Tuesday, December 23, 2008

The Pratt Family - A Refresher Course III

The Bartram family had a distinguished lineage which included Col. Abraham Gould who was killed leading his troops against the British invaders at the Battle of Ridgefield during the Revolutionary War; Capt. Ebenezer Bartram who commanded a "privateer" battling British ships during that war; Stephen Goodrich, Deputy Governor of Cnnecticut Colony; and Lt. Col. John Talcott who commanded colonial troops and their Mohegan and Pequot Indian allies in the battles caused by the Indian uprising known as King Phillip's War. Two Bartram ancestors were killed in that war.
 
The Bartram family's long-time home was Fairfield, Connecticut, where they intermarried with many prominent Fairfield families including the Burr family whose most notable (or notorius) descendent was Vice President Aaron Burr. (obviously this was where Burr Pratt's name came from).
 
Other New England families which were Bartram progenitors include Jennings, Wiiliams, Wakefield, Barlow, Hawley, Gray, Staples, Canfield, Bradley, Lockwood, Ward, Crane, Thompson, Birdsey, Frost, Phippen, Pritchard, Harrison, Vikaris, Mott, Hopkins, Sherman and Skinner. It is interesting to note that these same Sherman and Skinner families were also ancestors of the Woodruffs of Watervliet.
 
The parents of the Bartram sisters were Henry Bartram and Freelove McIntyre who lived near East Aurora, New York, not far from Buffalo. Freelove was widowed in 1864 when Henry was killed in a bridge-building accident. Three years later Freelove removed to Hagar Township with her girls and three of Henry's children from a previous marriage. There they settled on a small plot of land next to Joseph Dickinson's farm on Maple Road.* Dickinson's wife was Freelove's oldest daughter by her first husband, Perry Davis. It is told in the family that on her deathbed "Grandma Bartram" called for Perry, not Henry.
 
* This is the farm that Wilmer bought where Genevieve, Henry and Isadora were born.
 
HEIRLOOM NOTE: Pat Geisler has the "Pass" for the ship "Ann" captained by Ebenezer Bartram. That's something like a passport for a ship. She also has the Bartram flintlock pistol. I have Henry Bartram's diary for 1864, the year he was killed.

Emailed September 3

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