The Dead Effect
THE MAYFLOWER DESCENDANTS OF RUTH FULLER FRANCISCO
PART ELEVEN
We genealogists can get excited about the craziest of things. I mean, who would believe anyone would get all that jazzed about locating an eighteenth-century business ledger belonging to a man called Philip Skene? (Yeah, pretty much no one except for maybe me and a few other geeks of my own ilk.) But ya know, it was (for me) a find nonetheless. You see, I've been battling to place my friend Paige's ancestor "Old" Henry Francisco -- the legendary supracentenarian in the town of Skenesborough, New York (later called Whitehall) before 1790, and outside of secondary accounts written shortly before his death, and outside of Doris Begor Morton's published work where, in 1959, she "reconstructed" Skene's tenants list. And hey, I gotta say, it's been some pretty tough goin'.
Now, I gotta digress here - just for a minute. (I know, I hate to keep you waiting for the flurry of gossip and facts contained in Skene's tantalizing old business ledgers), but dude, first I gotta tell you a little bit about old Philip Skene himself, the man Old Henry Francisco owed money to.
As my grandkids might say, "This dude was cra-cra..."
I'm not gonna go into all the political diatribe of pre-war New York, other than to say that Philip Skene was a wealthy Tory who'd bought up a huge swathe of New York to rent out to us poor colonial types. Nah, that doesn't really matter as much. No, what I wanted to tell you about is how he kept his wife's body in the basement of his house.
I know, I know! Right?
Above: The Ticonderoga Expedition of 1775, p.338; best viewed in it's entirety at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/42889435.pdf
See, our guy Phil had a lot of expenses keeping up with his Tory friends and relatives on the other side of the proverbial pond. I mean it's no wonder that he kept such exacting ledger sheets to remind him and anyone else who asked just who owed him money. And, our guy Phil, being an enterprising sort of dude probably ran short of cash with all that colonization of New York going on. True enough too, is that our guy Phil appears to have married well enough, so well, that when his wife died, he referred back to some legal clause here or there that said he would be entitled to his wife's income as long as she "remained above ground."
I guess it didn't matter if she was dead or alive, just so long as she remained above ground.
So that's what our guy Phil did. He put her in a lead coffin and stored her in the basement, where, technically, she was "above ground" and he could continue to receive her income. I mean the phrase, what a sh*thead comes to mind when I think about our guy Phil.
And yes, this little story is just an aside and has next to nothing to do with Paige's ancestor Old Henry Francisco, or Henry's wife Ruth Fuller, or my efforts at securing all of the Mayflower lineage attached to their descendants. I just thought you, dear reader, might like to know just who Old Henry was stuck being indebted to - yeah, that guy - the guy with his wife in a lead coffin in the basement.
Creepy as...
Anyway, I've needed to place Paige's ancestor, Old Henry Francisco, in Skenesborough before 1777, and before he enlisted in the Continental forces. I needed this to secure his residency status in Skenesborough to tighten my Genealogical Proof Argument that this Henry Francisco is one and the same who married Ruth Fuller, a descendant of Mayflower passenger Edward Fuller.
So I gotta give the devil his due. Our guy Phil's eighteenth-century business ledger of folks who owe him money does just that. Who knows? Maybe Phil was saving up to buy his deceased spouse an upgraded lead box or build a better monument in the basement.
Hey, in genealogy we try not to judge, right?
Anyway, I thought I'd share some of the pages from the ledger. You're gonna see Old Henry Francisco's name nearly at the bottom of the five pages (not all shown here) indebted in 1773 in Skenesborough/Whitehall placing him exactly where he needs to be via an original document. You are also going to see Aaron Fuller, AKA Aaron Fuller, Esq., Ruth's brother and Old Henry's brother-in-law just a few lines removed. You will also see listings for several of Ruth's other brothers and the Vine family that Old Henry and Ruth's son, Solomon, married into.
Okay, we've established I am a geek about this stuff.
Eeewww....
So the purport of this post will be pretty short. Suffice it to say I have amended, revised, and otherwise mentioned and reconstructed my article submission to those august genealogical periodicals and journals to reflect that we have an original document for Old Henry and not some reconstructed (albeit excellent) hodgepodge created in, egads, 1959 to go off of.
I'm still waiting to hear back from the editor from March 16 - and yes, I know it is too soon. I am also waiting on Old Henry and Ruth Fuller Francisco's great-grandson, Clark Cisco's Mexican American War pension records ordered January 20. But hey, I am a patient (not) man, and I will take this small eighteenth-century ledger as a victory and a good sign that things are moving in the right direction.
The news clipping below is consistent with Skene's leger placing Old Henry in Skenesborough/Whitehall, Washington County, New York - in 1773:
And I do not keep any bodies buried in the basement. Well, not too many anyway. I hate the clutter.
Seriously? You had to ask? LOL.
To be continued....
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