FARNSWORTH HERITAGE

[Farns10th at aol.com]

                Our Heritage

Excerpt from the Farnsworth Memorial Preface.
p.11
And who can write a biography or trace the genealogy
of our honored dead without feelings of profound respect?
For in the tracing of their descent, or in the record-
ing of their acts, we see the scenes of daily life re-
enacted.  Who are our ancestry?  They had their fathers
and their mothers, their brothers and sisters, the same
as we have ours;  they had those who rejoiced at their
births and who mourned at their deaths; they had their
loves, their affections, their prosperity and their
adversity, their crosses and their pleasures; and in
writing their sayings and doings we are in part, only,
repeating the acts and doings of today.

And shall we love them less because they are dead?  Shall
we say that because they have gone from us that there is
no love where they dwell?  And if their hearts are turned
to us and ours to them, then this same love must exist
with them as it does with us - but this seems to be the
prevailing custom - and we must not doubt the sincerity,
to think more of our dead after they are gone than we
did while they were with us.

The desire to trace our lineage and to hold in rememb-
rance those we have loved, seems one of the noblest
and grand and most sublime aim in life, and one that 
seems prevalent among all enlightened people.  

To keep from oblivion and to place a something tangible
in the hands of those who shall live when we are passed
away and to encourage in the rising generation a desire
to know from whom they sprung, is the mainspring in
prosecuting this labor of love.

Considering the difficulties which beset the genealogist
(snip) There are many discrepancies and conflictions in
the various town histories and records and sometimes
when public records exist in the offices of town clerks
and in churches they are found to be erroneous.  These
errors often arise from the imperfectness of the informa-
tion imparted and sometimes from carelessness, but we
should not attach any criminal design in such cases.
Hence we have to take the records as we find them, make
comparisons and do the best we can with them.  

The blood that courses through our veins had flowed
through a long succession of generations before it was
parted into the drops which make us akin to each other.
And the man who of all others is the least likely to
pride himself on any ancestral lines is the genealogist;
for he considers more than others how many progenitors
every one of us have had.  

p.l4
And what a creditable little chronicle it is - this of
the Farnsworth family and its ancestors.  Matthais
Farnsworth brought with him from England none of the
titles or insignia of rank that are so attractive to
vanity, even in the bosom of a Republic.  Those who
value such baubles will not find gratification in these
pages.  But he came to America endowed with a sturdy
independence, a rugged integrity, a due regard for
morality and a simple religious faith that was worth
far more in subdueing unbroken forests and ungenial
soil of New England, than aristocratic descent or herald-
ic device.  He was respected and honored by those with
whom his lot was cast, for the brave, true and manly
qualities he possessed.  And what can his descendants
desire more than this?  It was such as he that made the
Puritan stock the peer if not the superior of any out-
growth of the divergent social and religious elements
that planted the seed of a great Nation along the 
Atlantic coast in the seventeenth century.

      "Give praise to others, early come or late,
       For love or labor on our ship of state:
       But this must stand above all fame and zeal:
       The Pilgrim Fathers laid the ribs and keel:
       On their strong lines we base our social health
       The man, the home, the town, the commonwealth."

Matthias Farnsworth was one of the early settlers who
followed the Pilgrim Fathers, founded communities upon
the lines marked out by them and completed their work
by transmitting some of their qualities to their de-
scendants.  If we of the 20th century have inherited
some small portion, and let us hope such is the case,
we have ample cause for gratulation.

The following pages (of the Farnsworth Memorial) will
show that the descendants of Matthias Farnsworth have
enjoyed in a marked degree the respect  of their fellow
men; that they have been earnest workers; that such
wordly honors as have come to individuals of the name,
such positions as have been attained in the various
pathways of life, have been the reward of merit rather
than the result of self-seeking or favoritism; that
they have been self-made in the truest sense."
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Transcribed by Janice Farnsworth  Feb 16, 1999