Roots and Migrations

What do we know about where our family’s ancestors came from, when they came to this country, and how and when they ended up in Michigan[1]? How does the history of our family fit in with the history of the United States? What was happening in different branches of the family at certain points in time?

EUROPEAN ORIGINS

We can trace ancestors to a number of European countries:

England (Compton and Champlin[2])

Switzerland (Stauffer, plus several branches that married into the Stauffers)

Germany (Moneysmith[3])

Holland (Hannah Compton’s mother, though this may now be in question)

We suspect two other major branches of the family, the Hawkinses and the Porters, came from England, but we don’t have records to confirm it.

EARLIEST ARRIVALS

We now know that we can trace some of our family roots back to the days of the Puritans and the earliest settlements in New England. In fact, the first Jeffrey Champlin moved to Roger Williams' Rhode Island, and his descendants lived there for many generations.

Conrad Mahnenschmidt was born in Germany in 1715, but his son Christian, our progenitor, was born in Pennsylvania in 1750.  

The Stauffers arrived in the American colonies in the later 1730s when George Washington was a boy. During that first half of the 1700s, the Zug and Hefflefinger families also came over from Switzerland, and their daughter and granddaughter Elizabeth would marry into the Stauffer clan by 1780, just at the close of the Revolution. We’re still searching for the link that brought the Comptons to the colonies.

By the time of the Revolutionary War, the Comptons were in Orange County in the Hudson Valley of New York, with James, our earliest Hawkins of record, just across the river  in Dutchess County, New York. The Porters[4] were in western Connecticut, the Stauffers, Hefflefingers, and Zugs just west of Philadelphia, and the Mahnenschmidts in Berks Co., PA. The Champlins were still in Rhode Island.[5].

MICHIGAN BEGINNINGS

Meanwhile, Michigan had been a battle ground between European powers and a pawn in the conflicts of war. It was explored first by the French but later controlled by the British. Both groups built forts to defend the area, but neither made an effort to develop settlements. The British prized the territory for its valuable fur resources. In fact, Michigan was one of the “trophies” fought over in the French and Indian Wars in the mid-1700s. At the close of that war, the French lost the area to the British.

At the end of the Revolution a quarter of a century later, the area—on paper at least—was part of the “Northwest Territory” that the British had to relinquish in the treaty settlement with the newly independent Americans.

FIRST SET OF MIGRATIONS –

Leaving the Colonial Tidewater

With the opening of more western lands to settlement in the decades following the War, our predecessors joined the migrations toward the frontier and away from the eastern seaboard.

The Stauffers began the migrations in 1805 (at that point they left the U.S. for Canada; see Stauffer History). Curtis Porter, who had been born in western Connecticut, was married at age 19 in Hamilton, New York, in 1811.

Because we now have from the Internet the birth dates of the children of William Compton, Jr., we know that they left Orange County (where his father was killed during the Revolution) and moved west between 1812 and 1818.[6] Though we don't know the time frame, the Hawkins family ended up in Yates County on the west side of the Finger Lakes, not far north of the Comptons.

While Henry Moneysmith’s son William was born in Pennsylvania in 1824, we believe his son Emery was born in Ohio in 1847. Jeffrey and Ellis Champlin were both born in Rhode Island, but Jeffrey was a toddler when his family moved to Schoharie, County, NY, and Ellis did much of her growing up in Duchess Co., NY.  

So far we have not been successful in tracing much of the history of Charles E. Wells, who married Hannah Compton. He was born in 1814, in Pennsylvania according to the 1880 census. That census tells us his father was born in Pennsylvania and his mother in Connecticut, so we know that generation was also born in America, likely about the time of the Revolution or a little later.

SECOND SET OF MIGRATIONS–

Heading for Michigan

Though the British had in theory given the Michigan territories over to the Americans after the Revolution, they continued to ply the fur trade. Eventually, the Americans did gain practical control, and the area was opened up for settlement.

The opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, through central New York from Albany to Buffalo, contributed greatly to efforts to settle the areas beyond. We know that the Porters used the canal for their move to Michigan, and it is possible others in New York did also (Champlins? Hawkinses? Wells?). In 1837, Michigan became the 18^th state.

Meanwhile, the early 1800s had found the Porters in central New York, the Comptons in western New York, and the Stauffers in Ontario. James Hawkins died in Steuben County, NY, in 1839. That same year, Jeffrey Champlin’s daughter Delilah (who would marry a Porter) was born in Delaware County in eastern New York. Harrison Hawkins, James’s great-grandson who would marry Delilah’s granddaughter, was born in Yates Co., New York, in the early 1840s.

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Within a decade of each other in the middle of the century, several branches of the family began making their way to Michigan:

·     Curtis Porter with his wife and 15-year-old son, George, set out from Hamilton, NY, in 1847 (following the footsteps of an older son)

·     David Hawkins, son of James and grandfather of Harrison, was in Michigan for the 1850 census.

·     In 1854 the Wells family (Hannah Compton and husband Charles) with their four daughters moved from Painted Post, NY, to Michigan.

·     Also in 1854, Abraham G. Stauffer, grandson of the Abraham Stauffer who went to Canada, left Ontario and moved to the Grand Rapids area. Several of his siblings did the same.

·     In the 1850 census, the Champlin family was listed in Delaware Co., NY., but in 1855 Delilah married George Porter in Michigan.

Meanwhile, the Mahnenschmidt descendants, now with several different versions of the name, fanned out into various Ohio counties, the Moneysmiths finding their way to Van Wert County.

PUTTING THEM TOGETHER

So by the time the Civil War began, all the major Michigan branches of the family were in place, all but one in and around Grand Rapids. The first marriage to begin uniting those branches took place eight years after their arrivals in Michigan when Samuel Stauffer married Roxy Wells in 1865. Twenty-three years later their daughter Esther brought the Porters into the picture by marrying Delilah and George’s son Ferd. It wouldn’t be until 1913 that  Ferd and Esther’s daughter Fern would marry Harrison Hawkins’s son, Mont.