A LIFE REMEMBERED!

As I sit in Target sipping on coffee while listening to people ordering their specialty drinks, my mind strangely wanders to a desperately poor man, an ancestor of mine who lived in parts of two different centuries.  His ancestors had first come to this country from England in 1635, and within a relatively short period of time, they became prominent members of Connecticut history.  Much has been written about them, and William and Elizabeth Tuttle are buried on the grounds of what became Yale University.

My great-great-great grandfather Rensselear Tuttle, who was nicknamed “Rancy” had a much different path.  He was born in Connecticut in August of 1789, the year George Washington became our first president in a unanimous vote of the electoral college.  It was also the year that the Bill of Rights was adopted and the first Thanksgiving Day was observed. That same year the Department of Treasury was founded and Alexander Hamilton was appointed as Secretary of the Treasury.  It was a trail of historic events in Rancy’s first year of life. I wonder what his early years were like and if he was aware of all the historic events around him as he grew to manhood. He was the oldest of eight children. His parents, Bostwick and Luania were very young parents and by 1810 they had moved to New York. It was there that Rensselear married Clarissa Crozier. By 1830 they journeyed on to Ohio where they lived for many years.  Clarissa became a mother for the last time at the age of 47; Rensselear was already 55. What a surprise that must have been!

By the 1860’s three of their sons were enlisted in the Civil War.  One of those sons, William, became a prominent and well-to-do Wisconsin legislator in 1858. Rancy and Clarissa lived with him at one point.

The two of them spent the last years of their lives with their children in various parts of Wisconsin, the last area being Clark County, where I grew up.  They were considered paupers and received a meager sum of $2.00 a week from the township they lived in for their care.  I have a hard time imagining how they survived on that amount, but there was no social security until many years later. From accounts I’ve read, when Clarissa and Rancy died, they were probably buried in unmarked lots near many other family members.  There are several graves marked with a simple wooden cross.  An obituary notice in an 1880 local paper tells of the school house where the service for Rensselear took place.

When Rancy died in July of 1880, he was one of the oldest people living in Clark County.  He had lived through the administrations of many presidents, the last being James Garfield, who became president in 1880.  That same year Helen Keller was born.

MY GRANDMOTHER MYRTLE TUTTLE (far right), about twenty-five years after her great-grandfather Rensselear died; this photo is from the same county where Rancy lived.

 

Rensselear experienced major historical events during his ninety-plus years, and although very poor, he will never be forgotten. This is one small way that I can pay tribute to him and keep his memory alive.  My grandmother Myrtle was nearly five when he died.  I wish I could go back and ask her if she had ever met him.  He must have had some amazing stories to tell.  I can only imagine!