Allen line: John Havens Starr, Samuel Falley, Lt. Richard Falley

I made the most astounding discoveries while just running a search on Newspapers.com for a great great grandfather, John Havens Starr.  This man died in 1873 in Tipton, Iowa, but his place of birth was Groton, Connecticut and he had also lived near Columbus, Ohio for several years.  However, the newspaper story that popped up was from The Nebraska State Journal of Lincoln, Nebraska on February 7, 1926.  To my absolute amazement and unspeakable delight, there was a picture of him and also of his wife, Clarissa Falley.  I stared and stared at those pictures.  I knew a little about their stories and was thrilled to see faces to put with the stories.  They were staunch Presbyterians and I think had a little more money than many of their neighbors, they lost a son in the Civil War, and after Clarissa died, there was a big family fight that depleted the money she had intended for the use of the church.

The story gets better.  Next, I saw photographs of Clarissa Falley Starr's parents, Samuel Falley and Ruth Root.  Their clothes were different than the younger couple's, and these were obviously older people, with the pictures taken probably not long before their death.  After all, these four people all died in the early 1870's, so just to have images of them is simply amazing to me.  Samuel Falley is out ancestor who was first a mariner,  sailing to the West Indies on numerous occasions.  He was a teetotaler and a serious abolitionist in later life, so my suspicion is that he had worked on at least one of the ships that brought slaves from the West Indies to America.  I believe that he was a good man, as evidenced by recent references I've found to his adoption and rearing of a young four year old girl left an orphan.  That young girl lived to be 102 years old, and told about Samuel and Ruth's raising of her for many years after.  So I got to look at the actual faces of my third great grandparents.  That was amazing.

The story gets even better, though.  Next to the photos of Samuel and Ruth Root Falley, there was another set of pictures.  These were not photos, but were photos of portraits of Samuel Falley's parents, Lt. Richard and Margaret Hitchcock Falley.  I was looking at the faces of my fourth great grandparents.  As I remembered his story, I got actual chills up and down my spine.  He had served in the French and Indian War as a young boy of sixteen, was captured and sent to Montreal, where he lived and worked for a widow there until he was eventually ransomed for rum.  Later, he was a lieutenant at the Battle of Bunker Hill in the early days of the Revolutionary War, and later still, ran an armory and manufactured rifles for the American cause.  I was looking into the eyes of a hero.

This find was probably one of my best ever genealogy days. Finally finding the name of another second great grandmother was exciting.  Learning that I was directly descended from much of the royalty and nobility of England was stunning.  But looking at the faces of these ancestors, faces I never thought I'd get to see, was better than anything I could ever have imagined. This is a true happy genealogy dance time!

The line of descent is:

Lt. Richard Falley-Margaret Hitchcock
Samuel Falley-Ruth Root
Clarissa Falley-John Havens Starr
Harriet Starr-John Wilson Knott
Edith Knott-Edward Allen
Richard Allen-Gladys Holbrook
Their descendants