Matthias Farnsworth and his descendants in America : a monograph

Contents

PAGE.

ORIGIN OF THE NAME ii

EIMGRANTS TO AMERICA IN THE SEVENTEENTH CEN- TURY :

Introduction

The descendants of Matthias Farnsworth may well rejoice that the annals of the family have at length been preserved in this little book ; their debt of gratitude to the faithful compiler, w^hose long and patient labors have borne this first fruit, can never be repaid. Only one who has essayed to piece together the fragments of obscure family history ; to extract the kernel of truth from the chaff of family tradition ; to reconcile the innumerable doubts raised by faulty records with ascertained facts ; to unravel the tangled skein of departed generations with its broken and missing threads — only one who has attempted any of these things can fully appreciate the labor involved in or the value of a work of this character. For it must be remembered that this monograph is but the reflex of a work of far greater magnitude and importance, the Genealogy of the family. Without the untiring investigations that have been continued through two generations, without the collection and arrangement of the slowly accumulated material for that work, this book never could have been written. In these pages the author has endeavored to present to those bearing the name what has been learned of their family history in the progress of those investigations, free from the statistics that necessarily encumber the pages of the Genealogy, and to give them such information concerning those who have borne or who now bear the name as seemed most worthy of preservation. Beyond this, it is an effort by one who has devoted a large portion of a long life to this work to arouse a more general interest among the members of the family now living in the completion of the records of the family, past and present, and to hasten the publication of a Genealogy that, always of inestimable value, must be of still gi^eater value and importance as time rolls on and the inevitable changes in social condition lead to an enhanced social estimate of name and descent. If this book succeeds in awakening that interest, and in eliciting from members

O INTRODUCTION.

of the family such scraps of information as they may possess, the author will feel that his labors have not been in vain.

How long a time has elapsed since the Rev. James Delap Farnsworth began the compilation of family records to which we now gain the first insight in the following pages. Most of us were then unborn, and volumes of family history have been enacted in the many intervening years. He died in 1854, nearly forty years ago, and the incomplete material he had gathered passed into the hands of a worthy successor, then in the prime of life. In his hands the framework erected by his predecessor has, by unremitting attention, grown to large proportions. Now he, in turn, long past the age of three score and ten, finds his work still far from complete, or from even a degree of perfection that will warrant its publication for some time to come. This should not be, and the Genealogy need not be long delayed if the Farnsworths in America who read these pages will send to the author the names and dates of births, marriages and deaths in their families, and urge others of the name to do the same.

And what a creditable little chronicle it is — this of the Farnsworth family and its ancestors. Matthias Farnsworth brought with him from England none of the titles or insignia of rank that are so attractive to vanity even in the bosom of a Republic. Those who value such bav;bles will not find gratification in these pages. But he came to America endowed with a sturdy independence, a rugged integrity, a due regard for morality and a simple religious faith that were worth far more in subduing the unbroken forests and ungenial soil of New England than aristocratic descent or heraldic device. He was respected and honored by those with whom he cast his lot for the brave, true and manly 'qualities he possessed, and what can his descendants desire more than this? It was such as he that made the Puritan stock the peer — if not the superior — of any outgrowth of the divergent social and religious elements that planted the seed of a great nation along the Atlantic coast in the seventeenth century.

" Give praise to others, early come or late, For love and labor on our ship of State ; But this must stand above all fame and zeal : The Pilgrim Fathers laid the ribs and keel ; On their strong lines w^e base our social health — The man — the home — the town — the Commonwealth ! "

Matthias Farnsworth was one of the early settlers who followed the Pilgrim Fathers, founded communities upon the lines marked out by them, and completed their work by transmitting some of their qualities to their descendants. If we of the nineteenth century have inherited some small portion — and let us hope that such is the case — we have ample cause for gratulation. The following pages will show that the descendants of Alatthias Farnsworth have enjoyed in a marked degree the respect of their fellow-men ; that they have ever been earnest workers ; that such worldly honors as have come to individuals of the name, such positions as have been attained in the various pathways of life, have been the reward of merit rather than the result of self-seeking or favoritism ; that they have been self-made in the truest sense, and it is the proud boast of the author of this book that, in a search for genealogical material extending over more than half a century, the prison and the almshouse have contributed no names to the record. May future generations do as well.

EDWARD H. FARNSWORTH.

December^ i8go.