With polygamy in the news these days, it seems a good time to report on my discovery of one of our stranger cousins. Fourth cousin five times removed to both Porter and me (through different lines), Aaron Johnson, born in 1806, the tenth of the thirteen children of Didymus and Rahuna (Stephens) Johnson, was just another name in my genealogical database, discovered during a convoluted search for the ancestors of Stephen Johnson, husband of Lucina Burr (sister of Porter's great-great-great grandmother) whose grave we found last summer in a small cemetery in Haddam, Connecticut.
Just another name, that is, until I found Aaron's entry in Paul Franklin Johnson's invaluable Genealogy of Captain John Johnson of Roxbury, Massachusetts. It's not unusual to find ancestors with more than one spouse, thanks to disease, war, and complications of childbirth. Large families were also not uncommon. But Aaron's entry stands out for covering two pages with his eleven wives and forty-three children! A perusal of the data makes all clear: although born in Haddam, Aaron died in Utah. Although the book presents only bare-bones genealogical data, Aaron's pages read like a history of the Mormon Church; in fact, he was apparently one of the church pioneers and was even a bishop.
That's a long way from Haddam.
