Legend and Lore of the Rood Family Line of Connecticut

One of Connecticut's first family settlers the "Rood" clan make for the Queer, Unusual, and Strange Ranconteuse list. (Please Keep Checking Back on this Post for more stories on Rood)  
The “Micah Rood,” or “Mike” apple is extinct, but the legend behind it is still growing. The curse of Micah Rood (1653-1728) and his bloody apples started about 1693 when Micah Rood, youngest son of Thomas Rood and Sarah Leffingwell White settled in West Farms (now Franklin) area--known as Peck’s Hollow.  The apple with streaks of red running through the white flesh are highly symbolic.....

  In of Micah’s orchards remains the remnants of a grist mill known as Franklin’s Crossing. Across the way still stands the Congregational church Micah obtained some local notoriety on account of a peculiar variety of apple that he brought to market It is an early species, has a fair outside, an excellent flavor, and each individual apple exhibits somewhere in the pulp a red speck, like a tinge of fresh blood. Several fanciful legends have been contrived to account for this peculiarity. The core of story of the Micah Rood curse was told by a Connecticut Correspondent in 1899 and featured in the New York Times: 

       The advent of a quantity of "bloody-heart" apples into the Windham markets from the back country town of Franklin has resulted in the unearthing of an eerie tradition about this singular fruit, which has found its way into print. They are called the "Micah Rood apples," and are of a delicious flavor, snowy interior, and cherry-red skin. In every one there is a large red globule near the heart of the fruit resembling a drop of blood.
       This peculiarity has been made the subject of investigation, but no theory accounts for it as plausibly as the tradition of " Micah Rood's curse." Micah Rood was a prosperous farmer at Franklin in 1693. He was avaricious, but finally became indolent, spending his time in dreaming over coveted wealth.
        One day a peddler, who carried a pack filled with valuable jewelry, passed his house. His dead body was found the next day beneath an apple tree on Micah's farm, where the latter was wont to sit. The skull was split open and the man's pack was rifled. Rood stoutly denied any knowledge of the crime, and, although suspicion attached itself to him, nothing was proved against him. He became morose and moody and never prospered afterward.
        People wagged their heads when on the autumn following the murder Rood's apple tree commenced to bear the "bloodyheart" apples. They said it was a silent judgment upon him, and that the dying peddler's curse upon the head of his destroyer had come home to roost upon Rood's apple tree. Nothing like the apples had ever been seen before. Either the apples or the Suspicion wore the life out of Rood, for he died soon after they appeared.
         Ever since then the tree has lived, but it has almost ceased to bear the strange apples. It is the fruit from other grafted trees that revives the story to-day.

  In an interview Ann Ayer, a Franklin farmer notes that her grandfather owned a Micah apple tree as did several other farmers. There are dozens of accounts on Micah's story and a Facebook Page: The Curse of Micah Rood and Alec Asten  The Curse of Micah Rood (2008)

         One of these townsmen who cared for Micah in his old age was Jacob Hyde (1700-1789) the son of Thomas Hyde and Mary Backus. Town Record:

July 5, 1727 two shillings per night and three shillings per day. And on  "December 17, 1728.  to Jacob Hyde for digging Micah Rood's grave, 4 s."

Well Known Descendants 

Major General Orlando Bolivar Willcox (1823-1907), son of Charles Willcox (1789-1827) and Almira Rood (1790-1870) boost he was descended from the Rood line of “strenuous Connecticut stock” in his published memoirs of the Civil War. Orlando’s mother was a direct descendant of Captain John Griswold and Orlando’s brother Eben North Willcox was great-grandfather of famous actor Vincent Leonard Price who married Daisy Cobb Willcox, daughter of Henry Cole Willcox and Harriet Louise Cobb.

There is more Rood drama coming and the old saying The proof is in the pudding and the apple doesn't fall far from the tree will certainly show this! Stay tuned!

• Willcox, Orlando B. & Scott, Robert Garth Forgotten Valor: The Memoirs, Journals, & Civil War Letters of Orlando B. Willcox Kent State University Press, 1999
• Peattie, Elia The Crime of Micah Rood Cosmopolitan Magazine 1888
• Roberts, Gary Boyd “# 77 Royal Descents, Notable Kin, and Printed Sources: An Assortment of Famous Actors", New England Historic and Genealogical Society 2004
• Buell, Robert Rood “The Rood-rude record” Prairie du Sac, Wisconsin Press 1953
• Ullmann, Helen Schatvet Colony of Connecticut, Minutes of the Court of Assistants, 1669-1711 Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2009
• Beers, J. H. Commemorative biographical record of Tolland and Windham counties, Connecticut: containing biographical sketches of prominent and representative citizens and of many of the early settled families, Volume 1  Beers 1903
• Haunted Apples: The Legend of Micah Rood Rogers, Alan Murder and the Death Penalty in Massachusetts Copyright Date: 2008
• Dimock, Susan Whitney Births, Baptisms, Marriages, and Deaths: From the Records of the Town and Churches in Mansfield, Connecticut, 1703-1850

Dr Henry Irwin Durgin of Eliot Maine

Dr Henry Irwin Durgin (1864-1939) son of of Joshua Durgin and Mary Elizabeth Kennison, grandson of John Kennison and Mary Thurston, great-grandson of Oliver Kennison and Anstress Cross great grandson of Oliver Thurston 
A National Register of the Society, Sons of the American Revolution, Volume 1 Sons of the American Revolution, Louis Henry Cornish, Alonzo Howard Clark Page 480. Henry married Alta May Knox (1864-1945) daughter of Ira S Knox and Susan Abby Pinkham, granddaughter of John Knox and Betsey Lord, great granddaughter of Samuel Knox and Sally Gerrish daughter og George Gerrish and Mary James. 

Durgin Home, Eliot, 1910 Located on State Road, home belonged to the prominent local physician Dr. Henry Durgin. Dr. Durgin came to Eliot in 1889 and remained very active in town affairs throughout his life, serving on the Centennial Committee, the WWI memorial chairman, and later Superintendent of Schools. Photo From Maine Memory Network

Doctor Sarah Mashele Practices Ancient African Tribal Magic Dressed in Dior

Healers reluctant to share secrets with medical giants 1998 Article in The Independent

     Attempts to pull 300,000 sangomas (traditional healers) into South Africa's hard-pressed health system are going nowhere. Fear that drug companies will steal their potions has the healers dragging their heels. Mary Braid reports.
     The Pope beams down on Dr Sarah Mashele's waiting room, sharing wall space with a Native American prophecy about human greed, a warning that smoking causes cancer and a painting of a sangoma chatting to a water serpent.
     The bizarre fusion of Catholicism and traditional African beliefs, modern technology and magic, continues in Dr Mashele's consulting room in a Johannesburg tower block otherwise filled with dentists, GPs and chiropodists.
     The fax jostles for space with Jesus, leather-bound Bibles and a pile of animal bones which Dr Mashele throws to diagnose complaints. If the bones prove useless the sick close their eyes and select a scripture printed on a fortune cookie-like slip from hundreds filed in a plastic box.

     Dr Mashele, the grandchild of a Christian bishop and descendant of a long line of African healers, is at ease amidst this hotchpotch. Illness she explains can be caused by stress, diet or germs. But witchcraft she adds, with a touch of defiance, can also cause sickness. Whatever the cause the answer lies across the corridor in a dark and hallowed room where she grinds herbs and plants for muti (medicine).
     Despite the efforts of the old apartheid regime, which dismissed traditional healing as primitive nonsense, some 300,000 traditional healers are estimated to be practicing in South Africa today.
More than 80 per cent of the population use them instead of, or as well as, Western-trained doctors. Healers are consulted 90-100 million times a year; every visit costs 100R (pounds 12) in a R10bn industry. The new government has taken a more enlightened approach to traditional African medicine than its Boer predecessor. Struggling to expand health care to the black majority the government realizes the benefits of recruiting this large workforce into primary health care. It also wants to subject healers' treatments to scientific tests. For despite the "mumbo jumbo" there is little doubt that some multi works.
    But a year after the Medicines Control Council set up a joint group of Western practitioners and African healers to bring the systems together, precious little progress has been made. At the heart of the delay are concerns about intellectual property rights. Healers fear research institutions and drug companies are poised to steal their knowledge, mass produce their remedies and rake in the bucks.
     Solomon Mahlaba, managing director of the African National Healers' Association, is a member of the MCC Western-African medicine group. He is also participating in a related Medical Research Council project at the University of Cape Town in which traditional potions are already being scientifically tested to discover how they work and to produce a register of safe and approved medicines.
     But he has his concerns. "This collaboration between Western doctors and traditional healers is unequal. We work with the university, but then everything produced belongs to it. At the moment it is one-way traffic leading straight to the pharmaceutical companies," he said.

Talking to Skeletons in the Garden: Hearing the Voices of the Dead in pre-1994 South Africa

Jonathan Tuttle (1756-1822) of Connecticut

Document in private collection. Receipts submitted for payment by Jonathan Tuttle. Date October 8 1789. Seeking Research support to verify this document.
 
Jonathan Tuttle (1756-1822) was born to Captain Ezra Tuttle (1720-1793) and Hannah Todd in New Haven, Connecticut. He married Sybil Cooper (1746-1828) daughter of John Cooper and Miriam Todd.  Jonathan Tuttle served as private in Captain Brockett's company, Colonel Douglas' regiment, also under Captain Trumbull, Connecticut Line. He was 66 years old when he died.

Grave of Captain Ezra Tuttle (Taken by and son Jonathan Tuttle. (Taken by Jan Franco) Burial: Old Cemetery North Haven New Haven County, Connecticut, USA Plot: 116 & 113 Captain Ezra m 2nd Susannah Merriman (2nd Blakeslee). Ezra was son of Nathaniel Tuttle (1675-1728) and Esther Doolittle (1638-1756) was commissioned Ensign of the 12th Co., 3rd Regt., Oct 1759; Lieut. of the 12th Co., 2nd Regt., Oct 1769; and Capt. of the same May, 1770. 

Hannah Todd Tuttle (Taken by Jan Franco) Burial: Old Cemetery North Haven New Haven County, Connecticut, USA Plot: 115 Hannah was the daughter of Gershom Todd (1695-1748) and Elizabeth Merriman (1703-1772) daughter of Japhet Mansfield & Hannah Bradley.  

Records of Jonathan Tuttle

 

 

• "Tuttle Reunion," Monday, October 13, 1873 Watertown Daily Times (Watertown, New York) Page: 3 Mortuary Notice Tuesday, September 3, 1822 Times (Hartford, Connecticut) Volume: VI Issue: 297 Page: 3
• Donald Lines Jacobus, The Bulkeley Genealogy: Rev. Peter Bulkeley, being an account of his career, his ancestry, the ancestry of his two wives, and his relatives in England and New England, together with a genealogy of his descendants through the seventh American generation, New Haven, Connecticut, 1933
• The Charles R. Hale Collection. Hale Collection of Connecticut Cemetery Inscriptions. Hartford, Connecticut: Connecticut State Library. 
• Sons of the American Revolution Membership Applications, 1889-1970. Louisville, Kentucky: National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution. Microfilm, 508 rolls.  
• United States 1820 Census. Online database. AmericanAncestors.org. New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2015. (Original index: United States Census, 1820. FamilySearch, 2015.)
  https://www.americanancestors.org/DB1561/t/22397/218/441437374
  
• Connecticut: Vital Records (The Barbour Collection), 1630-1870 (Online Database: AmericanAncestors.org, New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2011.) From original typescripts, Lucius Barnes Barbour Collection, 1928
• "North Haven Annals" S.B. Thorpe

Witchcraft the First White Baby in America and Salem Victims of 1692

March 1934 Article from Canton Press

1920 News: Newburyport Dry First Time in 20 Years

Scholar finds source for 'Scarlet Letter' New edition released of witch novel written by Newburyport man in 1842

Arthur Miller, author of “The Crucible,” was hardly the first writer to be fascinated by the Salem Witch Trials. 

In 1842, a writer from Newburyport named Ebenezer Wheelwright wrote a novel called “The Salem Belle: A Tale of 1692,” which drew on the same subject.

“It’s a story about a fellow who’s rebuffed by a woman he loves, and to get back at her, he claims she’s a witch,” said Richard Kopley, a professor emeritus of English at Penn State DuBois. “It’s 1692, and he’s believed — he’s playing to the superstitions of the populace.”

Kopley wrote an introduction for a new edition of “The Salem Belle: A Tale of 1692” that was published this year by Pennsylvania State University Press.

A scholar of American literature, Kopley had found a short review of the novel in a 19th-century magazine called The Pioneer. He had written about sources for Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter” in the past, and this review seemed to reveal a brand-new one.

“The description of the plot (in the review of “The Salem Belle”) culminates with reference to an anticipated death at the scaffold,” Kopley said. “I thought, that’s how ‘The Scarlet Letter’ ends — with death at the scaffold.”

After finding and reading a copy of “The Salem Belle,” he found two other scenes with powerful verbal and thematic echoes of scenes from “The Scarlet Letter” and felt convinced of the connection between the two books.

Although “The Scarlet Letter” is concerned with adultery and not witchcraft, Kopley felt Wheelwright’s biography made the book important to Hawthorne.

Wheelwright was a descendant of John Wheelwright, who was involved in the antinomian controversy — a theological dispute fostered by John’s companion, Anne Hutchinson — that shook the Puritan church in Colonial times.

“Hawthorne would have known of John because he knew Puritan history,” Kopley said. 

That controversy in turn underlays themes of sin and redemption that Hawthorne pursued throughout his fiction.

“He’s secretly allegorizing the history of the antinomian controversy as a way to tell another allegory — the defiance of Adam and Eve in the garden,” Kopley said.  

No author’s name was given in “The Salem Belle,” and it took an enormous amount of detective work for Kopley to discover Ebenezer Wheelwright’s identity.

Among his discoveries, after searching several archives, was that Wheelwright had declared bankruptcy and probably published the book anonymously because he didn’t want creditors to claim any profits he made from his writing.

Kopley also visited Wheelwright’s former home on High Street in Newburyport and spoke to his descendants.

“This was a mission of mine, so I could tell the story of the man behind the book, which was a critical source for ‘The Scarlet Letter,’” Kopley said.

From Newburyport News By Will Broaddus December 2016 
Recently I wrote a piece Hawthorne's family scandal that fueled "The Scarlet Letter"

Genealogy Magazine Video Series Helpful Tips Finding your Ancestors Episode 1: Courthouse Research

James Pylant, editor for Genealogy Magazine.com has just released his first video from a new series offering informative tips on Tracing your Ancestors. The first is on Courthouse Research and all the wealth of information that can be obtained! James offers a few guidelines that will help you through this process. The courthouse often houses Vital Records, Deeds, Birth, Death, Marriage Certificates, Military, Civil and more! Click link to watch video Episode One