Heretics and Rebels

This will be a rare post, a story about the Royce Clan (on the Moore side).  This is not a family that I am focusing on right now, as most of that research was completed long ago.  But this story is worth it, because it shows the high drama of family history research.

Grandma has often expressed less than a positive opinion about digging into her family's past.  At one point she informed me that they "turned their backs on the church." The Royce family has a long history in New Englad so like any good family, there are certainly some skeletons in that closet.  And that is okay. 

Here's the saga of Uzziel Royce: heretic and rebel

Uzziel Royce was born in Mansfield, Connecticut in 1758.  Fast forward past all of the research that I don't know.  Uzziel Royce was an original congregant of the first Baptist Church in Sullivan, County NY.  It is weird to think of anyone on Grandma's side as Baptist!

He was excommunicated.  Here's what The History of Sullivan County has to say about that

"And in this connection it may not be amiss to say that while at the first supper of our Lord there was one Judas at this judging from subsequent events there were about half a dozen. Uzziel Royce was excommunicated because he believed in open communion. Jonathan Reynolds because he wronged a brother. Jesse Bradley for intemperance. Ananias Warring walked with the brotherhood until he was an old man when he came to the conclusion that the Baptists of Thompson were a bad set and he was cut off. Shadrach Schofield during a controversy as to keeping the first or last day of the week holy concluded that all days were equally sacred and worked on Sunday and Ann Davies believing that the Church of Thompson dealt harshly and unjustly with her husband was honest enough to say so for which she was expelled from the fold. Even the good Elder himself was for a time denounced by this congregation as a child of the devil aud was driven from the sanctuary as if he were a moral leper."


I'm a big fan of open communion myself.  And I work most Sundays, too.