More Lasting Than Brass

Peter Haring Judd draws on a treasure trove of letters, photographs, and genealogical records to present the rich and colorful stories of members of the Haring, Herring, Clark, Denton, Phelps, White, Griggs, and Judd families, placing the individuals within the context of the social, economic, and historical forces that shaped their lives, as well as the regions and places where they resided and worked.

Judd follows the thread of the family's fortunes and misfortunes from people born under the British flag in New York City and the Hudson River Valley to their twentieth-century descendants in industrial Connecticut. The voices of these families reflect a wide range of experiences in a changing American landscape. Earlier generations participated in momentous events of the Revolution, were heirs of the early republic's expanding society and economy, and engaged in the northern campaign at Lake Ontario in the War of 1812. They were among the citizens who seized the opportunities afforded by access to former Indian lands in frontier New York and further west, and by a thriving commercial trade stimulated by steady improvements in transportation. Later generations carry the narrative to Minneapolis and then to Waterbury, Connecticut, where family members were part of the rise and fall of the once dynamic and bustling manufacturing center.

More Lasting than Brass also tells a human story, one that reveals men and women responding to surroundings and circumstances, marrying, divorcing, raising families, coping with illnesses, choosing paths to pursue, completing ventures, or having them cut short by mortality.

In this distinctive volume, Judd skillfully joins history and genealogy to re-create and illuminate the whole lives of individual family members against the backdrop of their times. Co-published with Newbury Street Press, imprint of the New England Historic Genealogical Society