What's in a name?

This is the promised post explaining why and how we came up with the name "Mather" for our soon-arriving daughter. You might want to get a comfortable chair, because I'm feeling loquacious. There is a short answer and a long answer. I'll start with the short(est) answer for those with hair-trigger attention spans.

The Shortest Answer
We like it. It is unique, yet easy to spell and pronounce, an unusual combination. It has a nice sound to it.

The Short Answer
Long ago, we had a plan in place for a boy's name. I was named for my great-great-great Grandfather, Daniel Ransom. His son, my great-great Grandfather, was Lake Ransom (pictured below in 1865). If we have a son after Mather, he will be named Lake.

We bounced around all sorts of ideas for girls' names, but were never really satisfied with anything. We turned to family history to come up with an idea, peering through my musty lineage to come up with a pretty name. Unfortunately, my ancestry had a lot of names we didn't really want to choose -- Betsey and Lucy seemed to recur most often. The only really pretty girl's name going back that far was a Hannah, but my cousin already has that name!

One day, Emily had an epiphany. Instead of finding a traditional name, we could take an old surname from my family history -- Mather. Shortly after proposing the idea, Emily had a dream that combined Mather with Elise, and that is how we ended up with her full-name-to-be -- Mather Elise Ransom.

The Long Answer
So what is this family connection to the name "Mather"? Our immediate family surnames are Ransom, Stoker, Warren, and Lewis. But the surname Mather is connected to my oldest known ancestor, Reverend Richard Mather, born in Lowton, England in 1596.

Richard Mather was a preacher at "the Ancient Chapel" in Toxteth, an inner-city stretch in Liverpool. He was not a mild-mannered man, and was suspended by the Church of England in 1633 for non-conformity, and again in 1634 -- this time earning the wrath of the Arch-Bishop of York for his standing refusal to wear a "surplice", a garment particular to the priesthood. He left the Church of England to join the Puritan cause.

In 1635 Richard Mather and his family departed from the port town of Bristol for the new colony of Puritans in Massachusetts. He settled in Dorcester where he served as Pastor until his death in 1665.

Richard Mather had six sons, four of whom attended Harvard. One of those sons was the famous religious scholar and Harvard President Increase Mather. Increase was also father to an even more famous (or infamous) religious scholar, Cotton Mather. But one of Richard Mather's sons did not attend Harvard. He was Timothy Mather, who became an apprentice farmer. It may not be a surprise that my line descends not from the famed and influential religious leaders of Puritan New England but rather their farmer brother.

It was Timothy's son, Richard, who moved from Dorcester to Old Lyme, Connecticut, at the mouth of the Connecticut River. It was around this time that Matthew Ransom arrived in Saybrook, Connecticut, across the river. There was a string of bad fortune in this Ransom line. Matthew died young of unknown causes and had only one son. That son was Captain Joseph Ransom, a farmer who moved over to Old Lyme. Joseph managed to have several sons, but both he and his son Matthew J. Ransom died fighting for the British Army in the French-Indian War.

In this period, the Mather family and the Ransom family became entwined, and there were several marriages between them -- an Alice Ransom married Samuel Mather, and Hannah Ransom married Augustus Mather.

Fortunately for me, Matthew J. Ransom fathered Richard Ransom before his death. Richard Ransom was a farmer and a fighter, a Revolutionary Army Lieutenant who survived the war, married, and moved 200 miles up the Connecticut River to South Woodstock, Vermont.

The familial connection at the center of this story was Richard's son, Richard Ransom Jr., who married Betsey Mather -- Timothy Mather's three times great-Grandaughter -- on June 10th (my birthday), 1792 and joined his father in Vermont. Betsey was the daughter of Dr. Frederick Mather, who also moved his family North to Vermont.

Betsey and Richard raised a large family at their Vermont homestead, including the man for whom I was named, Daniel Ransom, pictured to the left.

Well, if I have any readers left after this near-Bibical listing of ancestral names, there is an interesting fact I discovered when starting this research. Long after Emily and I had decided that we would, for certain, name our daughter Mather, I discovered amongst Daniel's children was not only his son Lake but another son, Mather.

While this Mather Ransom did not survive to adulthood, it amazed me that one has come before. That Daniel Ransom would name his son for his mother's maiden name shows what regard he held the Mather family; I admit it brings me pleasure to reforge that connection five generations later.

In mid-August the surviving Ransoms will gather in South Woodstock, Vermont, staying in the inn that was once Richard Ransom and Betsey Mather's home. I'll get to visit the Ransom-Kendall Cemetery, where many of these kin are buried. If you can't tell from the verbosity of this post, I'm quite excited. I'm particularly excited since this reunion is happening so close to the introduction of a new Ransom to the world -- Mather Elise Ransom.