1830] W^aldo Ancestry 



Holly of Stratford, Connecticut, our different spelling 

 of the surname having been adopted by the children 

 of Sylvanus' first wife, Huldah Lake, of which 

 group my grandfather was one. Huldah Lake Holly 

 was regarded as a gifted woman, and for her my 

 mother was named. Two of the Holly descendants 

 of the last century, Alanson and Birdsall Holly, 

 became distinguished civil engineers. 



My mother's mother, Anne Waldo, a third or 

 fourth cousin of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and reputed 

 to be a person of uncommon refinement and depth of 

 insight, I never knew. She belonged to a well- 

 known family widely honored in Connecticut and 

 Massachusetts, her father being Judge John Elderkin John 

 Waldo of Canterbury, Connecticut, at the time a 

 local leader of the "Federalists," who viewed with 

 alarm the democracy of his age. In one of his 

 speeches he decried the "hard times in Connecticut," 

 and insisted that there would "never be good times 

 again until every farm hand would once more work 

 all day for a sheep's head and pluck." He then 

 went on also to say that the trouble lay in the 

 " little red schoolhouses scattered over the hills, 

 which preach the doctrines of equality and se- 

 dition." I should here explain that my mother, 

 who preserved the record, was in no way sympathetic 

 with these views of her august ancestor. 



To return now to my more immediate story, it 

 was in the year 1830 or thereabouts that my grand- 

 father, Rufus Jordan, accompanied by his wife Re- 

 becca, his sons Hiram and Moses, and his daughters 



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