Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Noah SHEARER

Now you know (briefly) who Noah is and why he is important to me. He is truly the person that gave me Genealogy Fever. As I mentioned in my previous post, he was only 13 when he was involved in the American Revolution. Not only were Noah and his brothers involved in the American Revolution; remember the Battle of Bennington? But his father, John SHEARER was also involved in the war. John and one of his sons; William, answered the call to arms in Lexington on April 19, 1775, that was a mere 236 years ago. In addition to Noah and William, another SHEARER son was active in the Revolution. John SHEARER Jr. was in  the  Revolutionary War in 1779. Obviously my ancestors were rebels and revolutionary thinkers. I have sometimes been a rebel, but not to that extent. So, if you're a rebel and your ancestors came to America early on, you may come by it naturally, it's in your "genes".
You may be wondering how exactly I'm related to Noah, here goes. My mother is Priscilla, her mother was Kathryn, her father was Floyd, his mother was Clara and her father was Joseph and Noah was his father. That makes Noah my 4x great grandfather. In many families, there would be many more generations to span the time from Noah's birth to mine. I'll do the math for you.......almost 200 years, 198 to be exact. If a generation is presumed to be approximately 20 years, there should be 10 generation between me and Noah, but there aren't. I descend through Noah's 2nd wife, Betsey. He was 58 when he married Betsey, she was about 34 when they married. He was 60, when his son Joesph was born and he fathered his last child when he was 64. I feel confident saying he was a virile old man. Fathering a child at 60 certainly takes up a few generations. Noah is buried in the Oakwood cemetery in East Aurora, NY. If you ever get up that way, he and his family members in are the back of the cemetery. They pretty much take up the 2 back rows. Noah's grave has a American Revolutionary War marker by his grave that was placed there by the DAR. If I can find the photo of it that I have, I'll try to post it.

Monday, April 18, 2011

Getting started

I have it again, Genealogy Fever. It's been some time since I've actively worked on my family history. It wasn't just watching Who Do You Think You Are? or getting involved in DAR again that rekindled the fever. I needed something else to occupy my mind and family history was the answer. The Genealogy Fever hadn't broken, it had just been in remission and now it's back.
The first ancestor to get me started was Noah SHEARER. I remember going to visit my maternal grandmother in Rochester, NY and hearing about Noah. He was only 13 when he fought in the American Revolution, the Battle of Bennington to be specific. The story goes that when Noah went with 2 of his brothers to Vermont, he was supposed to bring the horses back home. But he didn't. Sounds like a typical teenager to me. He stayed and fought, did I mention he was 13? I certainly don't know of many 13 year olds today, that would be trusted to bring horses from Vermont to Massachusetts, much less decide to stay and fight in a battle. I have a niece that is 13 and granted she is a girl, but I can't imagine her doing something like that even if she were a boy.
So, Noah is the one to blame for this hobby, some might call it an obsession, of mine. My grandmother was also partially responsible. She had this fascinating trunk with lots of letters, deeds and other bits of information. Most genealogists, amateur or professional, would have given their right arm for some of the things in that trunk. I came to the conclusion about 15 years ago, that thanks to my grandmother, I was one lucky girl.
That's a little about how I caught the fever, now about the blogging. This is my first attempt at blogging and I'm sure my initial attempts will look different from my future ones. My intent with the blog is to share with people (mainly my family and it branches) the stories of some of my ancestors, brickwalls I have, new information and records that I find. One of the first things I had to do was pick a name for my blog. When I was teaching, we teachers would often comment about students who were very much like their parents. We would say, "that apple didn't fall far from the tree". Since genealogy is about family trees, I thought "An Apple Falls" would be fitting.