I noticed on GeneaBloggers website that one of their popular writing prompts is called Matrilineal Mondays. The concept is simple: Post about some one from the female line of one of the families you are researching.  I quickly decided it was a great idea and that I would write about Amy Fettie for my first Matrilineal Monday meandering.

Amy’s mother, whose name we still don’t know, is the missing matrilineal link for my husband’s mother’s family. We thought Amy was of French or Swiss French descent based on a MtDNA test done by a female direct descendant of Amy Fettie. Update: It turns out she was most likely German. But those borders were fluid then.

We don’t know a lot about Amy Fettie but my sister-in-law and I are obsessed with finding out where she came from, when exactly she was born, who her parents were, did she have any siblings, and where she is buried? We spend endless hours speculating on her origins and often find ourselves traveling down dead ends as we continue on our search to find out about her parentage. The mid-1700s is a time period that was well documented for New York and the surrounding colonies. Staten Island, where her husband’s family had lived since the late 1600s is well researched and most of the islands church and civil records held by the Staten Island Historical Society were catalogued and indexed in a WPA project during the 1940s and later microfilmed by the Latter Day Saints. I have searched most every microfilm record I could find for Amy Fettie, her husband, and her descendants, as well as collateral lines of the family. Knowing how easy it is to miss an important fact or clue I will just have to look through them all again. A person doesn’t just pop up out of thin air!

While we have no portraits of Amy, I did recently find a reproduction of  a oil painting of her son, Captain Henry Fountain, that was painted by an English artist who was living in New York at the time (Source: Ancestry.com). This painting hung in the Fountain House Inn, Shore Road, West New Brighton, Staten Island, NY, which Capt. Henry Fountain and his brother John Vincent Fountain owned and ran. The building unfortunately no longer exists.

As I look at Henry’s portrait I try to imagine what his mother and sister looked like. In my imagination Amy and her mother have the same dark hair and eyes and very fair skin as Henry.

It’s been difficult to find any records for Amy Fettie (est. 1748 – est 1793). The surname FETTIE seems almost non-existant in New York and New Jersey in the records of  that time period. The first vital record for her is her marriage bond to Vincent Fountain (1748 – 1819) dated 2 June 1772 (source: NY Marriage Bonds). The record does not give any indication as to exactly where the marriage took place — was it on Staten Island, or perhaps Manhattan? All we know from this record is that it was in New York State. Extensive searches of the available church records for Staten Island have yet to yield more details that might give us a clue as to where and when Amy was born, or any other details of her life other than her marriage to Vincent and the birth of her children.

Amy and Vincent had 4 children together: Their first child Anthony  was born a respectable 10 months after their marriage (4 March 1773 – 21 Jan 1844).  John Vincent was born nine years later (1782 – 4 Sep 1861) and then about a year later Henry was born (1783 – 28 May 1863). After a four year gap their daughter Mary was born (27 Dec 1787 – 13 Feb 1842). It is Mary who is the next female in this matrilineal line. Some family trees published online show Mary Fountain as the daughter of Vincent’s second wife but this is not accurate as she was born six years before their marriage. Mary became the wife of Abraham Van Pelt, a member of another old-time Staten Island family with roots going back to late 1600s.

When Vincent Fountain was enumerated in the first US Federal Census, taken in 1790, two females were in his household. Only Vincent’s name is mentioned however the census indicates that along with other male members of the family there were two females in his household, who we can assume were Amy and their 3 year old daughter Mary. This is the last record I can find in which Amy was alive.

The next vital record found for the family is for Vincent Fountain and it is dated four years after the census was taken. On Feb. 25, 1974,  Vincent married Elsey Jennings aka Alice Jinnings (1768 – 1841) at Moravian Church, New Dorp, Staten Island, NY. Vincent and Elsey had six children together, and presumably she filled the role of step-mother to at least the younger two of Amy’s children. The Fountain family on Staten Island was always fairly well off and both Vincent and Elsey are mentioned in various deeds of land transactions. Vincent’s accidental death was well reported in the New York Post and other newspapers. While Vincent’s funeral was held at St. Andrews Episcopal Church he was buried at Moravian Cemetery in New Dorp.  His wife Elsey, who died some twenty years later was buried with him. This fact was confirmed by Richard L. Simpson, historian at Moravian Cemetery.  Mr. Simpson was not able to tell me whether Amy Fettie Fountain was buried there or not.  Most likely she was laid to rest in family burying grounds that have since been obliterated, like so many others on the Island.

I will continue to search for information on this matrilineal line and hopefully will be able to add a post script one day in the near future.

2022 Update:

I have ruled out the possibility that Amy was the daughter of Abraham Betts of Fairfield County, CT. Abraham Betts will and probate records finally became available online. That showed his daughter Amy’s married name of Amy Williams. Further research uncovered the subsequent property deeds. Amy and her husband inherited some of the property, which they later sold. The reason I had pursued this possibility was that members of the Betts family lived on Staten Island and one of Amy Bett’s cousins was married to a brother of Vincent Fountain. I apologize to anyone who grabbed onto this name/family and appended it to Amy Fettie.

I have also ruled out the Veghte family of Staten Island and New Jersey. They had ties to Staten Island and the Moravian Church and to the Fountain family but no historical records or DNA test results matched up to prove a plausible relationship.

2025 update or what’s old is new again.

When Carolyn and I first started researching the Fountain ancestors we came across a man named George Martin Fetty who was born June 7, 1755, approximately 2 years younger than Amy Fettie. Try as we might, we could not find a single record to tie the two together. I still haven’t found birth records for Amy or George. His birth date was noted on his gravestone (died March 22, 1848 in Monongalia, West Virginia).

At one point during our research into the Fetty ancestry, Carolyn came across the Fetty site and contacted them about participating in their DNA project. They were interested in establishing the Y-DNA line but said sure, take the mtDNA test and send us the results. You never know how it might help out someday in our family research. Well, that was long ago and nothing came of it. I have no idea what, if anything, they did with her mtDNA test, or whether she even kept a copy of the file herself. After her passing in 2019, I continued the quest to determine who Amy Fettie’s parents were. Carolyn had given me viewing rights to her Ancestry.DNA autosomal test and I kept looking for Fetty/Fettie matches. She currently has about 10 DNA matches with direct descendants of George Martin Fetty.

George Martin Fetty fought in the Revolutionary War. Moved to Pennsylvania and then moved again to Monongalia County, Virginia (now West Virginia) where most of his many descendants still live. (Curiously, one of them lived next door to Carolyn’s daughter for a few years in West Virginia and we thought it would be ironic if George Martin Fetty were indeed Amy Fettie’s brother but brushed it off as an oddity.) At the same time that George M. Fetty was fighting for American independence, Amy was presumably living on Staten Island, which was occupied by the British army. Her husband Vincent Fountain served in the local militia on the British side. He was called as a witness in a court martial trial during the war. Many people on Staten Island just wanted the status quo so they could continue to farm and mind their own business. After the war, the staunch loyalists moved out of New York, but everyone else just got on with their lives. To be continued.

an Ancestry.com autosomal DNA test.