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.
Hi, Larry - thank you for your interest in the Naramore family history.
ReplyDeleteI don't know where OneWorldTrees is getting its information from, but Asa had only two sons who survived to adulthood, Samuel and John. John was born in 1799 and lived all his life in Charlotte, Vermont, dying there in 1882.
His son Edward Naramore was born in Vermont in 1830, but went west to Iowa, where he died in the early 1900s. His wife's name was Ida E. Tyler.
Their son Charles Naramore was born in Vermont in 1877 and died in Omaha, Nebraska in 1942 - another victim of The Curse of the Narramores. While standing on a streetcorner, he was viciously attacked and knocked to the ground in what turned out to be a case of "collateral damage" (the attacker had meant to strike someone else but hit Naramore instead). He fractured his skull in the fall and died an hour later.
This Charles Naramore was your grandfather Wesley's father.
That's pretty much right on. Easter was on April 5th in 1942; Charles was attacked on the evening of the 4th.
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