American Legacy ...Who? ME?!

As I have revealed in this blog in the past, I have been, at times, consumed by the passion called genealogy. It started in November of 1999. Why? I don’t exactly remember. I think it was because my siblings and I had agreed to organize and stage a family reunion for my father’s side. The prior reunion – in 1994 – had consisted only of the families of my father’s siblings. I had started with the same list of cousins and uncles (and an aunt), but I kept wondering about my grandfather’s siblings. I couldn’t recall ever hearing anything about them. Were there any? Did they come over to the USA?

A few questions to my father turned up a written essay cobbled together from an oral history, as told to -- and written down by -- my father’s cousin, Romeo, by his mother, the youngest sibling of my grandfather, as well as some of Romeo's own reminiscences that he had added to the “record.” The essay left more questions unanswered than I had even thought before to ask!

A simple entry of my family name into the Google search engine launched me on a fantastic journey of discovery and revelation.
But that’s not what I’m writing about here…

In the middle of all that, I felt a twinge of guilt that I was leaving my mother’s name out of it. It seems somewhat unfair that the whole convention of love and marriage in our country requires, at least traditionally, that the female of the pair give up her family name and take that of her husband. From the point of view of the amateur genealogist, this convention can prove more than a little frustrating! As it goes, I entered Mom’s name – Edgerton – into Google some time in 2000.

Bupkis.

This didn’t exactly surprise me. Other than her father, who died when I was four years old, I had never met nor heard of anyone else with the name. Granted, my mother was estranged from her parents as a teenager and, either out of anger or embarrassment, rarely spoke of them to me, so I imagine there are/were relatives in the region I just don’t know about.

Then one day in 2003 or 2004, I tried again with Google. This attempt produced four possibly helpful links. One of them, titled "The Edgerton Family Database" seemed pretentious. I presumed it was some guy who had listed his parents and maybe his grandparents, his siblings, their children and his own children. So I skipped over it and looked at the others first.

Those proved worthless to me, so I returned to "The Edgerton Family Database." The first page I encountered was a credits page, attributing the monumental effort that resulted beyond to four individuals. Okay. Big deal. Next page, if I recall, was the Edgerton Family index. It was a list of names, alphabetized by given names, as everyone was an Edgerton. It was quite a formidable list, and almost every name was a blue hyper-link. I clicked my way to the ‘Rs’ and found a couple of links for Robert, which was my grandfather’s name. In parentheses beside each name was a birth year. Fortunately for me, I had a copy of an obituary as well as the prayer card from the funeral home that had handled his burial, and each corroborated his birth year as 1895. I chose the Robert from the database index whose birth year was 1895 and clicked on it.

The next page brought me to a listing for Robert, revealing to me his parents’ names. His father’s name on the page was another hyper-link. I clicked up and up and up through generation after generation of Edgertons, a mind-bending journey through the Reconstruction, the Civil War, the expansion of our nation, the Revolution, to England… It boggled my mind to realize I had THAT MANY relatives wandering about the country at various stages of its history!

I had barely gotten started, transcribing the names of my lineage from the database to a Mac-based family-tree software called Reunion, when I thought to send a message to one of those credited on the opening page of the web site to thank them and acknowledge what a truly fantastic effort they had achieved, and what a valuable resource it had become for me. I also noted that there was no spouse or descendants listed for my grandfather, and I asked if he would care to have this information.

A few days later I received a reply to my message in which the author, a Florida-based actor whose stage name is "Edge", who is also my 5th cousin, thanked me for my gratitude, but then deferred my offer of new family information to another of the web-site's creators. Out of curiosity, he asked for my grandfather’s name and birth year, which I sent back to him in a return e-mail. Then I sent the information to the appropriate custodian of Edgerton Family information.

A few more days later I received another e-mail from "Edge" asking me if I realized I was a Mayflower Descendant. EXCUSE ME? Through a series of feverishly written (on my part, anyway) e-mails, "Edge" explained it to me, and then highlighted key names in my family tree that link me directly to the Mayflower!

So…

-Mom's father was Robert J. Edgerton.

-Robert's father was Palmer C. Edgerton (b. February 1863, Lake County, Indiana).

-Palmer's father was Amasa Edgerton (b. August 16, 1824, Elk Creek, Pennsylvania).

-Amasa's father was Horace Edgerton (b. 1794 in Connecticut).

-Horace's father was Isaac Edgerton (b. 1767, Simsbury (N. Canton), Connecticut).

-Isaac's father was Jonathan Edgerton (b. 1726, Norwich (Franklin), Connecticut).

-Jonathan's father was Richard Edgerton III, the grandson of Richard Edgerton, who made his way to the colonies sometime around 1647. On the other hand…

-Jonathan's mother was Hannah Calkins (b. July 20, 1705, New London, Connecticut).

-Hannah's mother was Sarah Turner (b. October 28, 1681).

-Sarah's father was Ezekial Turner (b. January 7, 1650, Scituate, Massachusetts).

-Ezekial Turner's mother was Mary Brewster (b. April 16, 1627, Plymouth, Massachusetts).

-Mary Brewster's father was Jonathan Brewster (b. August 12, 1593, Scrooby, Nottinghamshire, England).

-Jonathan's father (for you history buffs) was William Brewster (b. January 24, 1566, Scrooby, Nottinghamshire, England), who arrived to the Plymouth shores on the Mayflower in 1620. William Brewster also happened to be the ruling elder of the congregation, and therefore the leader of the Puritan church!

So I am descended from famousness! I am descended from historicality! I am descended from a man of the church! Go figure!

Unfortunately for me, however, someone in my line bought the historical equivalent to a double-wide trailer and set their historical equivalent mode of travel on concrete blocks in the front yard, and we've been struggling to recover from it ever since.

Get this –

- the man credited with the invention of stop-motion photography, and largely responsible for the development and refinement of the photo-strobe is Harold Eugene Edgerton, my 8th cousin-once-removed.

- the first Territorial Governor of the Territory of Montana (1864-1865) was Sidney Edgerton, my 1st cousin-five-times-removed.

- the governor of the Panama Canal Zone during WWII was Glen Edgar Edgerton, relationship yet to be determined.

- one of the two co-founders of Burger King®, in 1954, was David Edgerton, relationship yet to be determined.

(Just think… when new Burger King® print ads are being made, and the photographer sets up his strobes and takes a shot of a Whopper™, it all sorta comes full circle, no?)

As you can see, this kind of information brings to me a sense of joy and pride at what some of my ancestors have accomplished, and yet at the same time, it deflates my pride. What have I accomplished? What do I have to show the world except for this blog, a 3.64 GPA in college and a failed marriage?

Tread lightly with knowledge for, as it can make you powerful, it can also make you frail.

And no, I can't get you a free Whopper™.