In the woods of Maine there's a family burial plot that has been neglected. It's overgrown and in rough shape. In it there's a memorial stone for a boy who was born in Maine in 1831 but died in 1854 in Melbourne, Australia. What makes a young man from Maine go to Australia? I think he was after gold, discovered down under in 1851.
Online I found a diary entry that says: “I visited the Postmaster General Granger with whom I left applications from Moses Lord of Newburyport. W. L. Bigelow of Springfield, Otsego Co., New York. Joseph Low, Concord, New Hampshire, and William Hammatt of Bangor, Maine, for a mail agency for his son William Cushing Hammatt.”
William Cushing Hammatt and William Hammatt "of Bangor, Maine" are the father and grandfather of our young traveller.
This diary entry belongs to none other than John Quincy Adams, 6th President of the United States of America. It's from 1841, long after Adam's presidency (1825-1829) but while he served as a Representative of the House from Massachusetts.
So our young man's grandpa knows J. Q. A. well enough to have him personally drop off an application with the Postmaster General of the United States.
It turns out William Hammatt "of Bangor, Maine" is actually from Plymouth, MA. where his father Abraham was a Captain of Militia who served (very briefly) in the Revolutionary War.
Now, Abraham's mother Lucy Howland Hammatt was the great-great-granddaughter of John Howland and Elizabeth Tilley. Who were they? They were a couple of people from England who came to Plymouth aboard a little ship called the Mayflower!
So…how does this proud and powerful family who trace their roots all the way to the earliest pilgrims (first Thanksgiving and all that) find their graves forgotten in the middle of the woods in Maine?
That's the story I'm working on writing.
