Τ' CHAPTER I THE STOCK HE family of Cyrus Northrop had thrust its roots seven generations deep into the hard soil of Connecticut before it flowered in the man whose life is the subject of this record. Like most family trees, it began to branch long before it flowered, and Mr. A. Judd Northrup has traced its ramifications in the Northrup-Northrop Genealogy (Grafton Press) from its single representative in the first generation to its two hundred and forty-four representatives in the sixth and three hundred and twenty-one representatives in the seventh generation in which our Cyrus makes his presence known. The name Northrop' is pure English and Old English, and its etymology is easily discerned. "North" explains itself, and "thorp" is a fine old word for village, fellow to the German "Dorf", and familiar in proper names, either as Thorpe pure and simple or as the final syllable of vigorous and clean-cut surnames, Althorp, Oglethorpe, Ellithorpe, Crackenthorpe, and the like. "Northrop", then, is simply the man of the north thorp or north village. The change from "or" to "ro" in the last syllable is entirely regular. The complacence of the letter "r" in changing places with a neighboring vowel is a trait familiar to philologists and in this case the demand for the reversal is imperious. "Norththorp" is impossible; the two "th's" gride upon each other as harshly as the cylinders of a wringer; and 'The assiduity in Mr. Judd Northrup's book is prodigious, but it has not quite protected him from errors. For instance, in the half-page which is Cyrus Northrop's apportionment among the other hungry candidates for space, two mistakes are noted in pencil, probably in the President's own hand: "Winnie" for "Minnie' in the name of his elder daughter, and "Josiah" for "Joseph" in the name of his wife's father. But the amplest allowance must be made for the difficulties of the genealogist whose problem is often to obtain exactness from the inexact. His materials are often in a quite literal sense "old wives' tales", and it is small wonder if the innuendo associated with the phrase should apply to parts of the results of his inquiries. "Northorp" is more impossible yet, if there can be graduation in impossibility. The spelling "Northrop" settles every difficulty. "Throp" for "thorp" in the simple word is old-at least as old as Chaucer. Chaucer puts his Griselda in the Clerk's Tale in a "throp", as Tennyson, later on, put his Enoch Arden -another person of somewhat overwhelming virtue-in a "thorp". The poets have a relish for the word. "Northrop", thus modified, became a forceful and suggestive name, a name that in its flexible solidity reminds one of a wooden stave, and expresses to the ear with singular accuracy that peculiar combination of massiveness and resilience which constituted so much of the originality of Cyrus Northrop. The name Cyrus, inherited by our President from his father, reenforces, by its broad, rounded, axle-like quality, the impression of the surname. "Cyrus Northrop" was a man's name; each syllable was muscular. The usual spelling for the last syllable of the surname in England was "throp" or "thrope". The popular The popular spelling "rup" appears to have been later in time and American in locality. Mr. Judd Northrup, who belongs to the "rup" branch and perhaps to the "rup" party, affirms that the three Josephs who are the pioneers of the stock in America spelled their last name Northrup, as their wills and tombstones testify. In America, according to this authority, the form Northrop is an innovation, or, more properly, a renovation, of the old English spelling which adhered to the derivation of the word. The State of Minnesota will rejoice to be told that Cyrus Northrop's earliest ancestors in Connecticut spelled the name "rup". That resolute commonwealth did not permit itself to be swerved from its determination to write "rup" by the University President's courteous suggestion that he knew how to spell his own name. It was the one point on which the community in which he lived had decided that his opinion was valueless. The family of Cyrus Northrop is hardly traceable in English records; its history begins with the migration of its American founder, the first Joseph, perhaps from Yorkshire, who, with Eaton and Davenport's Company, on the ships Hector and Martin landed at Boston on the twenty-sixth of July, 1637. The sharers in the undertaking are collectively described as men "of good character and fortune", probably an entirely worthless testimony to a perfectly authentic fact. They came mostly from Yorkshire, Hertfordshire, and Kent, and their stay in Massachusetts was extremely brief. By April, 1638, according to Mr. Judd Northrup, (whose lead is gratefully followed in this and many subsequent particulars), they were settled in New Haven, and by November thirtieth, 1639, a number of them had left New Haven and planted the town of Milford. The rather interesting fact that Joseph, who belonged to this party, was not then a member of its church is disclosed by the equally interesting circumstance that his name appears after, not among, the list of "the free planters of the town". In those days of appalling certainties and formidable doubts, it is curious to watch a Northrop hesitating on the threshold of the church. By January ninth, 1642, his irresolutions had vanished. He became a member of the First Church in Milford. He married Mary Norton, who bore him seven sons and one daughter. The eldest of these sons, another Joseph, born 1649, became freeman of Milford in 1670, and married Miriam Blakeman; the second of three successive Josephs married the third of four consecutive Miriams, all of whom, except the fourth Miriam, were forefathers or foremothers, in the direct line, of Cyrus Northrop. The grandfather of this Miriam Blakeman who married Joseph was the Reverend Aaron Blakeman who had affiliations by birth with Stratfordshire, England, and by nurture with Christ College, Oxford; and in view of the later distinctions at which the family was to arrive, it is pleasant to think of his bringing to America in 1638 a memory to be |