Ancestry Magazine

My family tree is laden with precious stones, flowers, and famous names. There are Pearls and Rubies, Lilies, Roses, Irises, Daisies, and a lot of Violets. On other branches, dangle George Washingtons and Daniel Boones, Benjamin Franklins, Napoleon Bonapartes, Marquis Lafayettes, Abraham Lincolns, Robert E. Lees, Andrew Jacksons, Zachary Taylors, William Henry Harrisons, and a fictional hero, too.

Turns out our ancestors were as influenced by the media and historical events as we are today. France’s Marquis de Lafayette, a Revolutionary War hero, revisited America between 1824 and 1825, which brought him to the attention of another generation of Americans who named their children for him (and you thought your Marquis Lafayette Smith meant you had noble French roots).

Naming children for presidents, war heroes, and literary characters was common in American families—especially when couples had eight, 10, or 12 children and had exhausted the list of relatives to honor. Still, several unusual given names on my family tree sent me digging—Elmer Ephraim Ellsworth, Lorenzo Dow, and Jasper Newton. Who were these men?

Elmer Ephraim Ellsworth helped with Lincoln’s presidential campaign and went with him to Washington, D.C. When the Civil War erupted, Ellsworth went to New York City, raised a regiment of volunteers from the city’s firefighters and became a colonel of the New York Fire Zouaves. On 24 May 1861, Ellsworth was killed in Alexandria, Virginia, as he was trying to cut down a Confederate flag, going down in history as the first man to fall for the Union. Volunteers flocked to join the Union cause in response to Ellsworth’s death.

Lorenzo Dow was an eccentric Methodist minister whose infamy and influence led to thousands of parents of the early 19th century naming their children for him. The 1850 U.S. census lists Lorenzo as one of the most popular first names. At one time, Dow’s autobiography was the second-best-selling book in America, exceeded only by the Bible.

Jasper Newton was named for William Jasper and John Newton—a pair of American Revolutionary War soldiers who served under the famous “Swamp Fox,” General Francis Marion. Or so it is claimed. William Jasper really was a bona fide patriot who died during the siege of Savannah in 1779. But Newton was a character created by the Rev. Mason L. Weems, a book agent and preacher who fictionalized and embellished a client’s book about Marion’s brigade.

As the agent of General Peter Horry, the man whose reminiscences were collected in the book, Weems promised to “polish and colour [the book] in a style that will sometimes excite a smile, and sometimes call forth the tear.” When The Life of Francis Marion was done, Weems told Horry, “Knowing the passion of the times for novels, I have endeavoured to throw your facts and ideas about General Marion into the garb and dress of a military romance.”

Evidently in the process he created the Sgt. John Newton that various localities and many of our ancestors were named after—a Revolutionary hero who never existed.

Myra Vanderpool Gormley formerly was the editor of the RootsWeb Review and a columnist for the Los Angeles Times Syndicate. In retirement, she labors at detangling her illustrious roots and pruning her family’s notorious branches. The latter has turned out to be a full-time job.