John Adams and Me
For 2024, I’m writing a series of blog posts I’m calling “Daughter of Presidents,” exploring my family tree connections to the Presidents of the United States. These posts will appear each Monday
There are some things on this chart that I know for sure.
Daniel Cody (#6 on this chart) was my 4th great-grandfather.
Daniel’s brother was Elijah Cody (#7), making him my 4th great-granduncle.
Then there are some things that were new to me.
The connection between Elijah Cody and John Adams is through Josiah Chapin (1637-1726).
Josiah is the 4th great-grandfather of Elijah’s wife Phila Staples and the 2nd step-great-grandfather of President John Adams. This is hard to put on a chart.
Abraham Staples and President Adams are step-second-cousins. I’m not sure that’s actually a thing.
This was a fun relationship to research. It starts out simply enough – I am certain about my relationship to the people in this tree up to Elisha Cody, but the information that came after that was new to me.
First, let me tell you about the Cody family. You may recognize this as the name of one of the iconic figures of the American West, William F. Cody (aka “Buffalo Bill” – I call him Buff). The members of the Cody family in America are descended from Philippe and Martha LeBrocq L’Escaude, Huguenots who came to Massachusetts from the Channel Islands in 1698. By the next generation, the surname had been Anglicized to Cody. Philippe and Martha had six children, but only two of them are important to the link between Buffalo Bill and me: their sons Isaac and Joseph. I am descended from Joseph and Buff is descended from Isaac, my third great-grandmother Melinda Cody was Buff’s 4th cousin.
I had researched the Cody family in order to verify my connection through Daniel Cody (#6); I had included his brother Elijah (#7) on my tree, but hadn’t made much effort to learn much about him. When I looked into his life more deeply so that I could begin exploring the ancestors of his wife Phila (that’s the connection to John Adams), I came across some really interesting information. I had known that Buff’s grandfather Philip moved from Massachusetts to Toronto, Canada, in 1807 and that Buff’s father Isaac had been born there. Although Buff was born in Iowa in 1846, he was baptized in Ontario; the consensus seems to be that his family made a few trips between the United States and Canada over the years. This is conceivable; train travel east of the Mississippi had become routine by the 1840s and 1850s.
Buff’s grandfather Phillip seems to have prospered in Canada; he operated an Inn there, known as Cody’s Tavern. In 1816, he donated one acre towards the establishment of a church and cemetery, known today as the Dixie Union Chapel. At first, I wanted to read a lot into this name. You know, “Dixie” and “Union” and all. But the explanation is much simpler. This is a “Union” chapel because, in Canada, the word “union” often to ongoing efforts in the 19th century to unify the provinces that we now know as Canada (this happened in 1867), and it’s called “Dixie” because a country doctor named Beaumont Dixie donated additional land to the church.
However, I soon came across things I hadn’t known at all. Philip fought in the War of 1812 – but for the British. It was then a fairly minor task to find references to a plaque that helped explain the Cody family in Toronto; the 1818 plaque honors Elijah and Phila at United Empire Loyalists. (I couldn’t find an actual image of this plaque.)
Here are some details about Philip’s service in the War of 1812 (earlier studies of this family claimed that he served in the New York militia; he actually served in the York militia of Canada). The Codys are frequently identified as “one of the oldest Loyalist families in Canada.
Philip served as an ensign in the 2nd York Militia and engaged the Americans at the Battle of Lundy’s Lane.
He was in the Niagara District from September 22 to October 24, 1813 with other officers.
He was near St. David’s, July 4 to 24, 1814, and “on command after men”. He was probably looking for deserters or men who were absent without leave. The Americans burned St. David’s in this attack.
He was serving in a detachment under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Richard Beasley that was stationed at Burlington Heights from July 25 to 29, 1814. They also took part in the Battle of Lundy’s Lane on the 25th.
He served from September 25 to October 1, 1814 in Captain Thomas Merrigold’s Company
But I was still struggling to understand the Cody family in Canada. I was casting about for a way to figure all of this out, and I decided to try to use the new Ancestry ProTools Maps function to figure out how many of my ancestors (both direct and indirect) had lived in Canada. If you haven’t tried this yet, you should give it a whirl. It costs $10 per month, and you can sign up for one month at a time.
I soon realized I needed to tidy up my geographic information to make this work well; the Maps tool would only pick up an ancestor if I had a piece of information that linked him to that specific location. So after I did a little cleanup, I identified 20 or so members of the Cody family whose lives are documented in Canada. It appears as if about half of the children born to Elijah and Phila stayed in Canada, while many other family members came back to the United States. I don’t think that any of my relatives through Elijah’s brother Daniel (my 4th great-grandfather) ever moved to Canada.
When I click on the circle with the number 11 on the map, this pops up as a sidebar. You can see several of the relevant players in this story – Phillip, Isaac, and Elijah.
There’s a lot more to this story – some of which I haven’t fully explored yet – but it opens up yet another window to a deeper understanding of the history of both the United States and Canada.
Here’s how the rest of this connection plays out. Elijah Cody married twice; his second wife was Phila Staples. This is the line that provides the connection to John Adams. Phila’s 3rd great-grandmother was Lydia Chapin (1677-1758), whose sister, Mary Chapin, was the step-grandmother of President Adams. President Adams’ grandfather, Joseph Adams (1654-1737) had three wives – Hannah Bass, Mary Chapin, and Elizabeth Hobart. He had children by both Hannah and Mary, but it was difficult at first to figure out which woman was the grandmother of President Adams.
Although it would be better for my connection to John Adams if the wife of Joseph Adams was Mary Chapin, it looks more likely that it’s Hannah Bass. Particularly because Mary died in 1687, five years before the birth of Deacon John Adams, the father of President Adams. Just sayin’.
So let’s resume our exploration of the connection to John Adams. There’s not much exciting about it (at least not compared to Buff and his Loyalist relatives), but I want to fill out the story.
The immigrant ancestor on the Adams family tree was Henry Adams, who came to America in 1638 with his wife and eight children; their ninth child followed in 1651. The family settled in Mt. Wollaston, which was incorporated in 1640 as Braintree.
Their eighth child, Joseph, married Abigail Baxter in 1650, and they had 12 children, including their first son, Joseph (1654-1736), who was to be the great-grandfather of President Adams. Joseph married three times, as I mentioned earlier; his second child with his second wife was John Adams (1692-1761), who is often called Deacon John Adams to differentiate him from his famous son. Deacon John married Susannah Boyleston in 1734 and they had three children, including the John Adams who would become president.
The title “Deacon” for this John Adams is a bit misleading (although it is convenient); Deacon John was first and foremost a farmer; in the off-season he worked as a shoemaker. He was also a deacon in his church, a lieutenant in the Massachusetts colonial militia, a tax collector, and a selectman of the Town of Braintree for 20 years. According to Wikipedia, his duties as a selectman included supervising the poorhouse, schools, and roads. Deacon John attended Harvard and sent his famous son to that school as well.
We should not read too much into the fact that Deacon John held all of these positions. As I dug into the history of colonial Massachusetts as I researched my ancestors who lived there over the past decade, I came to realize that many property-owning men held multiple positions in their communities. It wasn't because they were necessarily skilled at all of these jobs; rather, because these very traditional societies limited public officeholders to white male property owners, the relative scarcity of men to fill these jobs meant that the eligible men frequently served in more than one position.
Deacon John’s wife, Susannah Boylston, was descended from a prominent family of scientists and medical doctors. She occupied a higher social status in what was still a very hierarchical society; when her son John matriculated at Harvard, his class rank was determined by a student’s “dignity of birth” – the social standing of his parents. Upon entering the institution, John was ranked number 14 out of 24 students – a rank that was maintained through graduation – at least in part due to the social standing of his mother. At this time, Harvard class rankings had nothing to do with intellectual prowess as exhibited by entrance examinations or earlier academic achievement.
One sad note I found in looking around a bit at this family – many historians believe that Susannah may have in fact been illiterate, as there are no surviving letters from her and there are many reports of people reading things aloud to her. I find it hard to believe this, given the emphasis on education on both sides of the family, but I’ll throw it out there for you to think about.
To sum it up -- WikiTree got this relationship right. It just took me a while to figure it out.
Great research…..just sayin’…..😎