The Curse of the Naramores - Part 2

Truman C. Naramore was born in Charlotte, Vermont on January 30, 1838, the son of Samuel Naramore and Philura Crossman, and the grandson of Revolutionary War soldier Asa Naramore.  Twenty-three years old when the Civil War broke out, Truman enlisted in the 1st Vermont Cavalry in September 1861, and was a corporal in that regiment when he was taken prisoner on the first day of the Battle of the Wilderness, May 5th, 1864.  He soon found himself transferred to the infamous southern prison camp at Andersonville, but managed to survive the horrors there and was eventually paroled in November 1864.  His health was impaired, however, and as a result of general debility and the scurvy he contracted there, he later received a pension of two dollars a month.

Shortly after the war ended, he married Laura Murray, raised a family of three children (two others died in infancy) and returned to agricultural and mercantile pursuits in Williston, Vermont.  He was active in both the statewide and local granges, being one of the founding members of the Chittenden County grange in 1876.  He was also an inventive sort, patenting several mechanical devices and agricultural improvements.  By all accounts, he seemed to have done as his grandfather Asa had before him, successfully shaking off his wartime experience and prospering.

In the early 1880s, he moved to California, where he pursued several interests, including that of a real estate agent in the firm of More, Snyder and Naramore, with considerable success.  But it was in the last decade of the century that the Curse of the Naramores finally caught up with him.  In 1891, he set up a starch factory in Los Angeles in partnership with T. Wiesendanger, but the business exploded - literally.  On the evening of December 10, 1892, just minutes after the last employees had left work for the day, there was a terrific explosion and the boiler went flying through the wall like a cannonball, landing on the sidewalk outside.  Fortunately, no one was hurt, but the factory was a complete loss and the neighboring residence of the Weyse family (from whom Weisendanger and Naramore rented the factory) was partially destroyed as well.  Otto Weyse, who was in bed at the time, had a narrow escape.

There had apparently been an existing dispute between Weyse and Naramore over the ownership of a wagon, and the events of December 10 could not have improved Otto's temper.  When Naramore went to collect the wagon after the explosion, he was stopped by Weyse.  Angry words were exchanged, and then Weyse struck Naramore over the head with a piece of board, severely injuring him.  It was to be strike one.

Strike two was not long in coming.  While riding on his wagon one evening at his ranch in Riverside, a person or persons unknown came up from behind and struck him on the back of the head with a blunt instrument. Naramore was thrown from the wagon unconscious, and the team ran off in a fright, carrying the wagon with them over an embankment.  The injury was serious, although Naramore eventually recovered.  Neither the attacker nor his motive was ever discovered.

Strike three also came about on the Riverside ranch, which Truman rented out to the Cummings brothers, John and Caesar, in 1894.  When the rent money, in the amount of $500, came due in August 1895 and Naramore went out to the ranch to collect it, the brothers murdered him, and then concocted a story about robbers who stole the money and killed Naramore.  The jury didn't believe them, however, and they were convicted and sentenced to death by hanging [but see the note below from a commenter indicating that the governor of California eventually intervened to halt their executions].

• Thomas (ca. 1640 - ca. 1690) -> Samuel (ca. 1680 - ca. 1754) -> Samuel (1706 - 1789) -> John (1735 - ca. 1815) -> Asa (1761 - 1851) -> Samuel (1806 - 1847) -> Truman (1838 - 1895)

As a postscript to this story, Truman had a son of the same name who remained in Los Angeles, where he died in 1943.  In 1936, the following "filler" story appeared in several newspapers:

LOSING GROUND

About one more "drop" in real estate and T. C. Naramore may be out of house and home.  He was standing under a tree in his front yard when 30 tons of it slid 65 feet into an automobile parking lot below.  Three years ago, 15 tons went the same way.  Now, Naramore's house is perched precipitously on the edge of a steep hill in the downtown section.

I don't know what finally became of his house, but it appears that, one generation on, the Curse of the Naramores still had some kick to it.  In Part 3, we'll go back and look at the short life and tragic death of Asa Naramore's younger brother Samuel.

The Curse of the Naramores - Part 1

The notion of a curse that hangs over several generations of a family makes for good fiction, but considering the string of misfortunes and gruesome deaths that befell several of the descendants of John and Tabitha (Newell) Narramore, one is almost tempted to believe there could be some truth to it.

The story begins with Asa Naramore, eldest son of John and Tabitha, who was born at Northampton, Massachusetts in 1761.  By the time of the Revolutionary War, his father had moved the family to Pittsfield, Massachusetts where his uncle Joshua's family was living.  Both families were caught up in the events of the fateful summer and fall of 1777, with the brothers each serving hitches in the Berskshire county militia during the Saratoga campaign.

After Saratoga, the main theater of war shifted to the southern colonies, but a simmering frontier conflict continued throughout the Mohawk Valley.  Although only seventeen, Asa served for twenty weeks as part of a levy of Massachusetts men marched to Albany in 1778, but his real chance for action came in 1780, when Sir John Johnson swept south from Canada and, joining with Indian allies led by Joseph Brant, raided eastward through the Mohawk Valley, burning and destroying homes, crops and supplies as they went.  In July of that year, Asa had enlisted as a private in Capt. William White's company of the Third Berkshire Regiment under the command of Col. John Brown, and it was this outnumbered regiment that, lacking promised support from General Robert van Rensselaer, was outflanked and overrun by Johnson's forces on the morning of October 19, 1780 at the Battle of Stone Arabia.  It was a decisive defeat for the Americans, with Brown and many of his men killed. Two of Brown's men were also taken prisoner, one from Capt. John Spoor's company and one - Asa Naramore - from Capt. White's company.

General van Rensselaer's forces caught up with Johnson later that day at a farm owned by George Klock (near the present-day St. Johnsville).  Although the Americans had the advantage, and both Johnson and Brant were lightly wounded, darkness halted combat before a complete victory could be obtained.  Johnson's army escaped during the night; leaving their provisions and artillery behind, they retraced their steps back to their boats on Oneida Lake and sailed back to Canada, taking their prisoners with them.  That supplies on the return trip were tight is confirmed by Asa's recollection of the journey, on which he was allowed only a small piece of raw horseflesh each day and a few bulbous roots that they dug along the way.

Although hostilities officially ended with the signing of the Treaty of Paris in September of 1783, it would be almost a full year more before Asa's captivity finally ended.  Returning to Pittsfield after his release in June of 1784, he successfully petitioned the General Court in 1786 for back pay amounting to eighty-five pounds, with which he purchased a farm in Charlotte, Vermont.  He later drew an annual pension of eighty dollars for his war service.

In the end, it's hard to make the case for the "Curse of the Naramores" weighing too heavily on Asa.  As bad as capture by Indians and four years as a prisoner in Canada must have been, it could have been worse - at least he came home again.  All in all, he seems to have been one of those people who manage to roll with life's punches.  When his wife of nearly fifty years died in 1836, he wasted no time in re-marrying - to a younger woman who soon refused to live with him and ran off just two years later.  Undeterred, he married a third time, in 1844, and ended his days in 1851 at the ripe old age of ninety, leaving an estate that was sizeable enough to be quarreled over by his widow, his children, and his grandchildren.

Still, if the Curse of the Naramores can only be said to have struck a glancing blow at Asa, it landed with full force on his grandson, Truman C. Naramore - as we shall see in Part 2.

• Asa was the great-great-grandson of Thomas Narramore:  Thomas (ca. 1640 - ca. 1690) -> Samuel (ca. 1680 - ca. 1754) -> Samuel (1706 - 1789) -> John (1735 - ca. 1815) -> Asa (1761 - 1851)
• A minor irony here is that Asa's younger brother Stephen spent his final years in the town of Brant, in Erie County, New York.  The town was named for Joseph Brant.

"With Half Pikes and Drawn Swords..."

Early in the afternoon of April 29, 1697, a boat from the British frigate Arundel slipped off from John Vyall's wharf in Boston's North End and put ashore at Master Obadiah Gill's shipyard.  There, led by the lieutenant, the chief mate, and Joseph Kigging, son of the ship's captain, William Kigging, the Arundel press gang quickly and ruthlessly set about its work, attacking Gill's apprentices and forcing one of them, John Narramore, into the boat.  During the struggle, however, one of his fellow apprentices, Nathan Raynsford, managed to escape and ran for help to the nearby shipyard of Samuel Greenwood.  As Greenwood's men came rushing onto the scene, they found the Arundel boat getting ready to depart, but caught hold of the painter and forced it to stop.  Their clean get-away ruined, the lieutenant ordered his men out of the boat, and out they came, some wielding half pikes, others with swords drawn.  In the end, Narramore was rescued, but several of Gill's and Greenwood's men were wounded in the ensuing melée.

• From testimony before the Massachusetts Court of Assize, May 15, 1697

Who was this John Narramore?  It's possible that he was the son of Richard and Ann (Waters) Narramore who was born at Boston  on September 10, 1676, but he might also be the son of Thomas and Hannah Narramore who was baptized at Boston's Second Church in 1681.  The only other known record of him is a deposition he gave before the Admiralty Court in London in late 1698 concerning the ship Frederick.  In his testimony, he states that he is a shipwright, born in Boston.