thomas leverett weblog

Mainers

I approach almost everything geographically, and so I've read about the recent shootings in Maine wondering if there was any possible connection with what I already know about the place. I'll explain but also give it away a little: chances are very unlikely that any of the victims or shooters are related to any of my people. But it's not absolutely certain, and in fact one reason they left there was that it was hard to turn around without bumping into someone you were related to. Here is the story.

It starts in Boston, in about 1806, when a man with six children died of alcohol-related something, leaving his wife alone, hungry, and cold. One possible solution to her was to send one son up to live with his aunt, his father's sister, who had married a farmer in Androscoggin County near Livermore Falls. The boy was about six at the time. He didn't have a ride all the way to the farm, but was dropped off at the intersection and walked the last four or five miles, as a six year-old, alone. He would always remember that.

His aunt, however, was true to her word, and raised him as her own, until he was a strong young kid able to enter the militia and come back to have a farm of his own. His aunt was Catherine Walker, and the step-father who raised him, James A. Walker. They were known in the local church but I was not very well able to track down what happened to either of them, where they ended up, or where or when they died.

Coming back from the militia, young Joseph, my great great grandfather, married a woman named Mary Turner and had three children almost before he figured out what else to do. His good friend Joseph Turner, Mary's older brother, had married and then remarried when his first wife had died. But Mary and Joseph Turner's father, Ebenezer, was hot on the idea of moving the whole operation out to Illinois.

Father-in-law Ebenezer was somewhat of a visionary. He had heard that Illinois had good soil, unlike Maine, and you could grow almost anything there. In Maine, people had noticed the rocky, difficult soil and of course the long, hard, winters. Livermore Falls was in a relatively fertile area but still overall no exception; some fruit grew there, but not enough. Families in their puritan traditions were large and the people didn't have enough room to expand into; to the north it was a wall of forest all the way to Quebec. And everyone was related to everyone; their children would eventually have no one to marry.

Joseph and Mary could see this, and it helped them form a plan, ultimately, to equip a wagon for the long ride out to Illinois. It would take several good horses and really solid wagon with a stove in it, and a big chair for Mother Turner, covered for the harsh weather even though it would be summer when they left. Joseph was good at the carpentry things; he'd run saws, and had spent time hauling huge timbers down to the coast, so he knew horses and wagons and building. His friend Joseph Turner encouraged him. All the Turners would be going, and some neighbors. It would be a wagon train.

In fact other people had the same idea. In 1830, a number of Mainers went to Illinois and other states as part of one of the larger internal migration movements in American history. Among the Mainers who moved to Illinois at that time was Elijah Lovejoy, who would set up a press in Alton, and Asa Turner, a cousin of Joseph and Mary who was somewhat of a firebrand preacher. Mainers and New Hampshirites were leaving New England regularly for the long trek across the National Road and into southern and western Illinois. It would take about 50 or 60 days of hard traveling. It would be slightly longer for them, since they'd stop in Boston to see Joseph's mother, and to see Turner relatives in Dedham.

When they left Livermore Falls, their wagons all decked out for the long trip, the town came out to wish them well. They lost a dog before they'd gone twenty miles, and they had to stop to reorganize in Lewiston. But soon they made it and were on their way. When they landed in Quincy, Illinois, it was November of one of the coldest winters ever, and six percent of Quincy had already been taken by cholera. But that's another story.

Back in Maine, relatives farmed the rocky soil as they always had. Some Turners and no doubt Walkers were left behind. Young James Walker Leverett, the youngest boy but the middle of the three children who made the journey, would always remember not only his few early years in Androscoggin County, but also his big journey, and walking much of the way.

Two of the victims of the shooting were Walkers; one owned the bar. But that's all I know, and I have absolutely no way to find or connect Walkers to James A. Walker of 1810, 213 years ago. Even then there were Walkers all over the place and no real way to figure out who was born of whom. Genealogy is a tricky and slippery art with names like Walker, and I, being a Leverett, am spoiled to a much easier line to figure out from.

We have the memory of the Walkers, though, and that comes from James Walker's name, and the fact that he was named after his adopted grandfather. May they rest in peace.

posted by tom @ 2:29 PM