Memoirs of William Hood Barnes
(1870 - 1946)

Great-Grandfather Aaron Barnes came to Troopsville, Caugua County, New York from Sharon Conn. in about 1790.

Great-Grandmother on father's side named Eggleston. Great-Grandfather Barnes married her in Conn. Her name was Martha.

Grandfather Thomas Barnes moved to Wayne County Butlertown. Moved back to Caugua County, moved to town of Rose. Moved to Seneca Falls. Came to Michigan in 1843, October 24th to Jackson.

Great-Great-Grandfather on mother's side named Sittser lived in Caugua County town of Senate. Went to Germany in about 1770 to get money from an estate. Never heard from after he started back with money. He was born in Germany. Grandfather on mother's side lived in town of Senate, Caugua County, New York.

Great-Grandfather (grandmother's father's name was Mills), lived in Caugua County town of Victor.

Great-Grandmother Isabel Duncan came from Scotland when eighteen years of age. She lived and married in Philadelphia, married a man by the name of McNelley. He was a soldier in the War of 1812 and died while a soldier. Great-Grandfather McNelley came from Ireland.

Great-Great-Grandfather Duncan married a woman by the name of Wilson. She was a sister of Alexander Wilson the ornithologist of Philadelphia.

Isabel Duncan came to America in about 1797. She was about three months coming across the ocean, coming on a sailboat.

Grandmother Katherine McNelley was born in 1803 in Philadelphia. They moved to Ovid, Seneca County, New York, in 1809. They moved to Putney, Stueben County, New York. Katherine McNelley was married in 1820 to James Hood. He was born in Pennsylvania. They had ten children, Robert born 1826, Isabel in 1828, Jane in 1830, John in 1832, Mary in 1834, Kate in 1835, Libbie in 1837, Caroline in 1840, James and William in 1842.

Grandmother died November 20, 1842. They came to Novi-Oakland County in April 1835.

by William Hood Barnes, circa 1940s

1) Senate = Sennett, a town just northeast of Auburn, NY

2) Caugua = Cayuga (a county in north central New York)

3) Victor = either Victory, or Will meant Victor, Wayne Co., NY

4) Troopsville = Throopsville (though it is pronounced "Troopsville"), a town just north of Auburn

5) Putney = Pulteney

6) Stueben = Steuben (a county in southwestern New York)

7) It was Aaron Barns' younger brother Thomas who early settled in Throopsville (then still part of Mentz), New York, along with the Treat family, Manrows (later evolved to Monroe), and others from Sharon, Connecticut. Thomas and wife Mary (Tyler) had the first two of their twelve children in Connecticut, in 1795 and 1797, and the remainder in New York starting 1798.

Aaron and Martha Barns had all seven of their children in Connecticut. According to an article about Aaron and Martha's son Horace, appearing in the Clyde (Wayne Co., NY) Times newspaper, dated November 8, 1877, the year was 1816 when the Aaron and Martha Barnes family immigrated to Mentz/Throopsville. One especially informative passage told of Horace: "He was born in Sharon, Conn., in 1804. At the age of 12, his father and a brother moved their families to Mentz, Cayuga Co., where they took up a considerable portion of land, which was finally divided among their children."

8) Cayuga County played a very prominent role in Barns/Barnes family history, and many Barnes relatives remained in the area after Thomas and Sarah emigrated to Seneca Falls, Seneca County, New York, and then to Jackson County, Michigan. Besides the Barnes and Sittser families (Auburn, Sennett, Throopsville, Mentz), the Bliss family's Hubbards and McCleans (Auburn, Moravia) also came from this county. Many geographical names from Cayuga County were transplanted to Michigan locales, indicating a large population movement to southern lower Michigan from that area.

9) "Sittser" is a variation of "Sitzer," which was an early spelling. Near the town of Throop is the "Community or Sitzer Cemetery," but the only Sitzers buried there spelled their name "Sittser." The cemetery is located on part of the original David and Sarah (Mills) Sittser farm and is where ancestors David and Sarah, and some of their sons and other relatives, are buried. Further back in history the family spelled the name Zitzer.

Sarah Mills was a daughter of Samuel and Sarah Mills. According to a Memorial written for David and Sarah's grandchild Sarah Elizabeth (Sittser) and husband Rev. Benjamin Franklin Willoughby, "Through the wife of Samuel Mills, the Sittsers for the generations succeeding David can trace their ancestry back to Ethan Allen, the revolutionary hero, who took possession of Fort Ticonderoga 'in the name of Jehovah and the Continental Congress.'"

Since Sarah and Ethan Allen were contemporaries (of the same generation), and since Ethan apparently had no sister Sarah according to known records, our Sarah at best could be a cousin. One "Sarah Allen" I discovered in the descendancy of Ralph Allen of England, born around the same time as ours (and may very well have been her), was part of the seventh generation of Ralph Allen. I also located Ethan Allen at the same level of descendancy from Ralph. By this reckoning, Sarah and Ethan would have been 4th cousins. Considering the fact that Andrew Sitzer's wife's name was Sarah Allen, perhaps the memorial's author was mistaken in which Sarah was related to Ethan. David's mother being the correct relative would make the following statement more sensible, "the Sittsers for the generations succeeding David can trace their ancestry back to Ethan Allen."

The entire two-paragraph insert about the Sittsers and Mills was written from the perspective of David Barnes, not David's son William Hood Barnes. Will probably wrote it down verbatim from a Bible or other record. From David's perspective, the entire series of generations was laid out accurately.

Will's account claimed that the Sittsers were from Germany, whereas an Indiana cousin and 3rd great-granddaughter of David and Sarah Sittser claimed that the family was originally from Holland, and that it was during the ancestor's return from Holland with an inheritance that he disappeared without a trace. Her additional detail to the story was that he boarded a ship bound for America but was not onboard when the ship arrived.

According to the Willoughby Memorial, Sarah Elizabeth (Sittser) Willoughby's father Matthew Sittser "...was a grandson of Andrew Sittser, whose exact place of residence is not known, but who lived somewhere on the Hudson in the latter half of the eighteenth century. Tradition has it that a more remote ancestor came to this country from Holland the century before. Andrew served in the Revolutionary war. He died April 19, 1806, aged 63 years..."

The late Douglas Norton Sittser of Muskegon, Michigan—3rd great-grandson of David and Sarah Sittser—claimed that the father of David Sittser was Peter Sitzer/Sittser, who came to America on the ship Snows Good Intent out of Bremen, Germany, in 1749. Peter was believed to have boarded ship when it stopped at Rotterdam, Holland en route to England and Philadelphia. However, Doug's account did not include Andrew Sitzer, who would have been of the generation between Peter and David. More recent and overwhelming evidence has since eliminated this Peter altogether from the family line and in his place is Johann Friederich Zitzer/Sitzer and his wife Johanna "Anna" Wingfiel/Wutfiel.

The above-mentioned overwhelming evidence also refutes Holland as the originating country and places the pre-emigration family in Poppenweiler, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany, where it is recorded the families of the brothers Andreas and Johann Martin Zitzer left for America 2 April 1738. Earlier generations lived at Muntingen in Germany's Black Forest near the border with France. Johann Friederich was a son of Johann Martin Zitzer and his wife Maria Catharina.

Andrew Sitzer was born about 1743, and his given name was sometimes spelled "Andreas" and "Andries." He was baptized on October 16, 1743 at St Paul's (Zion's) Lutheran Church of Red Hook, Dutchess County, New York, and parents were listed as Friederich Zitzer and Anna Wingfiel. Baptismal sponsors at Red Hook were the baby's Great-Uncle Andreas and Great-Aunt Elisabet Zitzer.

Our Andreas was later married to Sarah Allen, variously spelled Sara, about 1760, and an Andrew Sitzer was married to an Elizabeth Ten Eyck December 1, 1799, at the Dutch Reformed Church, Coxsackie, Greene County, New York. [Coxsackie is on the Hudson River just south of Albany.]

From http://www.threerivershms.com/docnyhistservicemilitiacoxsackie.htm:
On March 26, 1781, Andrew Sitzer, Ensign, was assigned to the Eleventh Regiment (Coxsackie and Groote Imbocht) militia, along with James Waldron, Captain, Coenradt F. Ten Eyck, 1st Lieut., and Jacobus Moll, 2d Lieut. The men were from a Company that was formerly part of the Fifth Regiment.

Andrew's son David brought his family from Berne, Albany County, New York to the Sennett/Throopsville area of Cayuga County sometime between 1812 and 1815. He was a stonemason and settled there to work on the new state prison at Auburn. He owned an extensive amount of property on which he and his sons built a large farmhouse on what became known as Sittser Road. Upon his death the property was divided between his wife and their children "Andrew Sittser, Samuel Sittser, Matthew Sittser, Sally, wife of Thomas Barns, John Sittser & Peter Sittser."

10) John McNelley's last name was spelled a number of different ways by the family and legal documents, including McNelly, McAnnelly, McAnnally, McAnally, McNally, McInally, and for a time his son James spelled the last name "McNella" while some of his children spelled it "MacNelly." Regardless of the spelling, it is a sept of Clan Niall (from which comes MacNeill, O'Neill, etc.), one of the more ancient of the Irish and Scottish clans.

11) PA or NY: Cousin Harris Ely Hood claimed James Hood, Sr. was born in New Paltz, Ulster County, New York, as that locale was listed as the father's birthplace on James' son William McNelly Hood's death certificate. Mary (Hood) Barnes was not the only child of James and Catharine who believed James was born in PA, but the belief sometimes varied from census year to census year and from child to child as illustrated by the following chart. In the 1850 Federal census of Salisbury, LaSalle Co., Illinois, James claimed his birth state was PA. In the 1860 census of Moscow, Hillsdale Co., Michigan, he claimed it was NY. However, it was not unusual for a person's opinion to change about their own birth state from census to census, depending on memory and possible clarification between the census years. Very near the time of James' birth his parents were living in PA, presumably Turbot Twp., Northumberland Co. Also very close to his birth the family immigrated to the Romulus/Fayette area in Cayuga Co., NY-an area that soon became part of Seneca Co. The belief that James was born in PA persisted in the family history memoir passed to posterity by Mary's son William Hood Barnes.

James' older sister Elizabeth "Betsy" (b. 7-31-1792 PA d. 5-18-1886 NY) married Joseph McDuffie (b. 6-6-1788 NJ d. 12-29-1859 NY) on 1-10-1810 in Romulus, gave birth to ten children—the last when in her early 50s, and remained in the Romulus/Varick area for the last 88 years of her 94-year life. She claimed to have spent her first six years living near Muddy Run, a river in Turbot Township. That would have made the Robert and Jane Hood family's migration north about 1798, the year James turned two years old.

—	In 1880, Isabell “Belle” Fowle claimed that both parents were born in NY. In 1900 she claimed her father was born in NY and mother was born in PA.
—	In 1880, Jane Gale claimed that her father was born in NY and mother born in PA. In 1900 she claimed both were born in PA, and in 1910 that her father was born in PA and mother was born in Philadelphia.
—	In 1880, Mary Barnes claimed that both her parents were born in PA. In 1900 she claimed her father was born in NY and mother was born in PA.
—	In 1880 and 1900, Catharine Mills claimed that both her parents were born in NY. In 1910 she claimed her father was born in NY and mother born in PA.
—	In 1880 and 1900 Elizabeth Hendershot claimed that her father was born in NY and mother was born in PA. In 1910 she claimed that both were born in PA.
—	In 1880, Caroline Gale claimed that both her parents were born in NY. In 1900 she claimed that her father was born in PA and mother was born in NY.
—	In 1880, William Hood claimed that his father was born in NY and mother was born in Scotland. In 1900 and 1910 he claimed that his father was born in NY and mother was born in PA.

12) Research by Harris Ely Hood has come up with a marriage date for Catherine and James Hood as being August 28, 1825. This makes a lot of sense, since Catherine is closer to the normal marriage age, plus she didn't start having children until 1826. Incidentally, Catherine's sister Mary was married to her first husband Samuel Waddell about 1820.

13) Catherine was apparently born in 1808 rather than 1803. On her tombstone near South Lyon, Michigan, she is mentioned as being 34 years old when she died in 1842. The year 1808 was also the year her sister Isabel was born, so it looks like another set of twins. [Sets of twins: Isabel and William Duncan, Catherine and Isabel McNelley, William and James Hood, David and Doris Barnes, etc.]

Early Settlers at Ovid, New York

Last Month in the Life of John McNelly

Announcing availability of new Wilson/Duncan book. The title is, Great-Great-Grandfather Duncan Married...a Sister of Alexander Wilson the Ornithologist of Philadelphia.

Last modified: Monday July 20, 2009

Home or Return to the top