Years ago, my father's cousin Gordon was an avid researcher of Barron family history. And then when I became interested in genealogy, many years after he passed, I eventually ended up with copies of his research.
One brick wall that he was never able to break through was finding the parents of Alice Elizabeth Castell. She was married to Edward Adrian Barron and they were my great-grandparents.
Finding Alice's parents became an early obsession for me. With the benefit of digitized records, I've been able to progress much further than Gordon ever had. Using census records and meticulous poring over images, I was eventually able to connect Alice to a family in the 1900 census where she was a niece living in the large Venable household that also contained her grandparents, David and Elizabeth McKenzie.
Once I found the McKenzie name, there was a little more digging involved, filling out the family tree of her aunt and her grandparents. Eventually I was able to connect Alice to her parents: John Castell and Elizabeth McKenzie (named after her mother, so that took a little untangling).
Now, you're probably wondering, how does this make the Barron family connected to a pirate privateer?
It turns out that the Castells of Washington D.C. (of which there were a great many), at some point had changed their name from Casteel. And, being lucky to have ancestors in Washington D.C. in the 1800s, it meant I had access to lots of digitized resources. It wasn't long before I connected my Castell family to a gentleman named Edmund Casteel.
Edmund Casteel, it turns out, was the great-great-grandson of the privateer Edmond du Chastel.
For an in-depth look into Edmond du Chastel, this website has some great information. What follows below is a summary of Edmond's life.
Edmond du Chastel first appears on the scene in Philadelpia in 1692 as part of a document listing Red Sea pirates who came to Pennsylvania from South Carolina. Prior to that, Edmond may have been in the West Indies or Virginia, where other du Chastels and Casteels are known to have migrated. But we really don't know.
Casteel researchers are working on finding the rumored connection to the du Chastel de Blangerval family from Flanders. As far as I understand it, this connection is assumed, but not yet proven. The reasoning behind this assumed connection is a signet ring mentioned in Edmond's wife's will that is similar to the signet used by the du Chastel de Blangerval family.
Edmond quickly settled into life in Philadelphia, appearing on the 1693 list of taxpayers and in a marriage record to Christian Bom that same year. He also appears as a witness on some business transactions.
The biggest event to note is that in 1697, Edmond was named as one of a group of "old pirates" in Philadelphia who local officials were trying to arrest and prosecute. While this was being sorted out, Edmond may have gone into hiding (or it could have been a lucky coincidental visit) as he appears on a list of patients in 1698 at a early health resort type of place in Maryland.
Regardless, by 1698 or therabouts, things had settled down enough for Edmond to continue his shipping career and success as a Philadelphia merchant.
1702 marked the beginning of Queen Anne's War. In November of 1706 (or possibly 1705 or 1707; there is some confusion on transcribing the documents), Edmond du Castell was commissioned as a privateer and appointed commander of the sloop Resolution.
Edmond's commision was to last two years, but it's unknown how long he continued. In 1710, he signed as witness in a court record in Barbados. After that, there are no known records of his whereabouts.
Edmond's will, written in 1702, was admitted to probate in March 1714, although there is not a definitive record of precisely when he died. It's possible he died in a measles epidemic that swept the east coast and reached Philadelphia in the Spring of 1714.
Even if we never find out the correct ancestry prior to Edmond du Chastel, or more details about his life, it's still pretty exciting to have a pirate in your family history. It's just the sort of thing that my kids love to mention. And who knows, maybe someday, one of them will love it enough to continue with the family research.
