Nearly 300 years ago, Col. Ebenezer Eastman built a crude cabin at a bend in the Merrimack River, making him the first white man to settle in Concord. Today, Sue and David Eastman and their son, D.J., tend a small patch of lawn off Portsmouth Street where a granite pillar honors old Ebenezer's foray into the wilderness.

"We have a connection here," Sue Eastman said in an interview last week. "We feel like we have a responsibility to preserve it."

The Eastmans are among a small number of Concord-area residents who can trace their family trees back to the city's earliest days. They honor those roots in different ways, but their histories follow Concord's own through the decades - with forays into farming, manufacturing, politics, the arts. Like any family, the old Concord clans have their share of scoundrels and ne'er-do-wells. But they also include prominent athletes, politicians, military figures and civic leaders. The families' continuity also runs parallel with that of the Concord Monitor, whose forerunner began publication exactly 200 years ago this year.

Here are some of their stories.

The Eastmans

Sue Eastman, born Sue Tilton, grew up in East Concord, just a couple of miles

from the Eastman School and Eastman Street. As a girl, she never imagined she might be related to the pioneer who lent his name to that building and road. Even after she married David Eastman in 1980, she never gave the name much thought. After all, her husband's family hailed from the North Country, so any relation to Concord's founder was unlikely.

It wasn't until Sue's mother, Florette Tilton, began pursuing the family's genealogy about 20 years ago that the family made the startling discovery: Not only was David a direct descendant of Ebenezer, so was Sue, through her mother's side.

"We didn't go very far, did we?" Sue joked last week, sitting in her childhood home just down the road from the site of Ebenezer's cabin.

As early Concord families go, the Eastmans are among the most prominent. An early city history describes Ebenezer as "the strong man of our town." He served as the town's first selectman and moderator, helped lay out streets and served as a state representative in 1746. He also ran the first ferry across the Merrimack, at the spot where the stone pillar now stands.

Through the city's Adopt-A-Spot program, the Eastmans help maintain the small park there.

Ebenezer fathered eight children. Sue Eastman traces her ancestry from one of them, Ruth, the only daughter. Her husband is descended from another: Moses, born in Concord in 1732. That branch of the Eastman line left Concord long ago, eventually ending up in Littleton, where David grew up. Sue, David and D.J. now live in Bow. Sue says her son, who's 17 years old, talks about working as a firefighter in Concord some day.

"He takes a lot of pride in knowing he's related to some of the first settlers," she said.

A few years ago, Sue Eastman met a descendant of another of Ebenezer's children. Paul Eastman, who lives on North Spring Street, hails from the line of Nathaniel Eastman, Ebenezer's fourth son. His father, Edson "Red" Eastman, ran the Sunset Baseball league and operated Eastman's Dairy in Concord for years. (White Park's baseball diamond is named after the elder Eastman.)

Paul spent his teenage years in a house next to the family dairy operation. During college breaks, he drove some of the milk routes. He taught school in New York for 29 years, returning to the North Spring Street house in 1986 to care for his dad.

Paul had known about his old Concord roots since childhood, when his father often described himself as a "proud, sixth-generation Eastman." But it wasn't until Paul retired that he finally found time to research the family tree. He turned to a collection of anecdotes, recollections and letters he'd gathered from older relatives over the decades and pawed through historical archives for more details. (next page »)