Good Fruit


Just so, every good tree bears good fruit, and a rotten tree bears bad fruit.  A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a rotten tree bear good fruit.  (Matthew 7:17-18)

The intent of this new blog is to present to my children and grandchildren a glimpse into the legacy of faith, hope and love that our ancestors have built for us.  As their descendants, we have the responsibility of nurturing that legacy.  We are, and strive to be, “fruit of good trees”.

Sources

I will leave it up to my descendants (or my contemporaries, if they want to chime in) to delve further back into our histories, but I am going to present in these pages what information I already have in the form of personal research, personal memories and pictures, and the keepsakes and memories from my grandparents and parents that came into my possession over the years. 

I have interesting information and pictures and memories from my Farnsworth (Dad), Batty (Mom), and Rabideau (Maternal Grandmother) connections.  I want to be somewhat organized in my presentations, but I will, quite frankly, write about what interests me on any particular day.  I hope to present family ‘trees’ that will help the reader to further explore their specific interest in the family history.

Just 2 of the 7 "scrapbooks" put together by Aunt Jean Batty
I want to express my thanks to my Aunt Jean Batty for compiling ‘scrapbooks’ containing most of the information I will write about.  I understand she did the same for others in the Batty Family.  I hope those cousins use my comments box to fill in details or ‘shore up’ some of my recollections.

Origins

Every good family story begins with an origin.  Once, at a family reunion for the Farnsworth side of my family, we were given a ‘family tree’ that traced our roots all the way back to Adam.  I am dubious of the scholarship that went into that project for a couple of reasons.  One is that it relied on a whole slew of dubious family folklore, with no real evidence to prove the claims.  The other is that while I have been taught and I believe that all mankind is traceable back to Adam, families with specific surnames did not start to surface until they became necessary when governments introduced personal taxation. In England this was known as Poll Tax. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to "develop" often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.

The name Farnsworth is of English locational origin; in old English, "settlement where ferns were abundant".  Such locational names were originally given to the Lord of the Manor or as a means of identification to those who left their place of birth to settle elsewhere. 16th Century recordings from Lancashire church registers include the christening of Agnes, daughter of John Farnworth, in Chorley on September 15th, 1550, and the marriage of Richard Farnsworth in Ainsworth on March 3rd, 1563. A notable name-bearer was Richard Farnworth, a Quaker minister imprisoned at Banbury in 1651 for not taking his hat off to the mayor! The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Leising de Farnewurd, which was dated 1185, in the "Pipe Rolls of Cheshire", during the reign of King Henry 11, known as "The Building of Churches", 1154 - 1189.
Here is the earliest Coat of Arms I could find for the Farnsworth Family:





The name Batty is a diminutive form of the English and Scottish medieval personal name 'Bat(t)e', itself a shortened, diminutive form of 'Bartholomew', a very popular name in the Middle Ages. 'Bartholomew' derives from the Aramaic 'bar - Talmay', 'son of Talmay', meaning 'having many furrows' and thus, 'rich in land'. Its popularity was partly due to the fame of St. Bartholomew, patron saint of tanners, vintners and butlers. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of William Baty, which was dated 1277, in the Assize Rolls of Somerset, during the reign of King Edward 1, known as the Hammer of the Scots, 1272 - 1307.
There is a Coat of Arms for the Batty families for the branch from England and one for the branch from Scotland:
Next up:  Relationships

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