The Ancestors

We have a couple of old portraits of ancestors with decaying plaster/gilded trim that my grandmother was desperate to pass on to a descendant who'd care for them, back when she went from a nicely-sized apartment to a smaller one years ago, in the course of her gradual shedding of worldly and earthly concerns. My Dad, who's now in that way himself, recently discovered some notes she'd made about the portraits. He'd been unsuccessful in trying to remember who the people in the portraits were ... all we knew was that they were some relatives.

We found "A Genealogy of the Nye family, Volume 1," by George Hyatt Nye, Frank Eugene Best, Robert Glen Nye, Luther Bert Nye, Nye Family of America Association, digitized on Google Books ... and this corrects some dates. Here's what my grandmother's notes say with those corrections:

There were two Chaddock brothers:

1) Joseph Chaddock, born 1724, died 1812

2) Calvin Chaddock, born 1765, died 1823

• born in Brookfield, Mass.
• graduated Dartmouth College, 1791
• ordained in Rochester, Mass 1793 (Congregational Church)
• founded Hanover Academy 1808
• Representative to the General Court 1811

3) Calvin married Meletia Nye and they gave birth to...

Ebenezer Nye Chaddock, born 1793, died 1880 (subject of one of the portraits)

• fought in the Battle of Lake Erie (age 21) on Ticonderoga under Commodore Perry
• pressed into British Navy, escaped by swimming ashore to the Connecticut coast

4) Ebenezer married Hannah Gibbs Fearing in 1817; they gave birth to...

Abby Fearing Chaddock on October 6, 1818 (subject of the other portrait)

5) Abby married John Avery Parker Allen, 1840 (we have his Civil War sword on the wall in Maine); they gave birth to...

Lucy Cushing Allen, 1841 (we have a photograph of her holding her baby granddaughter, my grandmother)

6) Lucy married Obed Clement Nye, they gave birth to...

Alice Sumner Nye on July 30th, 1877

7) Alice married William Howard Russell on June 14th, 1902; they gave birth to...

Sylvia Rousmaniere Russell (my grandmother) on July 27th, 1903

8) Sylvia married Standish Tabor Bourne (my grandfather) on October 15, 1924

So my son's been sleeping in a room with his great-great-great-great-grandmother and her father snoozing along with him.