The Slovak Yankee

My Austin Bearse Line

1. Austin Bearse c. 1618-after 1683 m. unknown
2. Priscilla Bearse m. John Hall (Jr.)
3. Esther Hall m. John Rider (Jr.)
4. Samuel Rider m. Rebecca Winslow
5. Lydia Rider m. Ebenezer Dexter (this generation moved to Nova Scotia)
6. Diademia Dexter m. Rev. Nathan Cleveland (this generation moved to New Brunswick)
7. John Cleveland m. Amy Martin
8. Ama Ann Cleveland m. James Smith (Jr.) (this generation moved to Maine)
9. Agnes Jane Smith m. John Quigley
10. Lila Mae Quigley m. Archibald Thompson Pratt
11. Agnes Elizabeth Pratt, my grandmother 1915-1972

The Great Migration: Immigrants to New England 1636-1638 by Ian Watson (NEHGS, Boston, 2024), Volume 1.  And see my article "The John Riders of Yarmouth, Massachusetts," The American Genealogist 80 (2005):128-39.

Cutting The Ties

As this week meanders from 2016 to 2017, a momentous happening will occur.  As of December 31, 2016, I will let my membership in the New England Historic Genealogical Society lapse.  I've been a member for 26 years.  Over the last ten years, I've not done much research on my own family.  I still used the library at NEHGS and certainly was glad to receive their publications.  But now basic membership is $90 per year.  And all you get for experienced genealogists is 4 issues of the Register and 4 issues of American Ancestors.  I've decided that's not enough anymore.  First of all the Register has changed.  It is no longer a New England journal but a national journal.  So the likelihood of my ancestors appearing in the Register from here on out has collapsed to near zero.  The Great Migration Project is done.  They've published their last original book and any further works are merely derivative based on what's been published already.  I hardly use the library anymore.  And living in Boston that was a big plus for membership.

I've already ended my member in all other genealogical societies except for the New Hampshire Society of Genealogists of which I am a life member.  Some time in 2017 in between world trips, I'll box up my research and books and find a storage rental for them.  It's time to downsize and genealogy is not going to make the cut in my new world.

Congratulations

In related news Eugene Cole Zubrinsky was elected a Fellow of the American Society of Genealogists along with Alvy Ray Smith, with whom I'm not familiar.  I've spoke about Mr. Zubrinsky here, here, and here.  He's a fine and deserving choice.  In addition we met tangentially in genealogical literature as his two articles on James Cole of Plymouth intersected with my article on the Rider family (a Cole married a Rider).  Despite that, we've actually never met in person, although we have corresponded via email.  When I was doing my book I needed him to make sure I got his Carpenters correct.  If you are a Carpenter descendant from Rhode Island and Massachusetts you must run out and get his articles on the subject.  Some of which are here:

CARPENTER, WILLIAM, b. a. 1605, d. Rehoboth, Mass., 7 February 1658/9?.  NEHGR 161:300; 163:297-98 (correction on Abiah³).

CARPENTER, WILLIAM, b. ca. 1610, d. Providence, R.I., 7 September 1685.  NEHGR 163:297 (correction); NEHGR 164:36-40, 296-97 (immigration and marriage).

COLE, JAMES, b. ca. 1600, d. Plymouth, Mass., between  8 March 1679/80 and 1 March 1683/4.  Son John² at TAG 81:122-32, 238-45; 83:258 (includes information on James’s death date and other in print misconceptions regarding this family, including his children John and Mary).

 

 

My Families in the 1790 Census

Despite having a number of New England ancestors, I have very few in the 1790 census.  Certainly half of my ancestry is Slovak.  The New England part is 25% Scottish, and almost 50% via  Atlantic Canada.  So only 1/8 or 12.5% of my ancestry is in this country at that time.

• Thomas Pinkham 1752-1820
• Ebenezer Runnels 1765-1851

Those two I did do sketches for in the New Hampshire volume one.  The son of Mr. Pinhkam married the daughter of Mr. Runnels and became my great-great-great-grandparents. 

• Stephen Berry 1724-1820, New Durham 2-0-3
• Isaac Stanton 1732-1829, Middleton, 1-2-3 (under the name Isaiah)
• Nathaniel Wallis 1746-aft. 1830, Epsom 2-6-3
• Benjamin York 1761-1845, New Durham Gore, 1-2-3
• Benjamin York 1725-1803, Middleton 1-1-1
• Abner Coffin not enumerated, maybe part of William Chadwick's household
• Reuben Heard 1722-aft 1806, 1-1-1
• Jonathan Heard, 1758-aft 1823, 1-1-3
• Moses Hayes (Jr.) 1763-1838 unfortunately, there are 3 Moses Hayes households in Rochester.  Which is which is a question.  I descend from two of them, father and son.
• Moses Hayes 1726-1813
• Benjamin Learned Dublin, 1741-1818, 3-4-3, under Larnard
• Josiah Dudley, 1745-aft 1820, Newport (already published)
• Daniel Dudley, 1719-1811, Newport (already published)
• Gideon Denison (Conn.)

Part of the reason I waited on many of these people was that I had incomplete data and was always hoping to find just that one bit more.  Wallis, Reuben and Jonathan Heard and Josiah  Dudley all do not have certain death dates. In fact, it really was just this year, that I perfected what I knew about Nathaniel Wallis.  I'm still missing a daughter for Jonathan Heard.  Moses Hayes and son are well done in Katherine Richmond's John Hayes of Dover Genealogy, so I'm thinking it would be superfluous to do them.  Likewise, Benjamin Learned is done well enough in Eugenia Learned James' Learned Genealogy.  The Dudleys were done by someone else, although not well, in my opinion.  And, of course, Gideon Denison is my only 1790-er not in N.H.  So perhaps an upcoming goal would be to write up Nathaniel Wallis and submit him.  

Follow Friday: Families in the 1790 Census Project

One of the print series I admire greatly is the Maine Genealogical Society's project on Families in the 1790 census.  Over 2,500 families have had sketches published in the 10 volumes of this series.  You can find a comprehensive index (for free) to it at their website.  A sample sketch is here.  This is great example of volunteering and publishing your own families at the same time. [Yes, Maine wasn't its own state until 1820, but the area that constitutes Maine is covered].

The other two northern New England states have followed suit, but not nearly to the extent of the Mainers.  Vermont has two volumes published, and New Hampshire one, to which I supplied two sketches.  I wonder why no other states have started such a project.  The idea was to bridge the gap between the American Revolution and the 1850 census.  This is a particularly hard time period to research.  

I should write up a few more families and send them in.  I just get so bogged down in getting them right that I neglect finishing them.

When Did the Burnham Brothers Appear?

I was trying to figure out some more on the Burnham Brothers and their not being on the Angel Gabriel.  There is a list of proprietors of Ipswich (called commoners in the text) dated 28 February 1641/42.  There are 111 names on this list.  No Burnhams.  That says something.  Of the people on the list, I descend from several including Regnald Foster, John Perkins, and Moses Pengry.

I suspect that if you wanted to speculate on other passengers on the Angel Gabriel, I would see who else was made a freeman from Ipswich at the same time as John Cogswell.  Then I would see if any of those persons left any records prior that.  If not, that would be a start for a speculative list.  It is common that people from the same ship tended (at least at first) to live in the same community.  That's another reason that the Burnhams were put on board.  The Ipswich connection.

The Angel Gabriel

As I discussed in this posting, there are no passenger lists for 17th century New England ships per se.  These lists are compilations from other sources.  There are two ships other than the Mayflower, which have fascinated and frustrated me.  They are the Mary & John and the Angel Gabriel.  I believe that if all the people who are claimed to have been on either vessel were on the vessel, they would have been the size of the QEII.  But such is the historiography of genealogy.  Because the Mayflower was first and there is a heritage society associated with it, genealogists have tried to place their ancestors' arrivals as close to 1620 as possible.  Part of the scholarship of the Great Migration Project is to throw light on the myths and lore and examine the facts.

We know about the Angel Gabriel from a contemporary report by Richard Mather which appears in Alexander Young's Chronicles of the First Planters of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay (1846).  The story of its foundering is on p. 478.  However, there is no mention of the persons on board.  At all.  On page 453 we learn that the ship was 240 tons.  On p. 458 we learn there many Godly Christians on board.  But that is all.  

So how is it that we know who was on that ship?  We know John Cogswell was on board with Samuel Haines because of Haines' deposition of 1 December 1676.  A further deposition notes that William Tarbox was also onboard.  Let's examine the timeline for  John Cogswell.  The Angel Gabriel founders off Pemaquid in August 1635.  John Cogswell is made a freeman at Ipswich on 3 March 1635/6.  This is typical for a Great Migration emigrant.   Within a year of landing, a record is created by the emigrant.  

However, these are the only people we can be certain were on the ship.  Perhaps because of its foundering, and the perceived providence of saving those people onboard, many 19th century genealogists put other families onboard without any evidence.  The most striking of these errors would be Robert Andrews of Ipswich who was made a freeman in Ipswich on 6 May 1635 when the Angel Gabriel was still in England.  Also Henry Beck is claimed to be onboard, but he is known to have come on the Blessing.  You'll also note on the passenger list compilation of the webpage to which I pointed, Richard Mather is given as a passenger, but he was on the James looking at the Angel Gabriel not on it.

How did the Burnham brothers get onboard?  By doing a simple Google Books search, this canard has been in print since at least 1888 (History of Essex County), and probably predates that.  The linking is this: William Hubbard claimed that the Rev. Joseph Avery was onboard, but he conflated two ships that foundered the same day in the same storm.  Avery was on a ship by Cape Ann.  Robert Andrews gets on board because he was a creditor to the Rev. Joseph Avery.  The Burnham brothers are called "kinsmen" in the will of Robert Andrews.***  QED.

The earliest record of a Burnham is four years after the Angel Gabriel founders in 1635.  It is unlikely that they left no records for four years in Ipswich.  They obviously came later.

You can read more on this (although I distilled a great deal for this post) from the Great Migration Newsletter, Vol. 7 (1998), in a series called Passenger Ships of 1635 (in five parts).  The Angel Gabriel is detailed in the July-Sept. 1998 issue.

***Another pet peeve of mine is that all we know is that Robert Andrews called the Burnham brothers kinsmen.  We don't know how they were related.  However, the bad genealogical thing that won't die for this, is that Robert Andrews was their uncle, with the Burnhams having an Andrews mother.  This is total speculation.

Surname Saturday: Gov. Samuel Allen ca. 1642-1705

Samuel Allen was the first royal governor of New Hampshire and served from 1692-1699.  I previously discussed him here.  Politicians being shady then as now, he actually served most of his term in England arriving in New Hampshire about 1698 or so.  I wrote an article on the English origins of his wife, Elizabeth Dowse: "The English Origins of Elizabeth Dowse, wife of Governor Samuel Allen of New Hampshire," The New England Historical & Genealogical Register 162(2008):164-73.  I had found their marriage license in London, which called her the daughter of Thomas Dowse of King's Somborme, in Hampshire.  I found his will, and voila.  I was always intrigued by her because the Gen. Dict. of Me. and N.H. calls her "an heiress" so I thought there was a possible royal line there.  There still may be, but I never made the connection.

Samuel, on the other, has been a harder nut to crack.  You can certainly place him in London, living in St. Michael's Cornhill parish when he married in 1672/73.  He was a merchant.  The marriage license calls him a bachelor, aged 30 (born ca. 1642), but his death record in 1705 calls him 70 (born ca. 1635).  After his marriage his children are baptized at St. Helen Bishopsgate parish in London.

So where does Samuel Allen come from?  Sadly, Boyd's Citizens of London offers no clues other than those cited above.  As a friend suggested, I need to slog through the many guilds of London and look for apprenticeship records.

In any case, after making some money in London, he bought (or so he thought) the Mason Patent, which basically said he owned what is today New Hampshire.  All of it.  The deal was eventually shown to be fraudulent, but his heirs continued to sue for the Patent and eventually quitclaimed it 100 years afterwards to others who then also pursued it in court.  His story appears in these works:

• Genealogical Dictionary of ME and NH by Sybil Noyes, Charles Thornton Libby, and Walter Goodwin Davis (Portland, 1939, reprinted Baltimore, 1988), p. 63.
• Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography edited by James Grant Wilson and John Fiske (New York, 1888) 1:55.
• The National Cyclopedia of American Biography (New York, James T. White & Co., 1906) 13:454.
• Biographical Directory of American Colonial and Revolutionary Governors, 1607-1789 by John W. Raimo (Westport, CT, 1980).
• Drake's Dictionary of American Biography by Francis S. Drake (Boston, James R. Osgood & Co., 1872, reprint Detroit: Gale Research, 1974).
• The Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans ed. by Rossiter Johnson (Boston, Biographical Society, 1904, reprint Detroit, Gale Research, 1968).
• A short narrative of the claim, title and right of the heirs of the Honourable Samuel Allen, Esq.; deceased, to the province of NH. . . (Boston, 1939 reprint, Mass. Historical Society No. 93).
• "The Case of Samuell Allen of London Esq. Governor of New Hampshire” by Elwin L. Page, Historical New Hampshire 25 (1970):47-53.

Oldest Working Farm in New England for Sale

This farm has been in the same family for 378 years.  John Tuttle first got a grant in 1642 (not 1632) and the owner is his direct descendant William Tuttle.  I am not a Tuttle descendant myself (so far as I know), however, James³ (John^2-1) married Rose Pinkham, sister of my director ancestor James³ Pinkham, so if the line went through him, I am a distant cousin of this family.  I probably am somehow, considering all the New Hampshire inbreeding!  

It is indeed something that a farm has been in the same family longer than the U.S. has been a country!

Surname Saturday: Hope Allen d. 1677, Boston, Mass.

Hope Allen and his son have the dubious distinction of being my only former ancestors who came into and out of my genealogy twice.  The first time was about 30 years ago. The ill-informed Pinkham Genealogy of 1908, claimed that my ancestor Thomas Pinkham of Rochester, N.H. was a descendant of Thomas and Mary (Allen) Pinkham.  I later proved that untrue.  Next time, I was trying to place my ancestress Sarah Yeaton in the Yeaton family and first thought she was the daughter of Benjamin⁴ (John^3-2 Richard¹)  and Mary (Mendum) Yeaton.  That would have made her a great-granddaughter of Benjamin and Sarah (Allen) Wentworth.  Again, I later proved that untrue.

Sarah (Allen) Wentworth and Mary (Allen) Pinkham were sisters, daughters of Edward² (Hope¹) Allen.  A third sister Rachel Allen married John² (Ralph¹) Twombly, and I've been kicking around the thought to do an article on the first four generations of that family as well.  So, although they are not my ancestors [as far as I can tell], I've collected quite a bit of information on them.  I particularly like the jump from Boston, Mass. to Dover, N.H. in the second generation.  

Best sources:

• Hope Allen Descendants by Leroy Morse Bailey (typescript at NEHGS, 1988)
• Genealogical Dictionary of ME and NH by Sybil Noyes, Charles Thornton Libby, and Walter Goodwin Davis (Portland, 1939, reprinted Baltimore, 1988), p. 62. 
• “Hope Allen and Granddaughter Deborah (Wager) Henchman” by Winifred L. Holman New England Historical & Genealogical Record 102 (1948):177-191.
• Wentworth Genealogy by John Wentworth, 2nd ed. (1878) in three volumes.