Our Family, A Legacy of Twelve Generations

Our Family
A Legacy of Twelve Generations
Emily Stewart Standish

Produced by Family Heirloom Arts
www.FamilyHeirloomArts.com
Portland, Oregon
Emily Stewart Standish: Writer, Researcher, Photography Editor
Lisa Kagan: Director, Text Editor, Photography Editor, Book Designer
Connie Lenzen: Genealogist
Emily García: Typographer, Design and Production Assistant
Joseph Webb: Digital Photography Artist
Julie Zander: Copy Editor
Copyright © 2012
Emily Stewart Standish
All rights reserved. Reproduction of the whole or any part of the contents without permission is prohibited.
Printed by Stevens Printing, Portland, Oregon.
Book binding by Grossenbacher Bros., Inc.
Front Cover Caption:
A collection of images celebrating the Stewart family throughout the generations
Cover design by Lisa Kagan.

This collection of stories was written by Emily Stewart Standish. A
portion of the content for this book is based on oral history interviews
of Richard Stewart, which were conducted by Emily Standish from
2010–2012. Source material for this book including letters, journals and
documents were collected from the Stewart family archives.
McBeth family homestead, built 1850

This book is dedicated to my parents and grandparents
in honor of their gifts and sacrifices.
May these stories inspire the generations to come.

Contents
Introduction
by Emily Standish
ix
Chapter 1
Origin Stories: The Hart,
Merrell & Green Families
3
Chapter 2
Origin Stories: The McBeth,
Miller & Stewart Families
17
Chapter 3
Alida Green
& E.P. Hart
39
Chapter 4
Peggy Hart
57
Chapter 5
Eldon Stewart
73
S vi S

Chapter 6
Farm Seasons
81
Chapter 7
Eldon Stewart
Later Years
89
Chapter 8
Three Generations
Living Together
97
Chapter 9
Three Women
Longing
101
Chapter 10
Catskill Chicken
105
Chapter 11
Emily, Richard
& Nancy
111
Chapter 12
One Sentence:
A Journey
135
Chapter 13
All Man’s Land
139
Appendix
Ancestral Charts
143
S vii S

Introduction
by Emily Stewart Standish
“The further backward you can look,
the further forward you are likely to see.”
Winston Churchill
I believe it is important to know where we have
come from, helping us understand how we have gotten
to where we are today. For my family and me,
three hundred years have passed since our Puritan
ancestors settled in Massachusetts Bay, and today our
home in Portland, Oregon, is three thousand miles
away from the family dairy farm in New York State.
With the current geographic, cultural, and digital
divide, our life here seems a long way from the place
I will forever think of as “home.”
Yet as I started to delve into the process of creating
this book, I began asking myself, “Are we really
so far from our roots?” Researching and writing our
family stories has reminded me over and over that my
ancestors are alive in me, and in my children, nieces,
and nephews, no matter how different our lives may
be. I carry the spirits of my grandmother, Alida, and
my mother, Peggy, with me each day. I am constantly
humbled and forever thankful for the legacy that
they have provided without ever having expected
anything in return.
When I was young, the stories of the past were
told over and over during family gatherings. I
remember snippets and sentiments of some of them,
but did not ask the questions then that I would ask
now. I wish I had listened more closely, or better yet,
that I had fired up our old reel-to-reel tape recorder
and captured the sound of their voices and their
stories. Over the years stacks of family photos, letters,
and memorabilia have been bound with string and
stashed in boxes at the farm, saved by our mothers,
aunts, and grandmothers who probably suspected that
someday we would look to the past in search of ourselves.
In the years since their deaths, family members
who shared a reverence for our family stories have
kept these treasures safe.
For the future family history seekers among us
who are still young and pursuing other endeavors, I
wish for you a glimpse at not only our stories, but our
faces. Look into the eyes of the men and women coming
to life throughout these pages, and you will see
yourselves emerging miraculously out of the generations
of Stewarts, Harts, McBeths, and Millers. We
are all here in this book, bound together by our shared
stories and the lineage we carry with us as our family
continues to grow from generation to generation.
S ix S

Our Family
A Legacy of Twelve Generations

chapter 1
Origin Stories
The Hart, Merrell & Green Families
When the Puritan settler Stephen Hart boarded the ship Lyon on June 2, 1632, he set
sail for the New World with big dreams of religious freedom and the prospect of
land ownership when he arrived. Lyon was owned by a group of Puritan investors and chartered
by Reverend Thomas Hooker to bring settlers to the New World. Stephen Hart could
not have predicted the thousands of descendants who would claim him as the first of their
family to inhabit what was to become the United States of America.
The Hart Family,
Settling in the new world
At age twenty-five, Stephen had simple dreams. He
wanted to settle into a life of farming with his wife
and family, and worship with other like-minded men.
Stephen Hart is my eleventh great-grandfather.
He was born in Braintree, Essex County, England, in
1605. While still in England, he married his young
sweetheart and they had two children before they set
off across the Atlantic. They landed at Massachusetts
Bay in 1632, and they set up their first home in
Cambridge, Massachusetts. Just a few years later, in
1636, Harvard University would be founded by other
Puritan ministers in the same village.
Stephen and his family went on to follow
Reverend Thomas Hooker to Newtown, Connecticut,
which later became known as Hartford, Connecticut.
At that time, the entire region was inhabited by the
Tunxis Indians and Stephen Hart was among the
first hundred white men to settle in the area. He was
hunting on Talcott Mountain near Hartford when he
glimpsed the fertile Farmington River Valley. Along
with a few dozen other residents of Hartford, he
moved his growing family to the Farmington River
Valley and helped to build a town on the east side of
the river. The town was incorporated as Farmington
Facing page: Alida, Anna Merrell, Edmund Matthew,
and Stanley Hart, circa 1905
S 3 S

College, a women’s college in Columbia, Missouri.
It was a difficult decision to leave Edmund behind
in New York State while she pursued a career, so she
wrote to Edmund about the choices that she faced.
Anna ultimately decided to travel west to teach
at Stevens College but they became engaged before
she left. While there, she missed Edmund and fretted
over the distance that separated them.
I thought I would not write until I
could tell you what my decision was
which I could not determine until
I returned to Bath. I received a letter
from New York informing me of
a vacancy at Groton, New York and
I wrote to inquire but have received
no answer. When I am settled again I
will write you such long letters. And
wherever I am I shall be yours only
and forever. If I go west which will not
be this week, I will write you when to
meet me.
I have so much to say to you darling,
but I cannot say it now for I want you
to get this letter tomorrow, but your
kind heart will forgive, when my mind
is not so ill at ease I will write you a
long long letter. But now my Dearest I
must say au revoir.
Lovingly,
Your Annie
– Adapted from a letter from Anna Merrell to Edmund, written
December 20, 1869
Excerpts from Anna’s diary, Wednesday, March 13, 1872:
This is a sad day. I have not received
a letter from Edmund in over a week.
Have been asking myself over and over
again if I could give him up. I don’t see
why I feel so but it has been impressed
upon my mind for so long that this
would invalidate our engagement. God
help me to endure anything and to say,
“He leadeth me.”
Friday, March 15, 1872:
Received a letter from Edmund, a
darling little letter assuring me of his
love. I think love is the dearest trait of
a human character. My mind is at rest.
Thursday, March 21, 1872:
How the time is passing. Soon the
time will come that is to make me
happy or miserable, happy, I think.
Precious dear!
After a long and passionate courtship, Anna left
her teaching duties at Stevens and returned by train
to Hornell, where she and her beloved Edmund were
married on September 2, 1872. Two years later, they
had a baby boy who they named Edmund Percival
Hart, and they called him “Percy.” They settled in
Hornell, New York, in a big house with a shady front
porch at Number 19 Ravine Street. Edmund Percival
was my grandfather.
Anna and Edmund had another son, Stanley, several
years later. Edmund and Anna were active in the
S 7 S

Marriage certificate, recognizing the marriage of Edmund Hart and Anna Merrell, September 2, 1872
S 8 S

Robert McBeth
S 22 S

A Collection of Civil War Letters
Robert we were sorry to hear that
you are wounded but we are very
thankful it was no worse, that when
the rebel bullets was permitted to come
so near you that a life has been spared.
It shows you and us that The Great
Preserver is ever near. He that watches
over the fall of the sparrow will watch
over you and we hope bring you back
home to us in peace and safety.
– Adapted from a letter to Robert McBeth from his mother,
Mary Miller McBeth, April 22, 1865
It was joyful tiding for us to hear
that Petersburg and Richmond was
ours and that Lee had surrendered but
oh how soon there was a change from
joy to sorrow. Those came a sound as
word on the winds that our President
is Dead, felled by the hands of an
assassin. We was at your grandpa’s
when your Aunt Jane came in and
asked us if we had seen the flag half
masted. She said that Mr. Lincoln was
Dead. We have heard that the murderer
of our President was surrounded
but they could not take him alive.
They were obliged to shoot him.
– Adapted from a letter to Robert McBeth from his mother,
Mary Miller McBeth, April 22, 1865
Your pa received the papers that you
sent him yesterday. We hope that you
will write to us as soon as you receive
this and tell us whether you expect to
be returned to your regiment or to be
returned home. We cannot see why
you would be sent home. We have
heard that Sherman has made a bad
move which has discouraged us some
but we know that He Who Rules and
ever Rules will do all things Right.
– Adapted from a letter to Robert McBeth from his mother,
Mary Miller McBeth, April 22, 1865
Dear Son,
We rejoice to hear that you escaped
with so slight a wound. We commit
you to that care which has shielded
you. You will find five dollars within.
The money you sent came all right, the
box you sent has not come yet. Write
son, your father, and let us know if you
have seen President Johnson. See all the
government officers and let us know
how they look. Write soon and send us
all the particulars of all you see.
Yours affectionately
– Adapted from a letter to Robert from his father, James McBeth,
April 24, 1865
S 23 S

Civil War letter written by Mary Miller McBeth to her son Robert
S 24 S

S 25 S

Nancy McBeth
S 28 S

Mabel Miller
S 29 S

The Stewart Family
In 1805 my great-great-great-grandparents, John
Stewart and his wife, Jane White, emigrated from
County Cavan, Ireland, to America. They settled first
in Albany, New York. Not long after they arrived,
John was taken sick and had to be hospitalized. He
was visited in the hospital by two men who were
members of the Masonic Lodge. He entrusted them
with his money for safekeeping while he was recovering
in the hospital. According to family lore, the two
men absconded with the money and he never saw
them again.
Eventually, after his recovery, John
moved his family to Argyle, Washington
County, New York, and then on to
Steuben County in 1818. They settled on
a tract of 150 acres in the tiny village of
Howard. John found land for fifty cents
per acre that he was interested in purchasing
near the village of Bath. Instead, he
eventually bought the tract in Howard for
$3.50 per acre because the Bath property
was reputed to be full of rattlesnakes.
John, known as “Bully Jack,” was reputed
to have a double row of teeth on top and
bottom, making it possible for him to bite
a shingle nail in two.
John and Jane had two known children,
Mary Jane and William. William was a
farmer until age forty-five, then studied
under a local doctor and practiced medicine
in the town of Howard until his death
in 1898. William’s wife was Susan Lucretia
Ford, a descendent of the Ford family who
had been in Massachusetts since the mid-
1600s. William and Susan had thirteen
children, four of whom died before they
were five years old. The children who survived
to adulthood were Robert, Melissa,
Mabel and Elma Miller
Matilda, Samuel Edgar, William Ford, James Hall,
Susan Jane, Olive Ada, and Fanetta. Samuel Edgar
was my great-grandfather. He married Mary Jane
Watts and they had five children. One of Edgar and
Mary Jane’s children was Jackson Lee Stewart, born
in 1882.
Mabel Miller married Jackson Lee Stewart in
1912 and they bought the sixty-three acres and the
farmhouse from Mabel’s Uncle Robert, the Civil War
veteran. On August 31, 1911, Mabel’s brother Floyd
noted in his diary, “Jack and Robert went to Bath
S 30 S

Samuel Edgar Stewart, circa 1870
S 31 S

chapter 3
Alida Green
& E.P. Hart
Alida May Green was all too familiar with leaving her loved ones behind, and, in 1901,
she stepped fearlessly onto the train in noisy, gritty Hornell, New York, traveling east
to pursue a college education. For two years she had been teaching elementary school, saving
money to finance the college classes she dreamed of attending someday. The Erie Railroad
car she boarded was bound for Providence, Rhode Island, where the Women’s College of
Brown University was just ten years young.
The first women had only begun taking classes
at Brown in 1891, though men had been matriculating
there since 1764. Brown was not the only college
educating young women at the time, but one compelling
reason brought Alida to Providence: her oldest
sister, Alice Green Carr, kept a boarding house there
for Brown University boys. Alida could live with her
sister, help with housekeeping to defray room and
board expenses, and teach night school to help pay her
college tuition. Imagine Alida stepping off the train in
a new city, beginning a course of college classes that
very few women at the time would have access to, and
living with a half-dozen college boys!
’Lida was the “baby” of her family, the eighth
child born to Luke and Olive Monroe Green in
Alfred, New York. Her arrival in 1881 came at a time
when the lives of rural families were defined by their
work, their church, their family, and their neighbors.
Even though the United States had just survived the
bloodiest and most tumultuous time in its hundredyear
history, the day-to-day lives of Alida’s family
were rarely affected by the issues of the young nation.
Instead, their daily routines were dictated by growing,
harvesting, and “putting by” enough food for a large
family to survive long, bitter-cold winters. The clothes
worn by the family were the result of spinning enough
Facing page: A collection of photos of Alida and E.P. Hart,
with a postcard of Hornell, New York
S 39 S

Card celebrating Peggy and Eldon’s engagement
Peggy and Eldon’s wedding announcement
After her graduation from college, Peggy moved
back home and began teaching home economics,
including an evening class in Canisteo, New York.
Peggy’s cousin, Wayne Crandall, was also a teacher
in the evening school. Wayne introduced Peggy to
Eldon Stewart, a young farmer who was a student
there. Wayne may have recognized qualities that both
Peggy and Eldon possessed, their curiosity about the
world and their gregarious personalities. Peggy and
Eldon dated for two years, going to movies and playing
cards with friends, sandwiched in between Eldon’s
demanding schedule of farm work. Before long my
parents, Peggy and Eldon, were engaged and had set
a wedding date for August 16, 1942. An engagement
party was held in the back yard of Peggy’s childhood
home at 153 Seneca Street, the same yard where she
and her siblings had chased fireflies years before. My
parents’ wedding was small and my mother handwrote
all the invitations to her family.
When Peggy and Eldon married, they moved into
his family home on the farm. At this same juncture,
his family home acquired electricity for the first time.
Until then my grandparents had used a generator to
create light in the evenings, but they thought that a
college-educated daughter-in-law would be expecting
electricity! They lived in the tiny upstairs of
the farmhouse with a kitchen and three bedrooms.
When several guests came for a special meal, such as
Christmas or Easter, Eldon would switch the furniture
between rooms, placing the tiny kitchen table in
a bedroom to create an actual dining room. Peggy’s
family gifted them many special household items for
their wedding, so they would have everything they
needed to set up their new home and be able to host
family and friends over the years.
Once their space was set up and settled in, Peggy
was eager to embark on the journey of becoming a
mother. Their first baby girl, Nancy, was born on
March 24, 1944, within two years of their wedding.
S 62 S

Eldon and Peggy, Easter 1941
S 63 S

chapter 5
Eldon Stewart
This story includes excerpts from the diary of my father, Eldon Stewart. He recorded entries daily when he was fifteen years old.
W
hen my father, Eldon, looked down at the bed pushed against the wall in Mrs. Day’s
hallway, he knew he would be figuring out a lot of things for himself that semester.
If he resolved to make the best of himself, it was going to be his decision. He was fifteenand-a-half
and would be a boarder at Mrs. Day’s from Sunday evening to Friday afternoon.
He would stay there from January until the end
of the school year in June. Due to the harsh winters
in upstate New York, he had to live close to school in
order to make sure he could keep up regular attendance.
After the summer he hoped he would have his
license and occasionally be able to drive himself to
school. For now though, he would sleep on this bed
in this hallway and put his few clothes in a box at the
foot of the bed.
Even though in January of 1932, the Great
Depression was still lingering and the farm needed
all the strong hands it could get, it was decided that
all the Stewart children would finish high school.
In those days in that area sustained by farming,
Sunday, January 3, 1932:
Done chores, got ready and went
to church. Leon brought me here to
Canisteo about 4:00. Went to church
again, got home about 9:00. I have my
bed in the hall at Mrs. Day’s. Resolved
that I will make the best of myself.
education was not a given. The nearby Dublin
schoolhouse, a one-room school, educated students
only through the eighth grade. Eldon’s parents, Jack
and Mabel, decided that would not be a sufficient
Facing page: Photos of Eldon Stewart
with his teenage diary entries
S 73 S

chapter 11
Emily, Richard
& Nancy
It is easy to fantasize about the idyllic life growing up on a farm, but as a young person I
rarely thought of it that way. As a teenager, I could not wait to leave that life behind.
Now, as a grown woman, I am more inclined to remember the good and filter out the parts
that I felt were confining when I was growing up. For me, up until high school, I really
enjoyed my lifestyle on the farm. I had my cats, a dog, acres to roam, fresh and plentiful
food, and cousins nearby to play with.
Emily
In one of my earliest memories of life on the farm,
I recall a litter of kittens born in my bedroom closet
when I was about three years old. The blessed event
happened while I was asleep and I heard my mother
and sister whispering and gesturing at something in
the closet. No doubt they had been watching for signs
of the impending births, and when the time came
they wanted to be there too. I awoke to their voices
and joined in to witness this miracle of life. I trace
my enduring love of cats to that moment. Later, I
adored the family cat that we simply called “Mama
Kitty,” and doted on each successive litter of kittens
she provided. I would follow her into the haymow to
the spot she had chosen to raise her litter to their own
self-sufficiency, and she would reward me by allowing
me to handle the new babies under her supervision.
I treasured my cats and a succession of dogs,
Penny, then Lady, then the last one we called Butch.
These dogs were a shaggy mix of shepherd and collie.
They were trained to dash to the upper field where the
cattle were grazing, and herd the cows to the barn at
the sound of my father clapping. They were trained in
this way because of my father’s laryngectomy, which
made him unable to call out orders for the dogs to
“go get the cows.” I tried to train them to do other
Facing page: A collection of childhood photos
of Emily, Richard, and Nancy
S 111 S