallingford, Connecticut. Three of his sons were among Wallingford’s first settlers, and were it not for this great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather venturing into the unknown, there would have been no Hall farm on Whirlwind Hill.

In the middle of a field on the farm stands a lone maple tree. I visit it every time I go back to Wallingford. When I stand under its branches I can see the farmland, and I imagine how it used to look. The tree makes me think of John, and I thank him for this place.

The Tree, Carol Crump Bryner, colored pencil

On Wednesday: Wilderness