Ancestry Magazine

My family holds regular family reunions. At some point during every reunion, we take the time to honor our ancestors by learning something new about our family’s heritage. During our last reunion, a fierce rainstorm forced us indoors during the afternoon’s activities. After the family gathered together, my father handed everyone a sheet of paper that contained a story of my tenth-great-grandfather, Joseph Wadsworth.

I eagerly followed along as my father told the story. Joseph Wadsworth was born in 1647 in Hartford, Connecticut, to William Wadsworth and Elizabeth Stone. He served in the military for most of his life. My father said that Joseph commanded the respect of his fellow townsmen. A captain and practicing attorney, he died in 1730 having served his country nobly and honorably throughout his life. But one particular event in Joseph’s life left a deep impression on me. I learned a story about courage–and a tree.

When the colony of Connecticut was formed in 1639, the people wanted to ensure that each of the colony’s three settlements had equal rights. Elected representatives from each settlement wrote the Fundamental Orders, which allowed the colony to govern itself. In 1662, King Charles II gave the Connecticut colony a charter that empowered them with a legal basis and the approval of the king. As a result, Connecticut became an independent colony with its own government.

Twenty years later, in 1682, King James II wanted Connecticut officials to surrender the charter granted by his predecessor so he could unite the New England colonies. Of course, they resisted the attempts. The king then directed Sir Edmund Andros, his agent and the governor of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, to take control and retrieve the charter. Andros told the Connecticut leaders of the king’s decision and set up a meeting with the governor and other officials of the colony–one of whom was my grandfather–to discuss the matter further.

The Connecticut representatives had all but given in to the powerful requests of the king on the day Andros arrived in Connecticut, 31 October 1687. As the story goes, at the meeting the Connecticut officials were on one side of a long table and Andros and the British were on the other side. The charter lay in the middle of the table, separating the two sides. During a heated discussion of the surrender of the charter, the candles in the room were suddenly extinguished. When the candles were re-lit, the Connecticut Charter was gone, and Joseph was nowhere to be found.

On that crucial night in October, with the fate of Connecticut hanging in the balance, Joseph snatched the charter from the table, left the room without a trace, and ran down Main Street. Joseph hid the charter in what he knew would be a safe place–a hollow oak tree, now known as the Charter Oak.

Joseph kept the charter in his possession until May of 1715, when the government was stable enough to ensure its safety. The tree was destroyed on 21 August 1856 during a great storm, but not before the story of Joseph Wadsworth and the Charter Oak became legendary.

Andros knew that without the charter, he would have no hope of gaining a political hold on Connecticut. He was right. The charter was not turned over to the British that night, and Connecticut was the only one of the original thirteen colonies to maintain self-rule until the American Revolution.

As my father finished telling the story, he pulled a quarter out of his pocket and showed us how the legend lives on today. The Charter Oak is engraved on the new Connecticut quarter, the fifth of the fifty U.S. Commemorative Quarters that are being released over the next ten years by the United States Mint.

He handed each of us a Connecticut quarter so we would have a daily reminder of our past. It was then that I realized my family tree has deep roots in this great nation–in the form of a tree, and a courageous man.

Brooke Isaacson is an editorial intern for Ancestry Magazine and the Ancestry Daily News.