Grant Family History

The Grant family can be divided into four parts by grandparents – Grant, Blakeslee, Boydston, and Gray.  William Grant and his wife Margaret Fitzgerald would move from Northern Ireland to New Haven Connecticut in 1849.  There he would be a road paver for many decades for the city.  Their eight children would all grow up and get married in New Haven.  Their second child Edward would marry Theodosia W Blakeslee in 1906 and they too would raise their family in New Haven.  Edward would be a chef for the Saint Thomas Seminary for many decades.

Theodosia better known as Carrie had parents of Walter Henry Blakeslee and Ann Smith.  Walter Blakeslee would graduate from the art school of Yale College in about 1874.  Besides odd jobs and raising a family, he also started a business Blakeslee and Thomas Scenic Artists in New Haven.  I have not been able to find any examples of his art but I did find while searching that he also composed music.  He wrote a musical score called “Old Pump on the Green”.  Walter Blakeslee had a father named Henry and a grandfather named Walter.  Henry was a blacksmith and Walter was a shoemaker.  This Blakeslee side is of Connecticut origin and that shows by their trades being skilled ones instead of taking mill jobs like immigrants.

Floyd Henry Toles Boydston served as a gunner on the USS Texas during World War I.  He was the son of Ohio and Connecticut farmers.  His grandfather Smith Willis Toles was a reverend of the Methodist Church in Bethlehem of Litchfield County Connecticut for many decades.  Floyd’s great grandparents Dwight Gates and Elizabeth P Higley had their 50th wedding anniversary in 1903 when Floyd was 8 years old.  There was an extremely long story about it in the Hartford Courant that listed every relative that the couple had.  Imagine the list on such a large family.

Patrick Gray came from Killarney of County Kerry Ireland in 1890.  Five years later he married Delia Gaffney who was also from that location in Ireland.  Their daughter Anna would marry in 1915 in Hamden Connecticut to the above Floyd Boydston.  Their granddaughter would marry in 1977 also in Hamden Connecticut to a member of the Spoor family.  The Spoor – Brault family has been written about extensively before.  I would love in the future to visit New Haven to find the gravestones of these four families.  Better then that I would also like to locate art work of Walter Blakeslee and to determine the church that Boydston and Gray were married in.