by Rocky Macy
Happy Thanksgiving, 2022!
Last year on Thanksgiving Day I used the opportunity of the Biden family's annual Thanksgiving retreat on Nantucket to blog about my own family's connection to several of the original European purchasers and settlers on the island. This year the Biden's are again celebrating Thanksgiving on Nantucket, and I am sharing some more history of the first Europeans to settle there.
In 1659 a small group of Massachusetts Baptists who were experiencing conflicts with the colony's Puritan leaders purchased a a significant portion of the island of Nantucket from the local governor, Thomas Mayhew, with the intent of settling there the following spring. That October, however, the troubles that one of the purchasers, Thomas Macy, a cousin of Governor Mayhew, was having with the Puritans began to escalate, and Macy decided that it would be propitious for him and his family to migrate to Nantucket then, as winter was settling in, rather than risk waiting until the spring.
Winter storms were on the horizon as Macy, who was 51-years-old, his wife and their five children, and three other adult males and one 12-year-old boy, came ashore on Nantucket on that cold October day. Although there are no official accounts of their first few months on the island, it is likely that the new arrivals survived the winter living in shelters dug into the hillsides - and with the assistance and generosity of the local Native Americans.
(Nathaniel Philbrick's excellent history of Nantucket Island, "Away Off Shore," has a complete chapter focused on Thomas Macy and his family's migration to Nantucket. The book has been reviewed two times in this blog.)
This Thanksgiving, with the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade providing background noise as I type, I decided to look into the genealogy of the department store's founder, Rowland Hussey MACY, and see exactly how his family is connected to the SREAVES family of Newton County, Missouri.
Even though my last name is MACY, I am not connected to the big store chain through my father's MACY lineage, but I am connected through my mother's SREAVES lineage. My mother, Ruby Florine SREAVES, was the daughter of Dan and Siss (ROARK) SREAVES of rural Newton County, Missouri. Dan was the son of Alexander and Mary Jane (ELLIS) SREAVES. Mary Jane ELLIS was the daughter of William J. and Matilda J. (COOK) ELLIS. Matilda J. COOK was the daughter of Thomas and Sinai (LEWIS) COOK. Thomas COOK was the son of John and Hannah (MACY) COOK. Hannah MACY was the daughter of Paul and Bethiah (MACY) MACY, second cousins who were both born on Nantucket. (Paul and Bethiah were each great-gxandhilcren of John MACY, who had been just four-years-old when his parents brought him to Nantucket on that cold October day in 1659.)
Paul and Bethiah MACY, and their daughter Hannah MACY, and her great-great-grandson, Dan SREAVES all descended from John Macy, the fifth and youngest child of Thomas and Sarah (HOPCOTT) MACY, the first European couple to settle on the island of Nantucket.
Rowland Hussey MACY, the founder of the department store which has sponsored the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade almost continually - except for three years during World War II - since 1924 - also descended from that same John MACY. Rowland H. MACY was born on August 30, 1822 on Nantucket and died on Mach 29, 1877, in Paris, France.
Rowland Hussey MACY was the son of John and Eliza (MYRICK) MACY. John Macy was the son of Silvanus and Anna (PINKHAM) MACY. Silvanus MACY was the son of Caleb MACY and Judith (GARDNER) MACY. Caleb MACY was the son of Richard MACY and Deborah (PINKHAM) MACY. Richard MACY was the son of John and Deborah (GARDNER) MACY - our common ancestors.
So, my first cousins on the SREAVES side of the family, the next time you watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, do it with the satisfaction and pride of knowing that it is a fine achievement of our family Rowland Hussey MACY was our 4th cousin, 5 times removed. (That's probably not close enough to qualify for an inheritance!) Our children are 4th cousins 6 times removed, and our grandchildren are 4th cousins, 7 times removed from the founder of the famous department store that becomes even more famous every year at Thanksgiving.
Anyone with an interest in any of this is welcome to peruse my extensive family tree information: "Rocky Macy's Roots, Branches, and Weeds" at Ancestry.com. It is open to the public, but be alert because Ancestry will try to sell you a membership. Rowland Hussey MACY is included, but he is out there in the "weeds" portion.
There are also numerous and extensive genealogical materials on the original European purchasers and settlers of Nantucket Island all over the internet.
And once more, "Happy Thanksgiving!"
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