Descendants of Richard Trott of Pitminster, Somerset, who settled Wethersfield, Connecticut, in 1637.
Nearly every Treat in America descends from one man, Richard Trott, baptised in the church at Pitminster in 1584, who crossed the Atlantic with his family in the 1630s and became Richard Treat of Wethersfield. His son Robert founded Newark and governed Connecticut; a grandson preached on Cape Cod; a great-great-grandson carried the name up the Penobscot, where the Maine Treats have been ever since.
Two games built by the family, for the family. Both run in the browser on a phone or a laptop, and every square and every stop carries a line of the real history.
The family's board game: forty spaces in order from Set Sail 1637 to Return to Pitminster, the Charter Oak and the Family Bible for the two decks, a lobster bake for free parking. Play online with family in other houses, or against bots named for the ancestors.
Play Treatopoly
Three hundred and eighty-nine years from Pitminster in the style of the Oregon Trail: the crossing, Wethersfield, Newark, the Penobscot and on. Buy provisions, mind the rations and the weather, and get the family through.
Play the Treat TrailChecked against the 1893 genealogy and the published record. Most of these are cousins; the family's direct Maine line is set out below.
Within one generation of landing, the family was named in Connecticut's royal charter, had founded Newark, and held the colony's governorship.
1584–1669/70
The immigrant. Baptised Richard Trott at Pitminster, married Alice Gaylord there in 1615, settled at Wethersfield by 1641; deputy and magistrate of the Connecticut General Court, and one of the nineteen patentees named in the 1662 Royal Charter.
1624/5–1710
Richard's son. Helped lay out Milford as a teenager, led the Milford Puritans who founded Newark in 1666, commanded Connecticut's troops in King Philip's War, and was governor of the colony through the Charter Oak affair of 1687.
1634–1708/9
Richard's youngest son; the Wethersfield line, from which the Revolutionary soldier Charles Treat descends.
1648–1716/17
Governor Robert's son; minister at Eastham on Cape Cod for forty-five years and a missionary to the Nauset people.
1731–1814
Rev. Samuel's grandson through his daughter Eunice. Prosecutor at the Boston Massacre trials, signer of the Declaration of Independence, first attorney general of Massachusetts.
1735/6–1795
Governor Robert's great-grandson; physician in the Revolutionary army and New York's health officer.
1690–1756
Rev. Samuel's son and the first Treat in Boston, a gunsmith licensed to the province; father of the Maine line.
Lt. Joshua Treat came up the Penobscot in 1759 as armourer at Fort Pownall, and the family stayed.
1729–1802
Joseph the gunsmith's son; armourer and interpreter at Fort Pownall, and by tradition the first settler on the Penobscot above the fort. Frankfort, Prospect and Winterport descend from his household.
1752–1824
Joshua's half-brother, the family's man at Bangor; his day book is a record of the early river trade.
1775–1853
Maj. Robert's son; surveyed the Penobscot country for Massachusetts in 1820, with Penobscot guides, and was on the first recorded ascent of Katahdin.
1798–1894
Lt. Joshua's grandson, of Orono; lumberman, state senator and railroad man on the Penobscot.
1808–1883
Lt. Joshua's grandson, of Eastport; among the first to can lobster, and the name on Treat Island at the mouth of the Bay of Fundy.
1841–1910
Of Frankfort and New York; Treasurer of the United States under Theodore Roosevelt, 1905–09.
1817/19–1907
Of Frankfort; reached San Francisco in 1849, raced horses, fought slavery, and left his name on Treat Avenue in the Mission.
1815–1902
Born Portsmouth, New Hampshire; United States district judge at St. Louis for thirty years, and a founder of what became the Washington University law school.
1811–1887
Of the Matthias line; Illinois Supreme Court justice and United States district judge, a colleague and friend of Abraham Lincoln on the circuit.
1833–1912
Private, 52nd Ohio Infantry; Medal of Honor for Buzzard's Roost, Georgia, 1864.
1839–1908
Of Lawrence, Massachusetts; the family historian. His 1893 genealogy is the book the family still keeps, and in 1902 he placed the brass to Richard and Robert in the church at Pitminster.
1816–1886
Bridgeport lawyer; Connecticut's delegate to the 1861 Peace Conference and later Speaker of the state House.
1918–2010
Born Winterport, Maine. Chairman of the New Hampshire Republican party, national committeeman, probate judge for twenty-five years, founder of Bank Meridian, and a member of the UN sub-commission on minorities in Geneva. The Judge William W. Treat Fellowship at the University of New Hampshire carries his name.
1859–1941
Born Orono; commandant of cadets at West Point and chief of the American military mission to Italy in 1918.
1879–1972
Stanford historian; held the first chair of Far Eastern history in the United States.
1905–1969
Sportswriter; compiled the Official Encyclopedia of Football and campaigned against the colour line in the pro game.
1900–1947
Princeton tackle, consensus All-American in 1922.
1907–2004
Biologist at City College of New York who discovered the mites that live in moths' ears.
The documented male line, generation by generation, as kept on the family tree and checked against the 1893 genealogy. The living generations are left off a public page.
The church of St Andrew and St Mary, where Richard was baptised in 1584 and married in 1615, still stands four miles south of Taunton, with the brass that John Harvey Treat placed there in 1902.
The family keeps a separate site about the church, the village and the families who sailed from it, with a family wall where cousins can leave a note.
The Treat Family