I’m always interested in hearing the backstory of one’s name. Nowadays, parents tend to spend a good chunk of energy in determining the names of their offspring, and I question if the trend was as big an ordeal in the past as it is the present.
Week 31: Favorite Name
On my father’s line of the family tree, we have very deep roots in America, stretching all the way back to the first few decades of the original colonies. The Crandall line can be traced back to Elder John Crandall who was born in England in the early 1600s and traveled to Salem, Massachusetts in the year 1635.
John’s great granddaughter is my 5th great grandmother. She was born 28 January 1743 in Stonington, New London, Connecticut. Her parents, who had rather normal names of Samuel and Sarah, granted her the special name of Desire Crandall.
The name Desire calls to me, because it stands apart from most other common names in my family tree. And because I consider myself a dreamer, it really tugs on my heartstrings. None of her siblings received names that held double meanings – theirs being names like Eunice and Thomas, that sort.
There has been some debate among descendants whether her name was truly Desire or possibly Desiree, but personally I believe it to be Desire as one of her own daughters took on the name Desiah – a clearly derivation. Also, another daughter was named Thankful, so I find it plausible to think they both were given names with double meanings.
In April 1759, Desire married Isaac Wilcox in Dutchess County, New York. The name of the county mixed with her name have always drawn me in, as they make me think of her as a storybook princess in a fantastical land. What’s also mystical about Desire is that legend has it that her and Isaac’s graves were located in the Old Cooper Cemetery in Plains, Pennsylvania, but the graveyard and all of the tombstones with it were desecrated, leaving her burial lost to time save for the following story…
"There was for many years a well filled graveyard at the town of Plains, (PA)
in this county, where many of the families of the old settlers of the
(Wyoming)
Valley lie buried. Within the past forty years the great influx of
foreign population from Hungary, and elsewhere, who located there for
the mining of coal, has been the one factor in the entire destruction of
this graveyard, until every sign of the place having been used for such
a purpose has been removed. Some ten years ago the Librarian visited the
spot to find, if possible, the grave of one of the residents who died
100 years ago. All that was left on the ground was a stone slab broken
in four pieces, inscribed with the following record of the person
sought.
"Desire Wilcox wife of Isaac Wilcox departed this life March 1 (1810?)
aged 65 years 5 mo 15 D'ys"
This lady was the ancestress of many residents of the Valley to-day and
when one of her descendants, at the suggestion of the writer, took the
fragments of this stone to his home for preservation, the very last
vestige of the old graveyard disappeared. "
This would be our Isaac Wilcox's mother (Isaac, his father). This made me so
sad. I wonder if that stone still exists. Many of our ancestors were probably
in that graveyard. This came from a book called Proceedings and collections
of the Wyoming Historical and Geological (Genealogical?) Society Vol. XIII,
page 31.
Marcia Richardson
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