Endicott's on the Move

Genealogy

Below is the address “Endicotts on the Move” that JEFA president, William T. Endicott, gave at the October 12, 2018 JEFA Cumberland Gap reunion. It’s about why and how branches of the Endicott family left New England and went down the eastern seaboard before reaching the Cumberland Gap, through which some of them went with Daniel Boone into Kentucky. The Big Picture as some of you know, I’m interested not JUST in the descent from John Endecott here in America, but in the big picture regarding the Endicott clan generally. I mean by that the dispersal of the Endicotts out of Devon, England, all over the English-speaking world. Not just here to America, but to Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa– not to mention the Endicotts who stayed in Britain. Basically, from the 1600s until just the last few years, more people were leaving Britain each year than were coming to it. And the Endicotts were part of that. It was fundamentally a search for better economic opportunity. That was usually a quest for more and better farmland, because all the good land had been taken in England. Sometimes, people have to face the fact that it’s better to move than to stay put. Yes, it’shard to leave family and friends and maybe even land you’ve had for generations, but sometimes you just have to do it. A lot of Americans are facing that dilemma today. Do you stay in an economically depressed area where there are no jobs? Or do you move to where the jobs are. So, that impulse to move caused Endicotts to go to Australia, for example. Sometimes they moved voluntarily, such as James Endicott going to Australia because of the gold rush there in 1851.

But sometimes they went involuntarily! For example, I’ve found cases of three Endicott convicts being “transported” to the island of Tasmania just off Australia, and to Sydney, on the mainland of Australia. Some Endicotts went to western Canada after the Napoleonic Wars because the Canadian government wanted to settle the land there, so Americans wouldn’t steal it! I’ve even found a law professor at Oxford University in England today, Dr. Timothy Endicott, who’s a descendant of Governor John Endecott by way of Canada. Tim told me that after his ancestors got to the American Midwest, they were attracted by cheap land in Canada and moved there. And from there, generations later, Tim went to Oxford, thus returning to England and completing a circle of about 300 years. In some cases, emigration out of England was also about religious freedom. The 1600s were a period of great religious turmoil. And as you know, that’s why John Endecott and the Puritans came to North America, so they could be left alone to practice the Puritan religion.

Just a Part of the Big Picture. So, as I see it, today I’ll be talking about only a part of the big picture of how the Endicott clan moved around the world. This time, I’m talking about moving out of Massachusetts down the eastern seaboard finally to North Carolina, before moving through the Cumberland Gap into the West, into Kentucky and Indiana and beyond. Today I’m going to stop there, at the Cumberland Gap. But from there, the Endicotts went to Oregon, California, Texas, and other places; and I hope someday to learn about all of that. By the way, according to the US Census, Oregon has the largest proportion of Endicotts of any state today. And California and Texas have the biggest total number of Endicotts. Someday, I’ll learn how they all got there! Fascination with the West The story I’m about to tell you is just the beginning of a great American drama, the settling of the West.

t’s part of what Horace Greeley said in 1865: “Go West, young man. Go west and grow up with the country!” I’m going to talk about the prelude to that today, the movement down the Atlantic coast until the Endicotts came here, to the Cumberland Gap, before starting West. But there will be a lot more to talk about in the future about the Endicotts and the West. For example, I had occasion to visit the Southwest about a year ago. And on that trip I learned a great deal about the settling of the West in general. I was struck by how much the West is central to American lore and self-image. It’s James Fenimore Cooper all the way to Gary Cooper! James Fennimore Cooper’s “Leatherstocking Tales,” all the way to all the Western movies with actors like Gary Cooper. And in between you have the Mexican War, and the cowboys and Indians of the dime novels before movies and TV existed. It’s hard to think of regions in other countries that have gotten so much attention as the American West.

As you know, there are all sorts of legends and myths about the West. And Endicotts have been part of that. For example, there’s William Crowninshield Endicott who was the Secretary of War under President Grover Cleveland in the 1880s. He presided over the capture of Geronimo and had to decide what to do with him. There was Endicott Peabody, who was a preacher in Tombstone, Arizona and knew Wyatt Earp. And there were the Cleve Endicott short stories written for the “Wild West Weekly” in the 1930s, one of the pulp publications about cowboys and Indians before TV.

So, there are many stories to tell in the future about the Endicotts and the West. And it all starts here, at the Cumberland Gap. Two Sections What I'd like to do today is divide this talk into two sections. In this, the first section, which is the biggest section, I’ll set the historical context that brings us to the Cumberland Gap, the 150 years of Endicott movement before coming to the Gap. And I’ll be mentioning a lot of specific Endicotts to spice it up. It’s a way of seeing American history through the eyes of one family––our family. And then in the second section, I’ll tie all the themes together in just one family, the Thomas Endicott family. That family moved successively from Massachusetts, to New Jersey, to Virginia, and to North Carolina before going through the Cumber-land Gap to Kentucky and from there to Indiana and beyond. I want to point out that it’s because of the work of two former presidents of the John Endicott Family Association, Teddy Sanford, and Gordon Harmon, that we know the story of the Thomas Endicott family. That’s because Teddy and Gordon wrote about it in an essay called “Thomas Endicott, the Pioneer Patriarch.”

@JEFA - May not be used, reproduced or copied without specific permission from the author and the JEFA.

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