Barnum Genealogy
As I was growing up I remember my grandpa, Charles Arba Fuller, telling me many interesting stories about my relatives. He was very interested in genealogy. My mother, Helen Irene Fuller Reames, worked with grandpa helping him gather information and made a book with the information in it. The information that I have that Grandpa Fuller gathered is of the descendants of Elihu #2 and Tamar Barnum. Elihu and Tamar were first cousins. They had 11 children that I have the names of. They are Eda, Laura, Lucy, Amanda, Betsy, Abby, Lois, Russell, Seth, Harlow and Seth. I have information on Eda, Russell, Seth, Harlow and Lewis. Grandpa Fuller come through the line of Lewis.
Here are a couple of interesting (anyway to me) stories that Grandpa has in his book.
Celinda (Barnum) Cummings, daughter of Seth Barnum was coming back to Kansas from the east during the Civil War days. As they crossed the Missouri River at St. Joseph, Missouri, they joined a wagon train going west. They had only about two days travel till they reached what is now Hiawatha, Kansas. Celinda’s father was running a way station and tavern there, but her wagon train had the misfortune to meet up with Quantrell and his raiders. All the men of the train were killed and the wagons were burned and horses stolen, leaving the women and children out there on the prairie. Celinda saved $400.00 that she was carrying by scraping a hole in the ground with her foot and putting the money in the hole and covering it up. She had one little boy (Tommy Cummings). She later married a man named Jake Englehart. She lived the rest of her life in that neighborhood and is buried there in the Old Original Cemetery.
Following the foregoing incident, Quantrell came back into Brown County, Kansas, after the Lawrence Massacre. Gathering recruits, they came to my Grandfathers farm one day. If they found any men folk, they either had to join the band or they would be shot. My Grandfather, Lewis Barnum, had made a large chest to pack goods in, back in Vermont, where they came from before the Civil War. When the raiding band came to my Grandfathers house to see if there were any men folk, he hid in the big chest right in the house and my mother (who was about 12 years old) sat on the chest while they were looking for him. The chest is still in the family. Ernest Reames and wife Leta, of Jamestown, Kansas, have it. Leta is a great-granddaughter of Lewis Barnum.
I have another connection to the Barnum family. My father Joseph Wesley Reames comes from the Russell Ebenezer line. So I have a double whammy of Barnum, which I am very proud. One of the stories I remember Grandpa Fuller telling me was that I was related to Pocahontas and P.T. Barnum, the great show man.
Here is a story Grandpa has in his book about Pocahontas.
RESTING PLACE OF POCAHONTAS
TO BE PRESERVED AS A SHRINE.
After months of controversy over the possibility of razing St. George’s Church, resting place of America’s Indian Princess Pocahontas at Gravesend, England, a plan is now under way which it is hoped will preserve for all time this historic Shrine.
The ancient church, located at the mouth of the Thames River, is sadly in need of repair. It’s congregation has dwindled due to the fact that the residential section of Gravesend has gradually moved farther from the waterfront, leaving the church stranded in the industrial section of the city.
Last year the order went out from the Rochester diocesan re-organization committee that the church be closed and it was later suggested that the building might be demolished.
This proposal brought a storm of protest from the people in Gravesend, which reverberated over England and soon reached America.
It was suggested by some Americans that the ashes of the princess be taken to her native land and placed in a shrine at Jamestown, Virginia, near where she had spent most of her life.
This suggestion was met by several serious obstacles, and the idea was abandoned.
The remains had been placed in the same vault with others who died in that period, and it would be impossible to exhume the dust of Pocahontas without disturbing the resting place of those buried near her.
Inasmuch as descendants of those buried there are living in Gravesend, there would be considerable objection on their part. In addition, it might be impossible to determine the remains of Pocahontas from others in the crypt.
It was then suggested by Sir Evelyn Wrench, founder of the English-speaking Union and of the Overseas League, that St. Geeorge’s be constituted a Chapel of Unity for all denominations represented at the World Council of Churches. He said:
"This chapel of Unity will be the first of its kind in the world, and it could not be more suitably located." says Dr. Daunton-Fear, rector of Gravesend.
It was from Gravesend that George Fox sailed for America with a party of Friends (Quakers) in 1671 to establish that faith in the New World. From here also embarked John Wesley in 1735 to carry the Methodist creed to America."
The chapel will be a place where the clergy of the various churches will be free to minister to members of their own communion; where displaced persons may worship according to their own tradition, and for many other religious and humanitarian services.
Pocahontas as a young girl befriended the Jamestown colonists during their first winter when their food ran out and they were faced with starvation. It was she, as every American school child knows, who saved the life of Capt. John Smith, when her father, Chief Powhattan, decreed that he be killed.
Pocahontas is also believed to have been the first native American to be converted to the Christian religion. At her baptism she was given the name Rebecca. In 1614 she was married to John Rolfe, an Englishman of the Jamestown settlement, and so became the first American to make an international marriage.
The following year Rolfe took his bride to England. She was entertained by royalty because she herself was a princess from the New World.
The Rolfe family, which now included a baby son, Thomas, was preparing to leave for America after more than a year’s visit, when Pocahontas became ill and died. She was buried in a crypt under the chancel of St. George’s Church. In the ancient church register of 1617, one may read the record of her burial there.
The son, Thomas, was reared in England by an uncle, but in early manhood came to America to make his home. Many Americans today trace their ancestry directly back to Pocahontas through her son. Two of our Presidents, William Henry Harrison and Benjamin Harrison descended from this famous line.
John Rolfe returned to America soon after the death of Pocahontas, where he died at an early age.
Two beautiful memorial windows were given to St. George’s by the Colonial Dames of America in 1914.
Alonzo Fuller's Civil War Diary
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