Date: Fri 25-Aug-1995

Publication: Bee

Author: KAAREN

Illustration: C

Location: A-7

Quick Words:

Swigart-Emerson-Benson-Saga

Full Text:

Saga of Genealogist's Roots Garners Top Awards

(with photos)

By Kaaren Valenta

A '49er tells what it was like to cross the country in a covered wagon. A

Civil War soldier writes a long letter to his wife the night before the final

attack by Union soldiers on Richmond. A mother of 11 children is convicted of

witchcraft at Salem, despite the glowing tribute by her minister and a signed

petition by 118 of her neighbors testifying to her excellent character.

Edmund K. Swigart's book, An Emerson-Benson Saga , brings to life the stories

of generations of families which made the harrowing journey across the ocean

to the New World, where they created a new life and a new society. It draws

personal information on successive generations from letters, dairies, wills

and other sources.

"This is people talking to us all the way back to the Mayflower , using their

own words - it's very powerful," the author, "Ned" Swigart, 64, said. "This

book was meant to be written."

The 743-page family history is a genealogist's delight, a vast compilation of

the Emerson and Benson families and 194 allied lines that married into the two

families. The book, self-published by Mr Swigart under the Gateway Press

imprimatur last year, recently won the two highest state and national

geneological awards: the prestigeous 1995 award for excellence of the National

Genealogical Society and first prize in the 1995 literary awards contest of

the Connecticut Society of Genealogists.

"I didn't write it for that. I did it for the family," Mr Swigart said

recently in an interview at his home in Washington, just down the road from

the Institute of American Indian Studies, a museum which was called the

American Indian Archelological Institute when Ned Swigart founded it and

became its first director.

Now retired, Mr Swigart started the book about five years ago in an effort to

learn more about his ancestors. The only child of a father who also was an

only child, Ned Swigart lost both parents when he was still fairly young.

"I knew no living member on my father's side," he said. "Dad's family came

from the mid-Atlantic area and most records were destroyed in the Civil War."

So he began with his mother's parents, Charles F. Emerson and Bessie Benson,

who married at Titusville, Penna., on January 23, 1889. The lines go back to

Thomas Emerson, who was baptized at Bishop's Stortford, Herts, England, on

July 31, 1584, and died at Ipswich, Mass., on May 1, 1666, and John Benson

(Binson), who is believed to have been born in Caversham, Oxford, England,

about 1607-8, and who died at Hull, Mass., on January 13, 1678.

The gateway ancestors to Charlemange, the Rev Peter Bulkeley and Alice

(Freeman) Thompson, are included in this genealogy as well as many Mayflower

passengers, such as Stephen Hopkins and Thomas Rogers. The major families of

the book include Barrows, Besse, Blanchard, Bloss, Booth, Chittenden, Ford,

Freeman, Hafford, Hall, Johnson, Joslyn, Lewis, Lord, Lyman, Merrill, Moulton,

Perry, Rogers, Stafford, Shaw, Spear, Stevens, Sumner, Woodward and Younglove.

The nearly 200 families mentioned are covered in varying lengths of

generations. In each account, all of the children of an ancestor are noted

with dates and spouses, and often with clues for further research. The family

origins in the United States, and in many cases in Europe, are discussed and

documented with printed and original sources. The families are among the

founders of more than 60 New England towns.

"A lot of teachers have been buying the book to use as a resource," Mr Swigart

said. "Obviously it is of interest to genealogists and historians, but many

people have told me they are using it as bedside reading. It's really unique."

In his research, Mr Swigart learned that his great, great-grandfather spent

summers in York, Maine, "so I thought maybe the library of the Old York

Historical Society might have some information on the family."

"I called more than once and was told that there wasn't anything, but I

pressed the question and asked if there were any boxes that hadn't been opened

and catalogued," he said. "There were three boxes in the cellar. In the first

box, in the first file, were the extraordinary letters which John A. Johnson

of Lower Sandusky, Ohio, wrote to his wife, Almira, from California when he

took part in the Gold Rush in 1849. His daughter married my

great-grandfather."

Mr Swigart's search uncovered more than 1,000 pages of letters written by

Edward O. Emerson, from his days at Phillips Exeter Academy to his service in

the Civil War to his entry into the oil business and the formation, with J.N.

Pew, of the Sun Oil Company (Ohio) in 1890.

"One of my ancestors still lives in the ancestral home in York and found the

Civil War letters in the attic," he said. "The project was like dominoes.

Everyone had some information, but no one had very much."

In his research, Mr Swigart amassed nearly 200,000 pages of original documents

which he condensed into less than 800 for the book. There are about 500 pages

of text; the rest includes a forward, photographs, geneological charts and a a

complete index. With the book Mr Swigart includes what he descibes as a

one-page "cheat sheet" which gives the page numbers for specific areas of

interest such as the Salem witch trials and the French and Indian War.

In identifying more than 20,000 cousins from the allied families, Mr Swigart

learned that he and his wife, Deborah, are very distantly related through a

marriage that took place before the Revolutionary War. Both have ancestors who

crossed on the Mayflower .

But it was the search for his roots, not a desire for self-aggrandizement,

that motivated the project.

"What is in my genes was part of all that happened," he said. "I was convicted

of witchcraft and sentenced to death. I saw my baby bashed to death and was

marched barefoot to Montreal and ransomed as a servant. I know about the

privation on the Mayflower , how all those people survived on a tiny boat for

eight months with just a few square feet of space per person."

Already he has turned his attention to a book about his father's family, A

Swigart-Meyers Saga. "There were 13 children in my great-grandfathers's

generation but I've only found 20 descendants from that generation alive," he

said.

"All my family members are frontier people. Very few stayed in the cities. I

spent my summers next to a Potawatome Indian reservation in northern Wisconsin

until I was 16. My first job was as a fishing guide."

Educated at Hotchkiss and Yale, Mr Swigart says he still felt a profound

influence from his life near the reservation.

"My philosophy is very close to that of the Indians," he said. "You are born

with a unique talent and your life is a quest to find out what that is and how

to use it to serve others. Your life is here for a purpose. That's how I came

to know that I was meant to start the Indian Archeological Institute."

And why, perhaps, he is writing geneology books.

An Emerson-Benson Saga is available for $49.95 plus $3 postage and handling.

Additional copies are $45 plus $1.50 each for shipping. Mail orders to: Edmund

K. Swigart, PO Box 1134, Washington, CT 06793. A flyer with the 196 family

names discussed in the book is available. Send a stamped, self-addressed

envelope to the author.