Ancestor of the Day #6: Chief James Chagum — The Chief Whose Name Never Sat Still

Day 1 was Molly. Today is James. You can’t tell the founding mother’s story without the founding father — and this one was a chief.

James Chagum. He was known to be chief — the Chief of the Barkhamsted Light House Tribe. That’s not my embellishment; that’s what the old accounts say. A Narragansett man from Block Island who, with his wife Mary “Molly” Barber — my Day 1 ancestor — built a village on Ragged Mountain above the Farmington River around 1740. A village of outcasts that lasted more than a century.

Here’s the thing about James: his name never sat still. Chagum. Chaugham. Chogam. Shawgum. Every clerk who wrote it down spelled it the way it sounded to him that day. So if you’re descended from him — and hundreds of us are — the first lesson is this: search every spelling, or you’ll miss your own grandfather.

The record that anchors him: on May 3, 1779, James “Chogam” bought 70 acres at Ragged Mountain from Abraham Kellogg for £21. Barkhamsted land records, Volume 1, pages 205–206. I’ve transcribed the whole deed right here on this blog — read every word of it. A chief buying land in his own name. That’s not legend. That’s ink.

Now the honest part — the pledge is the pledge. I have found no birth record, no marriage record, no death record for James. None. You’ll see dates floating around online — born about 1710, died about 1800 — but those are somebody’s guesses, not records, and I won’t dress them up as fact here. When the record shows up, you’ll hear it from me first.

Why “Lighthouse”? There was no lighthouse. There were cabin hearth-fires glowing through the windows at night, and stagecoach drivers on the Hartford–Albany road steered by that glow. “There’s the Lighthouse — only five miles more to New Hartford.” A village of outcasts became everybody’s landmark. I love that.

The village James and Molly founded lasted from about 1740 to about 1860. It’s on the National Register of Historic Places now, and a Connecticut State Archaeological Preserve — thanks in large part to Ken Feder, who first surveyed the site in the summer of 1986 and has spent decades proving what we descendants always knew: this place was real, and it mattered. (His site photos appear here with his permission — thank you, Ken.)

In 2015 I published my first research book about him — James Chagum: Chief of the Barkhamsted Lighthouse Village — and dedicated it to my father. Daddy asked me, more than twenty years ago, to find our Native American roots. That one request became my life’s work. You can read the book free on my blog.

And if you’ve read my children’s book — The True Story of the Barkhamsted Light House Village (paperback · Kindle) — you’ve already met him. Elder Chief James Chagum narrates the whole story. The chief tells his own tale, the way it should be.

So here’s your Day 6 ancestor: a chief, a landowner, a husband, a founder. No birth certificate. No death certificate. Just a deed, a mountain, a village that glowed in the dark — and hundreds of descendants, including me.

What name in YOUR tree keeps changing spelling? Every variant is a clue, not a dead end. Tell me below. 💛

Who do you want to see next? Tell me below.

— Coni

Sources: Barkhamsted Lighthouse (Wikipedia) · Freedom Trail: Barkhamsted (CTMQ) · A Lighthouse for Outcasts, Far From the Ocean (Today in CT History) (Today in CT History) · 1779 Kellogg deed transcription (this blog) · Kenneth Feder (CCSU)
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