The Anderson Report: August 2007 Research Trip
December 5, 2007
For this trip we had three main goals!
1. Separating out the Andrus (Andrews, Andress, Andros…) lines in Vermont.
This I did by calling all of the living Andrus families in Vermont in the hopes of doing DNA testing with them.
- One group, the Andrus name came from their mother. This line does not qualify for DNA.
- One group descended with the farm in Danby. We got a DNA sample on this line.
- One group lived in Stowe. His wife was familiar with DNA so he gave a sample.
- One knew they descended from Bildad and they were not in our area.
- One group from Rutland City left the state and went to Huron County, Ohio. We will need to track them if we do not locate a match from the tests now in progress.
We are starting to separate out the lines. The results are back on the gentleman from Stowe (so are Ray and Merrill Andrus’s Jane Munday line). They were not a match so that eliminates that line.
We are still waiting on "Family Tree DNA" for the rest of the results to come in.
2. Put Ruluf’s land in Essex County on the map.
Ruluf was Milo’s father. We found the land that Ruluf had once owned with the help of the Essex County assessor’s office. The land was located in Jay, NY. Jay was later divided off in the 1820’s and named Wilmington. Ruluf owned land in current-day Wilmington across from Fox Farm Road to the east. It consisted of 100 acres on the south side of “Lot 27”—part of a piece of land originally granted to a Nathan Mallory. Ruluf mortgaged this land in 1808 and lost it in 1809. John Smith (father of Ruluf’s future wife, Azuba), owned land across the street from Ruluf’s.
If you enter "Indian Rock Rd., Wilmington, New York, United States" on Google Maps this is what you will see:
Half way down the Indian Rock Rd. loop (off highway 12) is where Ruluf’s land was located. If you go across highway 12, to the north of Fox Farm Road that is where John Smith, Azuba’s father, had his land. (Azuba was Ruluf’s wife and Milo’s mother.)
[This photo is taken from Ruluf’s land, looking west. The mountain in the picture is Whiteface Mountain. Whiteface Mountain is just north of Lake Placid.]
3. Get as much information as possible into our digital library so research can be done at home.
We gleaned information from:
- Vermont Historical Society in Barre town and County: histories, old maps, box of original documents on Ezra Andrus family (Danby farm) containing 420 original documents—three days’ work by three people.
- Vermont State Archives in Middlesex: all Andrus and variant spelling names—one day, three people.
- Burlington Historical Society in Burlington Vermont: Andrus and Dutcher names—one day.
- Tinmouth City offices: Andrus and Smith names, especially Joseph son of Isaac of Shaftsbury.
- Poultney Historical Society: all associated names: genealogies, grave sites, tax records—especially Roswell and Isaac son of Isaac of Shaftsbury.
- Pawlet City offices: all Andrus and Dennison’s land, birth, marriage, and death records.
- Pawlet Cemetery: descendants of Ezra Andrus and other Andrus persons
- Shaftsbury Cemetery: descendants of Isaac Andrus of Shaftsbury
The Trip
As for the actual trip, this trip did not go as planned!
