By JISOO LEE
Gazette Contributing Writer
NORTHAMPTON ? The Sheldon Family Association?s 73rd annual reunion in Northampton marks a homecoming for the clan as they return to the home and resting place of their ancestor, Isaac Sheldon, an original colonial settler of the town. In order to be a full member of the 500-member association, one must document descent from a Sheldon who came to the United States prior to 1660, or have come into the family through marriage or adoption. Some are still looking for that connection.
"People are interested in who they are, where they?ve come from, and how they get here," said association president Jeanne Jeffries. "I think like everybody else, the Sheldons are interested in their background. If you talk to your grandmother, she can tell you interesting things you are not aware of."
The association maintains a genealogy database of over 70,000 names of the five colonial Sheldon men's descendants. The reunion, which takes place Sunday through Wednesday, will include pilgrimages to places significant to the family such as Deerfield, site of a 1704 raid in which members of the Sheldon family were taken captive.
Descendants come from states as distant as California. In recognition of the family?s donation of Isaac Sheldon?s land to Northampton, the Meadow City Conservation Coalition will hold a ceremony at 2 p.m. on Tuesday at Sheldon Field on Old Ferry Road to honor the family. The coalition was formed to hold conservation restrictions and steward preserved lands in Ward 3 and the floodplain.
In a lecture on Sunday evening, Elise Bernier-Feeley, librarian of local history and genealogy at Forbes Library, will recreate Isaac Sheldon?s Northampton of 1654-1708 for the Sheldons.
"I try to imagine what it was like when the settlers came," said Bernier-Feeley, who will telescope Northampton?s history into an hour?s talk. "What they ate, what they grew, what it was like when darkness fell, to hear the wolves cry in the wilderness, to go out on a dark night and see stars like jewels because there was no light on the ground. The silence. We?re surrounded by technology and sound, but in Northampton, you could truly hear the birds sing, the river flow. There was a beauty to the Valley, but this was true bucolic wilderness."
The land and the river were of paramount of importance for the new settlers, as it was for the Native Americans who had inhabited the area for centuries.
"It was not an easy thing to come and build your house, go to the meadowlands day in and out with your oxen, put in your crops, and pray that everything would work out all right," Bernier-Feeley said.
Isaac Sheldon held many offices in Northampton, including the position of tithing man, responsible for the townspeople?s deportment. "If you fell asleep during the sermon, you were poked by the tithing man," she said. Religion and sermons were an integral part of day-to-day life. Those who did not share the conservative Puritan beliefs of the Northampton First Church were encouraged to relocate.
David Harris, 68, of Springfield, is a 10th-generation descendant of Isaac Sheldon and a local host for the Sheldon reunion. Although he never enjoyed history in school, Harris became interested in tracing the family tree in books he received from his mother.
"History wasn?t something I learned," he said. "It was something I absorbed by working on our family tree."
"My family went through a lot of grief to settle this area," said Harris, who is descended from the Sheldons taken captive to Canada by the French and Native Americans during the 1704 Deerfield raid. Native groups and settlers mingled in the early days, according to Bernier-Feeley; Native Americans came into the new settlers? houses, settlers were welcomed at the encampment, and trade happened across the Pioneer Valley. Relations turned sour as the settlers began to take away land and water on which the indigenous tribes had farmed and fished for so long.
"The Native Americans found out about broken promises, and that their land had essentially been taken from them," Bernier-Feeley said. "The land had been cleared by them for centuries. They were driven off their land for a few trinkets."
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