The Sanford line, part of the Faulkner side of the family, runs from England to the earliest New Haven, Connecticut, and Massachusetts Bay colonists all the way down to Alex's grandfather's grandmother, Sarah E Sanford (1880-1926), who married into the Faulkner name. These are some of the highlights of the Sanford family.
Founder's Bridge in Milford, Connecticut, from Dave Pelland of ctmonuments.net. The blocks to the left of this photo continue across the span of the bridge; each honors a Milford founder or founding couple.
Many of Alex's ancestors on his Sanford side were Puritans who came to America in the earliest days of the Great Migration in the 1630s; we have identified a good proportion of Alex's 10x great grandparents and higher, including a branch or two as far back as his 15x greats! Some of these ancestors appear on founder's monuments in historic Connecticut, especially the town of Milford. Here, there is a "founders' bridge" with monuments to the town's earliest settlers, on which Alex has three pairs of 11x great grandparents:
Thomas Andrew Sanford Sr (1608-1681) and Sarah Meadows (1615-1681)
Henry Botsford (1608-1684) and Elizabeth Woolhead (1614-1692)
Nathaniel Baldwin (1610-1658) and Abigail Camp (1625-1648)
and two pairs of 12x great grandparents:
Nicholas Camp (1592-1662) and Sarah Elliott (1500-1645) (Abigail Camp's parents)
James Rogers (1615-1687) and Elizabeth Rowland (1619-1709)
James Rogers arrived in the colonies with his family in 1635 and took part in one of the first serious settler-native military engagements, the Pequot War, in 1637, serving under Captain Underhill. We were briefly under the impression that his father, Thomas Rogers (1586-1638), was the Thomas Rogers who signed the Mayflower Compact; other people on ancestry.com certainly claim that he is. However, a little more research revealed that he was a separate Thomas Rogers who arrived in 1634 and settled in Watertown, Massachusetts. Unfortunately for us!
Other Sanford ancestors, Alex's 13x great-grandparents Thomas Lord (1585-1678) and Dorothy Bird (1588-1676) arrived in Massachusetts in 1635, then joined Reverend Thomas Hooker's party in founding the town of Hartford, Connecticut, where they are honored on the founder's memorial. Also on the founder's memorial are their daughter Ann Lord (1614-1688) and her husband Thomas Stanton (1616-1677), Alex's 12x great-grandparents. (In a very Kanye West-esque side note, Thomas and Dorothy's first daughter, Ann's older sister, was named Thank Ye. Thank Ye Lord. Oh boy.)
[As a sidenote, one Sanford ancestor who is not on a founder's memorial but deserves to be remembered is Lydia(?-1654), Alex's 12x great-aunt, who was married to Thomas Gilbert Jr (1611-1662) the son of Alex's 12x great-grandfather Thomas Humphrey Gilbert Sr (1589-1659). In October 1651 Lydia Gilbert was indicted for witchcraft, charged with betwitching a man into fatally shooting her husband's employer in a hunting accident three years before*. She was most probably executed for this "crime" in 1654, although firm records of her death and burial have not been found; of course, some romantics believe she escaped prison and left the colony. Unlike Virginia and Massachusetts, Connecticut has not issued posthumous pardons for its citizens executed for witchcraft. (*Source: The Witchcraft Delusion in Colonial Connecticut, John M Taylor.)]
The result of all these Puritan founders' intermarriage was eventually Thomas Sanford (1732-1814), Alex's 7x great grandfather. He married Lydia Clark (1733-1817), whose Puritan heritage also runs back to the Great Migration. Her ancestor John Beecher (1594-1637/8) was Alex's 12x great grandfather, and one of the earliest men in the New Haven colony in 1637; tragically, he died over the winter of 1637-1638, before his wife Hannah and son Isaac arrived in the spring. Both Hannah and Isaac remained with the colony for the rest of their lives.
Thomas Sanford and Lydia Clark had a son, William Sanford (1765-1814), who married Huldah Hull (1767-1834). This pair of Alex's 6x great grandparents were distantly related (fourth cousins) through the Milford-bridge-monument Thomas A Sanford; Huldah descended from his first wife Dorothea, while William descended from his second wife Sarah (for yet another wrinkle, the two wives were sisters). Huldah's father Elijah Hull (1734-1811) had fought in his youth in the messy settler-native/British-French military engagement, the French and Indian War. He served in Col. Andrew Burr's regiment, Capt. John Barnum's company, "for relief of Fort William Henry and parts adjacent, August 1757."
William Sanford and Huldah Hull's son, William S Sanford (1804-1878), married Harriet Dumond (1810-1892), whose family came from the Dutch area of New York. Her great-grandfather was Harmonus du Mon/Hermannus Dumond (1740-1778), the same spy for the colonial military discussed in the Faulkner highlights post!
William and Harriet's son Cornelius D Sanford (1830-1907), Alex's 4x great-grandfather, fought for the Union in the Civil War, first in the 12th regiment of the New York state militia and later in the 7th infantry regiment of the regular army. He married Sarah M Faulkner, his third cousin through their common Revolutionary spy ancestor Harmonus du Mon/Hermannus Dumond.
Cornelius and Sarah's son George Washington Sanford (1854-1933), Alex's 3x great-grandfather, bore a patriotic name. He married Martha J Streeter (1859-1916), whose Americana street cred was not bad either. Her paternal side had only arrived in America after its independence, but her mother's side stretched back through Revolutionary War veterans Charles Wesley Bellows (1754-1839), who fought on the Massachusetts line, and Merry Seymour "Seymour" Kelsey (1751-1816), who fought with New Hampshire forces; both men are Alex's 6x great grandfathers. Seymour Kelsey's line, like the Sanfords, includes Puritan immigrants from the heyday of the Great Migration in the 1630s, including Alex's 10x great-grandfather and New Haven co-founder Matthew Gilbert (1615-1684); Alex's 11x great-grandfather, follower of Reverend Hooker, and co-founder of Hartford, William Kelsey (1600-1680); and one extremely interesting historical figure, Nicholas Desborough (1612-1683).
Nicholas, Alex's 11x great grandfather, was born in Essex, England; he arrived in the colonies during the Great Migration and fought in the Pequot War in 1637. He followed Reverend Hooker to Hartford, Connecticut, married sometime in his late twenties and had five daughters; after the death of his wife in 1670 he remarried. He should have lived out his last years in peace. However, only a few months before his death in August 1683 he was charged with witchcraft. Cotton Mather, an influential Puritan minister held in large part historically responsible for the Salem witch trials which began in 1692, accused Desborough and wrote about the accusations in his Magnalia Christi Americana, Vol 2:
In the year 1683, the house of Nicholas Desborough at Hartford, was very strangely molested by stones, by pieces of earth, by cobs of indian corn, and other such things, from an invisible hand, thrown at him, sometimes thro' the door, sometimes thro' the window, sometimes down the chimney, and sometimes from the floor of the room (tho' very close) over his head; and sometimes he met with them in the shop, the yard, the barn, and the field.
There was no violence in the motion of the things thus thrown by the invisible hand; and tho' others besides the man, happen'd sometimes to be hit, they were never hurt with them; only the man himself once had pain given to his arm, and once blood fetch'd from his leg, by these annoyances; and a fire in an unknown way kindled, consum'd no little part of his estate.
The case was dropped prior to Nicholas' death (the craze of the Salem witch trials had not quite reached its peak, and I believe these accusations sounded fantastical even at the time) -- but what a stressful thing to deal with in your last few months of life!
George Washington Sanford and Martha J Streeter's daughter was Sarah E Sanford, who married Myron J Faulkner, Alex's great-great-grandfather, melding the Sanford and Faulkner stories together into one.