When history comes alive......

As I've spoken of in other posts, I've been researching my family tree for years now, and am working on getting an interactive web site going that will allow other family members to follow the branches of the tree in whichever direction they wish.  I started with my dad's male line - which peters out pretty quickly at my great-grandfather - so I continued on with my paternal great-grandmother, following her male line back to the 1600's, when a man named Richard Baildon (who changed the spelling of his name to "Belding" when he was recorded as arriving in Connecticut in 1635) was the first of the line to set foot on American soil.

Sometimes, when first finding information on my forefathers, little things slide by until I start to search for proof of what others have posted as the God's Honest Truth.  One of those little details slid home unexpectedly yesterday.....

7 generations back from my great-grandmother, there is a man named Samuel Belding, the son of Richard, who, according to some of these people who have recorded information without researching it, was born in America in 1632.  (Quite the feat to be born here when his parents didn't arrive in Connecticut until 3 years after his birth, no?)  When recording the information - with a disclaimer that I'm still looking at the records for this particular person - I noted that his wife and youngest son have the same date for their death.

While it's not unusual for the people in early America to have been taken down by some sort of epidemic, there is usually a few days between the deaths, as different people will succumb to a fever or other illness at a different pace.  That these two family members would have died on the exact same date touched off a Sherlock Holmes-style reaction, so I followed the little wiggling leaf on Ancestry.com to see what historical hints anyone else may have posted.

A member story indicated that there was a disaster in the town where the Beldings were living, and when I Googled "September 19, 1677" and the town of Hatfield, Massachusetts, I got this:  Hatfield Massachusetts Indian Attack

I had been questioning why some of the children were born in Hatfield and some were born in other towns.  I had forgotten my American History when trying to deduce why they would have moved out of Hatfield and then moved right back again.  I forgot that the natives in the New World weren't the idealized "good people" who we hear about helping the settlers survive when we hear the story of the first Thanksgiving Feast.....

And the hostility of the native tribes resulted in a 47-year-old woman and her 5-year-old son being killed in an attack that resulted in 12 dead, 4 wounded, and 17 captured.  The hostages were marched up the Connecticut River valley, to Lake Champlain, and onward into Canada.  It took several months for a rescue party to get permission to go after them, and, miraculously, most were able to be rescued and returned to their families.

While I tuck this tale away for the time being, to be researched in further detail at a later time to confirm my ancestor's involvement in this incident, this brought history to life for me.  It's one thing to sit in a classroom in high school or college and listen to such tales about the early days here in America, not really feeling tied to it because of the number of years that have passed.  It's quite another thing to find that one's own relations were forced to move from one stockaded town to another or die at the hands of what may possibly be another group of relations, as there is a rumor of a native American ancestor somewhere in the mix of my genes.....

It may prove very interesting to find out which tribe attacked Hatfield - and which tribe the rumored "Indian in the Woodpile" came from....

In the meantime, I've given the family members who asked me to post this a little something to think about.  I'm hoping that, like me, they find the past reaching out to touch them more personally than it ever has before, urging other, younger family members to take up this gauntlet and continue this research after I join my ancestors on the other side of the ethereal veil.

Perhaps I'll be leaving an interesting legacy after all......