What ethnic background are we?

We are descendants of James Enno, who came from London in 1648 to help settle Windsor, Connecticut. We started spelling the name with one "n" about 1700.

The family always had a tradition that our ancestors came from France. That's apparently true. The Ennos or Hennos were militant Huguenots (French Protestants) who took refuge in England in the 1500s. 

David Eno's (1702-1745) son Roger  (1737-1808), brother of our line's ancestor David II (1726-c. 1789) was so taken by this that he added an "s" to his name then and there to make it look more French. To this day, Roger's descendants in New England and elsewhere spell it Enos. (One of these, William Enos, is a Rhode Island state senator.)

So we have French ancestors, English ancestors, Yankee ancestors and lots of other ancestors through our mothers. But since we've been in America for over 350 years, we certainly can call ourselves Americans.

Eno trivia

LIKE FATHER, LIKE...Though our ancestor James Enno is honored as one of the founding fathers of Connecticut's oldest town, he foreshadowed some of his descendants by having three wives (though not at the same time). Grandpa Jim also had the bad habit of ripping off people in land deals, and he at least once was hauled into a Crown Court for selling booze to the Indians!

NOT FIRST IN LINE: According to the U.S. Bureau of the Census, Eno is the 16,554th most common surname in the United States. Its frequency is 0.001%; percentile is 76.242

OUR TOWNS: Along with Enosburg Falls, Vermont, there is Eno, Colorado; Eno, Ohio; Eno, North Carolina; and Eno, Tennessee. There's even an Eno, Finland.

SING IT! ENO is the acronym for the English National Opera (www.eno.org).

OVER TROUBLED WATERS: The Bridge, a novel by Doug Marlette, is set largely in Eno, North Carolina.

PLAY IT AGAIN: Paul Eno was a banjo teacher and a banjo orchestra leader from the Philadelphia area. He is considered by many to be the most outstanding American composer for the classic banjo style. Eno had over 60 compositions to his credit. Hear some of his music at http://members.tripod.com/~wtalley/midis/plantatn.mid.

BROAD STROKES: Well known Eno artists have included Van Eno of Key West, Florida (who died of AIDS in1984) and the more famous Ralph Eno of Connecticut (d. 1962), who was a fellow Allen/Fanny descendant and a close cousin of ours.

OUR RALPHS OVERFLOWETH: Yet another Ralph Eno, a comedian who rejoiced in the cognomen "Freaky Ralph," was a Tiny Tim-like character who died in 1984 after torching himself and Don Novello, a former Chicago advertising man who was shaping a hilarious new character called Father Guido Sarducci.

Still another Ralph Eno, formerly of WTIC News in Hartford, Conn., was first selectman of Lyme, Conn., the town that gave us Lyme Disease. We believe that Ralph may be a fellow Allen/Fanny descendant, but we are not in touch with him as yet.

GO TELL IT ON THE ... HILL: Eno Hill, near Winsted, Connecticut, is, at 1,238 feet, the state's 34th highest point.

Enos and more Enos

As if one Eno family weren't enough, there are still other families of that name, none of which is connected to us, at least not for the past 500 years or so.

MORE ENOS WITH AN "S": There is a Portuguese Enos family that spells the name with a silent "s." We sometimes run into them in New England. 

QUEBEC: There is a Canadian Eno and Enos clan descended from the same French Hennos we are. These folks sometimes turn up in New England.

JAPAN: Eno is a Japanese name, and a Paul Eno who was killed in the Korean War is listed in the Japanese-American Honor Roll. Several members of our family report having received donation requests from the Japanese-American Museum being planned for New York City.

AMERICAN INDIANS: There is a branch of the Cherokee Nation known as the Eno Tribe, now mostly extinct. The Eno River and a number of other things in North Carolina are named after them. Ironically, Enos descended from DeEarlon Eno and Charlotte Crowell Deming Eno are descended, through Charlotte, from the great New England family of the Wampanoag chief Massasoit, of Pilgrim and colonial fame.

A spouse is a spouse….

Many people believe that you can tell a great deal about a person by whom they marry. Much that’s on this page has come from observations by those brave souls who have married into our line of the Eno clan over the last several generations.

Here are a few of the more pungent points:

● Eno women (and women of Eno descent) tend to think more highly of their husbands than Eno men (and men of Eno descent) think of their wives.

● Eno women generally are highly intelligent and well organized, devoted to their families and definitely not meek. There is a strong tendency toward nursing as a profession.

● To be an Eno man can be fatal, however. They tend to be talented and highly intelligent but all too often are impractical dreamers. Some have called them lazy. 

Eno men frequently are crusaders for one cause or another, and are apt to be highly opinionated.

As a rule, they hate working for other people and tend to work for themselves, but because they’re impractical dreamers or crusaders or both, their ventures into business sometimes are catastrophic. That’s probably one reason why there are an inordinate number of clergymen in the family: You essentially work for yourself, you get respect, you can be as idealistic as all getout, and there’s very little chance of going bust.

As one Eno put it: “We have lousy luck and lousier business skills. If we owned funeral homes, nobody would die.”

Still, when Eno men do manage to accomplish anything, they usually do so in a big way.

Eno men generally don’t like children. They’re apt to marry dominant women from high-class bloodlines but they, with some very notable exceptions, have an abysmal record as husbands and fathers. A few might have been good husbands and fathers but married such monster women that they (or so they claimed) broke under the strain and went running off into the blue. Our line’s history is strewn with divorces and single-parent families, well documented as far back as 1850 and with hints from well back into the 18^th century.  

Word out of Germany….    

Paul F. Eno (1953-), a great-great grandson of Allen and Fanny Eno and the unofficial family genealogist, believes that the family, though it came from France by way of England, ultimately had German origins. The original spelling was "Henno."

A fascinating back-door hint is the following pseudo-scientific quote from a source on the traits of various German families. It's almost creepy when compared with our characterization of Eno men above.

Your name of Henno gives you the ability to understand people and to merge conflicting viewpoints to create harmony in association. You dislike facing issues or witnessing hurt feelings. You make friends easily but must guard against becoming involved in the affairs of others or being too easily led. You could do well working with the public giving advice, where you can use your skills in diplomacy in handling people, but where you are not under pressure or required to carry responsibility and make decisions. You find it difficult to make snap decisions and to occupy a leadership position as you lack self-confidence. You dislike heavy manual work; as well, you are inclined to put plans off until forced to take action. You find it difficult to be systematic in business and you dislike budgeting. Without the encouragement of others, you lack the energy, confidence, or initiative required to bring an idea to fruition. This name creates weaknesses in the fluids of the body, kidneys, or glandular system.

Simply divine  

Interestingly, there was a primeval German god named Henno who supposedly lived in the Ayr Valley in western Germany, near where the city of Bonn is today. Some scholars believe that Henno was another name for the chief German/Scandinavian god Woden.

One can just imagine these Enos from the remote past taking their name from the god because they were -- you guessed it -- clergy!

Dysfunctional folks

Unfortunately, our branch of the family has been dysfunctional since at least 1792, long before some psychiatrist invented the word.

There is every reason to believe that our patriarch, Allen Eno (1792-1864) was illegitimate, living his early life ostracized and lonely and certainly without a proper home environment.

Sadly, when we do find ancestral graves in our line, the Eno men are almost always buried by themselves, a further indication of broken families.

The Allen and Fanny saga

Allen appears in the 1830 census (p. 354) as living in Simsbury , Conn. There are two little girls under five listed also (presumably daughters Fanny Louisa and Elizabeth Sophia), along with a female 30-40, presumably wife Fanny Lewis Eno (1797-1874). The couple had married in 1824.

Allen and Fanny seem to have separated before 1850. In the 1840 census, he, Fanny and four children were living in Simsbury, and he was listed as working in "manufacturing and trades." But in the 1850 U.S. census, Allen is listed as a "laborer" living in the household of Edward C. and Harriet Vining.

According to Fanny’s 1871 application for a widow's pension, Allen served in the War of 1812. He reportedly enlisted at Granby, Conn., in 1812 and was "present at the taking of Fort George, in 1813, and at the battles of Sackett's Harbor and Chippewa and later received a land-warrant."

Research indicates that Allen did indeed serve in the War of 1812. He is listed in the American Genealogical-Biographical Index (AGBI), “Records of Ct. Men who served in the War of 1812,” Hartford, 1889. (169p.):152

We have yet to locate Allen's or Fanny’s graves, but it’s doubtful that they’re together.

Whence Fanny?

As for Fanny Lewis Eno, a strong family tradition has it that she was born in England, but in Luther Eno’s (1840-1903) listing in the 1900 census, it states that his mother was born in Connecticut. There have been Lewises in both Simsbury and Granby all along.

In 1871, Fanny applied for a widow's pension based on Allen's service in the War of 1812. The pension application was rejected in 1874 as Fanny had provided proof neither of her marriage to Allen nor of his "presumptive abandonment" of her.

A tantalizing hint about Fanny came in the 1950s. Bernice Eno (1915-), wife of Earl B. Eno (1905-1961), a great-grandson, reports that a doctor told her that Earl's great-grandmother Eno was the first woman doctor in Connecticut. The doctor's claim has not been verified, nor have we been able to find out who was the first woman doctor in Connecticut .

Douglas Richardson, author of The Eno and Enos Family in America (1973) believes that Allen and Fanny had more children than we list on this website.

Oh, Luther, Luther!

As we will see, the Luther Eno mentioned above seems to have been a typical example of Eno males as well as a consummate hurler of bovine fecal matter.

He appears in the 1850 census of Windsor , Conn., at age 11, living in the family of Nathaniel and Jerusha (Eno) Pinney, whom Richardson believes were relations of his father, Allen. Paul Eno believes that Luther was Jerusha’s half-nephew. Jerusha (b. 1786) was a daughter of David Eno III (he sometimes spelled it "Enos") and Alice Winchell and would have been Allen's half sister, if the David-Sarah Hays connection is correct. 

It's probable that Luther had been displaced because of his parents' separation about 1850. The census form notes that Luther had "attended school within the year."

In the 1860 census (p. 670), Luther turns up at age 21 living in Windsor Locks, Conn. He had been “married within the year” to Emeline Thankful Trask (1840-1905), and his profession is given as "farm help" or "Farm hand" (not very legible).

The Civil War broke out the following year and, on Sept. 2, 1862, Luther enlisted in Co. E of the 25th Connecticut Volunteers. Interestingly, this was the same unit, or the descendant of the same unit, that Allen had fought in during the War of 1812. Nothing is known of Luther's war record, but he was honorably discharged on Aug. 26, 1863, at Hartford.

The 25th Connecticut fought in Louisiana in 1862 and 1863, and Luther almost certainly was with them. There is an old woodcut (at left), of the 25th watching some former slave children dance in New Orleans. Based on the family resemblances we see today, and given that Luther is the common ancestor of all of us currently involved in the family group, does anybody in the picture look familiar??

The mystery of “the governor”

Sometime in the 1850s, Luther apparently settled in the area of Deerfield, Mass., where he met and married Emeline T. Trask. Interestingly, Luther’s brother Ernest married Emeline’s sister Caroline.

The mystery comes by way of a swashbuckling story handed down through Luther’s children. Emeline, as the story goes, was the daughter of the governor of Massachusetts. Luther, who allegedly held some domestic position with the governor’s household, swept Emeline off her feet and eloped with her in 1859. Horrified, her gubernatorial papa sent the state militia in pursuit.

Research shows that this story is pure historical bilgewater. Emeline was the daughter of Chauncey Trask (1814-c.1850), a Deerfield farmer.

An Eliphalet Trask of Springfield was lieutenant governor of Massachusetts from 1858-1860. He might have been related to Chauncey, but the Trask family is so huge that it would be difficult to tell. The odd thing is that Eliphalet did have a daughter Emeline of exactly the same age as ours!

We’re sure that grandma is indeed Chauncey’s Emeline because Inez Eno (Luther and Emeline’s daughter, who died as an infant in 1862) is buried next to her grandparents: Chauncey’s wife, Emeline Thankful Searle (1818-1840), and what probably is Chauncey himself (the stone is missing) in North Granby, Conn.

One can just see dear old Luther at the hearthside doling out the baloney to the kiddies at bedtime.

The “other woman”

By 1871, Luther and Emeline had settled in Suffield, Conn., where they appear in the 1880 U.S. census. Luther reputedly delivered mail on horseback in nearby Simsbury.

In 1886, Luther successfully applied for a Civil War pension. He and Emeline suddenly divorced in 1890 after more than 30 years of marriage.

According to his granddaughter, Mattie "Margaret" Eno Bertrand Doering, Luther left Emeline at 50 years of age to marry a younger girl! That’s true. Luther hit the road with Mary J. Cassady (1869-c. 1933), 20 years his junior and the daughter of an Irish immigrant.

At some point, Emeline became a nurse, probably to support her family after Luther flew the coop.

Interestingly, the 1894 Chelsea, Mass., city directory records Emeline as "widow of Luther W." In fact, Luther lived until 1903. In those days, she probably was ashamed to admit she was divorced.

Luther is buried all by himself in the Elmwood Cemetery, Windsor Locks Road, 3/4 mile east of the East Granby village center. It’s a veteran’s tombstone and reads: Luther W Eno - Co. E 25th Reg. Conn. Vols. d. Oct. 13, 1903 age 64.

“Two bums” and their Nova Scotia adventure

Luther’s sons De Earlon T. Eno (1873-1959)(no tale tells where that name came from) and Elbert Edward Eno (1867-1952) turn up in the early 1890s living with their mother, the longsuffering Emeline, and their brothers, in Chelsea, Mass.

De Earlon and Elbert Edward, both colorful characters by all accounts, apparently were great chums, despite their six-year difference in age. Around 1900, they apparently were living with or near each other in Florida. A picture of the two of them, taken later in life, shows them on an outing, complete with boots and rods. Written in pencil on the back of the picture is “Two bums going fishing.”

The story in the family is that, sometime in the 1890s, the “two bums” headed for Nova Scotia, almost certainly on a hell-raising trip. They turned up back in New England a few months later with wives.

Elbert Edward came home with the reportedly beautiful Leona Final (1875-1953). Later in life, when his family was a shambles, he told his children that he’d married their mother because he felt sorry for her.

Elbert Edward became a minister, believe it or not, and served in Florida, then Vermont. As a man of the cloth, divorce wasn't a great career move for Elbert. So he told his Vermont congregation that Leona had died. When Pastor Eno braved a second marriage, the "deceased" Leona turned up at the wedding and created what must have been a scene from a Mel Brooks movie!

DeEarlon netted the reportedly stunning Charlotte E. (Crowell) Deming (1880-c. 1957). An apparent protégé of Leona Final’s, Charlotte was the daughter of Leonard Crowell (1848-?) and Mary Ellen Smith (c. 1856-?). As the family story goes, Leonard was a ship's captain homeported at Yarmouth, N.S. Charlotte’s birthplace, Blanche, is an unincorporated town in the Shelburne area. According to family tradition, “Lottie” and her mother had been on board when Leonard’s ship went down, and Lottie was the only, or one of the few, survivors. She was raised by the Demings or Demming family and changed her name to theirs – mainly because the Crowells, a well-to-do shipping family known as the most ornery cusses in Canada – refused to take her in.

DeEarlon served in the Spanish-American War, became a very successful electrical contractor (the first or one of the first in western Massachusetts) with the family’s typical entrepreneurial bent. DeEarlon installed the clock in the landmark tower in the center of Springfield, Mass. 

Evidently, both Elbert Edward and DeEarlon had the most amazing affect on women, and they didn't waste it. According to his son Earl B. Eno, De Earlon would vanish for long periods, presumably with girlfriends. When he was home, the family lived high-on-the-hog in the Holyoke, Mass., "highlands." When he wasn't, they had trouble finding enough to eat.

The story goes that DeEarlon supported two Ziegfeld Follies girls in New York City. When he finally left Lottie for good, he allegedly left her a pile of cash. With her children living from hand to mouth, Lottie nevertheless refused to use the money!

Bernice Landers Eno (1915-), Earl’s wife, tells an even darker tale. DeEarlon, says Bernice (who never met him), was a bigamist who at one time was arrested for impersonating a naval officer. The old goat did have two wives after Lottie, but the marriage dates, at least, don’t show anything overtly improper. Perhaps he just never bothered to get divorces before stepping up to the altar with the next victim.

When DeEarlon left Lottie, at some point before 1920, it embittered her for life and earned the everlasting anger of his sons. His daughters Mattie "Margaret” Eno Bertrand Doering (1910-1990) and Emaline Eno Paul (1902-1966), went to California to visit their father shortly before his death in the 1950s. Mattie reported that he was a sweet-tempered man who couldn't have stood his shrewish wife any longer.

DeEarlon died in 1959 and is buried in Valhalla Memorial Park, Huntington Park, Calif.

Minister and pharmacist

Elbert Edward’s son Edward Elbert Eno (1894-1953) became a minister and a pharmacist. He went to Vermont with his father as a boy of 16, later graduating from Colby College in Maine . He was a charter member of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Beginning in 1945, Edward Elbert and his son, Gerald B. Eno (1917-2003), ran the Eno Pharmacy at 7 1/2  West St., Rutland, Vt., for many years.

War hero

DeEarlon’s son William Ernest Eno (1900-1943) served in the U.S. Navy in WWI and again in WWII. An electrician’s mate in WWII, he was a petty officer 1st class on a PT boat and in the Naval Construction Battalion ("Seabees"). He was killed during an air attack by the Japanese during the battle of Tulagi. He served in the same PT boat squadron as John F. Kennedy. William's name is engraved on the National PT Boaters Memorial at Battleship Cove, Fall River, Mass.

That “Ol’ Time Religion”

Despite suspicions that so many Eno men embrace “the cloth” because it’s an easy living, there is an undeniable current of religious fervor in the family. As far as we know, most Eno descendants today are “believers,” whether church-goers or “free agents.” At any one time among the cousins, there have been Baptist, Congregational, Roman Catholic and even Spiritualist clergy, and they all knew each other. Paul F. Eno (1953-), a son of Earl B. Eno and Bernice Landers Eno and webmaster of this site, studied for both the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox priesthoods, never making it to either!

"I consider that the churches and I both had a lucky escape," he says.

So far, we’ve found no Episcopalians or Muslims, but there are possibilities in the direction of Judaism among the children and grandchildren of A. Leon Coplon and Nancy A. Eno Coplon (1934-), daughter of Wilbur E. Eno, another son of Elbert Edward.

So far, no Eno women have embraced ordination, but Erin Keith Todd (1975-), daughter of Walter Keith and Bonnie Joy Eno Keith (1948-), a daughter of Gerald B. Eno, is married to Bradley Todd, a minister in New Jersey.

The Collard Connection

In what seems to be an astonishing tribute to Eno family pride and oral history, DeEarlon Eno and wife Charlotte gave their son George (who died as a baby in 1910) the middle name "Collard." This was the name of the earliest known male ancestor of our line, first recorded in 1463. The name was virtually unknown in America in 1910, the year of George's birth. Is it possible that this ancestral name had filtered down in the family for nearly five centuries?

It wasn't until 10 years later, in 1920, that Henry Lane Eno published his book The Eno Family, New York Branch with his family tree that went back to Collard, the first such genealogical research that we know about.

One wonders what other family names and legends our grandparents and great-grandparents could have told us! The "Collard Connection" certainly is outdone only by the shreds of stories about Henno the knight that seem to have trickled down in the family from 1,000 years ago or more.

The frozen limit

Taking religious fervor to its limit, a cult in California uses the word “Eno” as a “mantra” or spiritual chant, repeating it over and over. We’re told this is because “Eno” is a “holy word” that can be shuffled into “One” and “Eon.”

Frozen luck

Paul F. Eno and Travis Doering (son of Mattie "Margaret" Eno Bertrand Doering) began researching the Eno family history in the early 1970s. Paul’s genealogical luck had a run as never before in December 2000, however.

Late that month, Paul dropped his mother off at her East Hartford home after her Christmas visit to him and his family in Woonsocket , Rhode Island. Paul decided to take the “scenic route” home through the ancestral turf of Simsbury and Granby, first visiting Luther’s grave in East Granby, which Earl had shown Paul as a child.

Paul then headed to North Granby and took what turned out to be a wrong turn. Several miles up the road he caught sight of a small cemetery, with about 10 graves, at the corner of a country road. A fan of old epitaphs, Paul got the notion to stop. When he walked into the little cemetery and glanced at the names, he was flabbergasted.

“These are all our people!” he recalls blurting out.

In the cemetery were Luther and Emeline’s baby daughter Nina, next to Emeline’s parents Chauncey Trask (that’s conjecture as the stone was broken off) and Emeline Searle Trask. Nearby were her maternal grandparents Thomas Spring (1765-1849) and Jerusha Pomeroy Spring (c. 1774-1849), great-great-great-great grandparents to Paul’s generation.

Paul started writing down dates and epitaphs, but it was so cold that his pen froze.

Several of our cousins have since visited this cemetery. Paul, a grandson of De Earlon Eno, and Cynthia Eno Bessette (1943-), a granddaughter of Elbert Edward Eno, decorate the graves on or about Memorial Day each year. Family members are always invited to participate.

“It’s important to remember your blood,” Paul says, adding: “We visit Luther at the same time, even though the old chump probably doesn’t deserve it!”

The day after this discovery, Paul says, he was looking for something entirely different in the 1892 and 1894 Chelsea, Mass., city directories and came upon Emeline and her entire family, complete with the address and jobs. Previously, nobody knew anything about their Chelsea sojourn.

“If I had looked for 100 years for that cemetery or that directory listing, I never would have found them,” he concludes.

The grave of William E. Eno, Haydenville, Mass. Killed in the Pacific during World War II.

Rev. Walter Eno (1920-1986), grandson of Luther Eno's son Ernest (1875-1967), a Congregationalist minister who later became a Spiritualist minister and bishop.