Making connections in the eighteenth century was often about making family connections. This is a story about an eighteenth-century account that reveals how ambitions of one kind could be understood through genealogy, and how information about family connections was shared among friends and family. It was the summer of 1775, almost exactly 250 years ago.
But first, I have to note how much I’m already enjoying so very much connecting with folks when I’m traveling to talk about Lineage, my book about genealogy as a practice and as a foundation of early British America. Over the last weeks I’ve been talking with genealogical societies, visited the Washington library at Mount Vernon and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania for book events, and chatting with folks via social media and on email (including through contacts here).
Second, I broke my cardinal rule of travel which is to make sure I get at least a couple of hours in a library! I missed that window in both places but I knew that was going to be the case so I started working on digital collections. Why? Well, because I can’t resist just a bit more research beyond the book, and it’s awfully fun to make even more connections to the places I’m visiting even if, in both of these cases, I’ve worked there frequently. I was able to connect the two places with this story of how genealogy facilitated other kinds of (social or political or economic) connections — or at least was imagined a likely vehicle for doing so.
The shorter family story is this. Bertles Shee was born in Ireland in 1742, and by the mid-1770s he was not only a Philadelphia merchant, but a Lt. Colonel in the Continental Army. His Irish parents, too, were now Philadelphians, and in 1769 he had married Cecelia Parke from Delaware. They had two children, Cecelia and Parke, before Cecelia (the mother) died in late 1777 or early 1778.
But before Cecelia died, she wrote a series of letters to her brother, John Parke, between1775 and 1777 that comprise, along with her widowed husband’s will also dated 1778, the bulk of the Shee Family papers at the HSP. The letters have been digitized as part of the Revolutionary City project, a terrific multi-institutional initiative in honor of the semi-quincentennial in 2026. Cecelia’s letters are chatty, informal, and intimate, suggesting the close relationship she had with her brother. He was serving in the army, so her letters were addressed to him variously, for example, “at the camp near Boston,” “Camp at Cambridge,” “at Roxberry near Boston.” The letters gossip about young women who might be romantically interested in John, and vice versa. They share family information, including about her own young daughter and infant son.
And of course there is a reference to the importance of genealogy. Of knowing who is related to whom, of knowing how you know it, and of what one makes of those connections. Here is where the connections between the HSP and Mount Vernon, between a Philadelphia merchant family and the Virginians George and Martha Dandridge Custis Washington come into play. Cecilia noted that her brother may not have yet had his full army commission, and she wondered if perhaps he could “modestly drop a hint” that he was related to General Washington’s wife’s family–and her children by her first marriage.
Cecelia detailed for John their relationship to the Virginia Parkes, and what that meant for their connection to the first general commanding the army of the United States of America. It was complicated, even delicate though how much Cecilia understood about Daniel Parke was unclear. Daniel Parke is referred in the Papers of George Washington euphemistically as “notorious.” John Custis had married Parke’s daughter, Frances, and it is this connection that Cecelia Shee described. (If you don’t know it, the online Encyclopedia of Virginia is a tremendous resource, produced by experts, and its entry on Daniel Parke is worth a read. Notorious indeed.)
A gentleman…who is a Virginian and knows General Washington – … says the General married a widow Custis – Of a large fortune – who has a son whose name is John Parke Custis -by her first husband – now Daniel Parke left two daughters in Virginia, one married Colonel [Byr]d and the other Colonel Custis -and this son-in-law of General Washington is a great grandson of General Parke so that Washington’s wife first husband was your second cousin….I think if some time you was in the company of the General – you would modestly drop a hint that your father had a cousin had an uncle who did live in Virginia- and ask if he left any descendants there you can do it without letting him (know) that you know that they are related to him- perhaps it may be of service to you.
Cecelia went on to say that John could note that “in a manuscript of your grandfather’s it was mentioned the time brother Daniel Parke was murdered in Antigua-and that was the way you know of the relationship.” Here is an extra bit of canny, sisterly advice (be cool, John!) but also a hint about how regularly a grandfather’s manuscript might serve as genealogical reference.
I’d point to the details here about who knows what about their family connections, as well as the inherent value of family connection. Genealogy, as I have argued in Lineage, was a cultural currency. It could be used– and was understood by– people of very different positions. In this case the idea that a connection of one very rich and powerful family to another could be of use to those further down or further apart on the family tree was not unique here.
More on the Custis family anon!