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
The family pages tell you who these people were. The history pages tell you what they did. This section tells you what kind of world they were doing it in — the larger landscape, social and political and physical, that shaped every decision they made.
Pieces here are organized by era and written in three distinct voices, depending on what the subject calls for.
Literary History Literary — Flowing narrative in the tradition of McCullough and Tuchman. Big sweep, individual lives set against broad currents of events.
Historical Fiction Historical Fiction — Scene-first storytelling in the manner of John Jakes. Characters in the room, dialogue that makes the past immediate. Built on documented facts; imagination fills the gaps.
Popular History Popular History — Conversational and accessible in the spirit of Kenneth C. Davis. What the textbooks skip. What it smelled like. What people were actually afraid of on a Tuesday in 1648.
The full story of the colony from the Winthrop Fleet to the last shots of the Revolution — with Samuel Stratton Sr., Francis Stratton, and John Stratton woven through every generation.
The same story as the literary history above — told in scenes, with characters in the room and dialogue. Samuel at the trial, Francis at Meriam's Corner, an old soldier marching north to stand in his son's place at Saratoga. A novel in the manner of John Jakes.
A focused dramatization of Samuel and Alice Stratton's defiance of the Massachusetts Bay court in 1649. Coming soon.
Born into the drainage ditches of Ohio’s Black Swamp in 1854, William McConnell spent his youth calculating the true cost of that rich, waterlogged country. In 1878 he pointed his wagon toward the rolling hills of Noble County, Indiana — and didn’t look back. A novelette in the manner of John Jakes.
What Indiana looked like when the first families of this line arrived — frontier law, canal towns, and the slow rise of professional life in Noble County. Coming soon.
A historical novelette tracing Francis Joel Stratton from the Erie Canal to Washington, D.C. — constable, physician, Union spy, and friend of Lincoln and Seward. He died in Washington in 1863 from wounds sustained years before the war.
Isaac William King, 88th Indiana Infantry — from the day an axe slipped on a hickory round in Noble County to the long march home. A scene-first account of one family's Civil War.
Jacob J. Gerber of the 30th Indiana Infantry survived Chickamauga only to be taken to Andersonville Prison, where nearly thirteen thousand Union soldiers died. Atlanta fell on September 2, 1864. Jacob died on September 3. A tearjerker novelette in the manner of John Jakes.
He platted Omaha City at twenty-four, surveyed Noble County for seven years, ran the hardware store that supplied half the farms in the township, served in the state legislature twice, and buried two brothers before their time — then went back to work. A novelette in the manner of John Jakes.
Norman Putnam of Bethany, New York, served in the 6th New York Heavy Artillery — the Anthony Wayne Guard — through every major battle of Grant’s 1864 Overland Campaign: the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, Cedar Creek. Four hundred and twenty men in the regiment did not come home. Norman Putnam came home. Then he moved to Iowa, and then to Dakota, and he didn’t quite stop moving until the frontier ran out.
Charlotte Hoffer wrote a letter to her husband George in February 1862 in her own hand. He died at Memphis nine months later. She spent the next twenty-three years signing pension documents with an X. She married her widowed neighbor Joseph Faber in 1872, and her daughter married his son in 1881. She kept the farm, the family, and the pension going.
Samuel Edgerton Stratton built his first mill at sixteen, partnered at the Anderson Machine Works, served on the Howard County Commission, and superintended the construction of the Kokomo courthouse. He was disowned by the Society of Friends as a young man and was a Spiritualist for thirty years. He married Hester Donnellan, widow of Francis Joel Stratton — another Stratton, of a separate line, possibly a distant cousin, certainly a fellow believer. Three counties west, the unwitting kinswoman who would grow up to be Gene Stratton-Porter was a child at Hopewell Farm. None of them ever met.
He walked away from a Virginia plantation on principle, built a frontier medical practice in Ohio from nothing, and at fifty-six picked up his squirrel rifle and marched ninety miles to help defend Cincinnati against a Confederate advance in September 1862. His name lives on in his grandson, Frank Nelson Stratton.
The home front, the casualties, and what came after — for families like the Kings and McConnells who lived through it. Coming soon.
A literary essay on Frank Nelson Stratton (1860–1905) — lawyer, self-made man, and writer of fifty stories for the great mass-market magazines of the pulp era. He worked by lamplight after the boys went to sleep, published in Munsey’s, Argosy, Everybody’s, and Collier’s, and died at forty-four with a year’s worth of stories still in the pipeline.
Frank’s first son enlisted at sixteen during the fever of the Spanish-American War, shipped to the Philippines, and was garrisoned at Villasis, Pangasinan Province when the Philippine-American War began in February 1899. He came home, settled in Seattle, lost his passport in Okinawa, and died in 1957 without ever discussing what the island took from him.
This section grows one piece at a time. Check back.
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.