What Would Francis Think?

By Bob Ferris

“A number of our men, indeed all who have not had the small pox are & soon will be under Inoculation.” Alexander Scammell to Timothy Pickering, Jr. Valley Forge, 28 February 1778.  

Washington and Lafayette at Valley Forge. 

I do not know all that much about my ancestor Francis Chaffin, but I do know some.  I know, for instance, that he was born in Littleton, Massachusetts near the end of January in 1730.  And that he was married to Rebecca Cummings in nearby Acton on April 26, 1756.  Records indicate that he was a member of the Acton militia in the 1750s so he likely fought in the French and Indian War soon thereafter.

Statue representing Minuteman Captain Isaac Davis killed at Concord.

I know also that his father was an English emigre named Robert Chaffin and was little noted too, but that his maternal great-great grandfather was Dolor Davis who came to Boston in 1634.  I know too that Dolor and Francis were both carpenters and farmers as were many in these family lines.   Historic papers tell us also that Francis and his son, Francis Jr., along with more than a dozen Chaffin and Davis cousins including Isaac Davis (portrayed above) and Joseph Chaffin (see below) signed a document on September 29, 1774 enrolling them in the Acton Militia in preparation of anticipated troubles.

Joseph Chaffin Powder Horn 

Continental Army records indicate that father and son enlisted for three-year terms during the Revolution.   And I know that Francis died of smallpox three days after his forty-eighth birthday at a place called Valley Forge in Pennsylvania while serving as a Corporal.  He left a wife and seven mostly-grown children.

Although my siblings and I descend directly from more than a dozen soldiers who served in the American Revolution, Francis will be on my mind this Memorial Day because he was the one who died.  He gave his life for a dream of a country.  He died in a fight to free this land from rule by an entitled elite, the heavy-handedness of corporate influence and too much power resting in the hands of the Church.  That he died of smallpox rather than a musket ball, bayonet stab or saber cut matters little in the grand scheme.

There will be much running through my mind as I think about Francis this Memorial Day weekend and beyond.    But one thing seems to dominate my thoughts and that is a question.  If I were somehow magically able to sit right next to a freezing, but fevered Francis and show him what his sacrifice and that of others wrought would he be proud of what we had become?   Would he have thought that his sacrifice was justified?  What, indeed, would Francis think if he could see us now?

The Fabric of Our Nation and the Five Grandmothers

My mother Mary Robb Ferris making the coverlet donation.

By Bob Ferris

My mother recently donated a linsey-woolsey coverlet to the Workingmen’s Institute in New Harmony, Indiana the town where her mother Edna Dora Robb was born.  Family legend holds that the home-spun linen and wool spread was worked on by five of Edna’s grandmothers.  Edna told my mother that she remembered there being a loom in her backyard as a child.

Edna Dora Robb sitting far left in front of Owen Home circa 1894.  The Owen family were the founders of New Harmony.

As my mother was going through the paperwork with the institute’s director my sister Caroline and I were madly hitting the internet with our i-Phones trying to see who those five women could have been.  It was really a game of proximity and timing. When could we place five of her female ancestors near New Harmony during a time when they could have reasonably collaborated on the creating of this protective covering?  Caroline and I finally settled on a likely time encompassing the 1860s to the 1880s and guessed that the weavers were: Mary Ann “Mollie” Chaffin Wilson (1832-1925), Sarah Ann “Sally” Stinnett Robb (1840-1897), Susannah Wolfe Chaffin (1801-1884), Minerva Jane Taylor Robb (1816-1901), and Nettie Ann Britton Stinnett (1820-1894).  In essence, the five grandmothers probably wove this amazing piece during a time of healing that followed a great national turmoil.

The raw materials like those on the left were used to create the product on the right.

As we drove back to my mother’s current home in Annapolis, I had a lot of time to think about these five women who combined processed flax and spun sheep shearings into a functional product that has lasted more than a century and a half.  It was impossible not to think in terms of metaphors and compare those times with these.

The grandmothers were not homogeneous as their ancestral roots came variously from Scotland, Ireland, England and France.  They carried too the diverse soils of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Virginia, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Kentucky and Indiana in their collective experiences on this continent.  Their antecedents were also varied in terms of station having variously trod palaces, pulpits or prisons as well as battle fields and ship decks including those of the Mayflower and other iconic vessels.  And they could look over their shoulders at past generations to see noblemen, generals, and private soldiers along with one grandmother that was hung as a witch.

Mollie Wilson.  

Nettie Ann Britton Stinnett

Much as they were different, just like the flax and wool, they were all pioneers and they were all tried-and-true Americans.  For example, each had rosters of relatives who fought in the American Revolution with others in the War of 1812 and one was the wife of a man who served in the War with Mexico.  In fact, most of the grannies had grandfathers who were at Valley Forge during that fateful winter and two of them could call an American president or two “Cousin” without stretching the limbs of their family trees too terribly much.

So we could leave this as a nice story about five women weaving a coverlet in Indiana and a pleasant visit to history, but I think it is more important for us now and in our present state to look at the simple elements of this story symbolically.  Because at its core this is a story of American patriots who suffered much to build this country taking diverse, raw materials and with intricate care and devotion making them into something beautiful and meaningful that would stand the test of time.  Hopefully the spirit of these five brave ladies working a backyard loom during a time of turmoil and healing will help inspire and guide us as we try to repair and rebuild what has been torn apart in this country over the past 18 months.