Lucy Tracy, a proud Sun City resident, can trace her ancestry back to the esteemed founder of Cornell University.
She is the eleventh generation of the illustrious Cornell family tree. She recently received a published book that contains the genealogy of the Cornell family.
Lucy Tracy holds the book that contains her Cornell family history. (Photo by Christine Such/My Sun Day News)
Tracy said, “The book has an accounting of the descendants of Thomas Cornell by Reverend John Cornell and was published in 1902. My grandkids are the thirteenth generation.”
The book, Genealogy of the Cornell Family: Being an Account of the Descendants of Thomas Cornell, was written by Reverend John Cornell and published in 1902 by the Press of T.A. Wright in New York. This book traces nine generations of the Cornell family, beginning with Thomas Cornell, who emigrated from England around 1638 with his wife, Rebecca.
Tracy gently goes through the old pages of the elegantly bound book, points out, “The book details the lineage of Thomas Cornell, who settled in Rhode Island, and his descendants for nine generations. It includes an appendix with information on related families, land grants, and wills. There are plots of land surveys that he had. My mother, in her handwriting, added the information and descendants for the tenth and, of course, my generation, the eleventh generation.”
The introduction to the book reads, “To write the history of one’s family is not an easy task. The early records to which one must refer for their early history are distributed over different parts of the country. The records, too, are incomplete and unsatisfactory; the War of the Revolution did much to destroy them.”
The author painstakingly traced the first documented appearance of Cornell in Boston in 1638, where Thomas Cornell attended a town meeting and voted, but deduced that he had likely arrived much earlier. Reverend John Cornell found that the property was deeded to Thomas Cornell in 1646 in Rhode Island. Thomas Cornell died in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, in 1655.
Tracy said, “There is so much information in the book, including a coat of arms and photos. The family did change the spelling of the name, which made it more difficult to document the four different derivations of the family name.”
Reverend John Cornell’s 1902 genealogy book, and related historical accounts, bring to light several unique and dramatic aspects of the family’s early history in America, including the murder trial of Thomas Cornell Jr. for the death of his mother, Rebecca Cornell.
In 1673, Thomas Cornell’s widow, Rebecca, died in a house fire. Her son, Thomas Jr., was accused and convicted of her murder in a trial that notoriously relied heavily on witnesses that claimed they learned of his guilt through dreams or visions. This type of evidence was highly unusual and controversial, even for the time.
Thomas Jr. maintained his innocence until his execution. Shortly after he was hanged, his wife Sarah Earle gave birth to a daughter, whom she named Innocent, as a public declaration of her husband’s innocence.
Tracy said, “The book traces the lineage that includes Ezra Cornell, the founder of Cornell University. My father and brother both graduated from Cornell University. My grandpa Cornell was a PE teacher. My dad was raised in multiple foster homes because his mother had died in childbirth and my grandpa had to travel for work. My dad was a chemical engineering PhD., completing his doctorate by age 23. He was a scientist who worked with soybean development.”
Ezra Cornell, along with Andrew Dickson White, an educator and fellow state senator, established the University. Ezra Cornell provided his farm in Ithaca, New York, as the initial campus site and contributed $500,000 as an initial endowment, which in today’s currency would be around $13 million. White was the University’s first president.
What’s next for Tracy?
“Now my task is to add to the documentation and to add the names of the next two generations,” she said.
