Sharing Stories

Hello Ferris Descendants!

This blog is dedicated to the lineage of Warren Angus Ferris (WAF) and his relatives. Ferris was a New York native and a descendant of 8 Mayflower passengers. He spent six years as a trapper and chronicler of the American West. During his adventures as a frontiersman, he kept a journal entitled “Life In the Rocky Mountains” which was later published by his younger brother, Charles Drake Ferris. He also created a map of the Salt Lake City area entitled “Map of the Northwest Fur Country”, which is also located at B.Y.U. Both Ferris brothers lived remarkable lives full of adventure. This blog will include material detailing their lives and also include stories about and letters from their families and descendants.

Every family needs a storyteller to pass stories from one generation to another. I ‘d like to share the material I’ve collected with anyone interested in this Ferris family line and also hope to inspire future family historians to delve into the amazing story of this Ferris family. Sharing stories from one generation to the next gives us a sense of identity, gratitude, resilience, cultural pride, and emotional connection to our ancestors.

I’d also encourage visiting and researching the Ferris-Lovejoy Family Papers collection located in the L. Tom Perry Library Special Collections at B.Y.U. in Provo, Utah. The collection is titled “Ferris-Lovejoy Family Papers” to include the family that Sarah (Gray) Ferris created after the death of her husband, Angus Ferriss in 1813. She married Joshua Lovejoy in 1815 and they had four children, Joshua, Sarah, Ruth and Maria Louisa. A great deal of the collection contains conversations between Sarah Lovejoy and her half-brothers, Warren and Charles. Much of the conversations include discussion about the tension between Warren Angus Ferris and and Joshua Lovejoy due to Warren accusing Joshua of swindling him out of 7 sections of land which Warren surveyed and purchased in Texas. This is a lengthy drama to be discussed in a future blog.

The Ferris-Lovejoy collection is open to the public and is in public domain. Everything posted on this blog is legally posted because it is in public domain, therefore there are no copyright infringements. To visit the collection, you must first make an appointment, which can be done on-line through the Special Collections website. The library will pull the specific boxes/material you request and allow you to review and photo in a protected viewing room. You are allowed to take photos for your own personal research.

Below is a photo of an original family letter written by Sarah (Gray-Ferris) Lovejoy, Warren’s mother. Note that the letter is written in cursive and utilizes the cross-writing technique by writing in one direction and then rotating it 90 degrees to add additional writing, The primary reason for cross-writing was to reduce the cost of sending mail. Before postal reforms in the mid-19th century, the recipient often paid for postage, and the cost was determined by the number of pages sent. By filling one sheet with as much writing as possible, including text in a perpendicular direction, the sender could get a long letter out for the price of a single page.

The Ferris-Lovejoy Family Papers collection was purchased by B.Y.U. from the man who built the collection, Walter McClausland, and added to their collection of Western Americana history. Mr. McClausland deserves credit for tirelessly researching and documenting the life stories of Warren Angus and Charles Drake Ferris. He was tenacious in pursing information on the brothers and fortunately all his findings have been preserved in a substantial collection. In researching the collection, B.Y.U. students have transcribed the original letters into typed manuscripts. The transcriptions were done prior to computerized word processors, so it’s very evident that traditional manual typewriters were utilized. These transcripts make reading and following the Ferris conversations so much easier, but you can really appreciate the vintage cross-written letters and the connection they give you to the authors. You may wonder why B.Y.U. has the collection of your ancestors’ papers, and that’s a valid question. The important thing to know is that the collection is well taken care of where it’s safe from loss from fire, flooding, mishandling, etc. It’s in a really safe place where it will be well maintained and available for all to view.

This blog will be assembled over time and won’t be following a specific time-line of events in the order of published material. I apologize for the dry style of writing, but I’m just presenting the material! I hope you enjoy the history!

Written by Anna Christine (Boles) Cohen (great-granddaughter (x3) of Warren Angus Ferris, great-granddaughter (x2) of Henry Ferris). Contact at greyhairfarm@yahoo.com