The Ancestor of the Red Delicious was Actually Delicious

It is Decidedly Not Delicious

    The Red Delicious apple, with its deceptive bright red hue and distinctive shape has been a popular apple in America for 128 years. Most of us remember getting one on our lunch trays in elementary school. But let’s face it, delicious it is not.

    I love apples. I have a special place in my world for each one. Each of them, but one.

    As I child I was not terribly picky about which apples I ate. My other classmates were though. They would hand their apples off to me and I would eat them all on my walk home at the end of the day. But the truly mealy, gritty ones—you know what I mean—would never survive more than a bite before getting chucked into a bush for the animals.

    Unless it was February. And winter. And I would eat the better bits around the mealy bits just for a taste of the fruit.

    I don’t feel so bad for my great distaste for the red delicious. Even Tom Burford, author of Apples of North America, whose ancestors planted seeds in the Blue Ridge Mountains in 1713, and who grew up with over 100 species of apples in their family orchard refers to the popularity of the Red Delicious as a “ramming down the throats of American consumers this disgusting, red, beautiful fruit.”

    Turns out, it wasn’t always disgusting.

 

Colonial Apples

    America had its own native apples, but the common varieties we know today are descendants of imports from Europe. Apples were important to colonial life. It was not only used for food, but hard cider, a safe beverage to imbibe, as the village water was usually unfit to drink.

    Apples were one of the earliest crops planted by colonists and each family would have a few trees of their own in their backyards. In the 1800s and the early 1900s, the popular apple was the Ben Davis, a reliable crop for growers. It was a pretty apple, and a crop with a reliable yield, but touted to be pretty bland.

 

What Jesse Hiatt Let Grow

    A Quaker farmer named Jesse Hiatt of Peru, Iowa found an unwanted apple tree growing within his orchard of Yellow Bellflower trees, in the 1870s. He tried to cut it back for several seasons but it came back up every year. History says that he decided something that tenacious deserved a chance and he let it grow.

    Ten years later the tree produced its first fruit, a red and yellow striped elongated globe. The flesh was said to be crisp, fruity and sweet, but it wasn’t pretty to look at. Hiatt named the perfumed apple the Hawkeye, after his home state. Amy Traverso, author of The Apple Lover’s Cookbook, says, “The [Hawkeye] was a chance seedling, and I like to imagine what a revelation it was to come across this apple tree that you hadn’t even planted. To taste the fruit for the first time and realize it was just incredible.”

 

The Next Big Apple

    The Ben Davis apple was the widely-seeded but bland apple in production at the time. In 1983 the Stark Brothers’ Nursery in Lousianna, Missouri, opened a contest to farmers, seeking a new strain of apple. Jesse Hiatt brought his Hawkeye apple to the contest. It was love at first bite and the Stark Brothers bought the production rights to the apple.

    The first thing they did was change the name.

 

The First Delicious

    It became the Stark Delicious.

    Rowan Jacobsen writes, in Apples of Uncommon Character, that “the fruit kept well and had an inoffensive, pleasantly aromatic taste. Most of all, it was very sweet. What it wasn’t, was solid red; instead, it had a light pink blush, reddish stripes, and a less pronounced strawberry shape, making it a pretty generic apple.”

    Over the next twenty years, the Nursery promoted the Stark Delicious in a manner that changed the business of apple production. The Brothers spent $750,000, sending salesmen to farms all over the country. They even sent it out as free gifts to their existing customers and exhibited it at the 1904 World’s Fair.

    The Stark Delicious became a hit and the Nursery was bombarded with requests for more trees from customers. As its population expanded, and it was propagated widely, it became less and less like the original Hiatt’s Hawkeye.

 

What’s in a Name?

    In 1914, when the Golden Delicious was discovered in West Virginia and bought up by the Nursery, the Stark Delicious apple became the Red Delicious. The Stark Brothers’ aggressive promotion of the breed meant that by 1922, the annual Delicious crop was valued at $12 million.

    A year later, one of the Delicious growers in New Jersey found one single branch on one of his trees that was producing a mutant variant of the apple. It had ripened earlier than the others and had turned a deep, solid crimson hue. One of the Stark Brothers’ sons travelled from Missouri and bought the branch, also known as a sport, off the tree for $6,000.

    “Traditionally, growers were paid based on the redness of the skin of their apples. Flavor was not evaluated,” Rowan Jacobsen wrote. “Red Delicious earned a premium over other apples, and the reddest Red Delicious earned the highest premium.” It wasn’t long before farmers all over clambered to get their hands on their own clone of the deep crimson variant.

 

Pros and Cons and Poor Taste

    Amy Traverson likens this as the problem. “It turns out that a lot of the genes that coded for the flavor-producing compounds were on the same chromosomes as the genes for the yellow striped skin,” she explains, “so as you favored the more consistently colored apples, you were essentially disfavoring the same genes that coded for great flavor.”

    This new breed of Red Delicious came with a thicker skin that disguised the bruises that came during long shipping routes. The “coke-bottle bottom” of the fruit and the uniform shape made them perfect for storage and transport, prizing them for a long shelf life over taste. The deep red fruits continued to ripen after harvesting, so it could be picked prematurely and left to ripen in cold storage as it travelled.

    As soon as an apple is picked from the tree it begins to produce ethylene gas, which is what causes fruit to either ripen or rot. According to Simon Thibault, author of Pantry and Palate: Remembering and Rediscovering Acadian Food, it enabled the Delicious apple to be stored for a length of time before being shipped.

 

Why So Popular?

    The Red Delicious was the most popular apple in production by the 1940s. But the skin was tougher than other apple skin, hiding an open-celled texture that consumers would consider mealy or gritty. It had a tough and bitter skin hiding mushy flesh. Have you ever wondered why that is?

    Thibault also says that if the Red Delicious is left on the tree long enough, something called watercore develops. “What that means is the starches and sugars get converted to sorbitol, or unfermentable sugar. They’re very sweet, but they don’t last long. If you let the Red Delicious do that, even the cardboard ones can become nonoffensive.” But then their shelf life for transport is severely shortened. As people left the farms and more people moved into the cities and shopped at grocery markets, and they were not getting their food from the farm stands, transportability became more important commercially.

    By the 1980s, seventy-five percent of the crops produced in Washington State were Red Delicious apples. They are responsible for two-thirds of the apples produced in America.

 

Who’s Buying Them?

    Now, the majority of Red Delicious apples are not bought by consumers. Instead they are sold to schools and health centers, hospitals and hotels; places where people don’t have a lot of choice in what they eat. For instance, the United States Department of Agriculture sends the fruit out through its food distribution programs, most of which comes from farmers’ surplus. The Red Delicious is usually one of the last crops standing, as far as American demand goes.

    Orchardists couldn’t just switch out their long-standing crops and the seemingly sudden shift in consumer demand took them by surprise. Tom Burford pointed out that people had been “eating with their eyes and not their mouths.” Now shoppers were not satisfied with poor flavor when there were other savory apples on the market like SweeTango, Honeycrisp, Pink Lady, and Snap Dragon.

 

The Decline

    Red Delicious apple growers lost almost $800 million between 1997 and 2000 because consumers weren’t buying them. In 2000 the government spent $138 million to bailout the apple farmers of Washington state. It was the largest bailout in the history of the apple industry.

    Production of the Red Delicious dropped forty percent over the next seventeen years. It is the parent of the Empire and the Fuji apple varieties, among others. It’s still one of the most commonly produced apples, by twenty million bushels, and in 2014, the Washington Apple Commission began focusing on exporting two-thirds or more of their Red Delicious crop to other countries. Most of our Red Delicious apples wind up in China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates.

    (Did you know that China produces a full half of the world’s apples, about eight times as much as the United States. Seventy percent of the apples they grow are Fujis.)

 

A New Cream of the Crop

    For the first time in fifty years, the Red Delicious was dethroned by the juicy and mildly sweet Gala in 2018. The Red Delicious came second—due to the production demand, Granny Smith was third, Fuji fourth, and the Honeycrisp fifth… though if they were correct, by the typing of this article the Honeycrisp should have moved up the list.

    Yum.

    Lots of farmers are slowly replacing their Red Delicious trees with new popular varieties and no one is planting new ones. Somewhere out there, some farmers still grow the original heirloom variety Hawkeye. Which means there is a chance to taste the fruit that was the Red Delicious’ ancestor, and experience where its name originated.

    I sense a road trip in my future.

 

 

 

Sourced with information from:

A.C. Bright, author of Apples Galore!

Tom Burford, author of Apples of North America

Rowan Jacobsen, author of Apples of Uncommon Character

Erika Janik, author of “Apple: A Global History”

Simon Thibault, author of Pantry and Palate: Remembering and Rediscovering Acadian Food

Amy Traverso, author of The Apple Lover’s Cookbook

LeAnn Zotta, author 200 Years and Growing: The Story of Stark Bro’s Nurseries & Orchards Co

My Family & the Flu of 1918

[Stock photo]

It's October in America. Some of us have been living under restrictions and in isolation since March. I know people who have lost family members they did not get to see. In this country we have currently lost 208,000 deaths from COVID-19. There have been over 1 million deaths globally.

How can we find hope and strength while still in the midst of this pandemic?

The Flu of 1918

I looked to our history. And I looked to my history. This is not our first pandemic that has required masks and isolation. Some media call it the Influenza Epidemic of 1918 or the Influenza Pandemic. Most commonly it is known as the Spanish Flu. That is a misnomer (I'll explain that below). 

The Flu of 1918 first made its appearance in March of that same year in the case of an Army cook in Kansas. It spread through the Camp but was not seen to be deadlier than an average flu. Then the troops were deployed. America had joined World War I in April of 1917. Our troops brought the new flu to England with them and it spread through Europe, through the French and British troops in April and May.

So why do we know it as the Spanish Flu of 1918? None of the other countries were publishing any news that could be harmful to their troops and stories of illness among the soldiers counted. Spain was the only country putting out information about this new and deadly flu and they were the first country to write about it. 

[Stock photo]

The second wave of the 1918 Flu was far deadlier than the first. Just as the deaths seemed to ebb in August, the virus mutated and troops returned from England infected with a new strain. The most brutal months occurred in the fall of 1918, from September to November.

In the month of October 1918 alone, 195,000 Americans died of it. The new strain claimed the lives of the old and very young as well as previously healthy adults in their prime and their deaths were horrific to the medical community. Medical science didn't understand what viruses were let alone the cytokine explosion effect the pandemic had on it's victims. 

Life in Buffalo NY

All of my ancestors who were alive during the Flu of 1918 lived in Western New York, close to Lake Ontario. People stayed inside as much as possible. Schools and theatres and stores closed. Everything was shut down. People tried whatever remedies they could conceive, like wearing bags of camphor around their necks.

Everyone wore masks. The mayor of Buffalo restricted gatherings of more than 10 people. All restrictions were enforced, and many enforced within the community itself. But there were groups that tried to get special dispensation to gather and meet. Of course there were. There was even a large anti-mask group that rose up in San Francisco, claiming their Rights were being infringed upon.

During a global health crisis.

Towns along the railroads were particularly afflicted as it spread. So many medical people were overseas aiding the war effort that hospitals and casket makers were overwhelmed. There were just too many cases and too many dead.

It has happened before. It could happen again. Where can we find strength after such a long period of isolating when we know it s not over yet?

My Great-Great Grandparents' World

I wanted to know the names and faces of my ancestors who had lived to see such times before and I checked my family tree to see who was alive during the worst months of the pandemic.

My great-great-grandmother Theresa Tenney-Eaton, a widow, was 58. She lived in Somerset NY and was the head of house, living with her son, William Bennett, 38, and his wife, Lena, 40. Their five children were also living with Theresa. On September 12, during the worst months of virus, William registered his World War I draft card. All survived.

Roy Eaton & Hattie Smith  & family

Theresa's other son and my great-grandpa Royal Eaton, 45, and his wife Hattie Eva Smith, 36, lived in Auburn NY with their three children, including my Grandpa Mark who was just three years old. Great-grandpa Roy also registered his WWI draft card on Sept 2, during the thick of the flu. All survived.

Emma Whitcher, Ruth Ruston, & Ruth Ireland

My 2x great-grandparents Charles Ruston, 64, and Ruth Ireland, 57, were living in Lockport NY with their daughters Maude, 36, and Ruth, 21. All survived.

Their son and my great-grandpa Frank Ruston, 29, and his wife Minnie Wicker, 27, had been married for five years. Their oldest child, my Grandma Ruth, was 2. Minnie's mother, my widowed 2x great-grandma Emma Whitcher-Wicker, was 70 years old and lived with them in Lockport NY, along with a schoolteacher boarder. All survived.

Katherine Pils & young grandchildren

My German great-great-grandparents George Art, 47, and Katherine Pils, 45, were servants working for the wealthy Kenan family. The couple were living with their youngest two children, Walter, 23, & Alice, 20. All survived.

Their eldest son, and my great-grandpa Robert Art, 25, and his wife Margaret Burke, 24. had been married and living in Lockport for five years. They had two small daughters, the youngest having been born just that same year. There had been a second daughter who died in 1916. All alive during the flu survived.

In Newfane NY my great-great-grandparents Lafayette Riddle, 48, and Frances Gillette, 43, still had four kids home on the farm and my great-grandpa Harold, 15, was one of them. All survived.

Even my great-great-great-grandparents Albert Durant, 76, and Rosella LaValley, 75, both of Quebec origins, survived, though Albert died two years later and Rosella the year after him.

Elsie Durant, far left in glasses, and other Durants

Their son, my great-great-grandpa George Durant, 39, and Emma Louise Burnah, 49, were newly living in Lockport, having moved from Piercefield NY. My great-grandma Elsie, 13, was the last of their children still at home.

The End of the Flu of 1918

At the time, PA state medical inspector W.E. Matthews said, "The most dangerous time of all is right now, when the disease is disappearing. There is always the possibility of people letting up in their precautions or not taking the precautions that are so necessary in checking the spread of the disease." 

[Stock photo]

He was right. There was a third wave of deaths, with as high a count as the second one. History believes the virus ebbed when the war ended because we stopped shipping and mobilizing troops around the world, cross-contaminating our countries.

The pandemic lasted from 1918-1919. It killed 2-5 million people globally. Over 675,000 Americans died of it over two years. We're at 208,000 after seven months.

And Now?

History teaches us that there will be an end to this version of pandemic. We know that we have medical knowledge and technology we didn't have then. There are reasons to be hopeful. But we have to do our part.

The second wave has not struck us yet. 

Wear your masks to protect other people from your germs. Wear your masks to protect you from other people's germs. Wash your hands regularly. Socially-distance for real. Isolate if you feel unwell. Invest in a thermometer.

May we all come through the other side of this. 

My Family and the Ratification of the 19th Amendment

Great-grandma Minnie Ruston in the glasses, center.

On August 18, 1920 it was written into law that voting rights could not be denied based on sex. Suffragettes had been protesting for the right to vote for decades. An early Women’s Rights convention was held in Seneca Falls in 1848, seventy-two years before the amendment was ratified.

This photo is of an unknown group of women from around the 1920s. My 1x great-grandmother Minnie Ruston is facing the camera in the glasses in the center. She was the daughter of a prominent business owner, fire chief, and Mason, Hiram Wicker. I have not yet been able to identify these women. There are other photos of the white-haired woman in the back row with the black robes on, but I am uncertain who she is.

Suffragette white in 1917?

[It’s important to note, considering how long women had to fight for it, that many states responded by passing laws to limit the freedoms of black citizens, including voting rights. It wasn’t until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that black women (and men) had the full and legal right to vote. That’s forty-five years after the Amendment.]

It made me wonder where my ancestors were in their lives in 1920. It was only 100 years ago and my female ancestors could not vote. I’ll never know what they thought about women’s rights to vote—I know that not all women were in support of it, though I have learned enough about some families to make some educated guesses. So I searched our archives for photos of my ancestors who were alive at the time, within a few years, and here they are:

My 1x great-grandparents Royal Levant Eaton and Hattie Eva Smith-Eaton were 47 and 38 years old with three children. My grandfather Mark Dutcher Eaton was 5 years old, the youngest in the second photograph. They were living in Auburn, NY where Roy was working as a prison guard.

Royal’s mother Theresa Cordelia Tenney-Eaton was 70 years old, living in Somerset, NY with her son Hubert and his family.

Hattie’s grandmother, my 3x great-grandmother Eliza Marsh Bird-Dutcher was 83 years old living in Somerset with her daughter Carrie and her family. Here she is, on the left, with her son-in-law's mother, Sophia Sears-Smith. Sophia died soon after this was taken, a decade before ratification.

Frank Ruston tucking his head. Either with his wife Minnie, or Minnie took the photo.

Minnie Wicker-Ruston and son Dickie and daughter Ruth, my grandma, around 1922.

Emma Whitcher-Wicker, front right, with sisters Ellen, Harriet, and Frances, l-r.

My grandmother Ruth Emma Ruston was 4 years old, living with my 1x great-grandparents Frank William Ruston and Minnie Estelle Wicker-Ruston in Lockport, NY. Frank and Minnie were 32 and 30 years old and he was employed as an accountant. Minnie’s mother Emma Angeline Whitcher-Wicker, 75, lived with them.

Frank’s parents Charles Evan Ruston and Ruth Ireland-Ruston, 73 and 59 years old, were both first generation immigrants living at their own home in Lockport.  He was still employed by the Harrison Manufacturing factory. (In my childhood it was the Harrison-Radiator factory.)

Robert George Art and Margaret Loretta Burke-Art were both 28 years old, living in Lockport, with two young daughters. He was working as a blacksmith.

Robert’s parents, my 2x great-grandparents, George Art and Katherine Pils-Art, 50 and 49 years old, were both employed by the wealthy Kenan family as their private gardener and housekeeper. Here Katherine is with other housekeepers, second one in from the right.

Margaret’s father, my 2x great-grandfather Frank Burke was 57, worked as the watchman for a city building in Lockport. He’s listed as married, not widowed, living with five of his children, though his wife Eliza Conners-Burke is not included on the census report. She would have been 54 at the time. I don't have any photos of them.

My 1x great-grandfather Harold Riddle, in the light suit, was 17 years old, living at home with my 2x great-grandparents Lafayette Riddle and Frances Ann Gillette-Riddle, 47 and 43 years old. With five of their six children in Newfane, NY.

Harold and Elsie in 1924 when they married.

My 1x great-grandmother Elsie Elizabeth Durant was 16, the last Durant child still at home. My 2x great-grandparents George Durant and Emma Louise Burnah-Durant, 51 and 53, lived in Lockport, NY where he worked at a Block Company. His father Albert died earlier that year in Vermont. His mother Rosella Lavalley-Durant, my 3x great-grandmother, 82 years old, was working as a housekeeper in Vermont.

Rosella Lavalley-Durant

I do not know what they thought but I know where they were and who their descendants became. I know my great-grandma Minnie was an avid photographer and these photos of this group of women survived all these decades later so they must have been important to her, and so they are important to me.

Same group of women with Minnie behind the camera.

Hamilton and Me… Well, How One of His Pals Shaped My Family

Daveed Diggs as Lafayette in Hamilton (left)

My background is in theatre and I love theatre of all kinds, including musicals. I’m sure by now most people have heard of the musical Hamilton if they haven’t seen it for themselves (or listened to the soundtrack on repeat). You don’t need to know the show but it’s a brilliant way of making history accessible and relevant to our current society.

Among the patriots fighting for freedom from English monarchy rule and taxes was a Frenchman named Marquis de Lafayette. He fought in the American Revolution on the side of the colonists. He was a celebrated hero of the war in America for decades afterwards.

A Bit of Bio

Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de La Fayette was born to a wealthy family in France and commissioned as a sous-lieutenant with the musketeers at 13. He believed in the American war and after spending three weeks with high society in London and being presented to King George III, the young Marquis snuck away to America, defying his French King’s decree that no French soldiers were to fight for the Americans.

To get himself to America he used his wealth to buy his own ship, docking in North Carolina before continuing to Philadelphia. He was 19 when he fought alongside George Washington. Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de La Fayette was known to his comrades as Lafayette.

After the Revolution, Lafayette returned to France and was a key figure in the French Revolution and the government that came after. In 1824, he was invited to be a guest by President James Monroe at a multi-state celebration of America’s 50^th anniversary. He had initially only intended to visit the 13 original colonies but he was met with such fanfare that he visited all 24 states, meeting up with his old friends from the war. He collected soil from Bunker Hill, the site of an important battle, and took it home to France.

The real Marquis de Lafayette.

When he died May 20, 1834 his son George Washington scattered the soil from Bunker Hill over him. Lafayette was 76 years old. He was sometimes called “The Hero of the Two Worlds.” President Jackson gave him the same memorial honors that had been given to Lafayette’s friend George Washington. Congress urged Americans to follow similar mourning practices for the Marquis. You can tell how beloved he was by the places across America named for him, like Fayetteville, North Carolina.

Lafayette’s Legacy

One of the curious ways in which he was honored was by people naming the next generation of men after him, by his full title. My 3x great-grandfather, Marquis de Lafayette Riddle, was one of those babies. He was born the year after Lafayette’s American tour. I'm hazarding a guess that he went by Lafayette in his day-to-day since that's what he named his son, my 2x great-grandpa, Lafayette Riddle.

When I encountered that name my first thought was, Hey! A Marquis! But then I wondered why a Marquis would be farming in Batavia, NY. I thought there was a story there. I went onto Ancestry.com and plugged in the first name Marquis de Lafayette and left the last name blank.

This is a list of the names that came up on the first search page. I don’t know what are census takers’ misspellings and what are evolutions of the name but I left them as is:

M.D. Lafayette Furby b.1824, New Jersey

Marquis de Lafayette Riddle b.1825, New York

Marcus D.L. Norvell b.1836, Tennessee

Marquis de Lafayet Beall (alive in 1841), Mississippi

Marquis D.L. Branham b.1843, Tennessee

Mercus de L. Corter b.1844, Tennessee

Marquis de Lafaette Munro b.1844, New York

M.D.L. Paddock b.1846, Kansas

Markes D. L. Raynor b.1847, Ohio

Marcus D.L. Burriss b.1847, Kentucky

Margaris de Lafayette b.1849, Missouri

M.D. Laf Hill b.1849, Alabama

Margins D.L. Handley b.1850, Indiana

M.D.L. Dotson b.1850, Virginia

Marcus D.L. Batson b.1850, Michigan

Margais/Marques D.L. Beeson b.1853, Indiana

Margaris D.L.F. Harrington b.1856, Massachusetts

M. de L. Cash b.1857, Virginia

Marquis D.L. Williams b.1858, Missouri

Marquis D.L. Greer b.1859, North Carolina

La Fette D. Ginn b.1876, Georgia

Marquis D.L.F. Gorham (resides in 1889), Indiana

The names must have been passed down through the families over time, as this man was born 110 years after the original Lafayette’s death:

Marquis D.L. Rogers b.1944, California

Trivia fact: My 9x great-grandfather George Bunker owned the famed Hill that would later be part of the Revolutionary War battle (though he died the landowner a good 110 years beforehand), that Lafayette would take soil from for his own gravesite.

Robert Moulton and the Salem Witches

illustration by Freeland A. Carter

The first day of March of this year marks the 328th anniversary of the start of the Witch Trials in Salem, Massachusetts. Over the span of seven months in 1692 over 150 people, children included, were arrested on the charges of witchcraft. One man was killed during torture and 19 more people were tried, convicted, and hung as witches.

Witches who did not exist.

Two months of paranoia preceded the trials. Two generations of my maternal ancestors lived in Salem at the time, one of whom was involved. My 9x great-grandfather Robert Moulton was 48 years old during the witch hysteria. He and his wife Mary Cook had eight children. Their son Robert, my other ancestor, was 17.

I circled Moulton’s land plot, number 138, on the map in green. That his neighbor at plot 128 was Giles Corey, one of the victims of the trials, becomes relevant. Now, I am not a Salem scholar and I am not going to run through the whole of the history of the witch trials. While I am certain the trials affected every life in that village and town, I’m focusing on the moments the trial intersected Robert’s life.

By the time of the trials Corey was not a respected man. Sixteen years earlier he was charged with beating his farmhand, described as a “natural fool”, to death. In a letter from Thomas Putnam to Judge Samuel Sewall, he states that Corey paid for his freedom. Salem’s court records show that Corey was often charged with setting his cattle to graze on others’ lands. In my ancestor Robert’s own words Giles Corey was “a very quarrelsome and contentious bad neighbor.”

Two years after the murder, in 1678, my 33 year-old 9x great-grandfather Robert had a feud with Giles Corey that brought them to court. He testified that Giles had threatened his planting. Later twelve bushels of apples were stolen from Moulton following a clash with Corey. Moulton’s saw-mill was damaged after another clash and he suspected Giles of sabotage which led to Corey suing my ancestor in court for defamation. In November Giles Corey withdrew his suit against Robert Moulton.

Fourteen years later, Martha Corey (who did not believe in the proceedings) was accused of witchcraft on March 19, 1692 by Ann Putnam, age 12. The frenzy was so great that Giles Corey testified against his own wife. On April 19th Giles Corey was accused by Ann Putnam, Jr, Mercy Lewis, Abigail Williams, Mary Walcott, and Elizabeth Hubbard. He had no trial because he refused to state whether he was not guilty or guilty so the court could not proceed. He expressed regret over his testimony against Martha but to no avail. He was held for months.

The Putnams accused Rebecca Nurse on May 2nd. She was the mother of eight children, who all pleaded for her life. Another prominent Salem member who gave written testimony in her trial was my ancestor Robert Moulton.

In his own words, on Jun 29th, he wrote, “the testimony of Robart Moulton sener who testifith and saith that I waching with Susannah sheldon sence she was afflicted I heard her say that the witches halled her Upone her bely through the yeard like a snacke and halled her over the stone walle & presontly I heard her Controdict her former: disCource and said that she Came over the stone wall her selfe and I heard her say that she Rid Upone apoole to boston and she said the divel Caryed the poole.”

Basically he testified that he heard Susannah Sheldon say that witches dragged her across the yard on her belly and hauled her over the rock wall. She said that she had flown to Boston and that the Devil had carried the pole. He wrote his statement after hearing her testify that she climbed over the wall of her own accord and then ridden a pole to Boston. Her stories contradicted.

His testimony did not help Rebecca. She and five others were hanged June 19th. But at least with his testimony we have evidence that not every townsperson allowed themselves to be swept up in the frenzy.

In September Giles Corey was led to a field beside the jail to force a confession. He was pressed to death beneath a board with rocks piled upon it. His final words were "More weight, more weight." Giles died at the age of 77 two days before his wife. They were cleared of charges posthumously in 1711.

Robert Moulton died in Salem in 1975.

I am grateful for the discovery of my Moulton ancestors. I am more grateful to have been able to parcel bits of who they were from what history was documented. What I found was a man who, whether he believed in the tales of witchcraft or not, spoke his truth in a time of great fear and hysteria. He held to his light. Some of that strength lives in me. I hold that in my thoughts as I navigate our current world.

Alive Through Me: Charles Evan Ruston & Ruth Ireland

I have a collection of family photos going back to my 4x great-grandparents. But they’re not just photos of dead people. I know their names. I know some of their stories. I know their lives before marriage. I see those pictures and I know who they are to me. In this series, Alive Through Me, I will be sharing the known stories behind those faces.

When I do my ancestor work I do so with the four main branches of my line, my mom’s mother and father, and my dad’s mother and father: Art, Riddle, Ruston, and Eaton. What Polish ancestry I have comes from the Ruston line but the Rustons themselves were from England.

Why they came here is a fantastic story. I’d like to introduce you to my 2x great-grandparents.

Charles Evan Ruston was born July 4, 1847 in Chatteris, Cambridgeshire, England to the far north of London. His parents were Richard Ruston and Anna Richardson. Richard was a wealthy land owner who employed a lot of hands. He would later own a popular department store of some kind.

Charles was the oldest of four siblings. He had three brothers and a sister; Frederick, Allpress, Emily, and Thomas. Charles was baptized at age 13 and a year later he is possibly listed as a pupil in another home in Oundle, Northamptonshire but appears back home by age 24.

Ruth Ireland was born in May of 1861 in Doddington, Cambridgeshire, England to William Ireland and Phoebe Lenton. She was also the oldest of four children, followed by Emma, Louisa, and Phoebe. I am guessing her mother might have died in childbirth with Phoebe as they share a first name. Whether that’s true or not Ruth must have lost her mother before she was a teen because at 12 years old she became sister to a fifth child, her half-sister Kate Ireland.

In 1881 Ruth is listed as a visitor in the parish of St. Benedict. She was a maid in the household. This is the year that everything changed.

On a free-European-Parish-records weekend on Ancestry, I learned that the household Ruth worked for and the Ruston family attended the same church. I know that Charles and Ruth married in England and then came to America. All in 1881. He was 33 and she was 21.

There is more to the story, of course, passed down through generations. Somewhere in between the tales lies truth but I will share what I know as I have been told it. As I remember it being told to me. Ruth caught Charles’ eye and they fell in love. Richard Ruston forbid his son from marrying the maid as the well-to-do man’s son was destined for a better marriage match. If Charles married her, he would be cut off.

Charles and Ruth did marry and soon after boarded a boat for America.

In the new world they settled in Lockport, NY. I do not know what brought them that far from the coast. I don’t know if they knew someone in Western New York, or if there were hawkers trolling for laborers at the dock when they disembarked, or if they arbitrarily pointed at a map.

Curiously, I do not know how many months into 1882 their first child was born, a daughter named Maud. But that knowledge may be a clue as to why the sudden marriage and relocation.

Six years after Maud, their son Frank William was born. He is my Great-Grandfather. After another eight years, their daughter Ruth was born. Neither of my Great-Aunts married before 1940, which was the last census I could find. Maud was 57, working as a secretary for the YWCA. Ruth was 43, working as a clerk at/on Cupson Road. Ruth Ireland, listed on the census as Mrs. Charles Ruston, was 78.

92 Saxton Street

Charles had many jobs in America. In 1900 and 1905 he was listed as a farm laborer.

In 1913, their son and my great-grandfather Frank William Ruston married Minnie Estelle Wicker, the daughter of a wealthy family.* [Huh. I just made that connection. The more ways I write about my ancestors the more fully fleshed they become to me.]

In 1915 Charles worked as a grocer but in 1920, and on, he was a laborer with Harrison Mfg. When I was a girl it was called Harrison Radiator, but still manufacturing. Charles and Ruth owned their own home at 92 Saxton Street in Lockport.

Ruth & Charles, back center, and their American family. Great-Grandpa Frank on the far right. Grandma Ruth in the front with the doll. Great-Grandma Minnie took photo. Maude is between Charles and Frank, and due to resemblance, I might say the seated woman on the left may be the other sister Ruth.

Charles died in 1933 and Ruth lived on with her two daughters. As far as my research shows, Frank was the only child of theirs to have any children, making Ruth Emma and Richard Wicker their only grandchildren.

Charles never kept his lineage a secret. It appears as though he even named his son for his father—or maybe a beloved brother. A couple generations back, cousins travelled to England and pointedly stopped at the Rustons to say hello from the American cousins. But the family had kept their promise to cut Charles off. Even though he shows clearly as Richard’s oldest son on the English census reports, none of the family members would acknowledge relation to any Charles Evan Ruston. It’s entirely possible that they feared previously-hidden family members were looking for their share of the Ruston money. Despite how much my cousins tried to say to the contrary, they were turned away.

The Cambridgeshire Rustons may have clipped off a branch of the family tree but thankfully there is documentation that proves what a man’s pride tried to hide.

*At the time of their wedding, father Charles was working as a farm laborer. I imagine that the marriage into one of the more well-to-do families of Lockport was a boon in some way. Minnie was the only child of Hiram King Wicker and Emma Angeline Whitcher. Hiram was a well-off store owner, one of the first fire chiefs of Lockport, and the head of the Masonic Lodge.