Spirits
For 2023, I’m writing responses to the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks prompts provided by Amy Johnson Crow on her ”Generations Café” website and Facebook page.
This prompt was probably stimulated by Halloween, which falls in this week. But I’m going to write about another kind of spirits – the alcoholic beverages brewed, fermented, or distilled by some of my ancestors.
I wrote earlier in this series about words whose meanings have changed over the years (Week 10: Translation). One of those words was “maltster,” and I’m going to tell you about my 10th great-grandfather Andrew Warner (1599-1684), who was a maltster in Hadley, Massachusetts, in the 1660s.
I wrote a bit about Andrew for a project I worked on a couple of years ago. Here’s what I wrote:
My 10th great-grandfather Andrew Warner (1599-1684) married Mary Humphrey (1601-1672) in England, where they had five children before moving to Massachusetts in 1632. Andrew and Mary had three more children after moving to Massachusetts, including my 9th great-grandmother Hannah Warner (1632-1682), who was their sixth child.
After initially settling in Cambridge, they relocated to Hartford, Connecticut, with Reverend Thomas Hooker in 1636. After Mary’s death in 1657, Andrew moved to Hadley in 1659. He remarried there, to Esther Seldon Wakefield He was one of the leaders of the group of dissidents in Hartford called the “Withdrawers” who organized the move to Hadley. It was at his house in 1660 that the migrants settled on the town structure, which was to create two plantations, one on each side of the river. Warner chose to move to the west side of the river, to establish the town of Hatfield.
In addition to his role as general rabble-rouser and founder of towns, Andrew was a maltster – someone who prepares barley for use in brewing. Lots of products are made from malted grain – prominently among them, beer and whiskey. Andrew also ran a still that was used to distill cordials, sweet waters, and medicinal waters from herbs, flower, spices, and the like.
If Hadley was a happy town, it was at least in part due to Andrew.
I connect to Andrew through my paternal grandmother, Orpha Lydia Ellefritz.
Andrew has other descendants more famous than me (that wouldn’t be hard): Union Civil War General George McClellan and Utah Senator Mitt Romney. George and I are 7th cousins 3x removed; William Ripley (1588-1656?) is his 9th great-grandfather and my 12th great-grandfather through my Arnold family line. Mitt and I are 9th cousins once removed; William Spooner (1623-1684) is his 8th great-grandfather and my 9th great-grandfather through my Ellefritz family line.
Happy People. Happy Town.
Ha! Spirits. Good one. 1599. Wow. I don't think I'll ever be able to go back as far as you have with your family. Pretty remarkable.