M E R I D I A N     M A G A Z I N E

The Ancestor I Didn't Want to Find
By Sherlene Hall Bartholomew

One of my husband Dan’s ancestors came over on the Mayflower, and his are among those first migrant Separatists who celebrated our nation’s First Thanksgiving and who, in turn, are honored by us each November.

Too forgotten are those of another class that includes my ancestors--those the settlers brought over later to run their iron mills and other business on the Sabbath, so the more godly “Puritans,” as we have come to call them, could attend church.

I still remember that day in an earlier Thanksgiving season when I visited the Historical Library and Museum in Springfield, Massachusetts, only to find that the place was overrun with visitors to their holiday fair. Among delightful, traditional commodities for sale, I found stacks of red-covered books about the early settlers of Springfield. I saw that they were selling like hotcakes, so I bought one, too, and browsed through the index, hoping to find mention of my people.

Sure enough, there was Nicholas Pinion, on page twenty-eight! I dropped my jaw, along with all my bags, as I stood, transfixed, reading that my Nicholas, an early ironworker, was hauled into court for brawling, swearing, and “beating his wife.” As if that weren’t enough, this book also said he was also “presented for killing five children, and his wife says, one of them being a year old.”

Editors Michael F. Konig and Martin Kaufman used Nicholas as an example of those “unruly Elizabethan laborers” whose “civilities” the early promoters of local business “viewed as questionable,” but whom the Puritans were “confident they could reform, or at least control.” These writers divided the early Springfield settlers into two classes, the “Distinguished” and the “Obscure,” and they did not make at all obscure their assignment into one of these categories of my people!

I could have taken all this with a little more grace had I not, upon leaving the fair, been confronted by the lordly statue of one of the more “distinguished” of Springfield’s earliest settlers—none other than my man Dan’s ancestor Deacon Samuel Chapin. No doubt the Deacon was one of those magnanimous leaders described on page twenty-nine, who tolerated the “distempers” of my ancestor and “similar ‘disorderly’ workmen who were, it seems, eventually cured.” The book quotes foremost historian of the New England ironworks, E. N. Hartley, for pointing out that ‘the ironworkers and their children settled down mainly as farmers, joining the church, sharing in the distribution of lands, and coming, in general, strongly to resemble the regular inhabitants for whom they had once been trial and tribulation.”

With somewhat shaken drive, I did return to the court records, hoping to learn more. Yes, Nicholas was there for a host of evils, including fighting with his wife so as to cause her to suffer a miscarriage (and keeping the neighbors awake with all the ruckus), being absent from meeting four Sabbaths, and for spending his time in drinking and ‘common’
swearing. In fact his swearing got so bad, he was hauled into court for it when neighbor Quinten Pray testified that while “meeting with s. Pinion last Lord’s day coming out of the corn, he heard sd Pinion swear, by ___, all his pumpkins were turned into squashes, by ___’s blood, he had but one pumpkin out of it.”

Court records I found had more to say about this family of mine. Nicholas’ son Thomas, also my ancestor, was hauled into court for getting drunk. There was brawling, womanizing, and vandalizing of homes and liquor cabinets of their Puritan magistrates—and while they were in church, no less! I read court testimony by Nicholas’ daughters, who told how their masters at the mill solicited “favors” before dispensing gloves and other commodities from the company store—items these young women testified were dearly gained, so their old mother Elizabeth would not freeze that winter.

[I have since found a fascinating book, Founding Mothers and Fathers: Gendered Power and the Founding of American Society (Knopf, 1996), by Cornell’s Prof. Mary Beth Norton, in which she devotes eleven pages to the Pinion family, concluding: "If anyone had held a 'most dysfunctional family' contest in seventeenth-century New England, the clan headed by Nicholas Pinion, an iron worker, would have won easily. Pinion family members were prosecuted 26 times over two generations, for offenses ranging from profanity to gossip, theft, absence from church and infanticide. Especially egregious, in the colonists' eyes, was Pinion's inability to control his wife.”]

All this did not particularly strengthen my tight hold on a promise in my Patriarchal Blessing that I come from noble stock. Before I could gulp twice over these old court records, I got some instruction that I soon knew flowed from a higher source. A feeling came over me that warmed chilled notions about these, my people. Motions of love, joy, and peace softened my heart, as the Spirit taught me of God’s love for Nicholas Pinion and all his family. I cried, as I began to understand the magnitude of Christ’s atonement and His mercy for those who struggle in darkness, not comprehending the light and freedom in His law. I also felt chastised for my pride--that I should even think to judge this eighth great-grandfather of mine who forged a life for me that is so much better than anything he might have dared dream for himself.

Humbled, I fired off a letter to the Springfield Historical Museum, highlighting the accomplishments of some of Nicholas’ descendants, suggesting that they tell the editors of their book that, along with all due honor to the early members of the “distinguished class,” there for sure ought to be a monument to those “obscure” souls they imported to do their dirty work. I made a case that these laborers did as much or more than their colonial magistrates to build this nation and deserve our respect.

(Hmmm. Do you suppose the new governor of Massachusetts might take initiative to so remember the working class? I can see it now—a statue of my unbecoming Nicholas Pinion that rivals one so glorious as that of Deacon Chapin—but perhaps in Lynn, Sudbury, or New Haven, where Nicholas made sure we’d find him and all his family in their records. Better yet, when Governor Romney restores fiscal solvency, Massachusetts libraries and archives might be open more than a few hours a week, and the roads might even be plowed, so we can get to them!)

I, who previous to this experience had nothing but disdain for the scenery, fumes, and on-location atmosphere that Geneva Steel long brought to Utah, developed sudden tolerance, even there. (I can see it now: Geneva’s Joe Cannon commissions a statue to early colonist mill workers, as did the railroad magnate who built Samuel Chapin’s.)

On a more serious note, as important to the salvation of my own soul, it occurred to me on that memorable day, as I got instruction while pouring over those court records, that if God so loved Nicholas Pinion, was it not possible that He also loves me more than I understood before? As one who keeps lists of ways I need to improve, sometimes the goal to become more Christ-like got lost among the weeds in my garden and the empty pages of my daily journal. It took Nicholas Pinion to teach me something about the power of our Lord’s grace. I walked away from those court records with a more grateful and hopeful attitude about a lot of things.

Only yesterday, in the course of writing this column, I contacted Dr. Mary Beth Norton on the phone and found out even more that I didn’t want to know about my Pinions (she searched original manuscripts not open to the public for thirteen years, so knows what she is talking about). In the course of our long conversation, this engaging scholar told me about a cousin descendant, Malcolm Pinion, who also contacted Professor Norton, after reading her book. This morning I already got a response from him to my e-letter, asking him if we cousins could share notes about our ancestors:

“Believe it or not, I am a Southern Baptist pastor in the heart of conservatism. My family, too, is somewhat sedate as compared to Nicholas. I have even read from the pulpit Dr. Norton’s assessment that our Pinions were the most dysfunctional family in America, as an illustration that God can still work miracles! I hope we can pick up more correspondence in the future. At the moment I am preparing to travel to Memphis for a seminar as I finish work on my doctorate.”

There’s much for which we can be grateful, as we gather our families at this season of thanksgiving. Whether or not we have colonial American background, we can honor those who taught us how to be brave and free, as they forged a path to the comparative opportunity and prosperity we so enjoy. I, with many of you, am going to give special thanks, as I do each day, for rich abundance, gleaned while searching for and learning from my kin.

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