About This Site
Over 50 years of research into the Stratton, Schneider, King, and allied families—from colonial Massachusetts to Indiana and beyond. Built by Bill & Karen Stratton.
Strattons of Massachusetts Bay
Running Through the Sands of Time
Historical Fiction — A Novel in Chapters Historical Fiction
Seventeen chapters. Five centuries. One family.
From a Bedfordshire farmyard in the 1550s to a Navy retirement in Indiana in the late twentieth century, this is the long line of the Stratton family — not as a genealogical record, but as a novel. Each chapter centers on one ancestor: their world, their choices, their moment in history. The narrative thread passes forward like a baton, generation to generation, ocean to ocean, from Bedfordshire yeoman to the great-grandfather who drove mules on the Erie Canal, practiced medicine in Ohio, and spied for Lincoln — to the grandson of a country lawyer, to the great-grandson who finally put all the pieces together.
Every scene is built on documented facts. The dialogue, the interior lives, the imagined conversations — these are bridges across what the record does not say. Written by William F. Stratton, great-grandson of Francis Joel Stratton — the mule driver, the lawman, the physician, and the spy.
William Stratton (c. 1530–1604) & Joan Arden — Shrivenham, Berkshire
The Stratton farm in Elizabethan England. William marries Joan Arden, raises John, and watches the world of enclosed fields and Protestant settlements change everything his father knew. Coming soon.
John Stratton of Hinwick (c. 1550–1627) & Alice Pigott — Podington, Bedfordshire
John moves from Shrivenham to Bedfordshire, farms, raises four sons, and distributes his world in a will dated June 3, 1627. The chapter ends at St. Mary the Virgin, Podington. Coming soon.
Samuel Stratton Sr. (1592–1672) — England to Massachusetts Bay, 1630
Samuel leaves Bedfordshire, crosses the Atlantic, and stands at the rail as the Massachusetts coast appears for the first time. The long line begins its American chapter. Coming soon.
Samuel Stratton Sr. in Watertown (1633–1657)
Samuel as surveyor, selectman, and constable. Alice Stratton defending Margaret Jones at the witch trial of 1648. A fine paid, a refusal to recant, and a family defined by that defiance. Coming soon.
Samuel Jr., Richard, and John Stratton — 1650s–1700s
The three sons of Samuel Sr. diverge across a hardening colony. King Philip’s War, the militia, and the slow drift of the line toward what will eventually become Indiana. Coming soon.
The Revolutionary War generation — 1775–1783
A Stratton at Concord or Saratoga. The long line from Bedfordshire, now picking up a musket in Massachusetts. The republic is born; the family is part of it. Coming soon.
Francis Joel Stratton (c. 1820–1863) — Part One: The Young Man, Erie Canal, 1836
Joel at seventeen, driving mules on the Erie Canal. Rochester. First lessons in law and violence. The three-cornered friendship — Kelsey, Seward, Donnellan — that will shape the rest of his life. Coming soon.
Francis Joel Stratton, M.D. — Geneva Medical College, 1846–1848
At thirty, scarred and bankrupt and still technically married, Joel arrives at Geneva Medical College to reinvent himself — and finds himself, as class chairman, signing the resolution that admitted Elizabeth Blackwell as the first woman to earn a medical degree in the United States.
Frank Nelson Stratton (1860–1905) — Gilded Age Indiana
State prosecutor by day. Writer of fifty stories for Munsey’s, Argosy, and Collier’s by lamplight after the boys went to sleep. A brilliant man burning out too fast. Coming soon.
Dr. Frederick Nelson Stratton (1905–1940) — Ligonier, Indiana
The dentist’s office in Ligonier. Banti’s Syndrome. The death that leaves a three-year-old without a father and sets the family on a different course. The hinge of the whole book. Coming soon.
Volney King, Bertha McConnell, and the Brush College Farm
Indiana farm life, 1900–1945. The King-McConnell-Bell Ohio origins. The grandparents who raised Billy from age two to nine, and the farm that held him while the rest of the world moved without him. Coming soon.
Lucille Dee King Stratton — Depression-era Indiana
Four marriages. The shunning by the Stratton family. The choices a woman makes when the world leaves her few of them. Coming soon.
Allied families of Noble County — Civil War through early 20th century
Jacob Gerber at Andersonville. E.B. Gerber building the town. The families that would converge with the Strattons and Kings in Ligonier. Told as parallel vignettes, each thread braided together. Coming soon.
William F. Stratton, childhood (1937–c. 1946)
Billy on the Brush College Farm. Volney and Bertha. The absence of a father. The fields, the animals, the life that shaped everything after. First chapter told in William’s own voice throughout. Coming soon.
William F. Stratton, Navy service (1955–1979)
From Indiana to the fleet. Twenty-four years. The world seen from a ship’s deck, from Korea to Vietnam to the Mediterranean and beyond. Coming soon.
Karen Schneider Stratton — Guam, April 4, 1980
Karen’s own Navy service. The meeting. Two careers, one life. Told partly in Karen’s voice. Coming soon.
William F. Stratton — the genealogy project, 1990s–present
The discovery of Harriet Russell Stratton’s genealogy on CD-ROM in the 1990s. The obsession that followed. The website. The long line from Bedfordshire to Indiana, finally visible. The closing chapter circles back to John of Podington’s will. Coming soon.
New chapters are added as they are completed. Check back.
— Wm. F. Stratton, May 2026
Over 50 years of research into the Stratton, Schneider, King, and allied families—from colonial Massachusetts to Indiana and beyond. Built by Bill & Karen Stratton.
If you are tracing a Stratton line, start here. Harriet Russell Stratton's two-volume Book of Strattons is the most comprehensive Stratton genealogy ever compiled—both volumes are free and fully searchable online.