Weaving Family Connections

I’m a weaver and I belong to a Weaver’s Guild.  A project was proposed to rehabilitate a barn-frame loom in John Greenleaf Whittier’s birthplace. I knew nothing about barn -frame looms but I do follow directions well so I volunteered.  In JGW’s birthplace, in addition to the barn-frame loom, there were hand towels that were woven by JGW’s mother Abigail Hussey Whittier.  I was inspired to re-produce the weave and so I planned to make some pillow cases with the same block weave pattern and stripes of color that Mrs. Whittier made.  Of course, I didn’t have to start the project by planting flax like she had to do.  So I had leisure time to learn about her history and research her genealogy. 

Abigail was the daughter of Samuel Hussey and Mercy Evans.  She was born in 1779 and married John Whittier in 1804.  They lived in Haverhill, Massachusetts.   Her paternal grandparents were Joseph Hussey and Elizabeth Robinson of Somersworth New Hampshire.  Joseph’s father, Richard Hussey was the immigrant to the colonies in this family line and he was a weaver, too.  He settled in Dover, NH.  Joseph’s wife was Elizabeth Robinson, born 30 July 1712, also probably a resident of Dover at the time of her marriage.  I started to hear the little alarm bell in my head which goes off to tell me to keep digging genealogically.   Dover was a place where I had found a lot of family ties.  This could get interesting, I thought. 

Elizabeth Robinson’s father was Timothy Robinson who was born 15 March 1667 and lived in Dover NH.  Her mother was Mary Roberts.  Her parents were John Roberts (1628 – 1694/95) and Abigail Nutter (1630 – 1674).  I knew about both of these people and I was getting excited.  Abigail Nutter’s father’s name comes up from time to time and it is an interesting name:  Hatevil Nutter.  Make of it what you will but it is great to have in a genealogy because you remember a name like that.   John Roberts I knew because he was a child of my 10^th great-grandfather Thomas Roberts, Sr., of Dover.  Thomas, Sr., was one of the First Settlers of Dover and was a member of the Fishmongers Company of London.  In a 1641 document from that company he was marked as “in New England”. 

My Dad’s ancestral line comes down from Thomas Roberts, Sr., through John Roberts’ sister Anna who married as her first husband, James Philbrick, Sr., who was born in Suffolkshire and died in Hampton New Hampshire in 1674.  They were my 9^th great- grandparents in this line.  A great great great grand-daughter or theirs, Mary Brown, married Jacob Dearborn who relocated his family to Parsonsfield, Maine.  Jacob Dearborn’ s father, Capt. John Dearborn, was one of my Revolutionary War Veterans. 

Thomas Roberts, Sr. had another daughter, Elizabeth, who married Benjamin Heard in 1671.  He had been born in York Maine, but lived near Dover for a while.  One of their children was the Anna Heard who was a captive taken to Canada as a consequence of the Candlemas Massacre in York January 1692.  She deserves her own story and will get one soon.  She was my Mom’s 5^th great-grandmother. 

So Thomas Roberts, Sr.,  becomes simultaneously, my 8^th great-grandfather maternally, and 10^th great grandfather paternally.  And he was John Greenleaf Whittier’s 4^th great-grandparent.  Quite a web of family to think about.  I guess I am my own cousin from this maze of people.  My parents weren’t living when I first experienced the stunning revelation that my ‘early New England’ father and my ‘Irish-French-Canadian’ mother were also cousins.  (Eighth cousins four times removed I think.)  I’ve recovered from that by now and treasure all of these connections since they make really good true stories. 

Oh, yes, we fixed the barn-frame loom and it’s in an upstairs chamber of the house.  The loom wasn’t used in a barn – it was constructed in the same way a building was framed back in the day.  And I wove the pillowcases that were inspired by my cousin Abigail Hussey Whittier.  You can see her towels and her entire home if you visit the John Greenleaf Whittier Birthplace in Haverhill.   www.johngreenleafwhittier.com

Musings on Independence Day

America’s birthday is a great thing to celebrate.  In years past, I always made it a part of my day to read the Declaration of Independence and the Preamble to the Constitution.  I always marveled at the determination of the founders to be a separate people when the outcome, if they lost, would be very grim indeed.  For the past several years, I’ve focused on genealogy and this year in particular for no discernible reason I’ve been thinking about the Tories and the Patriots and the ones who were neither.  I heard somewhere that one-third of the people of the 1770s desired to be free of Britain, one -third wanted to remain British subjects and one -third weren’t bound up with political changes.  I am sure there were divisions among families then, too.  That must have been extremely stressful.  

I’ve identified some ancestor Patriots:  Ephraim Lindsey of Marshfield, Mass who died at White Plains, NY;  Capt John Dearborn of Hampton, NH, who was a member of the coastal Militia; Jeremiah Philbrook of Vinalhaven, Maine who suffered depradations during the British raids on the islands in Penobscot Bay; and Increase Leadbetter, Sr. also of Vinalhaven who also suffered the same depradations.  I knew little about the Penobscot Expedition (1779) or about the building of the improvements to the fort by the British at Bagadeuce, now Castine, Maine until I came across these ancestors.  Many people who were islanders in Penobscot Bay tried to remain in their homes on the islands but were harried by the British who would confiscate all the food and animals they had been raising. Once the Penobscot Expedition ended in a tremendous defeat for the fleet from Massachusetts “the greatest part of {the islanders} were obliged to abandon their possessions to the Mercy of the enemy who came on to the Island and burnt their houses… .” (History of Vinalhaven, pg 9)  The ships’s crews who did the collections were so efficient their vessels were called shaving mills as they left a place bare.  Men and boys were impressed for labor and many found themselves building the British fortifications in unhealthful and inhumane conditions.   

By 1785, the returning residents of Vinalhaven which was comprised of the former Fox Islands (now the towns of Vinalhaven and North Haven)  petitioned Massachusetts for the legal right to be their own town.  They were rebuilding from nothing and wanted to own their own places in the new Republic.  The petition and the signers are found on pages 8, 9, and 10 of  A Brief Historical Sketch of the Town of Vinalhaven, (Rockland, ME 1900).   The list of signers looks like a family gathering to me:  Calderwood,  Leadbetter,  Philbrook,  Coombs,  Brown, Burgess,  Robbins,  Eames,  Dyer,  and others, and very interestingly, three Carvers – Israel, 45 years old, Thaddeus, 34 years old, and Caleb III, 23 years old.  Thaddeus was one of the earliest settlers to the Fox Islands – his cousin Israel and family came at about the same time.  Caleb was Israel’s nephew.  In doing my family genealogy I labelled the various Caleb Carvers so I could tell them apart.  This was important as Caleb III’s father, Caleb II, was a Loyalist.  This is why seeing Caleb III’s name on the petition was so interesting.  This evidently is an example of a divided family at the nuclear and extended levels.  

I knew that Caleb II and his son Melzar Carver were Loyalists because they were proscribed and banished from Boston.  This formal proceeding enabled the revolutionary government of Massachusetts to confiscate their goods and properties even if they had re-located.   There are other names of extended family members on other similar documents:  Tilden, Decrow, Bonney and Sherman.   A few of them were under house arrest for the duration of the war only being allowed to go to the meetinghouse on Sundays; a few of them left before the banishment was published like the Carvers, father and son.   Melzar actually evacuated with the British troops March 17, 1776.  His father, Caleb Carver II was a master mariner and owner of a schooner which re-supplied the British.  Caleb II was awarded 195 acres in Kings County,  New Brunswick after the war which became his home.  Melzar was also awarded land but by the time he was banished (1778) he was already a land owner in Norwalk, Conn.  

These are not the only Carvers who were impacted by these divided loyalties because it was a very large family.  The descendants of Robert Carver of Marshfield are vast in number but these are the ones who are closest genealogically to me.  Israel Carver and his brother Caleb II are both 6^th great-grandfathers.  You see, Israel’s daughter Lydia married Caleb’s son Caleb III and their daughter Margaret continues the line to me and my siblings (and I supposed hundreds of other people but I haven’t tracked them all down yet).  

Well, the Pops are finished.  It was another fine birthday for America.  There’s just enough time left to read the Declaration again.