Vermont Ancestry

As we visit these beautiful places of Vermont we are reminded that we have ancestrial roots here in the rocky soil of this Green Mountain state.

Welcome Benjamin Chapman was born in the village of Readsboro, Bennington County, Vermont on July 24, 1805. He was a contemporary of the Prophet Joseph Smith, born in the same year and in the same state. His grandparents, Throop and Deborah Chapman were among the earliest settlers in Readsboro, coming there in 1784.

Welcome's parents, Benjamin and Sibyl(Amidon)Chapman, moved from Readsboro to the area of Syracuse, New York when Welcome was only 2-years-old. So, his growing up years were in upstate New York. His first serious life's work was as a cook on a fishing vessel on Lake Ontario. He was in the Great Lakes and north Atlantic fishing trade until he began courting his future wife Susan Amelia Risely, a native of Madison, NY sometime around 1831. As Susan's parents looked negatively upon her suiter being a fisherman by trade and since he had earlier apprenticed as a stone cutter, Welcome forsook his life as a commercial fisherman and became a stone cutter, a cooper (a maker of barrels) and a farmer. He would have been around 26 years of age.

When he first learned of Joseph Smith and the Restoration Welcome saddled a horse and rode over 200 miles down to Kirtland, Ohio where he spent several days with the Prophet Joseph, and was baptized. He is the first of our Chapman line to become a member of the LDS Church.

On the Burnham side, James Lewis Burnham was born in Waitsfield, Washington County, Vermont on October 29, 1813. We do not have his history with us on our trip, but he most likely grew to manhood in the same area as he was wed to Mary Ann Huntley in 1834 and she was also a native of Waitsfield, VT, born there in 1816. The only other thing our limited record shows is that Mary Huntley Burnham gave birth to great grandfather George Franklin Burnham in October 1839 in Woodstock, Illinois. James must have joined the Church and brought his wife and family to gather with the Saints to the Nauvoo area. He died at the young age of 32 in Nauvoo.