Ep 20 - General Johnny Burgoyne - Deep Dive

Here is the episode we've all been waiting for.  Hazel had the best story for us, but family has been asking - Are we related to General Johnny Burgoyne???    Let's find out shall we.


https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Burgoyne
https://www.smith.edu/student-life/residence-life/houses/sessions-complex

Transcript

Kim: 0:00

Hello and welcome back to Chasing Hazel's Tales, a family history podcast presented to you by two registered nurses all around family, historians and sisters. If you've got family history, we want to talk about it. I'm Kim McLaughlin. And I'm Laura Ireland. And this week we have a famous historical figure and our best fan to talk. You know who our best fan is? I think we know. I think we know. And so I've been droning on for years about this famous figure. Are you ready, Laura?

Laura: 0:32

I think we are ready to start this discussion. Okay. You certainly, you have a lot of information about him, 35 years worth of your research plus what other people have garnered so far. So, and up to this point, you know, we've shared bits of our family history that really captivated our hearts and imaginations and initially might have been a little bit shocking. But helped us to better understand our family and ourselves. So now we want to dive into general territory, general Johnny Burgoyne territory to be exact. And although we've been found not to be genetically linked to the Burgoyne line, it is our family and part of who we

Kim: 1:13

are. Right. We are who we are. That's right. And if you look behind me. You'll see all the gen, you'll see all the general information I've picked up over the years. Probably two-thirds of it is about the general, yeah, scads and scads of. So,

Laura: 1:28

yeah. Kim's been going a little back and forth on covering General Johnny Burgoyne, the famous or infamous British General of the Revolutionary War depending on your opinion. And

Kim: 1:42

are you British or are you American? That's right. That's

Laura: 1:45

right. A loyalist or a Patriot, which I, that's right. So we are reported to be related to him, but who is he? Do you. He's John Burgoyne, born 1722 or 23 and died in 1792. And he is best remembered for his defeat or surrender again, depending on your opinion, by superior American forces in the Saratoga, New York campaign of 1777 during the American

Kim: 2:15

So I have a little thing. So that is exactly what it was said in Britannica online about him, and I don't know who wrote it, but what do they mean by superior American forces? I get a little defensive sometimes about grampy, general John, and so when they say superior American forces, I'd rather say, how about a rogue? English General who decided he knew better than to follow a plan that would work. Right. So, yeah. Hung him out to dry. Say, Hmm. I'll, I'll digress.

Laura: 2:48

Yeah. This topic feels a little intimidating to me, I would say, because it's just, it's been the topic for years of are we, or aren't we related? Or, you know, yes we are, but how, and there's, you know, connections to prove, but, you know, this is what started your whole journey. Digging around in the family history is how you got started researching building trees, which will eventually led to the DNA testing. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Kim: 3:16

History for sure. Mm-hmm. I've been researching this tree since before my son was born and he just turned 34, so that means it's been a while. And and this was the hook that made me the way I am today. I was just to blame. This is the blame. I was shown a family history file that my grandfather Stan had collected. Stan Burgoyne. He had contributed to it as well with his own recollections. So to me it was like a present. And each element of the file was a puzzle piece to work on, and I was hooked. That was it, it was done. the most important piece of that puzzle was right on top. It was the descendancy sheet that Sadie Burgoyne McConnell had created that showed our branch of the Burgoyne descending directly from General John Burgoyne, but I only had that one sheet. There were no other documents in that file. To back it up like there was no birth records, no anything, just who the people were in that line. So what did I do? I went looking, so when I started looking it was a late 1980s. Internet was just being thought about. It was just a baby, it was just in college. Yeah. I don't,

Laura: 4:25

nobody had it. There was no home computers,

Kim: 4:27

no nothing. And nothing. It wasn't until Brady was a small baby that we got computers at our house, and I can remember dialing the Maine state library from my computer. I mean, putting in the number. And actually connecting to that

Laura: 4:43

library and hearing those noises of the connection back. Exactly. Dial up

Kim: 4:47

days. Exactly. And then the thing was, now what I got on it, I didn't know what to do, so I disconnected because, cause it wasn't like you had a webpage, you just, you were in the library's database and it's like, oh god. Well anyway, that was above me, so. I would collect all the family history bit by bit, and now I have amassed a fair bit of genealogy. At the time I would just collect, you know, bit of this, a bit of that. And you know, dang it, I didn't always remember to write down where I had found some of these tidbits. So now that I'm older and wiser, I've learned a few things. Citations are important. They document where the information you have came from. And at the time I was just an excitable person and technically I'm still an excitable person. No, yeah, I, I go a little nuts when you start talking about fun things like genealogy. And so I was, you know, at the time I was just excitable and I would devour each piece of information, store it in the back of my brain somewhere, and then when I would retrieve it, I would say, Where did I get that? Where, yeah. We

Laura: 5:48

always think we're gonna

Kim: 5:49

remember, but we always, I, I'll never forget that. And, and you know what I do? I always forget it. Right. And over these last few something shiny. Yeah, shiny. I'm onto something else. So I just want everybody to forgive me and if I say I don't recall where I got this tidbit. Or where I found it, I, I would really prefer to give credit to those who assisted me. And if I've neglected to do so, call me out. I'll fix it and I'll give credit where credit is due. But there's a lot of people over the years, I'm a lot, I can't even imagine how many people I've talked to about the general and.

Laura: 6:22

What chances are they may not remember having told you. That's that's

Kim: 6:26

true. But I if you're not bad, I'm remembering it. They may not either. Right. Those were back in the days when you just collected everything and put it into a file. And but as I've, as I've learned through classes and things, citations of where it's at. Cuz otherwise if you come behind me and look through my papers that's here in my office, you're gonna say, where did she get all this stuff? And you know, and is this true? Is that true? Yeah. Who knows? But. Anyway, so I apologize in advance, but there are some things I remember, some things I don't. But first things, first people I, I wanna mention, why do we even think we're related? You know, so what? Our name's Burgoyne. That doesn't mean we're related to every Burgoyne going on the planet.

Laura: 7:05

It's true, but it, it is not that common of a surname either, so. Right. Yep. I always tended to believe it just on, I,

Kim: 7:12

I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, I think that's what everybody, everybody does, because there's a lot of people who think that they're related. Mm-hmm. So the reason that we think we're related first was Aunt Sadie, Burgoyne McConnell said so, so she wrote it down, she had it on paper, and we have her descendant chart from the, from the general. And it is still in use for me as the family tree, but that'll be, we'll cover more of that later. But Sadie is my, is on my family tree. She's my great grand aunt and she was an intrepid genealogist, spent a good amount of time chasing the general story. I even have a copy of the ship manifest when she traveled to England to do research in 1951. I got that on Ancestry, but that came up as a hint. I remembered where that came

Laura: 7:58

from. And what was, what was Sadie to our grandfather Stan. She

Kim: 8:03

was, was she an Aunt? Stan's aunt. So Stan's father was Lewis Lou, and Lou was her brother. Okay, so because they had a big family and she was born in Canada, so there's one, that's one reason why we think we're related. Number two, I have and here's the problem. I don't remember where I got this. I think it might have been Linda Burgoyne, but I'm not sure. But I have an article from The Hartford Current. It's a picture of Mary, Mary Burgoyne. She said she was related to General Johnny Burgoyne. So she, according to this, I think, was related to Edward Burgoyne from Prince Edward Island, and that would be on our family tree. The dates don't really mesh very well for me, but I'm not exactly sure. But anyway, so she died in Connecticut in 1967. We have a newspaper clipping, which shows her holding a baby. It happens to be a family friend. And the article goes on to say that she is the great-great granddaughter of General Johnny. So here's what it says. centuries Apart, Ms. Mary Burgoyne, great, great granddaughter of British general gentleman, Johnny Burgoyne, who surrendered to the American troops in 1777 at Saratoga. observe. Her 100th birthday at the Wilington convalescent home in her arms is they talk about the baby and the friends. And it says, miss Burgoyne, born in Charlotte. Prince Edward Island. Nova Scotia lived in Coventry for 82 years, so she's been in Connecticut almost her whole life. But she believes that she's related to general Johnny. And that's, that's what they mentioned in in her picture, not. A hundred years of, of a good life, you know? No, no. She's the general's granddaughter.

Laura: 9:44

And is she closely related to Sadie?

Kim: 9:47

I think she would be cousins of some sort. No, I think to Sadie, it might be like a grand, an aunt or a grand aunt, something like that. Okay. Yeah. So she would be like another step up. Mm-hmm. And when she died in 1966, I'm not sure if Sadie, I mean, yeah, Sadie was still alive. I'm not sure. I'll have to check that. But so this woman lived a really great long life. Mm-hmm. So we also have a letter. From Sadie's nephew, Sadie J. Her nephew was James. He went to go visit Mary in Connecticut on behest of Sadie. Sadie said, Hey James, go visit Mary. Get the story, find out what's going on. And so James did so, which is kind of nice, James went to go visit, and this was in 1966, and he said Mary was in bed when I arrived, dressed and covered with a crochet type spread. The nurse had helped her sit up and she sat down and explained James said why he was there. So what he, what she said, what he quotes her as saying, She says her father's name was John Burgoyne. She didn't think that he had a middle name. He was born and raised in England, but didn't know when or how he got to Prince Edward Island. Her grandfather's name was Edward Burgoyne. Her mother's maiden name was, and it's kind of, you can't really read it very well, but it looks like Jodrey, j o d r E y from Miramachi, which is a place probably nobody's ever heard of, but Laura, you and I have heard of it. And it's she explained it was in up, this is how she explained it. It was up back of Maine. So that makes sense to us. But she could remember her father being the overseer of a s of a I can't read that word. Some sort of farm that raised horses and the family name of the store was Cole's. And this all rings true too because I do know of a Cole family in that's related to the Burgoyne or in the same area, so anyway, James, so James went because Sadie had asked him and got some information, so this woman connects to our line, the John and the Edward, and that kind of thing. Mm-hmm. I just, the dates don't seem quite right and I can't quite figure it out. But you know, maybe, maybe someday when I have free time. Another person that claims to be related is Edward Burgoyne and he said, so he said he was related to general Johnny Burgoyne and he had receipts, but I wouldn't, call them receipts. Yeah. Because to me they were kind of flimsy. But let me just, I'll read it to you. I'll read it cuz it's kind of. Fantastical. If you ask

Laura: 12:26

me. I guess back in the day it was all just what was on paper anyway. Right. You know, the people could put down whatever they wanted, but Exactly. Hopefully

Kim: 12:34

they were honest. Well, but the thing is it, but then it continues, like everybody still thinks that they're related. I still get emails from people who think that they're related. The general Johnny, So this particular article is from the Island Newspaper. And again, this is one that I did not note when I received it or who gave it to me. I'm sorry. But it is an article, it's in the island, newspaper.ca. And this is called the Descendants of Burgoyne. The article says, Edward Burgoyne of Granville Prince Edward Island is a direct descendant of Lieutenant General Sir John Burgoyne, who fought in the war for Revolution of the United States. General Burgoyne was born in 1722, died in 1792. Mr. Burgoyne of Grandville has in his possession a deed of two acres of land in Roxbury, Hertfordshire. Conveyed by George Burgoyne to one Marmaduke Rodden of Colchester Marmaduke. Marmaduke Rodden.

Laura: 13:37

I thought that was

13:38

just

Kim: 13:38

a dog. So he has The deed, which was recently shown to the guardian, meaning the newspaper. The deed is on parchment and is written in old English script and is an admirable preservation perfect throughout including the signature and seal. It bears the date of sixth December, 1717. It is presumed that George Burgoyne, the maker of this deed, was a relative of Sir John Burgoyne. The document is remarkable, one in the fact that it's now nearly 200 years. So this was been right, right around 1917. Somewhere around there. Hmm. So my question to you is, just because Marmaduke and George Burgoyne had a document, does that mean they're related to General John? Well, that's all I have on that information. And that was this. So this was Edward, who is in our family tree. I. And if it is, if that's all the same, then yeah, we're related to Edward, but this other BU bunch of stuff about Marmaduke and the title or the deed. Mm-hmm. Right. I don't know.

Laura: 14:43

Yeah. I suppose it was as good of proof as any at the time. Right. Look, I've got this. You had

Kim: 14:48

a connection. Yeah. So that's number three. And then we'll go to number four and we'll call, we'll call it Good. We'll call it a day on that one. Yeah. Because I mean, you know, and I wouldn't even. I wouldn't even think about it, but there's four people historically who are not that far removed from General Johnny that think they're related to general Johnny, right? I mean, we're, we're really removed. Too bad we didn't have DNA N back in the day. We could have D n A tested him and probably figured out what was going on, but. I digress on that as well. So the next person is Richard Everett Burgoyne, who is in our family tree. He is in New York. And that's another tidbit story. That's a good story there too. But from the Buffalo Courier Express, it does. Here's the title, Scion of Noted General Freed. In city court, it says Burgoyne's great, great grandson is saved from the workhouse. After telling his story, the great-great grandson of General John Burgoyne of revolutionary fame was in city court. The other. If that were not surprising enough, it may be added that he was arraigned and on a vagrancy charge to which he plead guilty. But Richard Everett Burgoyne, 19 years old, was not sent to the workhouse with the others. He was discharged and given into the care of the Children's Aid Society. And that is how this story came to light. Richard was a clean cut chap, short but stocky with fair skin and attractive gray eyes. And he told a really straightforward story of his present circumstances. So I mean, he could spin, he could spin his story. A word smith. Yeah, and he came to be in, you know, about how he came to be in such a humiliating position, but he went on he had evidently got laid off from a job, but still owed money for his housing, that kind of stuff, somewhere in New York and ended up in Buffalo trying to find a job. And they tried to get him off the streets. But then it found out that the children's Aid Society found out who he was related to, and they did it because they went looking, not necessarily, they weren't even sure that he knew. So they just went back into the records and found out that Richard Everett had lost his father very young and had been on his own cuz his mother had died or, and the mother had remarried and anyway, so he found himself on his own, but in the end, It was noted, whatever the course taken by the blood of Burgoyne down to the fame of the latest scion of that family. The tale is an interesting one, and it's a fact that that the same blood flows through this lads veins. Strange romances have come out of the city court, but none more surprising than that. Of the great-great grandson of a round and talented Tori General, brought before the Barb Justin's justice as a vagrant, a plucky, wayfarer on the lonely highway of life. That's, wow, very dramatic. That was the very end of that article. It was three, I mean it's three pages long, so, so this plucky young lad or whatever. So those, oh, because he had a

Laura: 17:47

famous great-great-grandfather.

Kim: 17:49

Right? So along with, along with Sadie, these other people have reported that we are related to general Johnny and I can place all these people on our tree. So if they say they. And then they are historically much closer to General Johnny than we are. Mm-hmm. That's why I say, you know, they must have known something. So I don't have, I don't have, you know, all of their answers very readily, but, you know, I, I, I carry on. So, Laura, how about a general Johnny Tidbit?

Laura: 18:22

Yeah, I think life was full of little tidbits.

Kim: 18:25

But

Laura: 18:26

this one, this is, this is pretty interesting because again, it is close to home from Smith College in Northampton, mass from their website. Which this is something that our sister Kathy brought to our attention that Smith College, which is a private liberal arts women's college in Northampton, as I said had a general Johnny connection. Just for a little background they have the school has a few notable alumni including Barbara Bush, Nancy Reagan, Gloria Steinem, Julia Child, and Margaret Mitchell, just to name a famous few. So the story about Smith College goes the oldest house on campus Sessions house. It was built in 1710 by Captain Jonathan Hunt. The house was the first in North Hampton to be built outside of the stockade. So, and there was a staircase originally designed as a secret passageway used during colonization by the hunts as a place to hide when Native Americans tried to reclaim their land. It is also said to have been used during the Civil War as part of the underground railroad. So that's cool. Pretty historical significance there. But the most popular house legend. Is that the staircase was the site of clandestine visits between Captain Hunt's, granddaughter, Lucy and Johnny Burgoyne, a British red coat held captive in the house during the Revolutionary War. What you suppose this was after the big surrender at

Kim: 20:02

Saratoga? I'm thinking they held him a bit. You could sit over there in this house? Yeah.

Laura: 20:08

So the Sessions house is named for Mrs. Ruth Huntington Sessions, who acquired the building at the turn of the century and opened it to Smith students as housing became scarce. And she later bequeathed the home to the college and it's been used as a residence hall since 1921

Kim: 20:26

there. So the general, he was, he was out and about and I think Cathy Town, yeah, I think Cathy said at Halloween they used to have Halloween parties. And that secret staircase was part of the festivities, and I don't know. Oh, that would be a good one. Yeah. I don't know what all would happen. You know, maybe we should go during Halloween and find out what's going on there. Probably. I don't know. But so that's what the general, the, that, and they would use him as part of their festivities? I believe so. Kathy must have heard about that maybe in the paper, but, I forget. So, but the, but, but she was the one, because she did live in Massachusetts, she brought us that

Laura: 21:05

information and, and we know it came from her. So that's about all that we know. Yeah. But it's a good, it's a good little

Kim: 21:11

tidbit. I like it. I like it because it's like he was everywhere, man. And so we just you know, at least now you know why we think we are related to general Johnny. We'll continue on next week with General Johnny, but we have a family history tidbit for this week for our best fan. And our best fan is David. Hashtag prove me wrong. Alright, game accepted. It's okay. I went back in his tree and found out found his grandfather. His fa grandfather's name was Byron Lloyd. Byron was a first generation Mainer, born in Woodland, Maine, which is the county by the. County boy. He was a county boy. Mm-hmm. In 1907, but he left, he and his father and mother were John and Mod. They had been born in Canada, so, but by 1920 they were in Norridge Walk and that's where they stayed. So Byron passed in 1994, but we found Byron this morning in the Morning Sentinel, which is out of Augusta, I believe, or Waterville, one or the other. He was involved in a lawsuit.

Laura: 22:13

All right. So the article reads Plaintiffs in the eight, actions and the damages which they seek to recover. Follow Jenny v. Fog of Norwich Walk,$3,000. Alonzo Lancaster of Norridge Walk$4,000. Byron Lloyd of Norridge Walk,$1,500. Byron Lloyd and John Lloyd,$6,000. Byron Lloyd and Merle Lloyd.$2,000. Frank Moore of Norridge Walk. 3000, William Welch and Mary Welch and Madison 5,000. Thomas Crawford, wild of Madison, 3000. The first of the three actions brought by each plaintiff against the town alleges that Madison maintained a nuisance at its dump by keeping fires there during an extremely dry period. So the writ declares that the town maintained fires in its dump, thus creating and maintaining a dangerous and intolerable nuisance. And this condition created by the defendant was likely to generate and spread dangerous fires. And the defendant used its property in an unreasonable and unwarranted and unlawful manner,

Kim: 23:25

So basically, Those landowners were mad at, they were lived in Norwalk and they were mad at Madison because Madison had a dump and kept a fire burning there all the time. Even during dry weather. Right. So, so then they lost all this valuable timber.

Laura: 23:43

so the things that we learned from this little article, Byron was a considerable landowner alone and with his brothers, and there was a huge forest fire in Madison Norridge walk in October, 1947. That started with, seems like a careless fire kept at the dump.

Kim: 24:03

That's what they're alleging. Yep. Mm-hmm. So anyway, I don't know if David knew that this was a thing that his grandfather had done, so maybe David will let us know. But I tried to find the results of this lawsuit and I didn't. It was just, I ran out of time. But anyway. Yeah. Well, David will let us know. Yep,

Laura: 24:23

yep. So I think we're starting to have some plans here now that spring's. Yeah, gonna start doing a little more exploration of the cemeteries and people like us in the northeast just praying for no surprise snowstorms in April so that we can get out there and start doing our thing. Yeah.

Kim: 24:42

This morning they had data on how many surprise April snowstorms there are. And it's common and I didn't like that.

Laura: 24:50

I, I recall getting a major snowstorm on April. Yep. In high school, I don't remember which year, but it was a, yeah, foot and a half of snow.

Kim: 24:59

I think I was either a senior or I might have been a sophomore. Yeah, maybe a junior. Anyway. Yep. Yeah.

Laura: 25:07

Anyway, it, it'll, it'll melt quickly, but what a pain.

Kim: 25:11

Yeah. All right. So next week we want to discuss our family line, and that line goes right back to Cornwall, England. That is everything that I have verifiable just as a little tease. And all roads lead to Cornwall, is that what we're saying? Oh, oh, they do. And Cornwall road trip. Yeah. Cornwall's just stunning. So we're gonna go to Cornwall because that's where, that's what Sadie says is where they're from. So we're also gonna talk about the children of general Johnny. He did have children and he. Kind of an interesting life, but we have one of his children that we're very interested in, and Cornwall England is where it's at. So anybody wanna sponsor our road trip to England because we're taking sponsorships at this time. Spring would be a lovely time to go over and have some tea and, and, and talk about talk about things and ask around, are you a Burgoyne? Are you related to general Johnny Burgoyne? So until next

Laura: 26:10

week, please rate, review, and follow us on your favorite podcast platform. We also invite you to reach out to us by email at chasing hazels tales gmail.com. Tell us your tales or share what you've learned or found interesting about your family. Let us know if you've shaken your family tree and had any nuts, fallout,

Kim: 26:32

hazelnut. I dunno. We're all hazelnuts. That's right. Yes. You can

Laura: 26:36

also follow. Contact us or any of the above on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok. Thanks to Kim, and until next week, so long. Goodbye.