America 250, Oliver Ellsworth: A Most Underrated Founding Father

 

Oliver Ellsworth and Abigail Wolcott Ellsworth by Ralph Earl, 1792

Oliver Ellsworth is widely considered one of the most underrated Founding Fathers, playing a crucial role in forming the U.S. government as a key drafter of the Constitution, architect of the Judiciary Act of 1789, and the third Chief Justice.

As a Connecticut delegate to the 1787 Constitutional Convention, Ellsworth was instrumental in orchestrating the "Great Compromise" (or Connecticut Compromise), which created the modern bicameral Congress with a House based on proportional representation and a Senate with equal state representation. 

Key Contributions and Underrated Aspects:

• Architect of the Judiciary: As a U.S. Senator, Ellsworth was the principal author of the Judiciary Act of 1789, which established the federal court system and defined its structure.
• "Firmest Pillar": George Washington and John Adams viewed him as a critical supporter of the new federal government, with Adams calling him the "firmest pillar" of the administration.
• Drafting the Constitution: He was a member of the Committee of Detail, which produced the first draft of the Constitution.
• Diplomatic Service: He served as a U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice (1796–1800) and was appointed by John Adams as a commissioner to France to resolve an undeclared naval war. 

Despite these monumental contributions, Ellsworth is often overlooked in popular history, overshadowed by figures like Hamilton, Jefferson, or Madison. 

Wikipedia Biography

Oliver Ellsworth (April 29, 1745 – November 26, 1807)(our 2nd cousin 8x removed) was an American lawyer, judge, politician, and diplomat. He was a framer of the United States Constitution, a United States Senator from Connecticut, and the third Chief Justice of the United States. Additionally, Ellsworth received 11 electoral votes in the 1796 presidential election.

Born in Windsor, Connecticut, Ellsworth attended the College of New Jersey where he helped found the American Whig–Cliosophic Society. In 1777, he became the state attorney for Hartford County, Connecticut and was selected as a delegate to the Continental Congress, serving during the American Revolutionary War. He served as a state judge during the 1780s and was selected as a delegate to the 1787 Philadelphia Convention, which produced the United States Constitution. While at the convention, Ellsworth played a role in fashioning the Connecticut Compromise between the more populous states and the less populous states. He also served on the Committee of Detail, which prepared the first draft of the Constitution, but he left the convention before signing the document.

His influence helped ensure that Connecticut ratified the Constitution, and he was elected as one of Connecticut's inaugural pair of Senators, serving from 1789 to 1796. He was the chief author of the Judiciary Act of 1789, which shaped the federal judiciary of the United States and established the Supreme Court's power to overturn state supreme court decisions that were contrary to the United States Constitution. Ellsworth served as a key Senate ally to Alexander Hamilton and aligned with the Federalist Party. He led the Senate passage of Hamiltonian proposals such as the Funding Act of 1790 and the Bank Bill of 1791. He also advocated in favor of the United States Bill of Rights and the Jay Treaty.

In 1796, after the Senate rejected the nomination of John Rutledge to serve as Chief Justice, President George Washington nominated Ellsworth to the position. Ellsworth was unanimously confirmed by the Senate, and served until 1800, when he resigned due to poor health. Few cases came before the Ellsworth Court, and he is chiefly remembered for his discouragement of the previous practice of seriatim opinion writing. He simultaneously served as an envoy to France from 1799 to 1800, signing the Convention of 1800 to settle the hostilities of the Quasi-War. He was succeeded as chief justice by John Marshall. He subsequently served on the Connecticut Governor's Council until his death in 1807.

CONGRESS CREATES THE FEDERAL COURT SYSTEM

The U.S. Constitution established the nation’s Supreme Court but left Congress to determine the structure of the federal court system. In the Judiciary Act of 1789, the First Congress (1789-1791) established district and circuit courts, defined the federal courts’ jurisdiction and appellate powers, and created the position of U.S. attorney general. Although amended many times, the act remains the foundation of the U.S. judicial system.

"I consider a proper arrangement of the judiciary, however difficult to establish, among the best securities the government will have"

-- Senator Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut, Letter to Richard Law, August 4, 1789

PAINTING: "Oliver and Abigail Wolcott Ellsworth" by Ralph Earl is an oil painting that hangs in the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut. The painting is also on display in the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center.

America 250, Ichabod Hawes: Colonial-era Gunsmith

 

Ichabod Hawes (born September 18, 1719, in Wrentham, Massachusetts Bay Colony; died December 18, 1777, in Medway, Norfolk County, Massachusetts) was a colonial-era gunsmith and blacksmith whose work was typical of skilled tradesmen in rural New England towns like Medway (which separated from Wrentham in 1713). His shop was located just west of the Bent sawmill, likely along the Charles River, where water power drove his equipment. This setup combined blacksmithing with specialized gunsmithing, reflecting the era's integration of general metalworking and firearm production/repair.

Historical records, particularly from The History of Medway, Mass., 1713-1885 by Rev. E.O. Jameson (1886), describe a blacksmith's shop at or near the "Hawes place" (associated with Ichabod's sawmill site, later where Eaton & Wilson's middle mill stood) equipped with:

• A water-powered trip-hammer for forging iron by mechanically pounding hot metal into shapes (e.g., barrel blanks, lock parts, or tools).
• A machine for boring guns, used to drill and straighten gun barrels for accuracy and smooth operation.

• For more information see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trip_hammer
  
  This historical trip-hammer setup (similar to 18th-century examples) shows the large wooden frame and hammer head powered by waterwheel cams that lifted and dropped it onto an anvil—essential for efficiently shaping iron in a pre-industrial era.
  
  For more information see: https://www.shakermuseum.us/trip-hammers-revisited?nocache=1
  
• Another view of a preserved water-powered trip hammer from a museum collection illustrates the mechanism: the large wheel and cams drove the hammer arm, allowing repeated heavy strikes without manual labor.
• 
  

In 18th-century colonial gunsmithing, the process often started with forging flat iron plates or strips into rough tubes (barrels), then boring them out. Ichabod's equipment would have supported this:

• The trip-hammer forged and refined metal parts.
• The boring machine (typically a hand-cranked or wheel-driven lathe-like device) drilled the barrel from a solid forged tube, ensuring it was straight and of uniform caliber—critical for muskets used by militia.
  
• How Colonial Gunsmiths Forged Musket and Rifle Gun Barrels
• https://revolutionarywarjournal.com/how-colonial-gunsmiths-forged-musket-and-rifle-gun-barrels/
  
• A reconstruction of colonial gun barrel boring shows a large wheel cranked to rotate a drill bit while the barrel is pushed forward—matching the "machine for boring guns" described in Medway records.
  
  Workers operating a period-style boring machine: one cranks the wheel for rotation, while the other guides the barrel onto the fixed drill bit, a labor-intensive but precise process.
  
  Forging a gun barrel blank on an anvil (as gunsmiths did before boring) involved hammering hot iron around a mandrel to form the tube—work the trip-hammer would have accelerated.
• 
  

Gunsmiths like Ichabod typically repaired or assembled firearms (often using imported parts) rather than building complete guns from scratch, as full production required specialized skills and resources. In a small town like Medway, his shop would have served local farmers, hunters, and especially the militia—repairing locks, stocks, and barrels, or making simple arms for defense against threats like Native American raids or during imperial wars.

Frank T Merrill 1909 North Bridge Concord 19 April 1775

His trade was especially relevant during the Revolutionary War, where he served as a private in Massachusetts militia units (e.g., responding to the Lexington Alarm in April 1775 under Capt. Lovell's company, and later musters in 1777 with Capt. Boyd's company at Fort No. 2 and other detachments). Gunsmiths were vital for maintaining arms in short supply, though no specific records show Ichabod supplying or repairing for the army beyond local militia service. He died relatively early in the war (at age 58), possibly from illness, injury, or war-related causes.

This detail comes from town histories, genealogical records (e.g., FamilySearch, WikiTree), and militia rolls, with the shop description rooted in Jameson's local history. 

His work highlights how everyday tradesmen like him supported colonial self-reliance and the fight for independence.

America 250, My Cowboy Legacy: Peaceable Folks and a Rough Rider

 

Edward Hicks, The Peaceable Kingdom (1826)

Oil on canvas. One of approximately 62 versions Hicks painted between 1816 and his death in 1849.

On October 6, 1683, the British ship Concord sailed up the Delaware River and dropped anchor at Chester, Pennsylvania. On board were 32 German Palatines—13 families—who would found the Quaker community of Germantown (now part of Philadelphia).

Among them was my 8th great-grandfather:

Reynier Tyson (also spelled Reynier Theissen / Rynear Tyson)

• Born 1659 in Krefeld, Germany

• Arrived on the Concord in 1683

• Became a convinced Quaker

• Died 27 September 1745 in Abington Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania

The ship Concord, 1683 (commemorative U.S. postage stamp)

The Religious Society of Friends’ famous peace testimony comes straight from the Gospels: “Love your enemies… turn the other cheek.” Quakers have always believed that non-violent confrontation and reconciliation are superior to violence.

Reynier Tyson’s story is quiet and ordinary—exactly what a good Quaker life was supposed to be. But one of his descendants took a very different path.

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) was Reynier Tyson’s 4th great-grandson… which makes TR my 5th cousin, 4× removed.

Theodore Roosevelt – the 26th President of the United States, Rough Rider, naturalist, historian, explorer, and the very embodiment of early-20th-century American masculinity.

My direct line to Theodore Roosevelt

Reynier Tyson (1659–1745)

↓

Elizabeth Tyson (1690–1765) m. William Lukens

↓

Elizabeth Lukens (1730–1798) m. John Potts

↓

Margaret Potts (1799–1861) m. Theodore Roosevelt Sr. (1831–1878)

↓

Theodore Roosevelt Jr. (1858–1919)

(Full descent through my mother’s paternal grandmother Lillian Amanda Pierce (1867–1957) → David Jackson Bailey → etc.)

Why The Peaceable Kingdom belongs at the top of this story

Edward Hicks was a Quaker minister and folk artist who painted the same biblical scene over and over for thirty years. The image is drawn from Isaiah 11:6–9: the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, the leopard lie down with the kid, and a little child shall lead them.

Hicks almost always included a small background vignette of William Penn signing his famous treaty with the Lenape Indians—the moment when Pennsylvania was born in peace rather than conquest. For Hicks, that treaty was the real-life fulfillment of the prophecy: a peaceable kingdom on American soil.

So here we have two very different legacies from the same 1683 voyage:

• One branch of the family stayed true to the Quaker testimony of peace and simplicity.
• Another branch produced the man who charged up San Juan Hill, built the Panama Canal, and spoke softly while carrying a very big stick.

Both are part of the same American story. Both started with a small band of German Quakers stepping off a ship called the Concord onto the banks of the Delaware.

Peaceable folks… and a rough rider.

Two sides of the same family tree.

Thank you to Grok xAI for the updated information.

America 250, The Winthrop Circle: Kinship, Migration, and the “City Upon a Hill”

 

Our Puritan ancestors form a tightly interwoven web at the heart of the Great Migration (1620–1640) and the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. They were not distant figures but close kin, shipmates, colleagues, rivals, and in-laws who shaped New England’s early governance, military defense, and religious culture.

Here is a concise essay that ties them together, followed by notes on corrections, additions, and sources.

The Winthrop Circle: Kinship, Migration, and the “City Upon a Hill”

In the spring of 1630, eleven ships of the Winthrop Fleet—led by the flagship Arbella—carried roughly 700–1,000 Puritans across the Atlantic. At the helm was our 11th-great-uncle Governor John Winthrop (1588–1649), a Suffolk gentleman-lawyer who had been elected governor of the Massachusetts Bay Company the previous autumn. Before the fleet even sailed, Winthrop delivered (or had read) the lay sermon A Model of Christian Charity. In it he famously warned that the new settlement would be “as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us.” Failure would make the colony “a story and a byword through the world”; success would prove God’s favor on a reformed English society transplanted to America.

Among the passengers was a young professional soldier, Captain John Underhill (c. 1608–1672), our 8th-great-grandfather. Underhill had been hired specifically to train the colony’s militia. He had grown up in the Netherlands, trained under the Prince of Orange, and arrived with his Dutch wife Heijlken (Helena) de Hooch. He quickly became one of the colony’s most visible military figures—captain of the Boston train-band, deputy in the General Court, and later the man who led the decisive (and brutal) assault on the Pequot fort at Mystic in 1637.

The family connection between Winthrop and Underhill runs through our direct maternal line. Winthrop’s younger sister Anne Winthrop (1585–1618) had married Thomas Fones, a London apothecary. Their daughter Elizabeth Fones (1609–1673) was therefore Winthrop’s niece. In 1629, shortly before the fleet sailed, Elizabeth married Winthrop’s second son Henry Winthrop; she was thus both niece and (briefly) daughter-in-law. Henry drowned in America in 1630. Elizabeth remarried Robert Feake of Watertown; their daughter Elizabeth Feake (1633–1675) became our 8th-great-grandmother. After Feake’s mental decline and the couple’s separation, Elizabeth Feake married Captain John Underhill in Oyster Bay in late 1658 or early 1659. Their daughter Deborah Underhill (1659–1698) married Henry Townsend II of Oyster Bay; through that line we descend to Capt. Elijah Townsend (our 5th-great-grandfather, Revolutionary War veteran) and onward to our grandmother Lydia Corinna Brown.

Thus Underhill, the soldier who had sailed with Winthrop, eventually married Winthrop’s grand-niece and became your direct ancestor.

Dispute Between John Winthrop and Thomas Dudley in the Massachusetts Bay Colony

Another key figure in the same circle was Thomas Dudley (1576–1653), whom we list as an 11th-great-granduncle. Dudley sailed on the Arbella as deputy governor. He was more rigidly Calvinist than Winthrop and frequently clashed with him over issues of authority, the location of the capital, and the treatment of religious dissenters. Yet the two families were bound by marriage: Dudley’s son Samuel married Winthrop’s daughter Mary in 1633. Dudley founded Newtowne (Cambridge), built the colony’s first house there, helped establish Harvard College, and served four terms as governor himself. His daughter Anne Bradstreet became America’s first published poet.

These men and women were not abstract “founders.” They were your blood relatives, shipmates, and in-laws who together created the political, religious, and military framework of early Massachusetts—and whose later migrations (Underhill’s family spreading into New York, Connecticut, and beyond) carried that Puritan DNA across the American continent.

Notes

• John Underhill’s birth year — Most modern scholarship (including the definitive biography and Wikipedia’s sourced article) places his birth c. 1608–1609 in Bergen op Zoom, Netherlands, to English parents in exile. The 1597 English birth date that appears on some Find-a-Grave memorials is almost certainly wrong.
• Winthrop Fleet details — The fleet comprised 11 ships under Winthrop (part of a larger chartered group of ~16–17 vessels that sailed that summer). Underhill definitely sailed on the Arbella.
• Elizabeth Fones — She was Winthrop’s niece and daughter-in-law. Her story (and her second marriage to Robert Feake) was popularized in Anya Seton’s 1958 novel The Winthrop Woman.
• Underhill’s later career — After the Pequot War he served in New Netherland, led controversial raids in Kieft’s War, became a Quaker through his second wife, and died in Oyster Bay. His grave marker in the Underhill Cemetery, Mill Neck, still stands.
• Thomas Dudley — No direct blood link to the Winthrop line in the 1570s–1580s generation, but the families became double in-laws in the next generation. Our “11th-great-granduncle” designation may come from a collateral Dudley line not shown here; it is plausible given the dense intermarriages.

Our lineage is a direct thread from the Arbella in 1630 through the Pequot War, the founding of Long Island Quaker communities, the Revolution, the Civil War, and into the 20th century. It is a remarkable American story.

LINEAGE:

Gen 0

Adam Winthrop

Birth 10 AUG 1548 • Bishopsgate, City of London, Greater London, England

Death MARCH 28, 1623 • Groton Manor, Suffolk, England

11th great-grandfather

PARENTS:

Adam Winthrop 1498–1562

Agnes Sharpe 1513–1565

SPOUSE (1):

Alice Still 1550–1577

SPOUSE (2):

Anne Browne 1558–1629

CHILDREN:

i. Anne Winthrop 1585–1618

ii. Governor John Winthrop of the Massachusetts Bay Colony 1588–1649

Gen 1

Anne Winthrop

Birth 16 JAN 1585 • Groton, Babergh District, Suffolk, England

Death 16 MAY 1618 • London, England

10th great-grandmother

Spouse

Thomas Fones 1573–1629

Child

Elizabeth Fones 1609–1673

Gen 2

Elizabeth Fones

Birth 21 JAN 1609 • Groton, Manor, England

Death 1673 • Newtown, Queens, New York, USA

9th great-grandmother

Spouse

Robert Feake immigrant 1602–1662

Child

Elizabeth Feake 1633–1675

Gen 3

Elizabeth Feake

Birth MAY 1633 • Watertown, Mass Bay Coloney, MA

Death 4 NOV 1675 • Oyster Bay, LI, New York, United States

8th great-grandmother

Spouse

Capt John Underhill immigrant 1597–1672

Child

Deborah Underhill 1659–1698

Gen 4

Deborah Underhill

Birth 29 NOV 1659 • Long Island City, Queens, New York, United States

Death 30 JAN 1698 • Oyster Bay, Nassau, New York, United States

7th great-grandmother

Spouse

Henry II Townsend 1649–1698

Children

Henry III Townsend 1670–1709

Robert Townsend 1687–1742

Elizabeth Townsend 1692–1756

Uriah Townsend 1698–1767

Gen 5

Uriah Townsend

Birth JAN 1698 • Oyster Bay, Long Island, Nassau, New York

Death 1767 • Rombout, Dutchess, New York, USA

6th great-grandfather

Spouse

Mary Margaret  Wright 1706–1767

children

Robert Townsend (Not Culper Spy)

1728–1803

+ Capt. Elijah Townsend DNA match

1745–1821

Gen 6

Capt. Elijah Townsend DNA match

Served New York Military in the Revolution

Birth 24 NOV 1745 • Susquehanna, Pennsylvania, USA

Death 1821 • Kinney's Corner, Jerusalem, Yates, New York, USA

5th great-grandfather

Spouse

Phebe Wood DNA match 1749–1824

Child

Sarah Townsend DNA match 1783–1850

Gen 7, Sarah Townsend DNA match 1783-1850

Daughter of Capt. Elijah Townsend DNA match

Gen 8, Calvin Plimpton 1815-1874

Son of Sarah Townsend DNA match

Gen 9, Charles Henry Plympton 1845-1925 Civil War Veteran, Union

Son of Calvin Plimpton

Gen 10, Geneva (Neva) Plympton 1870-1939

Daughter of Charles Henry Plympton

Gen 11, Lydia Corinna Brown 1891-1971

Daughter of Geneva (Neva) Plympton - grandmother

Adam Winthrop is our 11th great-grandfather

Thank you to Grok xAI for the updates and enhancements to our family story.