When I do a live show I like to try to find a local interest story that ties in to an unexpected Celebrity Story, and the more unlikely the better! A kind of six degrees of separation in a Genealogical context.
For my appearance at the Quay Theatre Sudbury in Suffolk, I did a bit of digging and came up with a story that no one was expecting, this took us all the way from Sudbury to The Sopranos.
Sudbury Puritans
Around 1594 a man named Edmund Rice was born in Suffolk, probably around Stanstead in Suffolk within six miles of Sudbury. His origins have been disputed, but thanks to Y chromosome DNA analysis it has been settled that his origins were in Suffolk, and thanks to parish and other records it is clear that the family lived in the Stanstead and Sudbury area.
Edmund Rice Puritan Founding Father
This was a time of Puritan Migration to the “New World” in around 1638 he took his family to Massachusetts. He founded Sudbury Massachusetts in the same year, named after his home town of Sudbury in Suffolk. He was one of the petitioners for the founding of Marlborough in 1656. A Deacon in the Puritan Church and a Politician, as Religion and Politics were fully intertwined in the 17th century He was an important man in the new colony.
However all was not to go well for the family.
Kidnapped!
On Aug. 8th 1704, in the south part of Marlborough, called Chauncy, a number of the townsfolk were spreading Flax, a major local crop. Amongst them were five boys who were the Great Grandsons of Edmund Rice, aged between 5 and 10 years old.
According to eye witness accounts a party of up to ten Mohawk “Indians” rushed from a wooded hill nearby, grabbed the boys and made off with them, the youngest about five years old made such a resistance that the Mohawks simply killed him and made off with the others. Mohawk Tribal Chief at at hat time shown below.
This was an opportunistic slave raid, and the surviving boys were carried off into the wilderness, and marched off, eventually ending up in the Mohawk territories of Canada. Slavery in the sense it was practiced by the Indigenous tribes did not necessarily mean for life, at least in the case of young men, and one of the boys named Asher, was ransomed back by his father about four years after the kidnap, via the intervention of the Reverend Lydius, the Minister of Albany.
Life Among the Mohawks
Asher’s brother Adonijah grew up in Canada eventually left the tribal life, to be married to a French woman, and later a Dutch woman, and built up a farm near Montreal.The other boys, Silas and Timothy, stayed with the tribe, stopped speaking English, took Indigenous wives and raised children within the tribe of the Cagnawaga. Timothy, decided to stay within the tribe despite having an opportunity later in life to leave, and became the third of the Six Chiefs of the Cagnawaga Tribe. This came about upon the death of his Master who had adopted him in the native way as a “foster son” upon the death of his own natural son.
Timothy had built a reputation amongst the tribe for his courage strength and warlike spirit. Timothy was remarked upon by a British Army Colonel Lydius, as the Chief who made a Speech to General Gage on behalf of the Cagnawagas, after the capture of Montreal by English and Mohawk forces. He also visited his old home town of Marlborough many years after his capture.
New York
Silas Rice took the tribal name of Tookanowras, but he was also baptized as a Catholic and known as Jacques Thanhohorens. He gave rise to many descendants in the Kahnawake Mohawk tribe.
From the end of the 19th Century many Mohawk men from the Kahnawake reservation near Montreal found work in the Iron and Construction Industries in New York, and were particularly noted for their skill and fearlessness when working at heights, meaning that as New York boomed, there was a constant demand for more Mohawk men to take up work there.
Many Mohawk men fought in the American and Canadian Armies in both World Wars, and during the 1920s moved to the areas providing work in New York, and settled in tight knit communities in Brooklyn,and especially in Boerum Hill, which became known as Little Caughnawaga after their tribal land in Canada.
These men worked on many landmark buildings such as the Empire State Building, Chrysler Building,a and The George Washington Bridge, as shown in the famous picture below of Mohawk Iron Workers in New York.
By the mid 20th Century there were estimated to be up to 700 Mohawk people still living in the area, although this number would tail off once new Highways were built making commuting from Canada a feasibility.
Sopranos
Among the Mohawks was a young girl born on the Mohawk lands in Canada, but living with her family in Brooklyn, her family named Alexandra Kawisenhawe Rice. After her father’s death, Alex and her mother moved back to the Kahnewake reserve in Quebec.
However Alex took up acting winning critical acclaim in a number of PBS films, as well as in the Twilight Saga Films, and others.
In 1999 Alex appeared in the Sopranos as “Maggie Donner” who has dealings with the Soprano Gangster Family when they made forays trying to stop a Native American protest that could affect their construction sites.
Alex Rice is a direct descendant through her father of both Edmund and Silas Rice, a member of the Kanien’kehaka, Iroquois speaking, Mohawk Tribe.
Which brings us full circle back to Sudbury!
Travelling Through Time to Trace Your Ancestors 