Blodgett - Pierce Family --- Family Stories
Connections
by Barbara (Blodgett) Vannier
Several years ago my son, Steve, was elected historian of the Blodgett family reunion
(my father's family). Not long after that, while he was doing research on the Blodgett
family, in the Erie County Library in Buffalo he came across some fascinating connections
between my father's family and my mother's family (the Stone family). We knew that both
of these families were very early immigrants to America, arriving in New England in the
mid 1630's. But we had no idea just how close these connections really were.
He was looking over the passenger list of the Increase, the ship on which Thomas Blodgett,
the first of his ancestors came to this country in 1635, when he was much surprised to
notice the name, Simon Stone, also on the list. He knew that his grandmother's (my mother's)
first ancestor, Gregory Stone, also came to this country about 1635. Steve wondered if
Simon Stone could be a relative of Gregory's.
That same day, in the same library, he discovered a book titled "The English Ancestry of
Simon and Gregory Stone". There he found that Simon and Gregory Stone were indeed brothers.
Seven ships had left Ipswich, England together for Boston in 1635, but the passenger lists
of only two of the ships have ever been found. Though Gregory's name was not found on either
list, Steve thinks that he may have been on one of the other ships in the group. The Stone
families came from Haughley and the Blodgett family came from Stowmarket, in the same area
of southeast England.
That same day, in the same library, Steve found another book named "Gregory Stone Genealogy -
Ancestry and Descendants of Deacon Gregory Stone of Cambridge, Mass". This book contained
a map showing that Gregory Stone and Thomas Blodgett bought adjacent farms in Newtowne
(now Cambridge, Mass.).
Later, while doing more research at the New England Genealogical Society's library in Boston,
he learned from a listing of church members that they belonged to the same church, too.
When Thomas died and his wife remarried and moved away, she sold her farm to Gregory.
Gregory's property later became the location of the Harvard Observatory, which is now
the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astro-Physics. His property faced the Cow Common,
where all the farmers in the area grazed their cows. This Cow Common later became the
campus of the Harvard University
Almost 300 years after Thomas and Gregory arrived in this country, lived as neighbors,
and whose families subsequently went their separate ways, these two families were reunited
in 1919 in Fredonia, New York, through my parent's marriage.
Barbara (Blodgett) Vannier is the daughter of Boyd and Julia (Stone) Blodgett
and the granddaughter of Abram and Jessie (Pierce) Blodgett