The Chair: Volume I

Chapter 2 Leann-1

Chapter 2

LeannLorileigh Ramsey Johnstone sailed to the Massachusetts Bay Colony with her infant daughter Lilith, called Lily, aboard ship Lyon (English registry) in November of 1631. Her father-in-law, uncle and guardian, John Winthrop, who served as Governor of Colony and had made passage available to them after her husband Rodney, a lieutenant in the English Navy, had perished at sea in a drowning accident while slipping from the mainsail on the H.M.S Indefatigable in a fierce storm off the Cape of Good Hope south of Africa while en route to India and the Far East.

In 1632, Lorileigh married a wealthy landowner named Captain Ronald Fletcher. He owned land in Massachusetts, Maine, and Rhode Island, along with holding various acreage throughout the northeast on up and until what is known today as the St. Lawrence Seaway. A marriage arranged by her uncle Governor John Winthrop. In 1640, the Fletchers acquired more barren and fertile land near today what is New Brighton, Connecticut. Lorileigh is considered one of the founders of first New Brighton, and then Greenwich, originally known briefly as “Greenwich Point,” then successively known for much of its early history as 'Lorileigh's Pointe,’ but changed in 1955 to ‘Lorrie’s Lash™’, one of the many trademarked companies her descendant “Lana” began in her life, in recognition of both Divine Providence and The Luck of the Irish, which she credits for having made possible her “extraordinary success in fashion, the motion picture industry, and cosmetics,” which was, of course a tribute and large real estate acquisition by her descendant “great granddaughter down the line many generations, more than ten,” Lana (née) Plough McCracken. Lorileigh Johnstone and their purchase in 1640 of “The Pointe” and much of what is today is nearly a third of Connecticut. A woman owning such property in her own name was viewed with dismay in “hoity toity, puddin’ ‘n pie, kiss the girls and make them cry too cool for school” upper crust society of then. Lorileigh sent a leaflet written in her own longhand at the time in response to any, and there were many, villagers, townspeople, and churchgoers, informing them all to literally “stay the Hell out of my business.” Captain Fletcher went insane and abandoned Lorileigh and Lilith, reportedly because of difficulty within the marriage, financial difficulties, due to losing at games of chance such as high card and dice, and having been poisoned, it was later found out, by some intentionally tainted grog by a bordello and innkeeper named Kenneth McDougald. Captain Fletcher, for all his faults and setbacks, is however, known for the popularized game known as “I’m thinking of a number between 1 and 10.” Locally it was called “Number,” not “Numbers.” Drunken brawlers, dart players, and local furniture makers, both turners and joiners, loved playing the game.

It is important to note that there is a document, apparently official, from now present-day New York state, and also Pennsylvania, along with Illinois apparently, that traces the “grand and great” mothers, the descendants of Lorileigh, all written in various longhand cursive form of the times, that chronicles basically a lineage, a line of descendants and ancestors, officially recorded also in churches for posterity:

Lorileigh (née Wentworth) Johnstone, then Fletcher, then Hawthorne b. 1611

Lilith (née Johnstone) Archer 1631

Lila (née Archer) Baker 1652

Lydia (née Baker) Douglas, then Edwards 1675

Layla Meadow (née Douglas) Franklin 1700

Louise Mae (née Franklin) Garner 1718

Lynn Anne (née Garner) Hamilton 1737

Lena Constance (née Hamilton) Jackson 1756

Lisa Rose (née Jackson) Kelly 1774

Lucille (née Kelly) Lee 1790

Lydia Audrey (née Lee) Miller 1807

Laura (née Miller) Nicholson 1825

Lyon (née Nicholson) Peterson 1844

Lycynthia (née Peterson) Pierpont1865

Lacey (née Pierpont) Curran 1881

Leann (née Curran) Plough 1898

Daughter Lana Plough was born to Hiram “Hires” and Leann (née Curran ) Plough on November 11, 1918, a significant date in both world and American history. Hiram’s brother was Abe Plough. They were both sons of Moses and Julia (née Isaacs) Plough. There remain some actual certificates of birth either from local churches and or registrars, for most all of Lorileigh’s ancestors, and for all of her descendants to date.

Following her husband’s so called “desertion,” essentially becoming a crazy man achieving what some termed “village i***t” status, Lorileigh outraged the locals by marrying her husband’s business manager, William Hawthorne, who was considered a horse trader and excellent yeoman, an archer, he having sheared a moose’s head off with a crossbow shot by an arrow with blue jay feathers from two hundred yards in the deep thicket woods, and who was also “pretty good with a musket.” There was no documented written evidence that Lorileigh and Captain Fletcher were officially divorced in either the eyes of the church, or legal local and territorial arms of the semi-council governments, although these organizations were more focused on constant bickering and “dispute resolution,” including an occasional “fence feud,” mostly over water rights, river access, hunting seasons, livestock bartering, and crop rotation ordinances, so any such documentation re any such “divorce” may very well have been sequestered away in a basement. Amidst this scandal, it was only her close blood relationship to the Governor which saved her from prosecution for adultery, an offense then, if found guilty, the sentence being hanging until dead. Why way back then, if your head popped off while hanging, some newly formed sects, including those who became “witches” were allowed, and even encouraged, to taking the head of the deceased, attaching it to a large stake, blood draining everywhere, light it on fire, and run it through the village with it, screaming and pretending to be warriors and broods of indigenous or mysterious ghostly peoples. It was strangely, during that time in Colonial America, considered very good fun, a nice capper to a tragic event that enabled people to have some closure, however bizarre historians later considered the tradition. Whatever, undaunted, Lorileigh, her new husband, and the child Lilith were forced to leave Connecticut and Massachusetts for New York, then called New Netherlands, “where land deals where available at a good price,” and where they were recognized as a legitimately married twosome, likely because of a lifetime friendship Lorileigh formed with Judith Stuyvesant, wife of Dutchman Peter Stuyvesant, one of the founders of Manhattan, that island in middle of what is now New York City. Then the Hawthorne’s moved to what was later called “Hawthorne’s Cove,” with Lorileigh having gone out hustling land deals to build and secure boat slip ownership entirely in what is today known as Astoria and Queens.

In 1654, Lorileigh and her family survived an attack by a band from the Hackensack tribe of Indians, who set fire to their house and barn, burning down both. Lorileigh, overwhelmed at the prospect of rebuilding there, then purchased land in what became Rye and then Newton in the autumn from Lawrence Patterson. Patterson had told Lorileigh, “I have had enough of all this growth and infusion of strangers. I will make you an offer you can’t refuse. I must get out of here soon or I will lose my mind. I am leaving for the west.” Patterson, it is said, eventually settled, by himself, “many miles south” of what became Fort Pitt, (named for England’s Earl of Chatham) on what was known as the Monongahela River. He reportedly was later butchered by a local gang of Frenchmen, some explorers, who claimed he was “festooned and adorned half naked in feathers and leaves with colored paints reflecting off his body indicating to us he was of the native savage tribes.” The following year, William Hawthorne, was made Schout, a Dutch word for “Chief Governmental Official,” in the area that had become Rye, New York.

Records, sketchy, but consistently direct when unearthed from storage drawers or trunks in libraries, churches, and civic halls of records, on dusty dirty decrepit shelves, show that Lorileigh “has numerous descendants in the United States, including those descending from her original marriage to Rodney Johnstone in London, England. Lorileigh’s daughter Lilith married Casey Brown, who was a zealot for religious freedom with his efforts in what was known as Nyack Remembrance, which has been forgotten. Lilith became a major importer of Irish lace, creating a black market for it, and making personal deliveries in a two-horse drawn wagon, with “Lilith’s Lace” in gold fleck lettering on a black lacquer facing, in shiny silk paper boxes to high wealth clients throughout New York City.

Reportedly, then the ancestral family of Lana emigrated to Tennessee and Kentucky, and points south.

After the Civil War, and on through the migration to the American West, with its tales of opportunity, fame, fortune, and fraud, there had been much consternation about the new rising visible role of women, not just in politics and government, but in business, including the fashion industry. Women were still not permitted to vote, and there were many restrictions regarding the ownership of land. Of course, there were no women in Congress or in state legislatures. However, that changed after the war.

This rise in the participation of women in government was due in large part because of the absolute slaughter and decimation of men in the ranks of the defeated and destroyed Confederate army, necessitating the women and children left behind in the South to fight and fend for themselves.

One such woman was from Gabriel, Georgia, who ascended to Sheriff. Sydney Colleen Colbert, who was, as an orphan, transplanted from her childhood home in rural France to the intellectual and artistic splendor of Paris. Soon after, she takes up both writing and sewing, including macramé and embroidery. She pens a fantastical novel at age fifteen, “L’incroyable Voyage de Candice,” about the lifelong “incredible voyage” of a cunning and bold country girl named Candice, but the nuns at the orphanage she has lived at since age two, get wind of it late one night when they notice a light in the dormitory window, spying a candle Sydney has lit to finalize her story, and destroy it. However, Sydney has made a copy, with notes of it, kept in the attic above the kitchen and cafeteria which she also wrote by hand simultaneously with “the original.” Sydney has an admirer, Pierre LeBlanc, another orphan, from Marseilles. The two of them go off one weekend to the “City of Lights,” walking, after midnight, being picked up by coach, and walking again, finally riding in the back of a fruit and vegetable wagon the majority of the trip. Shortly after their arrival in Paris, they find a way to get Sydney’s book, entitled now printed and stored by Jean-Claude Killy, a Parisian artisan, newspaperman, bon vivant, and restauranteur, in the attic of his five-level flat. Killy was an ancestor of the legendary French skier and Olympic Champion of 1968 who is also named Jean-Claude Killy. Sydney had noticed his name as a writer for one of the columns on the front page in the newspaper Le Figaro, that had found its way into the antiseptic, cold, and unforgiving orphanage.

It is not clear when exactly, or more importantly why, the two chose to return to the orphanage. Suffice it to say, likely sometime of punishment, including beatings, and being given even more menial tasks to complete were marshalled at them both by the nuns. Pierre was never heard from again. It is thought he ran away and perhaps joined the Army, maybe even the Legion. There also remains confusion as to exactly what all happened at this point, but a few years later, at age 18, and allowed to leave the orphanage of her own free will, as long as there was a “job prospect,” or some generally defined “opportunity,” Sydney meets an American in Paris, Geoffrey Anderson, from Atlanta, Georgia, a buyer of fine wines, who had first a business, and then a personal friendship with Killy. Somehow, someway, after a brief courtship, and drunk on champagne, Geoffrey proposes to Sydney in a café serving only local “peasant food,” ripe with chicken, eggs, and dandelion salads, with secondary Italian olive oils, and the two are married, in the Gare du Nord train station of all places. Revealing her book “L’incroyable Voyage de Candice,” Geoffrey, Jean-Claude, and Sydney take the four hundred fifty-page manuscript to Parisian book publisher L. Hachette, named for Louis Hachette, from whom Geoffrey had bought wine, and was also a close friend of Jean-Claude.