04 April 2010

SNGL - Degrees of separation

Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun for yesterday was:

Find an ancestral line that stretches back to the time of the US Revolutionary War (1775-1783), about 230 years. Define your person-to-person connection (the person actually met the next person on the list) back to a historical figure from that time.

I knew my grandfather, Emery Ogden.  He knew his grandfather, James Robert "JR" Ogden.  JR most likely knew his grandfather, Jonathan Ogden, who died in New Brunswick when JR was 9.  The record of Jonathan's claim to the Crown for compensation for the property he lost when he left New York for Canada after the war included the following "Produces Certificate of his taking the Oath of Allegiance. Mathews , Mayor of New York , 27th March, 1777".  So he swore an oath of allegiance to the Crown in front of Mayor David Mathews.

As I wrote here, Mathews was accused of plotting to assassinate General George Washington.  I can speculate that Mathews at least knew somebody who knew George Washington, or I can just claim Mayor Mathews as an historical figure who my great-great-great-great-grandfather met.

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