Clan William: Marrying Up - William Edgar Mattison Jr

This is a short little story about a Munson-descended man "marrying up." William Edgar Mattison married Elizabeth Dean Alford, a descendant of Governor Thomas Dudley of Massachusetts.

Capt Thomas Munson > Samuel Munson > Samuel James Munson > William Munson >  Martha Munson > Eliakim Doolittle > Tirzah Doolittle > Mary Eddy Montgomery > Effa Roslie Galusha > William Edgar Mattison Jr m Elizabeth Dean Alford

William Edgar Mattison, Jr. was born to William Edgar Mattison, Sr and Effa Galusha on 07 Sep 1912 in Shaftsbury, Vermont. The Mattison's were of modest means. William Sr. worked at various labor jobs and farmed throughout his life. They had seven children. William was the second youngest. By 1935, they had both passed away.

By the time Jr. was 17, he was no longer in school and was working in a furniture factory. He then took a job as a night watchman at the newly opened women's Bennington College (1932) in southwest Vermont. Bennington was the first liberal arts college to offer visual and performing arts in its program. While patrolling the campus one night, he met young Elizabeth Alford, daughter of the prominent and uber wealthy Brookline, Massachusetts Mr & Mrs Edward Balch Alford family. 

Bennington College

Elizabeth had her society debut in the 1933-34 season and was most eligible. A freshman at Bennington, she was a  member of the junior league and the exclusive Vincent Club. 

The society wedding was held on November 5, 1935 at the Alford Estate in Brookline. The event was picked up on newswire and published all over the country as "handsome cop marries wealthy socialite."

You have to kind of wonder how the senior Alford's felt about a working class young man marrying their daughter.

William became a dairy farmer in Concord and dubbed the farm "Arrowhead Farm." This farm should not be confused with the Arrowhead Farm of Herman Melville in Pittsfield.  This house was the original homestead of Ezekiel Miles, built in 1741. The Mattison's raised their six children on the farm. Mrs. Mattison gave tours to school children and the children participated in 4H. They seemed to live a very happy life. You can read a lovely oral history by the eldest Mattison child, William, about the farm in the 1940s and 1950s.

Farm today. Photo credit JB the Milker

In 1940, Elizabeth's father died, leaving his fortune to his wife and two children, leaving the Mattison's even better off than before. There was an account of her brother, Edgar, after inheriting while serving in the Army, that also made the newswire. 

William died in 1972 while on a visit to his native Bennington. He had been a life member of Nashawtuc Country Club and the Bennington Elks. Elizabeth was listed in her obituary as the wife of William - not the wealthy socialite and descendant of generations of Boston Brahmins. In getting to know her, I'd say that was probably just the way she wanted it.

Click to Enlarge

Clan William: Physicist DeWitt Bristol Brace, PhD

Today's subject is the incredible pioneer scientist, DeWitt Bristol Brace, PhD. He was a brilliant physics professor and researcher who died young. Makes me wonder what he could have done had he lived a full life.

Capt Thomas Munson > Samuel Munson > Samuel James Munson > William Munson > Peter Munson > Lydia Munson > William Zelus Bristol > Emily Cowles Bristol > DeWitt Bristol Brace, PhD

DeWitt Bristol Brace was born to Emily Cowles Bristol, our Munson descendant, and C. Lusk Brace near Wilson, Niagara County, New York on 05 Jan 1859. Lusk was a farmer and later a Lockport mill operator. Lusk and Emily had four children, DeWitt being the second son and child.

DeWitt received both his bachelor's and master's degrees from Boston College in 1881-1882. He then studied under Dr. Henry Augustus Rowland at Johns Hopkins University for two years. He then went to Berlin, Germany to study under Dr Hermann Helmholtz and Dr Gustav Kirchhoff at the University of Berlin. He received his PhD in 1885 in Berlin after he completed his dissertation on the magnetic rotation of the plane of polarization.

Dr Brace returned to the US, he traveled to the University of Michigan, where he spent a year as an assistant professor of physics. 

Old Physics Lab at UNL

The University of Nebraska at Lincoln was founded in 1869 and built in a four block section of the city. It's farm campus was built in 1873, outside of the city of Lincoln on the prairie. In the beginning, the science department was not divided into specialties like Chemistry and Physics. It was the first university west of the Missisippi to offer a doctoral program. There apparently was a bias in eastern academic circles that the western education insitutions were inferior in both the academic backgrounds of its faculty and its research capabilities. DeWitt helped dispell this myth when he arrived to take a full professorship in 1887. Part of his charge was to create a physics department.

Research had not necessarily been a big deal at UNL, but Brace believed that such research was critical to the operation of the University. He believed strongly that higher education centers must develop research.  His own research led to great distinction for the University. With a growing reputation, Brace used his clout to lobby for updated equipment, laboratories, facilities, and money for research. He built a very strong Physics department but the department still needed a home on campus. 

UNL Physics Staff 1905
UNL Library Archives

 "Brace also began building a graduate program and hired two additional instructors in 1896, Burton Evans Moore and Louis Trenchard More. A few years later Clarence Aurelius Skinner and John Edwin Almy were also added to the physics faculty. In 1896 one of Brace's students, Harold Allen, was awarded a Ph.D. degree by the University of Nebraska. This was the very first Ph.D. given by any school west of the Mississippi. With one or two exceptions, no further Ph.D.s were given until the present Ph.D. program in physics was initiated after World War II. The photograph on the left shows members of the Physics Department in May 1905 in front of the old Nebraska Hall, which is where the Department was housed until it moved into Brace Laboratory later that year." https://www.unl.edu/physics/department-history

DeWitt made a special study of radiation and optics and published, "The Laws of Radiation and Absorption," in 1901. Life in Nebraska was good. His mother lived with him and had been with him for many years. But, it was time to focus on more than just science. That same year, he went east to marry Iowa native Elizabeth Wing on 16 Oct 1901 in West Newton, Massachusetts. The couple returned to Lincoln and began their family.

Lincoln Journal Star, 12 Oct 1901, p 6

In addition to securing several patents in the course of his research, his body of work had continued to grow as evidenced here: 

"Brace’s own contributions to physical science were almost exclusively in the domain of optics. By the invention of his sensitive-strip polarizer, and his half-shade elliptic polarizer, he extended the range of observation far beyond that previously attained, and he devised and partly executed many experiments in which this increased sensitiveness could be used in the study of fundamental optical problems. Returning to the question which he dealt with in his first published paper, he succeeded in showing that the beam of polarized light which undergoes rotation in a magnetic field is susceptible of resolution into two circularly polarized beams. He showed that, to a very high order of sensitiveness, no effect is impressed upon a ray of light by a magnetic field, if its lines of force are at right angles to the ray. He showed that, up to the third order of the ratio of the velocities, no double refraction could be observed in a medium due to its motion through the ether. He planned and tested a method for determining the velocity of light, from which he expected still greater accuracy than that attained in the classical researches of Michelson and Newcomb. He executed several repetitions, with greatly improved instrumental appliances, of classical experiments bearing on the fundamental question of the relative motion of matter and the ether."  ~ © American Astronomical Society • Provided by the NASA Astrophysics Data System

Brace fought mightily to get a building in which to house the Physics department. The Regents approved $75,000 for a new building. Brace guided it's development and building with the construction team. Then he hit a roadblock when the all powerful athletics department which believed the building was perilously close to its football field. To keep things on track, Brace altered the footprint of the building. Progress on the new building with its state of the art laboratories continued through 1904 and 1905. 

At the beginning of the 1905 school year in September of that year, Brace became ill. He developed septicemia believed to have stemmed from an infection in having a carbuncle removed from his face (an infected boil)  and would die on 02 Oct 1905, having never seen the completion of the project. The school named the building the Brace Physics building in his honor. Much of his research would not be completed by Brace, leaving other physicists to continue his work. Today's Physics Chair, Dr Dan Claes, believes that Brace's research provided a result that "contributed to Einstein's theory of relativity."

New Brace Physical Science Building
(Click to enlarge)

From 1903 to 1905, the Brace's had three children born to them. The youngest, Alice, was born after her father's death in 1905. 

Dr. DeWitt Brace, wife Emily, Lloyd and Roger Brace about
1905. UNL Library Archives

Mrs. Brace moved to Massachusetts after her husband's death and her children would be educated at top East Coast schools as far from the prairie as they could be.

Clan William: Munson Connection to the Tragedy of 9/11

David and Lynn Angell

I'm back after more than a year of working on fleshing out the entire Clan William of the Munson
Family. Capt Thomas Munson, hailing from Rattlesden, Suffolk, England, came to Boston in America between 1632 and 1634. He was one of the earliest applicants to move to the new territory bought from the Quinnipac Indians of New Haven (now in Connecticut) in 1639. Munson's great grandchildren make up the "Clans" of his family. I descend from Clan William. My 2x great grandmother was a Munson. She was Mary Anne Munson who married William Custer Smith and resided in Iowa at the times of their deaths. This story takes us far away from our humble Munsons to the bright lights of Hollywood.

This story connects to Thomas Munson in this manner:

Capt Thomas Munson > Samuel Munson > Samuel Munson > William Munson > William Munson II > William Munson > Clarissa Munson > Sarah Nichols > Foster Webb Eggleston > Pearl V Eggleston > Raymond Foster Myers > Marilyn Myers > Marilyn Lynn Edwards m. David Angell

Marilyn Myers, whose family had hailed from New York, Ohio, and then Michigan, married Thomas Edward Henry, Jr. of Alabama. The couple settled in Montgomery, Alabama around 1942. In 1946, their first child arrived. On 11 Aug 1949, their second child, Mary Lynn, arrived. Mary Lynn attended Auburn University, planning a career as a librarian.

Around 1970, Mary Lynn met David Angell, who was working on Cape Cod at the Eastward Ho Country Club. Mary Lynn was waitressing there. On Aug 4, 1971, the two married and settled in Providence, Rhode Island. 

Lynn worked as a librarian and David worked as an insurance technical writer. David was very creative and this work did little to create any kind of creative outlet. In 1977, the two decided to give Hollywood a try and while Mary Lynn supported them as a librarian, David struggled to make a go of it in Hollywood, selling a few scripts here and there. He finally got his big break when an episode he had written for the TV series, "Cheers," won an Emmy.

This led to a collaboration with famous TV producers David Lee and Peter Casey. Their first venture together was the TV series "Wings." The second was the "Cheers" spinoff, "Frasier."

By The documentary film 9/11.,
Fair use,
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13622822

On 11 Sep 2001, Lynn and David were headed home from their vacation on Cape Cod attending a family wedding back to their home in Pasadena on American Flt 11, when hijackers took over the plane. Flt 11 was the first aircraft to hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center. All 92 souls on the aircraft died and the total death count attributed to the impact of the aircraft was 1,402.

Lynn and David had no children. They supported the Hillside Schools and the Pasadena Playhouse. Their Foundation still exists and gives to other worthy philanthropic endeavors.

 

People in Pasadena, where the Angells permanently lived in one of three homes they had in the L.A. area, were especially saddened by the loss, considering how much time, money and resources the wealthy but discrete power couple had contributed, especially to organizations working with impoverished and neglected children, here and around L.A. County with their Angell Foundation.

And perhaps few others felt that loss more acutely than John Hitchcock, at the time the executive director of Hillsides home for abused and emotionally disturbed children. John Hitchcock was surprised when Lynn Edwards Angell walked into his office at Hillsides School, a Pasadena, Calif., home for abused and emotionally disturbed children, and described herself as a "retired librarian" willing to do the volunteer library work he had advertised. "She seemed awfully young to be retired," he said.

That was more than a decade ago. Mr. Hitchcock, the school's director, soon learned that Mrs. Angell, a soft-spoken native of Birmingham, Ala., was married to David Angell, a rising star in Hollywood's community of television writers and producers. He also quickly discovered that Mrs. Angell had the dynamism and financial resources -- she gave the money anonymously -- to play a major role in transforming a small collection of books in the corner of the auditorium into a much larger library with its own building.

Weeks after Mrs. Angell's death at 52 in the hijacking of American Airlines Flight 11, Mr. Hitchcock continued to discover new dimensions to her contributions. "She quietly did things like paying for golf lessons for a child who expressed an interest to her," Mr. Hitchcock said.

"She knew all 66 kids by name. She sent each one a postcard from Cape Cod this summer."

Profile published in THE NEW YORK TIMES on November 26, 2001.

Thomas Munson & The Thomas Munson Foundation

My great-great grandmother Mary Jane Munson Smith was part of an absolutely gigantic family of

Munson's signature of the
founders of New Haven is
fifth down on the left

Munsons that started with Capt Thomas Munson, the first emigrant. Munson came originally from Rattlesden, England and became one of the founders of New Haven, Connecticut.

From the Thomas Munson Foundation website: 

"The first appearance of Thomas Munson (1612-1685) in America is recorded in Hartford, Connecticut in 1637 as a member of the militia unit engaged in the Pequot Indian War. He signed the Fundamental Agreement at New Haven Colony (dated 1639) prior to April 1640 and established his permanent home. His life and actions are well documented in The Munson Record, Volume I and the Connecticut colony records.

The evidence is persuasive that the Thomas Munson who was recorded as being baptized in St. Nicholas Church in Rattlesden, County Suffolk, England on September 13, 1612, was the same man who later distinguished himself in the public affairs of colonial New Haven. The principal tie is the age listed on his gravestone… aged 73 years, which links well with the baptismal record.

The Church records document that the Thomas Munson of Rattlesden was the son of John and Elizabeth Munson. John was baptized 14 October 1571 and was buried 26 November 1650. Elizabeth was buried 3 January 1634/5. John was the son of Richard and Margery (Barnes) Munson. Richard was buried at Rattlesden on 3 December 1590, while Margery was buried there 7 February 1622/3. (The Munson Family of County Suffolk, England, and New Haven, Connecticut, Milton Rubincam, The American Genealogist, January 1941.) Thomas Munson of Hartford and New Haven married Joanna. This marriage produced 3
children (generation 2): Elizabeth, Samuel, and Hannah. Generation 2 produced 19 generation 3 descendants (grandchildren of Thomas and Joanna); Generation 3 produced 66 great-grandchildren of Thomas and Joanna (generation 4).

From the beginning of TMF, a “Clan-based” structure was recognized. Originally, each TMF Clan was understood to consist of all identified linear descendants of Thomas and Joanna through male lines; as Clan Head was the great-grandson in that line; the Clan bore his Name. 17 such Clans were recognized. Obviously, many lines from Thomas and Joanna were overlooked in this structure: the descendants of Elizabeth (generation 2) and Hannah (generation 2) as well as all the female lines in later generations. In 2008, TMF broadened the definitions to recognize descendancy traced through all the great-grandchildren of Thomas and Joanna. Thus were identified as many as 43 potential new Clans. To date, descendants in 7 of these have been located and their new clans have been activated. Listed on this website is the current list of 24 Clans."

The early Munson's lived in New Haven. Here's a neat image of where the early Munson's lived in town:

I am from Clan William. I have purchased the first two volumes of The Thomas Munson Genealogy and though Clan William is completely left out of Vol II, enough information was available in Vol I to help keep my efforts going. Clan William seems to have a lot of people who moved West early on, which could account for the genealogy not being able to keep up with their movements while Vol II was being prepared. I'm awaiting Vols III-V to see where I've gotten it right/wrong/or where the genealogy document needs some help. 

There are well over a million living descendants of Thomas Munson living in the US today. Wow!