Day: September 25, 2026

Every village has a founding couple. Ours has a legend — and a record. Today I’m giving you both, honestly, because that’s the pledge I made yesterday.

Watch the Ancestor of the Day short film:

The legend goes like this. Around 1740, Molly Barber of Wethersfield was forbidden by her parents from marrying the man of her choice. She declared she would marry the first man who offered himself. That man was James Chaugham, a Narragansett man from Block Island. They married — some versions say in secret — and left Wethersfield for the wilderness of Barkhamsted, where they raised a family and founded a community. The poet Lewis Sprague Mills put it in verse in 1932, and a thousand retellings followed.

That’s the story. Here is what I can tell you with a document in my hand.

I cannot find Molly’s birth record. I cannot find her marriage record. No one can — the historical sources say so plainly. What I CAN show you is the end of her life, itemized in a clerk’s handwriting.

In January 1821, the estate of “Mary Chogum, late of Barkhamsted” was inventoried: one iron kettle, $1.25. One small kettle, fifty cents. One old chest of drawers, fifty cents. Fourteen acres of land at ten dollars an acre. Total: $142.25. That was her whole world, appraised.

Her estate couldn’t cover her debts — the town of Barkhamsted itself held a claim of about $272 for the support she had needed in her old age. Her 14 acres were sold to her son-in-law, William Wilson, for $100, and the town took the loss. I’ve transcribed the whole probate packet on this blog — the administrator’s bond, the inventory, the final settlement of January 1822 — and you can read it here: https://conidubois.com/2026/07/23/unlocking-history-the-1821-estate-of-mary-chogum/

So the legend gives me a defiant young woman of Wethersfield, and the record gives me an old woman whose kettles and chest of drawers were worth two dollars and twenty-five cents. Both of them are Molly. Both of them are mine. She was one of the two people who founded the Barkhamsted Lighthouse community — the white wife and the Narragansett husband, about 1740 — and her descendants, in the hundreds, are still here. I’m one of them.

That’s the thing about ancestors. The story tells you who they were to the world. The record tells you what they had when they left it. I want both.

Your turn: What legend lives in YOUR family tree — and what record backs it up, or breaks it? Tell me in the comments. I want to hear it.

Tomorrow afternoon: another ancestor, another record. And remember — once a week, one of YOUR ancestors takes this spotlight. Got a brick wall? Send it through my contact form at https://conidubois.fyi/contact.

— Coni

Sources: [Barkhamsted Lighthouse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barkhamsted_Lighthouse) (Wikipedia) · [The Oddest Lighthouse](https://www.ctmq.org/the-oddest-lighthouse/) (CTMQ / CT Freedom Trail) · [Barkhamsted Lighthouse — Bringing Light to the Connecticut Hills](https://newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/barkhamsted-lighthouse-bringing-light-connecticut-hills/) (New England Historical Society) · [Chaugham Family of Barkhamsted CT](https://www.rockvillemama.com/chaugham.htm) (Town of Barkhamsted Family Outlines / USGenWeb) · [Unlocking History: The 1821 Estate of Mary Chogum](https://conidubois.com/2026/07/23/unlocking-history-the-1821-estate-of-mary-chogum/) (this blog) · Lewis S. Mills, The Story of Connecticut (1932), quoted at [conidubois.com](http://conidubois.com/2019/01/14/what-is-the-true-name-of-the-chief-of-the-barkhamsted-lighthouse-chaugham-vs-chogam-chagum-part-1-land-transactions/)

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