On August 18, 1795, Conrad married Elizabeth Klapper in the Reformed Dutch Church of Claverack. Conrad and Elizabeth remained in Claverack for the next 10 years, raising five children: Heinrich (Henry), Simon, George, Anna, and Christina. Between the years 1805 and 1810, the Schutz family uprooted from the predominantly Dutch and German society of Southeasthern NY and moved to Swanton, VT. Within the largely French and English population of northwestern Vermont, there existed a sizeable minority of Dutch and German families, which extended north of the border into Missisquoi County, Québec. Many of these settlers had been Loyalists to the English crown during the revolution and left the Albany, NY, area to flee persecution.

Conrad Schutt (sic) is listed in the 1810 census for the town of Swanton. Two more children had been born since the move, one being a son, John, and the other unknown. Then on August 2, 1813, our next ancestor, Jehiel Shutts, was born.

Around 1815, Conrad Schutz left Swanton and settled in what is now Ellenburg, NY, at the time still part of the town of Mooers. Conrad presumably went ahead of the rest of the family in order to build houses and make a new home. In the 1820 census for the town of Mooers, Conrath (sic) Shutts is listed as the head of a household of three men. He likely settled in what is now Ellenburg Center, before later moving to the Chateaugay Lake area, still known at the time as the Shatagee Woods.

According to The Old Guide’s Story, written by Charles E. Merrill in 1935, the Shutts family came to the Chateaugay Lake area around the same time as the Merrill family, who arrived in 1823. This was when the rest of the Schutz/Shutts family left Swanton, VT, and joined Conrad in NY. The 1830 Mooers, NY, census enumerates Conrad Shultz (sic) and sons Simon, Henry, and John Shutz (sic) all as heads of household. In that same year, the town of Ellenburgh was created from the southwestern corner of Mooers.

In 1834 Conrad’s youngest son, Jehiel, married a young English lass named Mary Ann Barnaby. Soon after their marriage, they made their home on Lower Chateaugay Lake at the foot of Spear Hill. Jehiel and Mary Ann lived there until Mary Ann’s death in 1859. Jehiel remarried to a woman named Caroline in 1861. They moved around Ellenburgh several times until finally returning to the home at Lower Chateaugay Lake in the 1870’s.

It was about this time that Jehiel’s eldest son, Edgar Shutts, returned from service in the Union Army. Edgar spent the majority of his four years of service (1861-1865) fighting the Confederate Army in Virginia and North Carolina. Shortly after his return, Edgar was married to Annetta Haseltine. They bought a large tract of land above the Upper Chateaugay Lake and made their home there. The small community that rose up from this square of land was known for decades as “Shuttsville.” The official name of Merrill was adopted in 1877, when a post office was established. As late as 1930, though, it was still referred to as Shuttsville, as this was written on the left margin of the 1930 census page for this area of Ellenburg. The road is still named the Shutts Road.

The Shutts family has lived in Ellenburg (the ‘h’ was dropped from the spelling in the early 1900s) ever since. Nine generations of Shuttses have lived here, covering a span of almost 200 years. Seven generations have lived on the Shutts Road, including several families who still call it their home.

The information provided above has been accumulated by researching census records, historical documents, and church records, as well as through correspondences with fellow genealogists. This last chapter in our family history has also been passed down orally from generation to generation. It was told to me by one of my father’s cousins. It was told to him by his grandfather, my great-grandfather, Maurice Shutts.

The story goes that, at the turn of the 19th century, there were two Dutch (Deutsch?) brothers who moved their families to Canada. One of these brothers then moved his family to Ellenburgh, while the second decided to continue on to California, where he was eventually hung for stealing another man’s horse. The family that went to Ellenburgh was the first to permanently settle in an area that was still a vast wilderness. They owned the entire square of land that makes up the Shutts and Blanch Roads, extending down to the edge of Upper Chateaugay Lake. After building their own homes, the Shutts family then sold the rest of this land, encompassing dozens of acres, to the Peets family for nine cows.

Schutz-Shutts Migration Route

(Click on map for full view)