I have two portrait albums that presumably came from the Miller-Abbot Homestead in Warren, RI. Several years ago I had them digitalized, and they can be viewed at the link below. Most are labeled, thankfully – it means so much more to be able to put a name with a face! Someday I hope we can write some stories about these families and the Homestead itself.
It’s fun to see family resemblances. One of the most striking to me is great-grandmother Marcia Ransom (whose portrait is the feature picture of this post) and my sister Judy, below.
Many of the photos are of the Ransom/Manley/Charles W Abbot families. Nephew Rudy recently did some research and wrote the following interesting story about the family:
Commodore George Marcellus Ransom, a veteran of the Mexican-American and Civil Wars and originally from New York, moved to Norwich sometime between 1882 and 1884 after retiring from the navy. It was there that in 1884 his daughter, Marcia Ransom, 24, would marry Charles Wheaton Abbot Jr., a 23 year-old Army officer, and Marcia would give birth to Grace Abbot in 1895.
Commodore Ransom and his wife, Jane (née Manley), continued living with their son, William McClenahan Ransom, a civil engineer, and a G. Manley Ransom, a doctor who appears to be another son (although I haven’t found any correlating information on him), who both used the family home on Broadway as their office. As of 1886, the doctor was no longer living or practicing in Norwich, and the Ransom family had moved to a residence on Washington St., while William made use of an off-site office. Neither home appears to be still be around, unfortunately.
Here’s the interesting part though; William Ransom had gotten married that year to Annie Francis (or Frank) Abbot, who happens to be the older sister of Charles Wheaton Abbot Jr.! So, two years after Marcia and Charles got hitched, their older siblings got married too, in the bride’s hometown of Warren, Rhode Island. William began to transition his profession toward teaching music, and in 1889 was the director and vocal coach of Norwich’s Musurgia Glee Club. Annie’s obituary in the Norwich Bulletin notes that she was also musically talented and assisted William with his passion. The couple would have one daughter, named Marcia, who passed away shortly after her 9th birthday.
Commodore George M. Ransom died in Norwich in 1889, and the rest of the family moved to Warren shortly thereafter.
Now just to make the family tree even more complicated, Commodore Ransom and his wife Jane had a second daughter, Grace Virginia Swift, whose own daughter, Pauline, married Frederick A. Asserson. Yep, those Assersons – he was the son of Rear Admiral Peter Christian Asserson, and the sister of Malene, who would marry William Bartlett Fletcher, Sr. Clearly these families were close!
Here is a link to the portrait album with many of these folks:
Abbot and Fletcher Family History 
Love, love, love the photos!!! Thank goodness, Gram, Grace Abbot Fletcher, wrote (I recognize her handwriting) the names on most of them. I remember pouring over them in 1964, age 11, sitting in Gram’s bedroom in her small house in Bristol (maybe Warren), R.I., which she built after the Homestead in Warren was sold. As an infant, I was even at the Homestead, once: the Christmas after my father was killed in active service,1953). Rudy did a great job in his section, too. It will take me a while to unravel and make sense of all those fascinating twists, turns, and interminglings among relatives, in this riveting section of our family tree. What a pleasure! Love, Melissa Fletcher Keith (only child of Grace’s son John Asserson Fletcher II, brother of Joan, Abbot, Mary Alice, Kristin, and Priscilla). Gram’s mother Marcia does resemble Judy, and Marcia’s brother resembles Max. 🙂
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