Those Morbidly Obese Old Men and Their Flying Machines

Andrew Naramor, born in 1836, was the son of Nathaniel Colton and Nancy Baker Naramor, and the grandson of Dr. Nathaniel Naramor.  He was a farmer who evidently had a mechanical bent and had gained some success as an inventor, patenting an improved hay rack, for example.  He also seems to have dabbled a bit in poetry, although here his efforts are perhaps more charitably judged relative to the Vogons.  Interested readers may decide for themselves, below.

When he was sixty years old, some seven years before Kitty Hawk, he sought to get ahead of the Wright brothers with his own human-powered flying machine.  Surviving newspaper accounts attempt, and fail, to paint a picture of it, but one is left with the impression that it must have looked rather like a meeting between Icarus and Big Bird:  it had two large wings, which were strapped to the arms, and two "sails" (described as being "somewhat like the feet of a duck") which were strapped to the feet, as well as a large rudder for steering.

The test flight took place in the middle of February, in Michigan.  The intrepid inventor climbed up to the roof of a barnyard shed, cautiously crept to the edge, spread his wings and . . . discovered that gravity's not a beach, but it sounds something like that.

It is at this point that the newspaper accounts mention that Andrew weighed some 300 pounds.

Incredibly, although he spent time in the hospital with injuries that were originally feared to be fatal, he survived the ordeal, and in fact lived for another eight years, although he never attempted flying again.

 
 

We Won the Revolution, So Let's All Move to Canada

One of the odder and lesser-known postscripts to the American Revolution was the brief attempt to heal divisions between the British Empire and her former American colonies by making large grants of land in Quebec (then called Lower Canada) available to American settlers.  The program was instituted in 1792 by the new Lieutenant Governor of the province, Sir Alured Clarke, and originally had two aims:  (1) to reward Loyalists who had fled to Canada as a result of the Revolution, and (2) to increase settlement there as a deterrent to any American designs on its northern neighbor.  However, under the influence of William Smith, chief justice of Lower Canada and chairman of the Executive Council’s land committee, most of the warrants to survey new townships under this program ended up being issued to Americans, many of whom had displayed anything but Loyalist sympathies in the previous conflict, in accordance with Smith’s belief that American settlement was the surest way to patch up the recent rift in the Empire.

From the Americans’ point of view, the prospect of a free grant of 200 acres of land (1,200 acres for the leaders of the settlement) was a powerful inducement to swear allegiance once more to George III.  As has been recounted elsewhere, Nathaniel Naramore twice fought on the side of the Massachusetts militia during the Burgoyne campaign of 1777.  But almost before the ink was dry on Alured’s proclamation, he and Jonathan Fassett (also a man with less than sterling Loyalist credentials, having been an early associate of Ethan Allen’s Green Mountain Boys) were petitioning to have a new town, to be named Ponsonby, surveyed and granted to them and to their associates.

These associates, numbering 190 in all, included a number of Nathaniel’s former neighbors from Goshen, Massachusetts, as well as his two younger brothers Joseph and Alpheus and his cousin Justin Naramore from Pittsfield.  Conspicuously leading the list, and called out for special attention to “His Excellency and Council” were the “good Loyalists” Abijah Hawley, and the brothers George and Gould Buck.  It is unclear whether Abijah was related to Justin Naramore’s Hawley in-laws, but the Bucks were intermarried with some distant Parsons cousins of Nathaniel’s sister-in-law Rebecca Parsons Naramore.  Whether these relationships played any part in the drafting of Abijah and the Bucks for the cause is unknown, although it makes for interesting speculation.  Another point of interest is that Gould Buck is a direct ancestor of John Wayne – his great-great-great-grandfather, in fact.

In any event, as might be expected, the project to promote a closer union with the United States by opening the doors to settlement by former rebels soon ran into serious headwinds from many on the council, and by 1795 the scheme was effectively dead.  But Nathaniel already had other plans.  After marrying Molly May in Goshen in 1789, he had brought his new bride north to the newly-founded town of Georgia, Vermont, where she was one of the first members of the Congregational Church and he was the town’s first constable.  But despite being “universally esteemed, both as a physician and a citizen” (as a history written more than 70 years later would recall), in 1795 the young family picked up stakes and headed for what was then the frontier country of the Genesee in western New York state.  In January of 1796, Nathaniel bought the western half of lot no. 61 in what is now the town of Avon, and bought the remaining half in 1803.  The property is still a working farm in the town, located on the north side of  Route 20 just a little ways east of the locally famous Tom Wahl’s restaurant.

Nathaniel makes two appearances, in quasi-Natty Bumpo guise, in the Eli Granger diaries (http://rbscp.lib.rochester.edu/4045).  Granger records a geese-hunting trip to Braddock’s Bay on March 18, 1797 with “Parks and Dr. Narrimore”, and  on August 3^rd of that year records that “Dr. Narrimore came to visit Dan [Rowe]” who had been “taken with a Fevor that is common to the Country”.  Very likely this was the so-called “Genesee Fever”; the early settlement of the Rochester area was plagued by malaria from the swampland around the Genesee River.

In response to a 1797 New York law, Nathaniel, who had most likely apprenticed with a country doctor in the Goshen area, was required to prove that he was qualified to practice medicine in the state.  As a result, Timothy Hosmer, the Judge of the Court of Common Pleas, filed the following certification:

These may Certify that Doct. Nathaniel Naramor has Resided in This Town upwards of Four Year and has been in the Practice of Phisic and I am perfectly Satisfyed with his abilities as a Phisician

Coming from Judge Hosmer, who had been a surgeon with the Continental Army on General Washington’s staff, this was no faint praise.

The last known record of Nathaniel is from May 30, 1804, when his name appears on a jury list for the town of Hartford (now Avon).  He died from unknown causes in 1809 and is buried in the main Avon cemetery.  The stone is now gone, but its former presence is attested by a 1946 cemetery survey, which recorded the grave marker for one “Doots” N. Naramor (even then, the stone must have been seriously weathered, with the transcriber evidently mis-reading “Doots” for “Doctr.”)  After Nathaniel’s death, his oldest son Chester assumed responsibility for the family, moving one town over to Caledonia, where they remained for the next 25 years or so.  Chester was one of the New York militia who were taken prisoner at the ill-fated Battle of Buffalo in June of 1813.  In the mid-1830s, Chester and his family went west to Kangley, Illinois, where his son, Elisha Gilbert Naramor, became a prosperous farmer.

The next-oldest son, Horace Naramor, appears never to have married, and eventually settled at Batavia, NY where he was a well-known manufacturer of grain cradles for many years.  He died sometime after 1868.  Although there is a Naramore Drive in Batavia today, it is in a newer development, and its name has no connection with Horace.

The third son, Jeremiah Naramor, also seems not to have married, and died in Utica, Michigan in 1836, where he had moved with his younger brother, Nathaniel Colton Naramor, and their mother, Mary (May) Naramor, who died there in 1840.  Nathaniel C. Naramor married Nancy Baker and had several children.  They have numerous descendants today in Michigan and elsewhere, and the distinctive spelling of their last name marks them out as descendants of Dr. Nathaniel.

• Thomas (ca. 1640 - ca. 1690) -> Samuel (ca. 1680 - ca. 1754) -> Samuel (1706 - 1789) -> Samuel (1730 - 1777) -> Nathaniel (1757 - 1809)