52 ANCESTORS IN 52 WEEKS 2019 WEEK 43 SAMUEL HASKELL JR. OF HARVARD, MA.AND WATERFORD, ME.

Samuel Haskell was born in Harvard, Worcester County Ma. to Samuel Haskell,Sr.
and Sybil Willard on12 Jun 1749. Twenty one years later he married his fourth
cousin Ruth Safford (they were both descendants of William Haskell and Elinor
Cook) on  6 Dec 1770. They had eleven children, all of whom were born in
Harvard, and sometime between 1799  and 1810 the family moved from Harvard up
to Gorham, Maine.:

   Samuel  b: 16 Jan 1772
   Sybel  b: 17 Nov 1773
   John  b: 4 Dec 1775
   Martha  b: 15 Feb 1780
   Ruth  b: 5 Jan 1782 
   Mercy  b: 11 May 1784  
   Eunice  b: 17 May 1786
   Ward Safford  b: 5 May 1788
   Betsy Elizabeth  b: 2 Sep 1790
   Sarah  b: 17 Apr 1793
   George  b: 23 Mar 1799  


I'm descended from Martha who married Moses Houghton.
  
By 1820 they were in Waterford, Maine, where Samuel died
sometime before 18Jan 1826 which is the earliest dated document in the Probate
File. I'm not sure why it took ten years for the estate to finally be settled. Samuel
died in debt and there are several court orders that the estate be sold over the
course of that decade.Eventually an auction was held, and one of the items on
the list of what was sold caught my attention.

The auction was held on 8 Sept 1834 and the items fill two pages and part of a
third. Here's an image I found on FamilySearch for that third page:

"Maine, Oxford County, Probate Estate Files, 1805-1915," images, FamilySearch Estate files drawer H52 Hamlin, Cyrus to Howe, Jacob,

The first two items on the page are:
"One bottle of pepper sauce      .17  Eunice  Haskell
Four bottles                               .17     Do       Do "

Eunice Haskell was one of Samuel and Ruth's children. The "Do" under her
name stands for "ditto". When I read what Eunice bought from her parents'
estate on that page I wondered why those two things. Ruth Haskell had died a
year after Samuel, so if Eunice bought the pepper sauce to eat and it was seven
years old, I'm not sure it would still be edible. Maybe it was something Eunice
herself had made since then on the premises since she was single and perhaps she
had stayed on at the family home after her parents died. Those other four bottles
she bought must have been empty, since there's no indication on the list that
they contained anything. Was Eunice going to make more pepper sauce and needed
those jars?

Dang, that must have been really special pepper sauce!

It's not a big question, just one of those things I run across in the Probate Records
that makes me wonder.