Chapter 19 - Ancestors of Marian Coapman

The photograph to the left was taken around 1949. I am in the foreground, Charles A. Baker Jr., age 7. My mother, Marian Coapman Patterson named after her grandmother, Marian Coapman, is in the center. The older gentleman in the rear is my great grandfather, Eugene Hutchinson Ferree, the husband of Marian Coapman. He was around 81 when this photograph was taken and he passed away in 1952, 56 years after the death of his first and only wife. I did not attend his funeral but I remember visiting him in a nursing home shortly before his death.

In Chapter 6 titled “The Ferree Family” of the Baker Family Tree Blog that I wrote back in mid-2006, I reported that I not been able to learn anything of the parents of Marian Coapman. Whether additional information such as copies of the US Census have been added to the web since 2006, I do not know, however in the past year I easily discovered that David Coapman and Elsie Yawger were the parents of Marian Coapman. With this knowledge the ancestral branch of our family tree beginning with Marian Coapman opens wide and is the subject of this chapter of our family’s history.

We have learned a great deal about Marian’s father, David Coapman, from four sources: the US Census, his service record in the military, the local newspaper, and a county directory. David’s name first appears in the 1850 US Census where we find a David “Copeland”, age 6, living with his mother Lydia “Coapeland”, age 40. David and his mother are listed as living next door to a Walter “Copeman”, age 37, and his family. The misspelling of the last names and sometimes even first names in the early US Census records is not uncommon. From this census we have learned that David Coapman was born in 1844 in the township of Aurelius, in the County of Cayuga, in the State of New York. We have also learned that David’s father probably died before the 1850 US Census or before David’s sixth birthday, for David’s mother Lydia Coapman is listed as the head of the household. We might also conclude from this Census that David and Lydia are living nearby David’s Uncle Walter, or his mother’s brother-in-law. The population of the Township of Aurelius in 1850 was relatively small and it is likely that the two Coapman families would have been related. David’s name is listed again in the 1860 US Census living with his mother and they are still living near to Walter Coapman and his family. On a copy of an old 1853 map of the Town of Aurelius it shows the locations of the major property owners in the township including the home site of Walter Coapman. According to the 1850 US Census Walter Coapman’s property had a value of $12,000. His property was located about 1-1/2 miles east of the Village of Cayuga on present day Genesee Street. Lydia Coapman’s nearby property was valued at $4,000 in 1850, apparently not quite valuable enough for her name to have been included on the 1853 property map.

Cayuga County which includes the Township of Aurelius is located at the north end of Cayuga Lake in New York’s Finger Lakes Region (Cayuga County is shown in red on the adjacent map of New York State and the Township of Aurelius is shown in the lower map of Cayuga County located to the east of the large lake on the left, Cayuga Lake, and to the west of the City of Auburn outlined in yellow.) Prior to the end of the Revolutionary War the land that is now Cayuga County was occupied by the Cayuga Indian Tribe, one of the six tribes that made up the Iroquois Confederacy. In 1779, General Washington in response to the Cayuga Indians and some of the other tribes siding with the British against the Americans, sent a detachment of soldiers under the command of General John Sullivan to dispatch the Indians from their lands. The Indians aware of the movement of Sullivan’s army fled the area before the arrival of the Americans. Sullivan’s army without any resistance from the Indians burned their villages and their crops. After the War in 1789 a treaty was signed that created a 64,015-acre reservation for the Cayuga Indians which included much of the area of present day Cayuga County and all of the present day Township of Aurelius. Unfortunately for the Cayuga Indians this land was very valuable to the growing number of land hungry American settlers and in 1795 New York State acting under the terms of a new treaty with the Cayugas, purchased much of the new reservation back from the Indians. Then in 1807 acting once again under yet another treaty, the Cayuga Indians sold the last pieces of their reservation land to the State. While not relevant to our family’s history, it is interesting to note that these Treaties negotiated with New York State were never ratified by the U.S. Congress as required. Over 200 years after the last treaty was signed, the Cayuga Indians in 1980 filed a lawsuit in Federal District Court claiming that because the treaties were not ratified, the sale of their land was illegal and they demanded the return of their land plus monetary damages. While the claims of the Cayuga Indians may have had merit, they ultimately failed to prevail in court primarily based on the doctrine of laches that requires lawsuits to be filed within a reasonable time period. Apparently the United States Court of Appeals felt that 200 plus years was not a reasonable period of time. A young lawyer named Mark Stephen Puzella early in his career had the opportunity to work on this lawsuit between the Cayuga Indians and the State of New York. His law firm I believe, was representing the defendants who ultimately prevailed. The irony of course, is that Mark is married to my niece, Karen Ferree Fanton, the daughter of my sister Anne. Many of Karen’s ancestors including the Coapman, Titus, Ferree, Hutchinson, Starkweather, and Yawger families were all early settlers in Cayuga County and all lived on land that was originally part of the Cayuga Indian Reservation.

The announcement of the wedding of David Coapman to Elsie Yawger on October 29, 1863 in Union Springs in Cayuga County was published in the Aurelius Daily Advertiser. Union Springs is located in the Township of Springport immediately to the south of Aurelius. The wedding took place at the home of Elsie’s parents, John Yawger and the late Adaline Starkweather. [In case you are not taking notes from previous chapters, my grandmother, Florence Adaline Ferree (Patterson), is named after her great grandmother, Adaline Starkweather.] David was 20 when they married; Elsie Yawger was only 19. Less than one year after they were married David Coapman on September 14, 1864 enlisted as a Private in the Union Army in nearby Seneca Falls. The Civil War was currently raging in the southern states and it seems likely that young David, who had recently turned 21, may have been drafted. The first and very unpopular conscription laws were passed in the United States Congress in March of 1863. He obviously would not have had the financial wherewithal to hire a replacement to serve on his behalf or pay a fee to get out of serving as both options were allowed under the conscription laws. Many of his contemporaries with parents of more means than David’s would have followed this common practice to avoid service in the military. David was shipped almost immediately to Virginia to fight with the 3rd New York Regiment of the Light Artillery. His regiment must have been an active participant in the Siege of Petersburg which began in June of 1863 and in the ultimate fall of Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy, in June of 1865. General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox in April of 1865. David Coapman was mustered out of the army in Richmond, Virginia on June 24, 1865 and he made his way home to Aurelius no doubt traveling north with thousands of other soldiers. Marian Coapman, the first child of David and Elsie Coapman was born on March 17, 1867.

David Coapman was never to become a wealthy man. In an 1867/68 Directory of Cayuga County he was listed as a grocer working for the Mud Lock Canal Stores. In the 1870 US Census at the age of 33 he listed himself as a “Railroad Watchman”. His home in the Village of Cayuga was listed as having a value of only $1,000, a modest sum even in the 1870s. In 1879, his name is listed in a “History of Cayuga County” as being one of five men elected to serve as a Constable in the Town of Aurelius, a position likely to have paid very little. The last we know of David from historical documents is the 1880 US Census, wherein David now 36 years old, lists himself as a “House Painter” which probably equated to his being self employed. The 1890 US Census records are incomplete and there is no listing of a David Coapman in Cayuga County. His name does not appear in the more complete records of the 1900 US Census and it is assumed that he died before 1900. [Since writing this history chapter, Deb Plugh, a descendant of Susannah Downing, one of Lydia's daughters with Obadiah Downing, sent me a copy of an article from The Auburn Bulletin dated June 12, 1888, that states that David Coapman actually abandoned his wife and children and moved to California possibly with his lover and a widow women from their hometown, Village of Cayuga. The article also suggests with a certain amount of tongue-in-cheek that David Coapman was not respected as a Constable. Please contact me if you are interested in a copy of the article.] In the 1900 US Census we discover that his wife, Elsie Coapman, is living in Lockport, New York with her son-in-law, Eugene Hutchinson Ferree, my great grandfather. Before the 1910 US Census, Elsie had moved to live with her son, George Coapman, who was currently working for the E.H. Ferree Company in Lockport. Elsie Coapman does not appear in the 1920 US Census and it is assumed that she died after 1910. Despite a rather long search, I have been unable to locate the burial location of either David [maybe in California] or Elsie Coapman [maybe in Lockport]. Marian Coapman is buried in Lake View Cemetery in the Village of Cayuga along with Walter Coapman and his family and David Sands Titus and his family. David Sands Titus as we will discuss later is an in-law of the Coapman family. John and Adaline Yawger, the parents of Elsie Coapman (Yawger) are buried in the Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springport, New York. In neither of these cemeteries did we find David and Elsie nor did we find their names in any of the other cemetery records in Cayuga County.

We will probably never know with absolute certainty the names of David Coapman’s parents although DNA testing of the descendants of David and the descendants of his likely parents and the Titus family would go a long way towards solving this mystery. We do know based on the US Census that David’s mother had a given name of Lydia and his father had a surname of Coapman. We also know that at the time of David’s birth there were two other Coapman families living in Aurelius, Walter Coapman and his family and John Coapman and his family, both brothers. In the 1850 US Census, Lydia was listed as 40 years old, Walter 37, and John 34. They were all contemporaries and it seems likely that Lydia may have been a sister-in-law of both Walter and John. Further evidence of this possibility shows up in an 1855 Census taken in the Town of Aurelius wherein both Lydia, Walter, and John are all listed as originating from the County of Dutchess, New York before moving to Cayuga County. In Lydia’s case her arrival date in Cayuga County is listed as being 26 years earlier than the 1855 census or an arrival year of 1829. Lydia was only 19 years old in 1829 and it is unlikely that she traveled alone from Dutchess County which is located on the Hudson River north of New York City, to Cayuga County. She was either married or traveling with her family. In the 1855 Census there are only two other individuals listed as arriving from Dutchess County in 1829. They are David Sands Titus, age 27, and his wife Julia Ann Coapman, age 22. On the 1853 map of the Town of Aurelius that I referenced above, the property of David Sands Titus is shown located just up the road from the property of Lydia Coapman and Walter Coapman. Lydia Coapman (her married name) was either a family friend of the Coapman’s and Julia Ann’s in 1829 or less likely a family friend of the Titus’s, and she had elected to move with David Sands Titus and his wife (and family)to Cayuga. On the other hand some genealogists believe, including me, that Lydia Coapman’s maiden name was Lydia Titus and she moved to Cayuga from her home in Dutchess County with her older brother David Sands and his wife. If this is correct, which I believe it is, then David Sands Titus is my 3nd great uncle, and his parents, Gilbert Titus and Jane Hoag, are my 4rd great grandparents. Gilbert and Jane Titus will be discussed further in subsequent paragraphs.

Of course, Lydia Titus moving to Cayuga County with her brother and his wife in 1829 does not help to explain how Lydia Titus became Lydia Coapman. Obviously the fact that Lydia was very familiar with the Coapman family, Walter, John, and Julia Ann, gives us a clue as to whom she eventually married in the Coapman family. The one piece of compelling evidence as to whom she married and who is the father of David Coapman, comes in the form of a handwritten letter and family tree written by Mrs. Kate L. Tompkins on March 10, 1912 to her younger relatives whom she refers to as cousins Kate and Irene. The original letter was located in the office of the Cayuga County Historian’s Office in Aurora, New York. Kate Tompkins as it turns out is the daughter of Abraham Coapman who is the brother of Julia Ann, Walter, and John Coapman as well as the eight other Coapman brothers and sisters including Jacob Coapman, the second oldest son of John Jacob Coapman and Catherine Rappleye. Jacob was born in Dutchess County on June 28, 1803. On the family tree prepared by Kate Coapman (Tompkins) she lists David as the son of Jacob. There is no reason not to accept this document as accurate therefore David Coapman is without question the son of Jacob Coapman, and Jacob is the husband of Lydia Titus (Coapman).

Lydia Titus (Coapman) was 34 years old when she gave birth to David in 1844 and Jacob was 41. Since David appears to be the only Coapman son born to Lydia based on the Census records beginning in 1850, it seems likely that both Lydia and Jacob were married to others before they married each other in the early 1840s. Jacob Coapman did not appear in the 1840 US Census in Aurelius nor did he appear in the 1850 Census which leads to the conclusion that he died before 1850 and married Lydia following the 1840 Census. I could find nothing more about Jacob Coapman other than the family information listed in the Kate Tompkins’ letter. There is however, compelling evidence to suggest that Lydia was married before she married David’s father in the early 1840s.

In the 1850 US Census there are three children living in the Lydia Coapman household: David Coapman, age 6, George Downing, age 12 (born about 1838), and Phebe Downing, age 16 (born about 1834). In the 1860 Census, George Downing and David Coapman are still living with Lydia Coapman. In the earlier 1840 US Census we find a Lydia Downing listed on the same census page as John and Walter Coapman as well as David Sands Titus and in fact her name immediately precedes that of John and Walter on the list which suggests that Lydia Downing and Lydia Coapman are one and the same person. The Lydia Downing household in 1840 consists of one male under 5 (George Downing?), one male 20-30 (?), 2 females 5-10 (one might be Phebe Downing), 1 female10-15, and I female 30-40 (Lydia Downing). If Lydia Downing is in fact Lydia Titus and later Lydia Coapman, the additional members of her 1840 household are not obvious. Lydia Titus was only 30 years old in 1840 and it is unlikely that she had any children older than around 10. Following this same line of thinking I reviewed the 1830 US Census in Aurelius and discovered an Obadiah Downing living in a household consisting of one female child under 5, one adult male, 20-30 (Obadiah) and one adult female,20-30 (Lydia?). Is this our Lydia Titus who married Obadiah Downing? It appears likely. [Since writing this history story I have been in contact with Deb Plugh who is a descendant of Susannah Downing, one of the children of Obadiah and Lydia H. (Titus) Downing. Based on Obadiah's will, she informed me that the couple had four children: Phebe and George (mentioned in the Census) plus Susannah and Mary. She also sent me a copy of a wedding announcment for Phebe Titus, daughter of Gilbert Titus, which clearly suggests that Lydia H. named her daughter after her sister Phebe Titus thus providing us with further evidence that Lydia's maiden name was Titus.]

Based on the above scenarios, we might draw the following conclusions: Lydia Titus married Obadiah Downing and they had a daughter before 1830. Before 1840, Obadiah Downing died leaving Lydia Downing a widow in 1840 with one son under 5 (George), one daughter under 10 (Phebe), and one daughter just over 10 years old. Also in her household in 1840 was a young unrelated adult male who probably helped her with the farm, and one unrelated female under 20 helping her with the children and household chores. Lydia Downing, a widow at this point, married Jacob Coapman, the brother of John, Walter, and Julia Ann. Lydia had known Jacob while she was still in Dutchess County although she was seven years younger than Jacob and he was probably married in 1829 when Lydia Titus only 19, left for Cayuga County. Jacob probably lost his first wife and his family had made him aware that Lydia had also lost her husband. They were married around 1842 and their only child David was born two years later in 1844. Much to Lydia’s misfortune she lost her second husband Jacob before 1850. Lydia’s first daughter with Obadiah Downing, who was born in the late 1820s, was in her early 20s by the 1850 US Census and was not living with Lydia during the census. She may have married. That would explain why there are only two Downing children in the Lydia Coapman household in 1850. All of the above is speculation of course, but it does explain in part why Lydia Coapman is found living with two Downing children in 1850. So far in this chapter we have developed the following family tree.

John Jacob Coapman (1774-1864) m.
Catherine Rappleye (1782)-1873)
parents of
Jacob Coapman (1803- Before 1850) m.
Lydia Titus (1810-after 1870)
parents ofDavid Coapman (1744-Before 1900) m.
Elsie Yawger (1745 – After 1910)
parents of
Marian Coapman (1867-1895) m.
Eugene Hutchinson Ferree (1866-1952)

and for the parents of Lydia Titus
Gilbert Titus(1765-1847) m.
Jane Hoag ( ? - 1849)
parents of
Lydia Titus (1810-after 1870) m.
Jacob Coapman (1803 - before 1850)


The trip for Lydia Titus and her brother David and his wife and family, (and one slave according to a biographical review of David Sands Titus in the “History of Cayuga County” published in 1879) from their hometown of LaGrange In Dutchess County to their new home in the Town of Aurelius in Central New York was much easier than it had been for their predecessors who made the trip before 1829. In 1825 the Erie Canal was completed which meant that once they boarded a boat in Poughkeepsie in Dutchess County on the Hudson River, they remained on the water in relative comfort, at least compared to the much longer overland trip previously required, until they disembarked just north of the Town of Aurelius for a short wagon ride to their new home. The Erie Canal and its many laterals that opened in the following few years was an amazing engineering marvel especially considering that it was built in the early 1800s using only the muscle power of men and horses. The main part of the canal was connected via a lateral canal to the north end of Cayuga Lake followed a few years later by another canal lateral to Seneca Lake. Additional canals were built connecting Seneca Lake to Keuka Lake, and Seneca Lake to the Chemung River (and subsequently to the Susquehanna River) running south. The effect of the canals was immediate and dramatic for the development of Central and Western New York. Not only did settlers flood to the west as a result of this new inexpensive form of transportation, but agricultural trade exploded as the many new farmers discovered the ease of shipping their farm commodities at costs 90% below the previous costs of shipping overland. The Town of Aurelius in the County of Cayuga was ideally suited to take advantage of this new prosperity and it is not surprising to discover that many of our ancestors in this area including Great Grandfather Ferree’s side of the family, the Hutchinsons, benefited financially from the effects of the Erie Canal.

Individuals in our branch of the Titus family tree are all descendants of Robert Titus and his wife Hannah Carter, my 9th great grandparents and the 5th great grandparents of Marian Coapman. Robert, Hannah, and their two children John and Edmond, boarded a ship in London on April 3, 1635 bound for America and the Port of Boston. The family originally settled in what is now the town of Brookline just south of Boston, but they later moved to Weymouth, then to the town of Rehoboth, near Providence, Rhode Island, and eventually in 1654 to Long Island, where the family was to remain for the next five generations until Gilbert Titus, Robert’s 3rd great grandson, moved his family to Dutchess County, New York in the late 1700s. Robert Titus was probably not a Puritan when he arrived in Boston which may have motivated his move to Long Island away from the predominately Puritan New England colonies. It is not clear at what point the family took up the Quaker faith although it was undoubtedly around the time when the first Quakers settlers arrived in New York from England on the ship “Woodhouse” in 1657. It is known that Robert Titus had some trouble with the Authorities prior to his moving to Long Island for harboring a known Quaker “being of evil fame,” which probably signified that they were or were soon to become Quakers. Edmond Titus, Robert’s son and my 8th great grandfather, and his wife Martha were among the earliest adherents of the Society of Friends and “as a consequence suffered reproach and injury” including being fined in 1687 for refusing to contribute to a fund towards the construction of a new house for the priest. The fine consisted of confiscating one of Edmund’s cows. The Titus family were to remain Quakers through a number of generations. While it is not clear whether David Sands Titus and his sister, Lydia Titus (Coapman) remained Quakers after they moved to Cayuga County in 1829, according to a biographical review of Hiram Titus (son of David Sands Titus) written in the “History of Cayuga County” published in 1879, it refers to David and Lydia’s parents as being “worthy Quakers of that place” (Dutchess County.) We do know that Lydia’s granddaughter, Marian Coapman, was married to Eugene Hutchinson Ferree in an Episcopal Church suggesting that Marian Coapman may have been an Episcopalian, the likely denomination of her father David.

One final interesting and somewhat humorous look at our family’s past is the final will of Hannah Titus who survived her husband Robert Titus. The will was dated 14th May, 1672 and reads in part”
“Add also I give to my son John my mare, and to my son Edmond I give a horse, and to my son Samuel a brown cow and a yearlen stear, and I give to my son Samuel’s wife my warming-pan, and to my son Abiall’s wife my smoothing iron, and to my son Content’s wife my skimmer . . . .”
Kathy and I have decided that we need to review our wills. . . “and to my son Charles I leave my favorite shovel, and to my son Geoffrey, his mother’s old frying pan. . . .”

I was unable to locate any concrete evidence as to the arrival time or the country of origin of our immigrant Coapman ancestor although in a biography of John C. Coapman in the 1879 publication of the “History of Cayuga County” it indicates that Jacob Coapman, my 5th great grandfather (and Marian Coapman’s 2nd great grandfather) “was born of Holland parentage.” Jacob’s father is believed to be Johannes Coapman and based on his estimated birth date of 1715 and the fact that his son was born in America around 1740, Johannes probably arrived from Holland in New York around 1720-30 and he may have moved to Dutchess County (shown in red on the map of New York State) immediately following his arrival as prior to 1725 almost all the settlers in this area of Dutchess County were of Dutch descent (as the county name obviously implies.) This is all pure speculation. The existence of Jacob Coapman on the other hand is fairly well documented as living in Dutchess County, at least during the period of the Revolutionary War where is he found to have signed a Revolutionary War Pledge on August 15, 1775 shortly following the Battle of Bunker Hill. His name is also mentioned a number of times in the Records of Christ Church, an Episcopal church in Poughkeepsie and in the tax rolls in Dutchess County, where his name appears in 1774, 1775 and 1777. Furthermore, there is a Jacob “Copemen” listed as a private on the New York Line during the American Revolution although I was unable to find any clear evidence that this was our Jacob Coapman from Dutchess County. There was also a Jacob “Coopman” who fought in the 2nd Regiment of the Dutchess County Militia who is more likely to have been our Jacob Coapman. We know that Jacob’s wife’s name was Maria LeRoy and we know that one of their sons was named John Jacob Coapman. This information comes from the handwritten family tree prepared by Kate L. Tompkins that I mentioned earlier. Jacob Coapman would have been her great grandfather. This same family tree lists the name of John Jacob’s son Jacob, and his son David Coapman, father of our Marian Coapman. John Jacob Coapman married Catherine Rappleye and they lived their entire lives in Dutchess County which is well documented in US Census lists from 1810 through 1860. There is one final note about the Coapman family. Catherine Rappleye (1782-1883), the wife of John Jacob Coapman, is my 4th great grandmother on my mother’s side of the family. However, as we have learned from many sources, all of the Rappleyes (and the many spelling of the name that are found) in American history are all descendants of Joris Jansen Rapelje and his wife Catalytje Jeronymus Trico, my 8th great grandparents on my father’s side of the family. Since my mother and my father are both descendants of the first Rappleyes in this country, then my parents must be distant cousins.

At this point it is only fair that we also cover the ancestor’s of Marian Coapman’s mother’s side of the family, the family of Elsie Yawger. Philip Yawger, Elsie’s great grandfather and my 5th great grandfather is the most interesting of Marian Coapman’s ancestors. He is also the earliest of her ancestors to settle in Cayuga County and as a result of a history of the Yawger family written in 1893 by Rose N. Yawger and by a family history written by Mary Eliza Davis, both that features Philip Yawger, we know more about his life history than the other men and women ancestors of Marian Coapman previously discussed.

According to a family history of the Yawger family written by Mary Eliza Davis (1841-1923), great granddaughter of Philip Yawger, Philip’s father, the Count Philip Von Jager brought his four sons from Goblenz, Germany to America in 1755. His youngest son Philip, born on June 22, 1753, was only two years old when the ship disembarked in Philadelphia. The family eventually settled on a large estate in Flemington, New Jersey. In 1774, Philip married Catherine Kuhl from nearby Kingwood, New Jersey and together they had eleven children including our 4th great grandfather, John Yawger. There is some evidence that Philip Yawger fought with the New Jersey militia during the American Revolution although additional research is necessary to confirm this. Two years after their last child was born in 1799, Philip with his wife, nine of the children (the two oldest girls were married and remained behind in New Jersey), and his son John’s wife packed up all of their family belongings and household goods in canvas-covered Jersey wagons, and driving their stock, headed west into the forested mountains of northeastern Pennsylvania. After many long hard days of travelling they eventually entered the Susquehanna River valley and followed the valley north along the river until finally stopping and settling in the small settlement of Owego (located on the Susquehanna about 20 miles west of the present day City of Binghamton, New York). Less than two years later after a visit to the Cayuga Lake area, Philip fell in love with this new Cayuga wilderness country, purchased 130 acres of land that was covered with oak and hickory forests, incredible fertile soils, and bordered on the west by the beautiful Cayuga Lake, and in the spring of 1802 he moved his family once again. The land that Philip first purchased was part of “The Military Tract” which was land that had been set aside for distribution to New York soldiers who had fought in the Revolutionary War. The idea was that they would receive the land in lieu of pay for their services as soldiers. Unfortunately for the soldiers much of the land was still owned by the Cayuga Indians at the end of the war and many of the soldiers tired of waiting for the Indian claims to be settled before they could occupy the land, elected to sell their claims to the land. Many of these claims were sold to speculators who figured they would buy the land cheaply and sell it later at a huge profit (it’s called “flipping” today.) Unfortunately for Philip Yawger, when he purchased the land in 1802 the seller’s title was cloudy, and it was not until 1812 after he had made major improvements on the land, was he able to obtain a clear title to his property from the State of New York. Family history records that he was aided in his quest to clear the title by an acquaintance and a future President of the United States, Martin Van Buren. Is it possible that my 5th great grandfather slipped some money under the table to this big shot in Albany so that his problem would go away? Anyway, by the time that Philip Yawger was finished, he had acquired almost 1,000 acres of land in Cayuga County and he had prospered greatly.

But it was much more than just farming the land that made Philip Yawger a prosperous man for in the fall of 1809 while plowing his land he uncovered a soft grey stone which he learned later was a high grade soft gypsum stone. This gypsum stone when ground to a powder made both an excellent fertilizer as well as a plaster material for building construction. Soon Philip owned a fleet of 50 or 60 boats and he was shipping both the ground powder and the stone all over the lake. Some of the stones were hauled overland south to the Susquehanna River where they were then hauled down river to the large cities to the south. It is said that the Yawger quarry was the only known quarry in the United States at this period of time. The only other source of gypsum material was hauled all the way down from Nova Scotia, Canada. When President Thomas Jefferson placed an embargo from shipments from England and Canada in 1809 preceding the War of 1812, this should have been good for the Yawger quarries, however when the war began in 1812, a disaster was soon to occur.

At the start of the War of 1812, Generals Dearborn and Van Rensselaer were ordered to make an invasion of Canada. To prepare for the invasion their militia army passed through Union Springs where the Yawger boats were docked, and they confiscated all of the plaster shipping boats. The boats were then hauled to Lake Ontario where they were fitted out for the transportation of the troops to Canada. In the meantime, Philip Yawger was unable to fulfill his plaster contracts, he was sued by his customers, and nearly financially ruined.

General Van Rensselaer operations were equally ruinous although in his case it was due almost entirely to his inexperience as a soldier and to his incompetence. On April 13, 1812, Stephen Van Rensselaer led his troops across the Niagara River at Lewiston, New York to Canada to engage the British forces at Queenston. The major battle that followed became known as the Battle of Queenston Heights where the Americans were soundly defeated. As a consequence of his defeat, Van Rensselaer resigned his position as General of the militia and for the most part the plans for the invasion of Canada were abandoned. Unfortunately, Philip Yawger’s boats were not only abandoned, they were burned on the shores of Lake Ontario.

In 1812, Philip Yawger was almost 60 years old and it was to late in his career to start over. Fortunately he still owned the land and during his life he had provided for his children by giving them large farms holdings free and clear of incumbrances. Only his two youngest sons were still living at home and through their efforts and the efforts of two of the other brothers, they were able to secure compensation for the value of the boats although unfortunately, not for the financial loss of the plaster contracts. These sons were also successful in securing some financing to keep the business afloat. Philip was so grateful to his two youngest sons for rescuing the business, that when he died in 1830, he left them the original 130 acres of land and the quarries. Four of the Yawger sons eventually joined a partnership and thereafter the business again prospered. Philip’s life is a wonderful story and might make a great movie.

The photographs of the two very similar homes shown below belong to two of Philips sons, Henry’s on the left, and Peter’s on the right. Both of these sons were part of the partnership that continued the plaster business after their father’s death and both homes reflect the wealth of these two brothers. Philip and Catherine Yawger built a home at the corner of Route 90 and Backus Road north of Union Springs that was described by their great granddaughter, Mary Eliza Davis, as a Greek Revival House similar to the homes they remembered back in New Jersey. Without question it would seem that the two brothers followed the design theme of their parent’s home.















The left photograph below is my great Uncle Henry (1793-1865) and on the right is my great Uncle Peter (1787-1869) and his wife.













Philip’s and Catherine’s oldest son, John Yawger, my 4th great grandfather and the great grandfather of Marian Coapman, was born in 1776. He married Elizabeth (Elsa) Cole in 1800 in New Jersey before their move with John’s parents to Cayuga and for most of his life until he died in 1826 he was a farmer on land granted to him by his father. His death according to family history, was an accident caused by a runaway horse. He was only forty-nine when he died. John is also credited with operating an inn/tavern in Union Springs at the corner of Schoby and Cayuga Streets. In 1823 the first town meeting of the newly organized town of Springport was held in his tavern. John and Elsa Yawger had five children including a son, John Yawger (Jr.), my 3rd great grandfather, who was born in 1817. John Jr. was a farmer all of his life in Springport. Around 1840 he married Adaline Starkweather, the mother of Elsie Yawger. Elsie’s mother died in 1849 when Elsie was only 4 years old and her mother only 31. John Yawger described himself in the 1860 US Census as 42 years old and a “farm laborer.” In 1870 he is described as only a “laborer” and in the 1880 Census he now refers to himself as a farmer. It appears unlikely that when Elsie Yawger’s father died in 1895, Elsie received little in the way of an inheritance which might explain why in the 1900 US Census, Elsie is listed as living with her son-in-law, Eugene H. Ferree, in Lockport, New York.

There are many more branches of the Marian Coapman family tree that we have yet to explore. For example, Marian Coapman’s grandmother’s family, the Starkweathers, could trace their family back to a Robert Starkweather who emigrated to America in 1640, and there is a Johnson branch who can trace their family tree back to an Isaac Johnson who came over with his father in the early 1630s and fought as a Captain at the “Great Swamp” fight to end the King Philip’s War in 1675. There are many more interesting stories but too many to write about in this chapter which is already too long. These stories will have to be told at another time.

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Chapter 18 - The Hamilton Family

The first of my ancestors on my father’s side of the family to settle in the Elmira, New York area were Lebbeus Hammond and his wife, Lucy Tubbs. Lebbeus was noted as a Revolutionary War soldier and an Indian fighter and they settled near Elmira in the 1790s. Their story and the history of the Hammond family is told in Chapter 8. Lucy Tubbs’ parents were Lebbeus Tubbs (also a soldier in the Revolutionary War) and Bathsheba Hamilton. The Tubbs’ family history which includes a look at the early years of Plymouth Colony is told in Chapter 2. This chapter tells the story of the ancestors of Bathsheba Hamilton.

David Hamilton, my 9th great grandfather, was born around 1625 and it is unlikely that the exact year of his birth will ever be determined. Some genealogical sources place the birth date as early as 1620 and as late as 1640 although neither of these dates are realistic. The 1620 date would have made him older than his older brother, Gabriel, and substantially older than Annah, his wife and childhood sweetheart whom he did not marry until 1662. The 1640 date would have made him only eleven years old when he was a soldier in the 3nd English Civil War, which was very unlikely. David was born in the village of Westburn in what was then Lanarkshire County, Scotland, located a short distance from the town of Hamilton and about eleven miles southeast of Glasgow. The Hamilton lineage can be traced back to Normandy, France to before the Norman Invasion of England in 1066. David’s 15th great grandfather is thought to be Robert de Beaumont, who fought alongside William the Conqueror, later King William 1 of England, at the Battle of Hastings. His 10th great grandfather, Walter Fitz Gilbert de Hambleton (1250-bef.1336) was knighted by Robert the Bruce around 1329 and granted for his services and loyalty the title of 1st Baron of Cadzow and the barony of Cadzow (now Hamilton, Scotland) which included vast acreages of land as well as the Cadzow Castle (located about 1 mile southeast of the home of David Hamilton. The ruins of Cadzow Castle are shown in the above photograph. David’s 6th great grandfather, Thomas Hamilton, was the third son, of John Hamilton (1371-1402), the 4th Baron of Cadzow. The lands and the titles however, passed to John Hamilton’s oldest son, James Hamilton. James’ direct descendant, Angus Alan Douglas Douglas-Hamilton, who was born in 1938, is the current 15th Duke of Hamilton. The Duke of Hamilton is today one of the most ennobled individuals in the United Kingdom. While David’s branch of the family tree did not inherit the titles and barony, the family was nevertheless a “Hamilton” which translated in the early 17th century to a family able to enjoy the privileges afforded to members of Scotland’s land-owning upper-class. James Hamilton (1606-1648), the 1nd Duke of Hamilton, was David’s 7th cousin, once removed. The painting to the right shows James Hamilton.

The times into which David Hamilton was born were turbulent both socially and politically. Charles I was crowned King of England on February 2, 1626. Unfortunately, religious conflicts permeated Charles’ reign as did an epic political struggle for power between Charles, who believed in the “Devine Right of Kings”, and the English Parliament. It was during his reign from the period of 1630 until around 1642 when the Parliamentary forces under Oliver Cromwell usurped the power of the King, that almost 25,000 Puritans immigrated to America to escape the unpopular reforms that Charles was imposing on the church. Many in England believed that King Charles was attempting to return the Roman Catholic Church to power in England and Charles gave them fodder for their beliefs by marrying a Roman Catholic and by his aggressive methods (including imprisonment and even torture) to purge the Church of England of its liberal and Protestant, Calvinistic practices. The Puritans on the other hand, believed equally strongly that nothing in the bible suggests that bishops with their rich robes, church ornamentations, elaborate rituals, and even kneeling at communions should be incorporated in religious services. While David Hamilton’s family were Presbyterians they shared with Puritans the conviction that King Charles was trying to move the church in the wrong direction. Presbyterians followed the teachings of John Calvin who advocated a simpler faith that like the Puritans believed that bishops and the “popish” church rituals should not be part of their church. In this period of history one’s religious faith was of paramount importance, enough to go to war to defend if necessary.

King Charles’ struggle for power with the English Parliament centered primarily over the issues of taxation and Charles’ attempt to reform the Anglican Church of England against the wishes of Parliament and the majority of the citizens of England. To go into great detail on the reign of Charles I that lasted from 1625 until his death in 1649, is beyond the scope of this chapter. Briefly however, except for the eleven year period from 1629 until 1640 when Charles had dismissed Parliament, during most of his reign the country was at war, and war required a great deal of money. Unfortunately for Charles the only way to raise the money was through taxation and the right to approve taxes, by English tradition, rested in the hands of Parliament. For the most part Parliament did not approve of his wars and they denied him the money needed to support his armies. When Charles came to power in 1628, the country was at war with France and Spain. In 1639 and again in 1640, Charles sent his military forces into Scotland in a failed attempt to force Scotland and the Presbyterians to accept his mandate that the Anglican Church of England was the only acceptable faith to be practiced in England. Without the funds, Charles was forced to abandon his efforts in this regard. Then in 1641, Charles ordered his military forces to Ireland to put down what he believed was a Catholic attempt to take over Ireland. In the summer of 1642, Parliament disgusted with Charles’ actions without their consent, maneuvered to gain control over the army. What resulted was the creation of two separate armies and the beginning of the England’s First Civil War. Back and forth battles in southern England between the Parliament army and the King’s “Royalist” army lasted until 1646 at which time the Royalist army was defeated and Charles escaped north to Scotland where he surrendered to the Scottish army. This effectively ended of the First Civil War.

In late 1647, Charles completed an agreement with the Scots that promised him military aid in exchange for his agreeing to implement Presbyterianism in England once he was back in power. The 1st Duke of Hamilton, James Hamilton, led an invasion into England with Royalist and Scottish forces but he was defeated by Oliver Cromwell in August of 1648 at the Battle of Preston. James was subsequently tried for treason for his role in the war, found guilty and executed. As far as can be determined our David Hamilton was not with James Hamilton at the Battle of Preston. This event ended the Second Civil War. Shortly thereafter, Scotland turned King Charles over to Parliament. Parliament, or to be more accurate, the militant branch of Parliament, a group that included Oliver Cromwell, set up a “high court of justice”, tried the King for treason, and in January of 1649, the King was beheaded. Oliver Cromwell and Parliament were now firmly in control of England, but the civil wars were not yet over.

Many of the English people, and particularly the Scottish people were shocked that King Charles I was executed. He was after all the King even if his behavior had been unpopular. Scotland, totally disillusioned by the new “Commonwealth” declared by Cromwell, proclaimed Charles’ son, Charles Stuart, as the new King of Scotland (King Charles II), and together they plotted to regain the throne of England. Charles II agreed to impose Presbyterianism in England in exchange for a Scottish army. The Commonwealth army under the command of Oliver Cromwell mounted a pre-emptive invasion of Scotland and defeated a Scottish army at the Battle of Dunbar in September of 1650. This was the beginning of the Third Civil War.

In August of the following year, King Charles II with his Scottish allies began a desperate attempt to invade England and capture London hoping to catch Cromwell’s army off-guard whose forces were still in northern Scotland. Joining King Charles II was a force under the leadership of William Hamilton, the new 2nd Duke of Hamilton, following the death of his father, James Hamilton, who was executed in 1649. James was able to raise a regiment of the men from his vast Scottish estates in Lanarkshire. Included in this regiment composed largely of horse cavalry, was our ancestor, David Hamilton, who would have been in his mid-20s at the time of the invasion. Unfortunately, for the army of Charles II and our David Hamilton, Oliver Cromwell anticipated the invasion and took decisive actions to thwart its success.

David Hamilton undoubtedly knew many of the soldiers called into service by Lord Hamilton. Many of the men were his cousins and friends. Most of them worked on his family’s estate or on the estates of his neighbors. He knew that most of these new soldiers were untrained and totally inexperienced and they had little idea of what was expected of them. Many of the men carried no weapons other than a long wooden pole called a pike. These soldiers were called the Pikemen. Other men were fortunate to carry a weapon called a matchlock musket which when it worked, fired a musket ball that was deadly at close range. These soldiers were called Musketeers and they with the Pikemen, were the army’s foot soldiers. David Hamilton, as befitting his family’s status, rode into battle on his large family horse. Neither David nor his horse wore armor and David’s only weapons were a carbine which he slung over his shoulder with a leather strap, and his sword. Most of the army did not wear matching uniforms. In David’s case, he wore only his normal civilian riding clothes which included his tall leather riding boots. David was a soldier in the Dragoons who formed the army’s cavalry regiment. They were not professional soldiers and few of them had fought in combat or received combat training.

David Hamilton was aware that he might someday be called into military service to defend Scotland and his Presbyterian faith. He was fully cognizant of Lord William Hamilton’s intention to support King John’s military efforts to regain the throne. Furthermore, David’s older brother, Gabriel Hamilton, was on the “Committee of War” for the County of Lanark beginning in the year 1648 and Gabriel was an outspoken advocate for the Presbyterian cause. He kept David fully informed as well as highly motivated to their cause. Nevertheless, when the call to arms finally came to join the invasion army, David had little time to prepare. He departed only with his horse, his weapons, the clothes he wore, and a small quantity of food and water. Where they were headed and how long they would be away he could only surmise by listening to the rumors that abounded among the soldiers in the marching army.

Oliver Cromwell’s army finally caught up with King John’s II Scots-Royalist army on September 3, 1651 in Worcester, England. David Hamilton had walked and rode his horse for almost three weeks and 300 miles on England’s dusty roads. Their army commanders expected additional men would join their cause along the way and the English countryside would provide them with their needed supplies, mainly food, but neither occurred and when they marched into Worcester the men were tried, exhausted, and as it turned out, greatly outnumbered by the Commonwealth army. The Scot-Royalist army had a strength of approximately 16,000 men; Cromwell’s army numbered around 31,000. Furthermore, the Scot-Royalist army consisted largely of untrained soldiers commanded by inexperienced leaders including both King John II and the William, Duke of Hamilton. Oliver Cromwell was a proven commander of many battles and his men were experienced and well trained. The Battle of Worcester was a total disaster for the Scot-Royalist army. While William Hamilton’s troops including David, courageously led an attack on the Roundhead position at Perry Wood, outside the city gates of Worchester, they were forced to retreat into the city. The 2nd Duke of Hamilton was fatally wounded during the retreat. In the biography of Oliver Cromwell written by Antonia Fraser and published in 1973, the conclusion of the battle that ended the English Civil Wars is described as follows: “Refusing quarter, the garrison was overrun, and their own guns now turned towards the city. As a result the wretched Royalists found themselves pressed back into Worcester itself from two directions. The result was carnage. Dead bodies of Royalists began to fill the streets. Crushed in the narrow alleys of Worcester, corpses not only of men but of horses began to block all possible passages like heaps of unnatural refuse. Some Scots, perhaps as many as four thousand, did manage to escape through the inadequately attended north gate. But two thousand were killed to a mere two hundred of Cromwell’s men, and eight or nine thousand prisoners taken.”

King Charles II managed to escape. The Duke of Hamilton’s leg was shattered by a musket ball and he died in agony from his wound. David Hamilton was among the 8,000 captured soldiers who were among the fortunate not to have been seriously wounded. Oliver Cromwell had no intention of allowing any of his prisoners the opportunity to return home to Scotland and live to fight another day. Most of the captured officers of the Royalist army were tried for treason, and then executed. The rest of their prisoners were marched in chains to London until it was determined that their punishment was to be deportation to the colonies in America where they were to be sold as indentured servants. The exact numbers of men sent to Barbados and the other British colonies in the West Indies, and to Bermuda is not known although clearly the fate of many of the men sent to the West Indies probably amounted to a death sentence. What is known is that approximately three hundred men were deported to New England. Fortunately for David Hamilton, and for his future father-in-law, Richard Jackson (who is my 10th great grandfather), they were included on the list of prisoners to be deported to New England.

David Hamilton remained in prison in the London area under despicable conditions with little food or warm clothing and blankets. It was getting cold and damp. Finally on November 8th, 1651, about two months following their defeat at Worcester, the three hundred Scottish prisoners were marched to the port of Gravesend, on the Thames, a short distance from London. There they boarded the ship “John & Sarah” under Master John Greene (a lumber dealer). The ship was consigned to a Thomas Kemble of Charlestown, Near Boston, where the prisoners were to be sold as indentured servants. The trip across the north Atlantic in winter must have been pure hell for the men locked in the ship’s hold below. It is estimated that at least 10% percent of the men died during the voyage leaving around 270 men alive when they disembarked in Charlestown (near Boston) in April of 1652. While their conditions were terrible by any standard, their status as indentured servants was in no way equal to the status of a slave. A 10% death rate on a slave ship would have been considered remarkably fortunate and the African slaves were bound slaves for life with little hope for freedom. Indentured servants on the other hand were in a sense, freemen who had chosen to contract themselves out as unpaid servants until they had worked off the cost of their transportation from England and the cost of their food and housing expenses while “employed.” Once their debt was paid they were freed of any further obligations. The period of the indentureship varied but it usually did not extend more than seven years.

There is no definitive evidence as to exactly where or how long David Hamilton remained an indentured servant. Many of the early historians are content to state that David probably remained in the Boston area and once his debt was paid he moved to Dover (now Rollinsford), in southeastern New Hampshire where the records clearly record his land purchase in 1662. Later records however, reveal that a David Hamilton worked with other Scotchmen, also former prisoners, at the Great Works sawmill in Kittery North Parish, Maine. Kittery North Parish is now part of South Berwick, Maine and it is located on the Salmon Falls River across the river from Rollinsford, New Hampshire where David Hamilton eventually settled and lived with his family for the remainder of his life. It appears probable that David served his indentureship at the Great Works sawmill from 1652 until about 1660. Lumber in the mid-1600s was a huge and prosperous business in Berwick, Maine. The thick forests in the area were filled with gigantic trees some 150 to 200 feet tall. They were cut down and floated down the river to the sawmills that were powered by the rapidly flowing Salmon Falls and Great Works rivers. The trees were called the “king’s pines” because they were used as mast’s for the great English ships. Lumber was a major export to England during this early colonial period. It was not unusual therefore, to discover that the labor intensive sawmills were employers of many of the Scottish indentured servants who had been captured in battle during the Third English Civil War. Indentured servants were obviously an inexpensive source of labor in these remote forested areas of Maine and New Hampshire.

Hamilton family lore has it that David Hamilton married his childhood sweetheart whom he had left behind in Lanarkshire, Scotland when he was banished to America in 1651. Her name was Annah Jackson, and she was the daughter of Richard Jackson, also of Lanarkshire and a passenger with David on the John & Sarah. Whether or not the story is true cannot be confirmed. In the privately written history of the Hamilton family by Samuel King Hamilton published in 1913 he writes for us the following: “. . through the doubt and defeat of that period her love never languished, and when her father, Richard Jackson, who had been banished by the same degree and transported to America in the same vessel with David Hamilton, had worked out his servitude and cleared for himself a little home on the westerly bank of the beautiful and historic Saco, bade her mother, her brother, and herself to join him, she left her desolate home in Scotland with a heart bounding with hope and expectation. July 14th, 1662, after years of sorrow and separation, these childhood lovers, near where the great river mingles its chastened waters with the mighty deep, and without a sigh for their old trysting-place in the home country plighted their troth.” Why say it in a few words when many embellished words will do just as well?

David and Annah Hamilton were to have seven children born between the years 1664 and 1679. David, if he was born in 1625, would have been 37 years old when he married. When his last son was born, Jonas Hamilton, my 8th great grandfather, David would have been around 54 years old. If Annah was David’s childhood sweetheart, it is likely that she would have been no more than five years his junior or about 21 years old when he left for war. If this age is accurate that would have made Annah around 49 years old when Jonas Hamilton was born and 34 years when her first child was born in 1664. These are not typical child bearing ages especially in the 1600s. While there is no reason to doubt that Annah was not the daughter of Richard Jackson, I suspect that that she was probably much younger than David when he left home in his mid-20s. I suppose it is possible that the young 25-year old David Hamilton was in love with a 15-year old Annah Jackson when he set off for war which might explain why he did not marry his “sweetheart” before he departed Scotland. It is more likely however, that they were not sweethearts. Whatever the circumstances, in the wildernesses of southeastern New Hampshire in 1662, there was probably a huge shortage of single women and after years of hardships, David Hamilton must have been out-of-his mind with joy to marry Annah Jackson, even if she were not his childhood sweetheart.

Prior to David’s marriage to Annah Jackson he acquired about twenty acres of land located on the west bank of the Salmon Falls River (which was then called by its Indian name, the Newichawannoch River) south of the present day village of Rollinsford. The Salmon Falls River today marks the boundary between the states of New Hampshire and Maine. Here he erected a house to which he took his new bride. His land was located not far south of the point where the Great Works River enters the Salmon Falls River. The Great Falls sawmill where David was employed as an indentured servant was located less than a mile upstream on the Great Works River. It is entirely possible that David was part of the original crew of men who logged the area where his new home was later constructed. David and his wife and family lived in this house until his death. His occupation for the next 30 years was that of a farmer.

Pioneer life in this part of New England was not easy. Not only did they experience the usual hardships one might expect in the frontier wildernesses of southern New Hampshire in the later part of the 1600s, but their remote location put them in a position of constant Indian conflicts. The area was a focal point for Indian raids during King Philip’s War in 1675. Raids continued though the early part of the French & Indian Wars, from 1689 through 1697. This period is referred to in our country’s history as King William’s War and many of the homes in the community of South Berwick located just north the Hamilton homestead, were burned and many of the colonists were killed. In his journal written sometime after 1691, the Rev. John Pike added the following matter-of-fact comment: “1691, September 28th. David Hamilton, Henry Childs, etc. were slain by Indians at Newichawannoch.” David Hamilton’s life ended in the same tragic fashion that seemed to have permeated much of his life. There are no records to tell us when Annah Hamilton died, although she may have died with her husband at the hands of Indians. Their burial place has never been discovered. The above photograph of the historical marker installed on Sligo Road in Rollinsford marks the location of his land that he called home for many years. David was in his mid-60s when he was killed.

While the historical records are not entirely inclusive, it is general accepted that David and Annah Hamilton had seven children, all sons: David, Solomon, Jonathan, Abel, Abial (or Bial), and Jonas. What is interesting and I found worth researching, was that all of their sons were given Old Testament names. What I learned was that in England in the late 1500s, the more common English proper names originating from the New Testament, such as John, Paul, Peter, and Thomas were considered Roman Catholic names by the rising group of Protestants in England such as the Puritans and the Scottish Presbyterians. They chose to avoid these “Catholic” proper names choosing instead names from the Old Testament. Obviously David and Annah strongly adhered to their Presbyterian faith even in the New World.

When David Hamilton died in 1691 he apparently did not leave a will which left the disposition of his property in the hands of the “selectmen of Dover.” What they chose was to order the property sold and the proceeds used “for the maintaining” of David’s eldest son, also named David Hamilton, for “the Hoole of his life.” It was alleged by the selectmen of Dover that young David was a “town charge”. This was in 1697 at which time the young David was 33 years old. He was obviously not a minor in 1697, therefore the reference to his being a town charge, may have been referring to him as the village idiot. There is no mention in these same records of Annah Hamilton therefore it is likely that she died before 1697. Other than David, only their son Gabriel is mentioned in the town records, and it is noted that Gabriel did not protest the disposition of the family property. The other sons whose ages ranged from around 28 to 32 in 1697 were obviously engaged elsewhere and offered no claims on the family property.

Jonas Hamilton, my 8th great grandfather, was born on his family’s farm along the banks of the Great Salmon Falls in the year 1678. He was the seventh child of David and Annah Hamilton and only 14 years old when his parents were slain by Indians. There are no existing records on Jonas in his younger years until his name appeared in church records in New London, Connecticut on September 9, 1708 recording his marriage to Elizabeth Wickwire. Why he chose to move from Rollinsford, New Hampshire to New London, Connecticut is a mystery. It may be the lack of available land near Rollinsford, the lack of available women from which to choose a wife, or the constant Indian conflicts in the area that drove him from home. The Queen Anne’s War had begun in 1706 and he may have joined the military to fight against the French and Indians which eventually led him to settle in Connecticut. Or possibly, he may have elected to serve on one of the many sailing ships that hauled lumber from the southern coast of Maine to the ship building seaport of New London. We will never know his motives but there does appear to be a consensus that Jonas Hamilton, son of David and Annah, is the same Jonas Hamilton who married Elizabeth Wickwire in 1708.

Elizabeth Wickwire’s parents, John Wickware and Mary Tonge, settled in New London shortly after the King Philip’s War of 1675. John was a soldier in the war and was engaged, probably as an officer, in the Great Swamp fight, the final battle of the war against the Indians. For his services he received from the general court a grant of one hundred and forty acres of land in the New London area where he moved and settled in 1676. John had immigrated to Massachusetts around 1650 from Gloucestershire, England. There is a town in England named Wickwire located about twenty-six miles south of Gloucester named after one of the great English lords of the 13th century, John de la Warre, who is thought to be an ancestor of the Wickware family. John met and married his wife, Mary Tonge, in New London in November of 1676. Mary’s parents, George and Margaret Tonge were early settlers of New London arriving sometime before 1656. George Tonge was an innkeeper (“house of entertainment”) most of his life and it is noted that “ . . only trustworthy citizens were recorded this privilege.” Apparently for the Puritans it was important to have someone “trustworthy” serving them ale. John Wickwire and Mary Tonge are my 9th great grandparents.

There is very little in the historical records about the lives of Jonas and Elizabeth (Wickwire) Hamilton. We know that they were baptized together in New London on June 25, 1710. This would be a more interesting fact if I knew the significance of two adults in their early 30s being baptized. Both of them must have been baptized when they were newborns and Jonas I would think, would have been baptized and raised a Presbyterian. Perhaps, they felt the need to join a church and the fact that they were of different faiths required them to be re-baptized as a condition of joining the church. It is unlikely that Elizabeth Wickwire would have been a Presbyterian and based on the fact that her parents arrived in the New World before 1650 from England, Elizabeth was probably an Anglican. In any case, they were admitted to the church and Jonas and Elizabeth were to have nine children born between the years 1709 and 1731 including my 7th great grandfather and their oldest son, Jonathan Hamilton, born on June 17, 1709.

Jonathan Hamilton married Anna Camp on May 9, 1732. Their first child, Bathsheba Hamilton, my 6th great grandmother, was born on December 1, 1732 (I know, less than 9 months following their marriage, hopefully the birth date is wrong), and their second child, Lucy, was born two years later in October of 1734. Anna Camp died on January 9, 1735 at their New London home. She may never have fully recovered from the birth of her second child. She was only 26 years old when she passed away. Jonathan remarried a year later in 1636 and outlived his second wife as well, but not before she gave birth to seven children. Then Jonathan, still very much in need of someone to take care of his home and his family, remarried for a third time in 1761 at the age of 53 and his new and probably much younger third wife, Phebe, gave birth to six additional children. In all, Jonathan fathered 15 children. He was 64 years old when his last child was born. He died only two years later on February 24, 1778 at his home in Horton Township, King’s County, Nova Scotia, exhausted but with a smile on his face.

Fortunately for the Hamilton family, Jonathan was fairly well off having acquired a large quantity of property and a prosperous farm, or “plantation,” as it is referred to in historical accounts in New London County records of the 1700s. It is interesting therefore, to wonder why Jonathan moved his family to Nova Scotia in 1761 shortly following his third marriage.

The French and Indian War was essentially a European war between England and France that began in 1754 and continued until the early 1760s. English history refers to the war as the Seven Years War. In North America it was essentially a series of battles for control of territory not only in Ohio and the “western” lands that were claimed by the French, but also in eastern Canada. The disputed land in Quebec and what is now the Canadian Maritime Provinces was originally settled by French explorers, fur trappers, and farmers and by the mid-1700s this land had been under French control for over 100 years. During the period of the war, the French with their Indian allies also attacked and created havoc with the English settlements to the south in New York and New England. The war in North America was essentially over by 1758 when the French military was defeated and they conceded control of all of their possessions in North America except for the land along the Mississippi River and its tributaries (Jefferson’s “Louisiana Purchase”). The Seven Years War was officially over in Europe with the signing of a peace treaty in Paris in 1763.

The British at this point did something rather unusual even for the 18th century. Beginning around 1658 the British forcibly began the removal of all of the inhabitants in the areas of present day Nova Scotia and Cape Breton. These inhabitants called “Arcadians” were sent away in ships and resettled in South Carolina, Georgia, and even Louisiana. Their cultivated lands and homes were confiscated without reparations. The British justification for these actions was that the Arcadians had supported the French during the conflict, an assertion that was not strongly supported by the facts. The British however, believed that these fertile lands in Nova Scotia could never come completely under English control as long as the land was occupied by French speaking people. Beginning in the following year, a proclamation was issued offering the sale of land in Nova Scotia at very favorable terms and the interest was immediately widespread and great.
Beginning in 1760 shiploads of emigrants left New England for resettlement in Nova Scotia. It is estimated that more than 70% of the new settlers came from Connecticut with many of them from the County of New London, the home of our Jonathan Hamilton. On Sunday, June 7, 1760 a baby named “Betty” was born to Capt. Peter Wickwire (Jonathan Hamilton’s first cousin) and his wife Rhoda “in the harbor of Horton [Nova Scotia]”. This was the first of Jonathan’s relatives to arrive in Nova Scotia. Many were to following including Jonathan and his new wife, and all of Jonathan’s younger children from his second wife who arrived by ship in mid-1761. The ship was loaded with all of their furniture, household supplies, farm tools and even their livestock. In a 1770 Census in Horton Township in King’s County, Nova Scotia, the Jonathan Hamilton family consisted of 1 adult male, 2 adult women, 3 girls, and 3 boys. When I first began the research on Jonathan Hamilton’s immigration to Nova Scotia, I assumed that he was a “Loyalist” and he retired to Nova Scotia because of the pending Revolutionary War. This was a logical conclusion as thousands of Americans left for British controlled Canada in the period immediately preceding the outbreak of war, when loyalty to the crown was an unpopular and even dangerous position to hold. However, in the case of the immigrants to Nova Scotia in the 1760s this was not the case. During the Revolutionary War these “Connecticut Yankees” in Nova Scotia remained neutral with respect to the war. Jonathan Hamilton was the first High Sheriff of King’s County before his death at the age of 69 on February 24, 1778.

Bathsheba Hamilton was 22 years old when she married 24 year old Lebbeus Tubbs also of New London County, Connecticut in 1654. She moved with her husband and three children with her father and his new wife to Nova Scotia in 1761 where she gave birth to a son in 1762. Lebbeus and Bathsheba are my 6th great grandparents. Lebbeus Tubbs and his brother Samuel are both listed in the group of early settlers of Horton Township, King’s County, Nova Scotia along with his father-in-law, Jonathan Hamilton. It is a total mystery why Lebbeus Tubbs and his family elected to leave Nova Scotia in the late 1760s and return to New London. There they joined join a group of New London settlers immigrating to the Wyoming Valley along the Susquehanna River in northeastern Pennsylvania around 1770. Obviously they must have decided they did not want to be Canadian citizens and subject their future descendents to high Canadian taxes and socialized medicine. On the other hand, it is possible that Lebbeus was sympathetic to the America cause for liberty so they returned to Connecticut. Lebbeus Tubbs was a soldier in the American Revolution and was present at the Battle of Wyoming fought on July 3, 1778. The story of the Tubbs family is continued in Chapter 8. Lebbeus and his wife and family later moved to the Elmira, New York area. He died in 1796; Bathsheba died in 1800.

The daughter of Lebbeus Tubbs and Bathsheba Hamilton, Lucy Tubbs (1758-1844) married Lebbeus Hammond (1754-1826); their daughter Mary Hammond (1774-1859) married John Sly (1764-1856); their son Mathew Sly (1815-1876) married Susan Maxwell (1823-1848); their daughter Mary Sly (1844-1917) married Charles Spaulding (1841-1875); Their son Henry Spaulding (1863-1889) married Ella Reynolds (1863-1935); their daughter Helen Spaulding (1887-1937) married my grandfather, Charles Schenck Baker (1885-1952). The end.

Chapter 17 - The Clarke Family

This chapter is dedicated to our daughter-in-law, Andrea, and it is the story of one branch of her family’s ancestral tree. We have tried wherever possible in the story to point out the instances where our family trees, hers and ours, have touched branches in the course of history. As it turns out our two families share a lot in common with many other American families who claim ancestors who bravely immigrated to ”The New World” in the first half of the 17th century.
It was a warm and sunny Sunday morning in the early spring of the year 1620 and seven year old Joseph Clarke was enjoying his ride in the back of his family’s wagon traveling down the narrow dirt country road. He was dressed in his best and only Sunday church clothes and Joseph knew that his mother would complain once she saw how dusty he had gotten his pants from dangling his legs off the back of the wagon. But he did not care. It was too nice a day. Riding with Joseph were his parents, Thomas and Mary, and his two older brothers, 16 year old Thomas, who was holding the reins of the steer pulling the wagon, and his 13-year old brother, Rowland. His 10-year old sister, Rebecca, sat quietly next to her mother. Joseph knew that once they reached their destination, the small farming village of Banham and St. Mary the Virgin Church, he would have to spend the next two boring hours inside the church. The church was almost always cold and damp and the seats were hard and he knew he would be scolded if he did not sit still. He had long ago given up listening to the old priest who spoke of things he could not understand. Even though he knew he would be bored, he loved Sundays for after the church service his family would visit with the other local families and their children in the churchyard before they returned to their small farm house in the country. He was particularly looking forward to this afternoon for many of his aunts, uncles, and cousins had been invited over for a large family meal. Joseph had spent Sundays in this way for as long as he could remember and he had long ago stopped complaining about having to go to the church. Joseph’s father reminded his young son when he complained that when he was Joseph’s age, his parents had taken him to this same church and he knew how Joseph felt about having to sit still for two hours. Joseph’s father also reminded him that Joseph’s grandparents, his great grandparents, and even his great, great grandparents had attended this same church in Banham and when they died they were buried in the graveyard next to the church. Joseph knew this to be true for he had seen their gravestones. It was hard for him to imagine that his great, great grandfather, John Clarke, had died two hundred years earlier. Although Joseph did not know this, St. Mary the Virgin Church had been constructed in the early part of the fourteenth century, almost three hundred years before Joseph was born. St. Mary the Virgin Church still exists in Banham to this day as shown in the above photograph. It is not known whether any of the old Clarke gravestones have survived to the present time.

There was another reason that Joseph enjoyed his Sundays. For the six days before Sunday, Joseph, even though he was only seven, had to work on the family farm with his father and two older brothers, and the work was hard and the days were long and tiring. While the family farm had orchards of fruit trees that had to be picked and taken to market each spring, most of their summer work consisted of planting, cultivating, and finally cutting, baling, and hauling to the mills, their large crop of hemp, the sale of which was the main source of their family’s income. They also had the farm animals and vegetable gardens that had to be cared for. The growing and particularly the cutting of the hemp was back breaking work and it was a great deal more difficult to produce hemp than wheat, the other main crop in the area. Wheat was grown by some of their neighbors, but hemp production was far more profitable as it was in great demand for its use in making the rope and sails used in England’s ever growing maritime fleet, and in the manufacture of durable textiles used in the making of working clothes and sacking, as well as paper and oil. It was said that hemp was so important that in the 16th century King Henry VIII had passed an Act of Parliament which fined farmers who failed to grow the crop. It is doubtful that Joseph and his father and brothers could have speculated that some of their descendents in the 21st century would consider smoking the hemp “weed” for medicinal purposes. In fact, in most of the United States today it is illegal to grow hemp, or as it is known by its more common name, marijuana.

For the next ten years Joseph lived and worked with his family on the farm and he rarely traveled more than a few miles from his home and from the land that had been in his family for many generations. Banham was a village and civil parish located in the English County of Norfolk situated in the low-lying area on the east coast of southern England known as East Anglia, about hundred miles north of the City of London. The two counties marked in red on the adjacent map of England are Norfolk on the north and Suffolk on the south. Norfolk was first settled by English tribes in pre-Roman times and despite occupation by the Romans in the first century and later by Viking invaders in the ninth century, by the time of the Norman invasion in 1066, the area had become one of the most densely populated lands in the British Isles. By the early 16th century, the City of Norwick, located about twenty miles east of the Village of Banham, had become the second largest city in England following London and the area had highly developed arable agriculture and woolen industries. While the origins of the Clarke family are not known, it is likely that their family ancestors had been in the area since before the Norman Conquest and maybe even earlier than the Roman occupation. It is believed that the derivation of the name Clarke came from the work “Clerk” or “Clericus” in Latin and was first used to describe a person’s occupation or employment probably as a scribe in the church. The first use of the word Clericus in England next to a person’s given name is found in the Doomsday book, the Norman census book that was written following the Norman invasion. It is doubtful that young Joseph Clarke in 1620 knew anything of the origins of his family, his family name, or this history of his country. In all probability, Joseph assumed he would be a farmer in the Banham area for the rest of his life like his father and his ancestors before him. All of that was about to change however, when Joseph met Ralph Wheelock in the year 1630.

Ralph Wheelock came from a completely different background than Joseph Clarke. He was born into a wealthy family; his father was the Earl of Shropshire with a large estate in the English midlands bordering Wales and his family could trace their Norman ancestry back to the tenth century. Joseph’s family were middle class people of Anglo-Saxon heritage and for generations their family had been farmers and tradesmen. Ralph Wheelock was educated and had earned a degree from Cambridge University. Joseph could sign his name but probably he could not read or write at least not to any great extent. Ralph Wheelock was ordained a priest in the Norfolk Diocese on May 6, 1630 only eleven days before he married Joseph’s 20-year old sister, Rebecca. Ralph was thirty at his marriage and Joseph was only seventeen. During the years of the 1620s while Ralph was attending Cambridge, the school was the center of the dissenting new religious movement that later gave rise to Puritanism. It is said that Ralph was disinherited by his father when he became a non-conforming clergyman, dissenting from the Church of England and supporting the unpopular belief of Puritanism. It is not surprising that Ralph chose to serve in a small church in the Village of Eccles, located a few miles to the west of Banham in Norfolk County. The East Anglia area of England which encompasses a six county area including Norfolk County, is said to be the birthplace of Puritanism and it is estimated that 60% of the Puritans who immigrated to America between 1630 and 1642 were from this area of England.

Ralph Wheelock had a strong influence on the Clarke family and Joseph was in awe of his new brother-in-law who was educated, worldly, a leader, and outspoken in his enthusiasm for his religious beliefs. Over the next few years following Ralph’s marriage to Rebecca Clarke, Ralph told the Clarke family stories about the new colony that was being settled in Massachusetts in America where Puritans could worship freely without fear of persecution from the hierarchy of the Church of England and the British Crown. He told the Clarkes that the cost of the passage to America was affordable, that the land in America was free, that families and any skilled craftsmen or tradesmen would not only be welcomed in the new colony but they would prosper. Ralph’s enthusiasm was so infectious that he convinced Joseph and all of his brothers and sisters with the exception of Thomas Clarke, Joseph’s oldest brother, who stood to inherit his father’s land, to make the long journey to the New World that was now being called New England.

The Clarke family consisting of two brothers and three sisters including Rebecca Wheelock, her husband Ralph and their three children departed for America in early spring of 1637. The trip from Banham to London left the family exhausted. While it was only 100 miles by coach, the roads in the spring were muddy and filled with ruts which made the 30 hour bumpy ride very uncomfortable. They knew that once they arrived in London they had only a few days to prepare for the ocean voyage and they would need to hurry to purchase supplies for their voyage and for their new life in America. Everything that they would need had to be purchased from nails, axes, and hatchets to pots and pans and blankets. They also knew that very little would be furnished on board the ship other than minimal food and water and they needed to gather what extras supplies they might need for the voyage. The name and size of the ship that carried the Clarkes and the Wheelocks across the Atlantic has been lost in history but the ship would have been small and without any comforts. It probably was no more than 75’ in length and 25’ in width and built originally as a merchant cargo ship. Most of the ship’s lower decks would be loaded with trade goods to sell to the new colonists as the sale of the cargo would be the primary source of income for the ship’s owners. The return voyage also would be filled with goods to resell back in England which may have included items such as lumber from the northeast colonies, tobacco from Virginia, and sugar from the West Indies. The ship may have carried as many as 60 to 80 passengers with each passenger responsible for a payment of around 5 English pounds sterling, which equates to a cost today of around $600 in US dollars. This was no cruise ship however, as there were few rooms for privacy and no bathrooms. No one bathed and fresh air was at a premium. Only on the few days when weather permitted were passengers allowed on the small deck. The living quarters below were dark, damp, and often stifling. The first ships that crossed the Atlantic from England to reach what would later be called the Jamestown Colony in Virginia, sailed southward out of England to the Canary Islands off the northwest coast of Africa. Here they gathered fresh supplies for the Atlantic crossing. The prevailing winds at this point blew from the east to the west which made the voyage over to the West Indies rather smooth as the winds were generally blowing into the sails from the stern of the ship. Once the West Indies were reached the ship would be resupplied for the trip northward. The entire voyage took up to four months. Ship-owners however, soon concluded that it was more cost effective to cross the north Atlantic rather than to travel the long southern route. This change cut their travel time down to two months or less with favorable winds. Unfortunately, the voyage for the passengers, while shorter, was far more uncomfortable as the prevailing winds in the north Atlantic blew from west to east. This meant that the ship had to head almost directly into the wind, constantly “tacking” back and forth, in order to maintain their westerly direction. For the most part the ship sailed into the waves which usually resulted in very rough sailing.

If Joseph Clarke thought that the ride from Banham to London was “uncomfortable” he was not at all prepared for the trip across the Atlantic. Within days, perhaps hours, of leaving the coast of England he was sick, seasick, and he was not alone. Seasickness was an experience that none of the passengers who were mostly tradesmen and farmers, had ever experienced and for many, the weeks at sea meant being seasick for weeks on end. To make matters worse, the voyage took longer than expected as the winds were strong and it was impossible to hold the westerly direction. Rather than taking eight weeks to cross, the voyage took twelve weeks. Their food and water supplies ran low; isolated cases of scurvy and dysentery broke out, and many passengers came down with pneumonia as a result of their close, cramped quarters and lack of fresh air. The closeness, the sickness and the constant pounding of the ship in the waves made sleeping difficult to impossible for many. This in turn wreaked havoc with the emotions of the passengers. When land was finally sighted, Joseph, perhaps for the first time in his life without hesitation dropped to his knees, as did the other passengers, to thank the Lord that their passage was almost over.

The ship dropped anchor in the Boston Harbor in late June of 1637. While Boston had been settled only seven years earlier it was already a thriving community of homes, warehouses, shops, taverns, and churches and was it not for the fact that almost all structures were constructed of wood which was readily available in the area, Boston could have been any English town duplicated in America. As the main disembarkation port for the Massachusetts Bay Colony over 10,000 new settlers had passed through the community since the first wave of immigration began in 1630 with the first arrival of Winthrop’s fleet of 11 ships and almost 1,000 settlers.

Joseph and his family were met at the port by friends whom they had known back in England. After gathering their possessions they traveled by dugout canoe up the Charles River to Watertown, a farming community located about six miles to the southwest of Boston where they assumed temporary lodging until a permanent home could be built or located. Unfortunately, while Watertown which was first settled in 1630 and was a thriving community like Boston, most of the good farm land had already been settled and what was available was being sold at prices that the family could not afford. In July of 1637, the Wheelocks and Joseph Clarke participated in a plan to create a new settlement further up the Charles River and in early 1638 the Wheelocks and the Clarkes as well as several hundred other new settlers relocated to the new settlement that was to be called Dedham.

The “Covenant of Dedham” is an interesting historical document that judged by the standards and laws of today would probably be found to be unconstitutional. In 1637, if you wanted your family to be part of the new settlement of Dedham, the male head of each family was required to sign the Covenant of Dedham. The document in effect set out the religious and political rules of the community but what makes it an interesting document is that it required all of the Dedham citizens to accept only the Puritan religion and be subjected to a public inquisition to determine their suitability to join the community. It reads in part “we shall by all means labor to keep off from us all such as are contrary minded, and receive only such unto us as may be probably of one heart with us . .” Considering that the Puritans left England to find religious freedom, the Covenant seems a strange contradiction. Nevertheless, 125 settlers signed the document including Ralph Wheelock, who was the tenth signer, and Joseph Clarke, who was the eighty-first signer.

In September of 1637, Joseph was finally granted about eight acres of free land in Dedham upon which he cleared trees, built a home, and plowed his fields and planted crops. All the skills he had learned working for his family in England were again put to use. In 1640, Joseph fell in love with Alice Pepper, a young girl from London who had immigrated to America with her brother in 1634 following the early death of her parents. Joseph, age 27, and Alice, age 17, were married in late 1640 and they moved into their new home that Joseph had recently constructed. Their first child, Joseph, was born in Dedham on July 27, 1642. Many of the early Dedham public records have been lost in history and in those that have been found, Joseph Clark’s name is seldom mentioned. It is assumed that he was a quiet man, probably very religious, but he kept to himself and rarely it seems, was involved in public affairs. One record that has survived lists the value of the Clarke’s house in Dedham in 1648 as 5 pounds, 4 shillings. This was a modest sum and clearly reflects the fact that he was not a wealthy landowner. In contrast, Joseph’s brother-in-law, Ralph Wheelock, was very active in the community and he is credited with helping to found the first taxpayer-funded public school in America and was its first teacher. Joseph and Alice’s second child, Benjamin, was born in Dedham on December 9, 1644 (This is our daughter-in-law’s 9th great grandfather). In total, Joseph and Alice were to have nine children; their last child was born in the year 1660.

By the year 1649, the population of the Massachusetts Bay Colony had grown to over 25,000 and Dedham, once a small community created a little over a decade earlier had now becoming quite populous. By 1647, it had become obvious to some that the original Dedham Covenant was becoming impossible to enforce especially with respect to the requirement that all citizens were to be of one faith. Furthermore, in the beginning it was expected that all [adult male] citizens attend the town meetings and participate in the town governance, however as the town grew especially geographically, this expectation became unrealistic and more and more the control of the town feel into the hands of a few large landowners. In 1649, a few of the Dedham citizens upset with what they were seeing happening to their village appointed Ralph Wheelock leader of a group to form and govern a new village apart from Dedham that was to become the Town of Medfield. Medfield was located about twelve miles southwest of Dedham also on the Charles River. In May of 1651, Ralph Wheelock and his family, Joseph Clarke and his family, and about twelve other families moved their homes to this new settlement. Joseph Clarke and his wife Alice were to spend the remainder of their lives in this new settlement.

Joseph was 38 years-old when he relocated for the final time to his new land in Medfield. While not old by the standards of today, it was still rather late in life for a pioneer in the 1600s to have to start all over again to clear land and build a new home. Besides planting crops (grain primarily), he was also expected to help his neighbors build the new church and the community center and help clear the land for the roads and public square in the new village. Their family in May of 1651 now consisted of four boys, ages 4 through 9, and two girls ages 3 months and 2 years old. The Clarke homestead was equal in size and appearance to the home pictured on the left. The house in the photograph is today called “The Peak House”, due to its steep roof, and it was built around 1680 by Benjamin Clarke, the son of Joseph Clarke. It is said to be an exact reproduction of the original Joseph Clarke house built in 1651. Joseph Clarke’s original home was burned by Indians in 1676 as was his son’s home located nearby . The Peak House is the oldest house in Medfield and is listed on the “National Register of Historic Places”. It is understandably a popular tourist attraction. Today Medfield has a population of around 13,000 and is one of the wealthiest towns in Massachusetts. There is a school in Medfield for 2nd and 3rd graders named Wheelock after Joseph’s brother-in-law whom he had so admired and followed.

Joseph remained a quiet unassuming man for the rest of his life. He served as a “selectman” (like a councilman) in the year 1660. In 1678, he donated “two bushielles Endian Corn” towards the building of the “new collidg at Cambridge [Harvard]”, and he and his wife remained steadfast members of the Old Parish Church in Medfield until his death in 1684 at the age of 71. Alice outlived her husband by 26 years finally passing away in 1710. Life had been hard for Joseph and his wife but their accomplishments are a reflection of the American spirit that helped build our country to the greatness that it is today. Historical note: The donation of grain in lieu of money to support schools was common in Colonial America particularly as hard English currency was in short supply. Joseph’s donation to Harvard was probably made as a result of a request by his brother-in-law, Ralph Wheelock, who was noted as a fund-raiser for Harvard in its early years. It is likely that Ralph Wheelock was personally acquainted with Charles Chauncey, my 9th great grandfather and the 2nd President of Harvard from 1654 until his death in 1671. See Chapter 3 if you wish to read more about Charles Chauncey.

THE SECOND GENERATION: Benjamin Clarke (1644-1724)

Twelve-year old Benjamin turned his head just enough to sneak a look at Dorcas Morse, the pretty, curly-haired, blue eyed girl that was sitting in the front pew next to her mother and her grandmother. He did not want anyone knowing he liked her, particularly Dorcas. Benjamin knew Dorcas from his Uncle Ralph’s school. He knew that she was a year younger than he; he knew that she was popular in school, she was bright and witty, and he knew that her father, who had been a good friend of his father’s, had died when Dorcas was only eight. What Benjamin did not know was that Dorcas’ grandfather, Samuel, her grandmother, Elizabeth (Jasper), and her father, Joseph, had emigrated from England on the ship “Increase” out of London in 1635. He also did not know that Samuel Morse was the 3rd signer of the Covenant of Dedham and her father Joseph was the 28th signer. Her grandfather Samuel, who had died in 1654, only two years earlier, was one of the leading citizens and original settlers of Dedham and later of Medfield where he had relocated in 1651 along with the Clarkes, Wheelocks, and others. Samuel Morse was born in Boxted in Essex County, England on June 12, 1576 and is the 11th great grandfather of our daughter-in-law. He and his family were devoted Puritans and had left England “due to the persecutions of Bishop Lund” and the other “Royalists.”

What Benjamin Clarke did not know in 1656 while he silently admired eleven year old Dorcas Morse in the church near their home in Medfield was that nine years later on November 19, 1665 they would be married in this same church. Their first child, Hannah Clarke, the namesake of Dorcas’s mother, Hannah [Phillips] Morse, was born on October 22, 1666. In 1668, Benjamin was granted land on Main Street in Medfield, across the street from the intersection of Pound Street and Main and here he built their home and his business establishment. On the modern map of Medfield to the left, the location of Joseph and Dorcas’ home can be found at Main and Pound Streets. The Joseph Clarke home can be located on the west side of South Street at the intersection of Oak Street. The original location of the “Peak House” was at Main and Pound although it has since been relocated. In total, Joseph Clarke owned 161 acres of land in Medfield.

Benjamin was by trade a wheelwright. He was also a prominent man in town affairs serving for a period of seventeen years on the Board of Selectmen in Medfield and for a two year period as a deputy to the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

I could not find any documentation to confirm that Benjamin Clarke was a member of the local militia that defended his town of Medfield during the King Philip’s War. Participation in the colonial militia was essentially compulsory for males between the ages of 18 to 50 and the militia had been playing an essential role in the defense of in the Colony since the arrival of the Pilgrims in 1620. Benjamin was in his early 30s at the time of the King Philip’s War and since Medfield was a battle site during the war, it would therefore be unrealistic to assume that he did not participate. Fortunately, since the time of the landing of the Pilgrims the relationship between the Native Americans and the Colonists had been relatively peaceful. In 1637, there was a short conflict between the combatants called the Pequot War; however it consisted mostly of a few Indian raids followed up with a one-sided attack on an Indian village by the Puritan forces that resulted in the deaths of over 600 Indian men, women, and children.

The King Philip’s War on the other hand was a far larger conflict which resulted in almost the complete annihilation of one tribe of Indians and the death of hundreds of colonists. One historian estimated that 7 out of 8 Indian combatants were killed and 30 out of 65 colonial combatants were killed. If true, this would make the King Philip’s War (named after the Indian leader depicted to the left) proportionately the most costly American war ever fought. The conflict lasted less than two years between 1675 and 1576. For the town of Medfield the war was a terrible loss especially on the day of February 22, 1675. The 200 militia soldiers defending the town did not deter an Indian attack and it did not prevent the Indians from burning close to fifty houses and killing more than a dozen inhabitants. The Joseph Clarke house was burned; the Benjamin Clarke house was burned; the Joseph Morse house (Dorcas’ parents) was burned, and most of their neighbor’s homes were burned. Even more tragic, Benjamin’s brother Daniel was killed and his sister Sarah’s husband, John Bowers, was killed. Fortunately most of the women and children had been able to escape just before the attack. It is impossible to imagine the terror of the day or the feelings felt by the Clarkes when they viewed the burned out shell of their home and their town. But they survived and rebuilt and the photograph of the “Peak House” is proof that they were able to overcome their adversities.

Benjamin and Dorcas Clarke were to have a total of eleven children including our daughter-in law’s 8th great grandfather, Theophilus Clark, who was born on September 25, 1670. Benjamin Clark lived to the year 1724. At the age of 80 he died and he is buried in the town he helped defend against the wilderness. Dorcas survived her husband by one year and she also is buried in Medfield.

THE THIRD GENERATION: Theophilus Clark (1670-1737)

Theophilus was only five years old when the Indians attacked their village and he remembered that terrifying day for the rest of his life. The screams of the townsfolk as they ran for shelter, the sounds of the guns, the smell of smoke, the fear, and the sight of the burned-out shell of their home were memories he could not shake from his mind. Fortunately, the town recovered after the raid and families pulled together to rebuild their homes and their village. When Theophilus was twenty-one years old in 1701 he married Rachel Partridge. Her parents were both born in England and after they immigrated to America they had settled in Medfield to raise their family. Theophilus and Rachel had known each other since they were children. Their marriage lasted sixteen years and Rachel gave birth to twelve children before her early death in 1717 at the age of 48. They had built a home in the new community of Medway located a few miles west of Medfield. Here they owned and farmed on their 110 acres. Theophilus also operated near his home the “Bent Sawmill”. Twice he served as a town Selectman and in both the town records and on his gravestone he is referred to as a Lieutenant, no doubt his rank in the town militia. Shortly after Rachel’s death, Theophilus remarried in 1718 to Elizabeth Underwood. Her first husband had died leaving her a widow with four children. Elizabeth and Theophilus were to have four additional children including our daughter-in-law’s 7th great grandfather, Theophilus Clark (Jr.), who was born in 1722. Elizabeth was 47 when her last child was born. Around 1733, the Clarks moved to Ashford, Connecticut located about 50 miles southwest of Medway. It is hard to imagine why Theophilus at the age of sixty-six years old decided to resettle in a new area that only a few decades earlier had been wilderness. Whatever his motives, he unfortunately died in 1737 only four years after their move to Ashford. Elizabeth lived until she was 82 years old, dying on Christmas Day in the year 1757. She is buried alongside her husband in the “Old Ashford Cemetery”.

THE FOURTH GENERATION: Theophilus Clark (Jr.) 1724-Before 1756)

It might be appropriate to call Theophilus Clark (Jr.) the “Mystery Clark” for there is almost no historical information readily available about his life. We know that he was born on April 19, 1722 in Medway, Massachusetts, the second child of the marriage between Theophilus and Elizabeth Clark. At the age of 23 he married 18 year old Bethiah Billings in Ashford, Connecticut where they both lived. They had four children born between the years 1746 and 1752. Theophilus died sometime before his mother’s Will was written in June of 1756 (possibly he died as early as 1754) for in her will she refers to “my son Theophilus Clark deceased. .” and to his four sons, Benjamin, William, Samuel, and Theophilus (III). There are no documents that we could find that describe the cause of his death. He was only in his early 30s when he died. It is possible that he was a casualty in the French and Indian War which had begun in 1754. We know that Theophilus had a cousin also from Medway, who was killed in the war in 1760, therefore it is not such a reach to suggest that Theophilus may have fallen to the same fate in the same cause. After Theophilus’ death, Bethiah remarried at least twice more, outliving both her second and third husbands. When and where Bethiah died could not be determined.

THE FIFTH GENERATION: Benjamin Clark (1750-1834)

Benjamin did not remember his father; his father had died when he was only five years old. When Benjamin was twelve years old his mother remarried a Mr. Walden but Mr. Walden died suddenly after less than four years of marriage. His mother again remarried less than a year following her second husband’s death and this time she moved with her new husband to Norwick, Connecticut leaving behind Benjamin and his brothers in Ashford. Benjamin, then seventeen, went to work and live at his uncle Theophilus’ tavern on Ashford Green in the village of Ashford. Benjamin Clark met his future wife “Nabbe” from the nearby community of Tolland, shortly before his nineteenth birthday. When they married in early 1769 Nabbe was only sixteen and Benjamin had just turned nineteen. [“Nabbe” and Benjamin are our daughter-in-law’s 6th great grandparents. Unfortunately, we know little about the background of Nabbe. It is believed that her proper name was Abigail but her surname is not known. A number of sources give her name as Abigail Hunt which would be very exciting because Abigail Hunt’s great-great grandfather, Thomas Loring, was the sister of Welthean Loring who is our son’s 11th great grandmother. This, if it were true, would mean that our son and his wife, our daughter-in-law, share common ancestors, the parents of Thomas and Welthean Loring. It is also exciting because Abigail Hunt is a descendant of a Mayflower passenger. As is often the case, information found on Ancestry.com is often bogus and after some research I believe that it is unlikely that it was Abigail Hunt who married Benjamin Clark. For one thing she was born and died in a town in Massachusetts that is not located anywhere near where Benjamin lived. Furthermore, the date of her death does not match the known date of Nabbe’s death. New note added December, 2008: Based on reasearch provided by Paula Hart, a distant cousin of my daughter-in-law's and a Clark descendant, she determined that Abigail Hart actually married a cousin of Benjamin Clark's who also was named Benjamin Clark. Their fathers were brothers. This helps explain why some of the genealogists using Ancestry.com confused the names.

In Chapter 8 of our family’s history we write about two of our ancestor families, the Hammonds and the Tubbs. Both families relocated in the early 1770s from New London, Connecticut to the Wyoming Valley (along the Susquehanna River near the present day city of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania). The background for this move to the Wyoming Valley was described as follows: “In 1753, an association was formed in Connecticut, called the Susquehanna (Land) Company, the object of which was to plant a colony in the Wyoming Valley, a region claimed by Connecticut by virtue of an ancient but somewhat questionable Charter granted to it by the English Crown in the 1600s. . . In February 1769, the Susquehanna Company finally sent its first group of forty Connecticut settlers into the Wyoming Valley. They were followed in the spring of 1769 by another two hundred families . . . .” [More information about this new colony and its history in the Revolutionary War is described in Chapter 8]. The tempting offer of inexpensive and fertile farm land was enough to entice not only my ancestors, the Hammond and Tubbs families, to relocate but also Benjamin and his brother Samuel and their families, who in early 1770 made the long overland trip to this new community in the Wyoming Valley. Despite the fact that hundreds of Connecticut Yankees moved to this new community in northeastern Pennsylvania over the next four or five years, it is likely that the Clarks (our daughter-in-law’s ancestors) and the Hammonds and Tubbs (our son’s ancestors) were neighbors and well acquainted. In fact, in August of 1776 both Benjamin Clark and Samuel Tubbs enlisted together as privates in the Wyoming Company that was formed to join forces with the army of George Washington. Their Company marched to New Jersey and joined with Washington’s Continental Army on January 1, 1777. Nabbe was pregnant when Benjamin left with his regiment.

Benjamin and Nabbe Clark’s first son, John Theophilus Clark, was born on July 8, 1770 in their newly built two room log home constructed shortly after their arrival in the Wyoming Valley. In 1772, a second child, a daughter, was born to the couple and in 1774 the couple was blessed with a third child. On March 5, 1777, Nabbe gave birth to twin daughters, however the births of the twins did not go well, and her new babies died. The complications from the births were too much for Nabbe. Her husband was away at the war when she finally surrendered her life on March 12, 1777. She was just 24 years old. Benjamin was devastated when he learned a month later of his young wife’s death.

Benjamin Clark and the Connecticut Regiment from the Wyoming Valley played a very active role in the Revolutionary War. In 1777, they were engaged in actions at Milstone River and Bound Brook in New Jersey [home of another Revolutionary War patriot, our ancestor, Peter Harpending] and in battles at Brandywine and Germantown, before joining Washington’s army at Valley Forge in the winter of 1777-78. In the spring of 1778, some of their regiment having heard rumors of a threatened attack upon their community in the Wyoming Valley, returned home to assist in the protection of their homes. Benjamin however, elected to stay with the Continental Army and was not present at the Battle of Wyoming on July 3, 1778. [See Chapter 8 for more details]. In June of 1778, Benjamin’s regiment was engaged in the Battle of Monmouth in New Jersey. Shortly after the battle his troops were ordered to return to Wyoming however they failed to arrive before the Indian attack and the massacre of so many of their friends. Benjamin was discharged from duty on July 5, 1778. In the summer of 1779, Benjamin joined Sullivan’s expedition against the western Indians which took him as far north as Seneca Lake in Central New York. Further military records indicate that Benjamin served in the army from March 1781 through June 1783. In 1818 at the age of sixty-nine years old, Benjamin Clark then residing in the Township of Ulster in Bradford County, Pennsylvania, applied for and was awarded a pension for his service in the Revolutionary War. In his application for the pension he noted that his discharge papers from the military were lost in February 1793 when “his home was consumed by fire together with all his effects . . “ [Chapter 9 describes Peter Harpending’s involvement in the Battle of Monmouth, Chapter 12 has a section describing the Sullivan Expedition, and Chapter 15 outlines many of our ancestors who fought alongside Benjamin Clark in the American War for Independence. If only we could go back in time to see how often the Clark family and our family crossed paths in the course of our country’s early history. It would be a fascinating adventure.]

Somehow, between the time he was discharged in July of 1778 and the time he re-enlisted in the summer of 1779, Benjamin Clarke managed to get remarried. His new wife was 28 year old Keziah Yarrington. Keziah had lost her first husband, Silas Gore, the previous year at the Battle of Wyoming. Together they had four children born between the years 1781 and 1787. In the late 1780s, the Clark family including Benjamin’s brother and his family, moved north up the Susquehanna River to settle a new community in Ulster in present day Bradford County, Pennsylvania. Joining them was Benjamin’s oldest son, John Theophilus Clark, and John’s future bride, Cynthia Campbell. Benjamin lived to the ripe old age of 87 and he is buried alongside his second wife in Ulster. Their gravesite in Ulster is located about 67 miles south of our cottage on Seneca.

THE SIXTH GENERATION: John Theophilus Clark (1770-1840)

John Theophilus Clark was only eight years old when the Indians and Tories attacked the Wyoming community in July of 1778 in what historians are now referring to as the “Wyoming Massacre.” Fortunately, John was with the other civilian inhabitants who fled into the forest when the militia surrendered the fort where they were living. John was in his late teens when his father and step mother moved to Bradford County further up the Susquehanna River in the late 1780s. Here he married Cynthia Campbell, of Scottish descent, in 1790 and together they parented twelve children between the years 1792 and 1824. He remained in this area as a prominent farmer for the remainder of his life. John died in 1840. Cynthia died in 1864. Cynthia Campbell’s grandfather, David Campbell, immigrated to America from Scotland in 1720. The family first settled near Boston. David’s son, James Campbell (our daughter-in-law’s 6th great grandfather), was a 2nd Lieutenant in the Massachusetts’ militia during the American Revolution. His name is included in the DAR Patriot listing which is a benefit to any of his female descendants who might be interested in joining the Daughters of the American Revolution. In 1790, he moved his family including Cynthia to Burlington, Pennsylvania. They are considered to be one of the earliest pioneer families in Burlington.

THE SEVENTH GENERATION: James Clark (1794-1878)

James Clark, the second oldest child of John T. Clark and Cynthia Campbell, was born in Bradford County in 1794. He married Sarah Simmons in 1818 and together they had at least nine children born between the years 1818 and 1835. All of their children were born in Burlington, Pennsylvania. Sometime in late 1837, the family moved westward ultimately arriving in Fairmount Township, Grant County, Indiana in February of 1838. In a history of Fairmount it is written: “The Clark family came in two wagons, one drawn by horses and the other by an ox team.” What motivated James Clark to move his family 600 miles from Burlington, Pennsylvania to Grant County, Indiana can only be assumed. Perhaps it was to seek a better life for himself and his children; perhaps it was just in his genes to migrate. James’ 4th great grandfather, Joseph, had journeyed from England to America in 1637, his 2nd great grandfather, Theophilus, had moved from Massachusetts to Connecticut in 1733, His grandfather, Benjamin, had relocated his family from Connecticut to Pennsylvania in 1770, and now he, James Clark, had crossed 600 miles of wilderness to start over again in Indiana. The Clark family continued to display an incredible pioneer spirit.

THE EIGHTH GENERATION: Gabriella Clark (1820-1923)

Gabrielle Clark, the second child of James and Cynthia, married Jonathan Havens in April of 1842 in Grant County, Indiana. They were to have nine children, including their son, Clark Havens, our daughter-in-laws’ 2nd great grandfather. Gabrielle lived to be 103 years old. In her biography that was included in a history of Fairmount Township, it reported: “Although in her ninety-seventh year, her mind is as keen and active, apparently, as ever, and, barring unforeseen circumstances, she bids fair to live to see her one hundredth anniversary. Mrs. Havens has read the Bible through seventy times . . .” The photograph to the left of Gabrielle was obviously taken in her later years. Frankly, based on her photograph, Gabrielle looks like a woman who would not have failed to hit me over the head with her bible if my mind wandered. More of those Clark genes I suppose.

Clark Havens (1860-1888) married Nora Bright (1863- ?) and they lived out their lives in Grant County, Indiana;

Their daughter, Blanche Havens (1897-1983), married William Russell Hinshaw (1889-1958), and they eventually moved from Indiana to Toledo, Ohio, (Blanche as a young girl is pictured on the right)

Their daughter, Anna Marie Hinshaw (1921-1986), married Ralph Orville Kachenmeister (1912 - ?) in Toledo, Ohio, where they remained throughout their lives. (A young Ralph Kachenmeister is pictured on the left)


Their daughter, Janice Lea Kachenmeister (1943 to present), married Leonard Paul Mientkiewicz (1940 to present). They relocated to Miami, Florida after the birth of their two children.

Their daughter, Andrea Mientkiewicz (1971 to Present) married Geoffrey Stephen Baker (1971 to present) and they currently live in Miami, Florida.