Tag: Andrews

Philip Andrews Jr and Philip Andrews Sr

PHILIP ANDREWS JR

As we continue to climb the Andrews branch of the tree, we have almost reached the top of what I have been able to find. The father of CalvinDexterAndrews was PhilipAndrews, Jr.  Philip was a lifelong resident of Ludlow, Massachusetts. He was born about 1808, the son of Philip and Sarah (unknown) Andrews. Philip must have been married twice, since his second wife would have been too young to be the mother of Dexter. He married (2) Mary Ann Powers on January 1,1838 in Ludlow. Mary Ann was eight years old when Calvin Dexter was born, supporting Philip’s relationship with another woman before his marriage to Mary Ann.

Calvin was probably the only child born from Philip’s first marriage. Philip and Mary Ann had one child: Mary Ann Andrews (Jr) was born about 1830, and married George W Mason April 12, 1855.  Philip is listed in the 1840 census with four in the family, one adult male (Philip), one adolescent male (Calvin Dexter), one adult female (Mary Ann Sr.), and a girl under 10 years (Mary Ann Jr.).

Not a lot is known about Philip. He probably worked as a laborer on the farms in Ludlow. Philip died violently at a young age. He was 34 years old when he was accidentally shot to death on October 17, 1842.[1]   I have not found out the details of this death. If someone can find the old newspapers that covered Ludlow during this time period, that might give us more information on what happened. His death occurred only six months after his father’s tragic death.

Mary Ann Powers was born about 1817 in Ludlow. She was the daughter of CharlesJames and Polly (unknown) Powers, and a first cousin of Lovina Jones, the Continue reading “Philip Andrews Jr and Philip Andrews Sr” →

Charles Andrews and Martha Gibbons

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Main Street looking West. Palmer, Mass. greenpasture.com

Charles “Charlie” Henry Andrews, the grandfather of Ruth and father of Blanche Louise, was described by his great grandson as a nice man, very easy going. He was tall, 5’11” and 185 pounds according to his World War I draft registration, with coppery colored skin, black straight hair – what was left of it since he was balding, brown eyes, and he had a big moustache. He chewed tobacco and smoked a pipe. A big Yankees fan, he did not like the Red Sox. He thought the Red Sox were foolish for trading Babe Ruth, and that they were prejudice against black baseball players. In fact, the Red Sox was the last professional baseball team to integrate, although they had the opportunity to sign Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays, and other talented black players and chose not to do so. They did not integrate their team until 1959, long after Charlie’s death. Charlie did not particularly like black people from the South. He said there were African-Americans fighting with the Confederates, and shooting at his people, who fought for the North. His father-in-law, as well as several of his and his wife’s uncles fought in the Civil War for the North.

Charlie was born September 11, 1877 in Vernon, Connecticut, the son of George Washington and Jeanette (Freeman) Andrews. He was the second child and first son of his parents’ eleven children. As a young man, he worked as a farm laborer on the local farms. He met Martha “Mattie” H. Gibbons, and they married on January 10, 1895 in Monson, Massachusetts. Charlie was 17 years old, and Mattie was 25. Mattie was pregnant with their first and only daughter, Blanche Louise, at the time of their marriage. They initially lived in Vernon, and moved to Monson by 1900. They were living in Palmer in 1906, where they made their home for the remainder of their lives. Continue reading “Charles Andrews and Martha Gibbons” →

The Andrews Family – A New England Heritage

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Jim, Ruth, Richard, Harry

What was Ruth Martha Andrews’s story? We knew very little about the family’s history, and there were few people to talk to when we began the search for answers. We knew that Ruth’s mother had died at a young age, and Ruth had been raised by her grandparents. We did not know her mother’s name. We did not know who Ruth’s father was, but we did know that her mother had been assaulted by a white man, resulting in a pregnancy. Son Jimmy, who lived with his great grandparents while growing up, told us the family was part Native American, and that he had gone with his great grandparents to “pig roasts” in Connecticut. Son Richard remembered the Civil War artifacts in the attic, and knew that one of his ancestors had fought in the Civil War.

What our search found out was astounding. Ruth has deep roots in New England. Not only did her great grandfather, James Wallace, fight in the Civil War, so did many of her uncles. Her ancestor, Ned Carter, fought in the Revolutionary War along with several of his sons. This family also had roots in New England slavery, which was quite prevalent but never discussed like slavery in the South. Continue reading “The Andrews Family – A New England Heritage” →

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Introduction to the DeBoise Family Tree (originally shared January 4, 2018)

I first met James DeBoise in the fall of 1974. I was dating his son and Jim had come to Rhode Island to visit Richard. I remember Richard fixing fried smelts and cream corn for his dad, a favorite of both of them. They both added sugar to their cream corn, mirroring each other in their eating styles. I also remember sitting with Jim in the back of the car and as he was talking about Ruth, his wife who had died the previous year, he began to tear up. It was obvious that he had loved and deeply missed his wife.

Over the years Richard and I spent a lot of time with him. He would frequently drive down from Springfield, in his red Cadillac convertible with the large cattle horns on the front and lights flashing around the license plate, to spend the weekend with us. I remember he always wanted to look sharply dressed, and he enjoyed going to the strip clubs. He wore a suit and his cowboy hat and boots when he went out. On a trip with us to Salem, Massachusetts he went through the Witch Museum for the first time, and laughed at me as I wandered through the cemeteries seeing if I could find any of my relatives buried there. On a trip to Plymouth and the Plymouth Plantations, he walked away, shaking his head, from Richard who kept trying to get the actors out of character. On a trip to Old Orchard Beach, Maine he bought a large stuffed gorilla, dressed it in his suit, and set it in the back of his convertible with the top down, turning heads and causing a lot of laughs. Richard took his dad to New Orleans a few years before his death, and the stories they came back with would make you roll on the floor with laughter.

Richard and James New Orleans 1988

We also had some serious discussions. During dinner at a local Chinese restaurant, he told us about being an orphan at 12 years of age. His youngest brother and sister went to live with his Aunt Bessie in New Haven, Connecticut. Jim, Harry and Joe were placed in foster care in Boston. Jim said he was being abused in his foster home and he ran away. He went to his brother Frank, who was only 15 and trying to survive on his own, and his sister Rose, who was newly married and only 17, but neither were able to give him a place to stay. He was on his own from that point on.

He traveled to New Orleans, New York, and other places seeking work. He worked at racetracks riding horses during part of this time. With little education, he became a very skilled mechanic. He drove trucks, rode show horses – equestrian and jumpers, worked hard and played hard. He told us about first seeing his future wife. He was driving a truck through Palmer, Massachusetts and saw Ruth coming out of the movie theater. He stopped the truck, introduced himself, and the romance blossomed from that point forward, much to the disapproval of Ruth’s grandmother.

I never knew Ruth Martha Andrews, but have heard stories about her. I cannot imagine having a family as large as hers – seventeen children with two dying at birth. She and Jim also made a home for four of her daughter Dorothy’s young children after Dorothy and her husband John died in a car accident in 1959. Ruth grew up as an only child, probably in a fairly quiet home. Her home as an adult was anything but quiet! It seems as if she was a very giving woman, with a lot of patience. When I asked her sons to tell me more about her, they said she was a “homebody”. She stayed home and took care of the children. Richard remembers picking wild grapes on “the hill”, and bringing them to his mother, who would make grape jelly. She also enjoyed listening to the detailed description of movies when Richard came home from seeing the latest movie at the theater.

Ruth did have an independent streak. She wanted to learn to drive, but Jim did not want her to. He was gone most of the week and wanted her to stay home with the kids. That way he knew where she was! However, she was determined she was going to learn. She snuck out Jim’s car keys when he was sleeping and had a duplicate made. He would leave on Sunday nights to go to work driving a truck back and forth to New York. He would leave his car parked at Haskell Trucking, his employer. She, and her son Billy, would take the extra key and go get the car, and Billy proceeded to teach her to drive. She gained her independence! I found a newspaper article where she was stopped for speeding in Ware and subsequently paid a speeding fine.

Once the children were older, and Richard was working on the racetrack, he convinced her to come with him to the horse races. She saw the horses and fell in love with horse racing, determined that she was going to have a racehorse. This was in the early 1960s, and she and Jim bought several horses which they raced throughout New England.

I have taken my passion for genealogy and have been tracing the DeBoise and Andrews families since the 1970s. I believe it is important to pass our family history, stories, and traditions on to future generations. I will share what I have found out about this family’s ancestors. I hope that family members will continue to add to the stories so that they are not lost and will track the new generations that have descended from these families.

Some of what I will be sharing with you includes information on the DeBoise and Perkins families; the Andrews and Wallace families; the Cortis/Remington family; family origins based on DNA; as well as ancestral charts. I have information on the many family members who fought in the Civil War, as well as the Revolutionary War and most of this country’s major conflicts. I hope you will enjoy, will add to the information, and will share the stories of your family with your children and grandchildren so they will know their history.
Teri