52 ANCESTORS : JOHN CUTTER WEST PT2.

 (The following was originally posted back in 2012 under the title "A New Clue In Deed")

 

More and more records are coming online that are of use to genealogists and
family historians. The other night cousin Chris Dunham sent me an email to let
me know about the Oxford County Eastern District Registry of Deeds website.
Oxford County Maine is where my West and associated families moved to from
Massachusetts back in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Chris also included the following image. 



As Chris wrote:
"I'm not sure how deeply you've delved into Oxford County deeds, but I found
a record showing that John C. West lived in Boston before coming to Canton
and marrying Arvilla Ames.

I've attached the deed from book 36, page 540, by which Elisha Turner of Peru
sold to "John West of Boston City, State of Massachusetts, Blacksmith," and Elisha
W. Thomas of Minot, blacksmith, land in Canton with a blacksmith shop on it on
16 Jan. 1827.

In book 35, page 474, Elisha W. Turner of Canton quitclaims his share of this 
property to "John West of Canton in the County of Oxford aforesaid Blacksmith" 
on 17 May 1827.

This shows that John settled in Canton in the late winter or spring of 1827—at least
four months before marrying Arvilla. Just to establish that this was the same John
West (the records don't always give his middle initial), a deed on page 542 of book
36 has John C. West of Canton, blacksmith, selling to John B. Douglas of Letter B
the same land and blacksmith shop in Canton. This was on 9 Dec. 1831. The deed 
has his wife Arvilla relinquishing her right of dower in the property."





Now this is the first time I've seen any document that has John Cutter West living
anywhere in Massachusetts other than Plymouth.  I don't know yet if John was related
somehow to either Turner or Thomas but how else would he know two blacksmiths
from Maine when he was living in Boston? The only other answer I can think of is
that perhaps they were apprentices together with another blacksmith and they decided
to set themselves up in business together in Maine.  Perhaps if I find an answer I can
break down the John Cutter West brick wall.

I went to the website and found quite a few records concerning my West family. Most
of them involve my 2x great granduncles Hiram F and Asa A West, but there are others
with transactions made by my 2x great grandmother Louisa A Richardson West and 3x
great grandmother Arvilla Ames West.  I checked this afternoon and there are also
many records involving my Ellingwood family, and I've still Richardson, Coburn, Ames,
and Barker lines to search for as well. It costs .50 cents to download a record but I plan
to go through them before I select what I want. I've already got 7 records for the sum
of $3.50!

Thanks, Chris for help and the heads up!

BTW,if you have Maine roots, be sure to visit Chris' Maine Genealogy Network page!

A NEW CLUE IN DEED?

More and more records are coming online that are of use to genealogists and
family historians. The other night cousin Chris Dunham sent me an email to let
me know about the Oxford County Eastern District Registry of Deeds website.
Oxford County Maine is where my West and associated families moved to from
Massachusetts back in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Chris also included the following image. 



As Chris wrote:
"I'm not sure how deeply you've delved into Oxford County deeds, but I found
a record showing that John C. West lived in Boston before coming to Canton
and marrying Arvilla Ames.

I've attached the deed from book 36, page 540, by which Elisha Turner of Peru
sold to "John West of Boston City, State of Massachusetts, Blacksmith," and Elisha
W. Thomas of Minot, blacksmith, land in Canton with a blacksmith shop on it on
16 Jan. 1827.

In book 35, page 474, Elisha W. Turner of Canton quitclaims his share of this 
property to "John West of Canton in the County of Oxford aforesaid Blacksmith" 
on 17 May 1827.

This shows that John settled in Canton in the late winter or spring of 1827—at least
four months before marrying Arvilla. Just to establish that this was the same John
West (the records don't always give his middle initial), a deed on page 542 of book
36 has John C. West of Canton, blacksmith, selling to John B. Douglas of Letter B
the same land and blacksmith shop in Canton. This was on 9 Dec. 1831. The deed 
has his wife Arvilla relinquishing her right of dower in the property."





Now this is the first time I've seen any document that has John Cutter West living
anywhere in Massachusetts other than Plymouth.  I don't know yet if John was related
somehow to either Turner or Thomas but how else would he know two blacksmiths
from Maine when he was living in Boston? The only other answer I can think of is
that perhaps they were apprentices together with another blacksmith and they decided
to set themselves up in business together in Maine.  Perhaps if I find an answer I can
break down the John Cutter West brick wall.

I went to the website and found quite a few records concerning my West family. Most
of them involve my 2x great granduncles Hiram F and Asa A West, but there are others
with transactions made by my 2x great grandmother Louisa A Richardson West and 3x
great grandmother Arvilla Ames West.  I checked this afternoon and there are also
many records involving my Ellingwood family, and I've still Richardson, Coburn, Ames,
and Barker lines to search for as well. It costs .50 cents to download a record but I plan
to go through them before I select what I want. I've already got 7 records for the sum
of $3.50!

Thanks, Chris for help and the heads up!

BTW,if you have Maine roots, be sure to visit Chris' Maine Genealogy Network page!

PART OF THE PUZZLE SOLVED

Back in September I wrote a post about a lead I'd discovered
on FamilySearch Record Search to more information on my
3x great grandmother Lucy Stowe. Lucy was the wife of 
Wesley (Westley) Coburn but I'd never been able to
find evidence of who her parents were.

Then two weeks ago cousin Chris Dunham left a comment for
me which helped solve part of my genealogical puzzle:

"Lucy M. Stow and Wesley B. Coburn, both of Newry, married 
28 Feb. 1827 in Newry, according to town records.

Lucy was the daughter of Melvin and Ann V. Stowe. Melvin 
was the brother of Andrew Newell Stowe of Newry, both 
sons of Samuel and Abigail (Dana) Stowe of Sherborn, Mass.
(You'll find more on this family in Elizabeth Ellery Dana's  
The Dana family in America.) Melvin appears to have lived 
in Lisbon, Maine, in 1810, but removed to Newry by 1820.
He and his wife (whose maiden name I don't know) are buried 
in Sunday River Cemetery, Newry."

So thanks to Chris I now have two more family lines to investigate!

MORE ANSWERS ABOUT THE WEST BROTHERS

Whenever I post something here about my Dad's side of the family in
Maine, I make it a practice to post a copy of it to my blog over at
Chris Dunham's Maine Genealogy Network on the off chance that the
information I write about might prove useful to others  or might find
another unknown cousin. I did that with my post  ANSWERS AND 
QUESTIONS ABOUT THE WEST BROTHERS and Chris made
a few comments on it that answered some of the questions and
provided a link to a very interesting map!

The first comment:

The 1858 Oxford County map shows J. C. West living on the Bear River
Road (what is now Route 26), just north of Grafton town line. It appears 
to have been the same place occupied by "J. E. Brooks" on this 1880
map. Heywood's History of Upton says that Joseph E. Brooks
"built a set of buildings" here about 1870, but doesn't mention that the
Wests had earlier lived here.

The 1880 map shows J. P. West living on what is now Back Street in 
Upton. This is confirmed by Heywood, who says that Jonathan P. 
West bought a farm of Stevens Morse south of the Back Street school 
house "about 1862, living there until his death in 1917, at the age of 86.  

I followed the link and found a map of Upton and vicinity on which were
located the exact locations of Jonathan Phelps West's farm, and Hiram
West's Saw and Grist Mill. If you click on the large pink square marked
Upton and enlarge it you can see them too!

The second comment answered my question about Asa West gave up
on hops as a crop on his farm:

"I may have an answer why Asa stopped growing hops by 1880. An
article in the Lewiston Evening Journal of 8 July 1880 said that 
"hop-raising has been rather a poor business in New England for 
the last few years. The low prices ruling for the last few years 
previous to the fall of 1879, has given such a meagre return for 
the labor and land invested in the cultivation of hops that last 
year many plowed up the vines and abandoned the culture."




I followed the link Chris provided again and found the site which displays
three pages from the newspaper. The article Chris quoted is on the first
page on the left in the upper left hand side. You need to enlarge the
image to see it. There's a lot of information there about other crop
values and I plan to compare it to the 1880 agricultural schedules that
I have for the West brothers and other relatives. So my speculation
that there just wasn't a profitable market for hops in New England was
right!

Thanks Chris for those answers and for being kind enough to let me
quote your comments here!

And for those of you with Maine roots, check out the Maine Genealogy
Network!   

SATURDAY NIGHT GENEALOGY FUN - WHICH GENEALOGIST WOULD I LIKE TO MEET?

Even though Randy Seaver is out at the SCGS genealogy jamboree, he still
managed to issue us a Saturday Night GenealogyFun challenge:

"1) Identify one genealogist that you would like to meet. The person could
be living or deceased.

2) Why do you want to meet with this person?

3) What would you talk about? What questions would you ask this person?

4) Write about your choice on your blog or in Comments to this post."

Now this is a tough one, but not because I couldn't think of anyone. On the
contrary, it's because there's just so many folks out there I'd like to meet.
But I finally managed to settle on just one.

1) I'd like to meet Chris Dunham.

2) As to why, I've always enjoyed his The Genealogue blog, but besides that,
we are distant cousins through my descent from my great great grandmother
Florilla Dunham.

2)Along with talking about that Dunham line, I'd hope we'd talk about Maine
genealogy. Chris has several other blogs dealing with Maine records and sources
such as Maine Genealogy , and Oxford County Genealogy Notebook as well as
contributing to Strange Maine so we might talk about those, and about genealogy
and geneablogging in general.

4) And now I've blogged about it.

BLOGGING BRUNCH16

Another Sunday morning with a cup of coffee, some toast,
and interesting genealogy blogs to browse. Usually I perform
this routine twice a week on my days off but I had things to
attend to on Thursday this week so I’m catching up today.


Jasia has an article on matrinames, the practice of including
your maternal ancestors last name as part of your own. Her
thoughts were a result of a passage from Bryan Sykes’
Seven Daughters of Eve which discusses the benefit of use
of matrinames would have for genealogical research.


Thomas MacEntee commented on this at Jasia’s blog and
then with some thoughts on family name schematics at his
own Destination: Austin Family. He includes explanations of
Spanish and Irish names and examples of how his own name
would be in two different formats of matrinaming.


(By the way, Word autocorrect changes matrinaming
to marinating. Strange are the ways of Microsoft!)


Using Thomas’ examples with my own name, I’d be William
White West or William West White. If I use the name of the
female ancestor furthest back in my direct line, I’d be William
Ames West after my 3x great grandmother Arvilla Ames,
wife of the Elusive John Cutter West.


Randy Seaver at Genea-Musings and Kimberly Powell at
Kimberly’s Genealogy Blog have posts telling how genealogist
Sharon Sergeant helped prove that a bestselling memoir by a
holocaust survivor was a hoax by a Belgian Catholic. Randy
includes a link to the story that appeared in the Boston Globe
and to Sharon’s own website, and I agree with him that
genealogy research shines brighter because of Sharon’s
efforts.


Finally, Chris Dunham over at The Genealogue has “Innocent
Until Proven German” which tells the story of an FBI visit to
a German immigrant’s farm in upstate New York during the
World War 1 years. Apparently this and other cases are part
of what are known as the “Old German Files” which can be
viewed at Footnote.com . Follow the link in Chris’ article to the
original news article by Sharon Tate Moody in the Tampa
Tribune.


I am going to check out that Footnote.com site. I have a
German great grandmother on my mother’s side of the
family!

RELATIVELY SPEAKING

When I started this blog my main objectives were to record as
much of our family’s history that I knew and remembered and
to talk about the discoveries I’ve made while researching our
genealogy. There was the hope that by putting that information
on line I might find other relatives from either the West or White
sides of the family.


It’s been nearly a year now(my first posts were on 23 Jan 2007)
and while I’ve yet to hear from or discover any White relations,
I’ve found or been contacted by some very interesting folks on
my Dad’s side including fellow genealogy bloggers. A link on
Boston 1775 led me to Walking the Berkshires and Tim Abbott.
Besides the pleasure of reading his blog, I also discovered in an
exchange of comments with Tim that we’re related through
several of our family lines, some of which Tim detailed on a
comment to my post here. I’ve learned much from Tim’s posts
about the Abbotts and the Barkers at WtB and I’ve had fun
with his family photo caption contests.


I’ve also learned much from Janice Brown at Cow Hampshire,
another Abbott descendant, who among other things set me off
on the quest for The 49 Genealogical Uses of the Flutaphone and
has given me some sound advice and suggestions in my research.


Another connection I discovered is with Chris Dunham of The
Genealogue who is my 6th cousin through my Dunham line and
with whom I’ve traded some images and discussed the tangle of
the different Dunham and Donham lines.


Recently I think I’ve found some connections with Randy Seaver
through his Hildreth line but I haven’t finished running down all
of them as yet.


And as anyone who has read their blogs knows, all four have
great senses of humor!


I mention Tim, Janice and Chris first because they were the first
connections I discovered since starting my blog and surfing those
of others. I’ve also had two significant genealogy finds by
searching on RootsWeb’s WorldConnect sites. The first was at
Larry Overmire’s site which led to my learning that ancestress
Lydia Phelps had been married to Larry’s ancestor Sampson
Read but was a widow when she married my ancestor John
Ames, and that the pedigree I had for Lydia was wrong.
Some pruning of the family tree had to be done.


Another was N.’s site. I sent an email with a question about the
spelling of a surname and the ensuing correspondence led to
more information on the Barkers and Coburn/Colburns in our
family trees.


Some research on my Ellingwood/Ellinwood/Ellenwood lines
brought me to D.Balcro’s website. D. and I are related also
through the Ballard and Stone families.


The two most recent contacts include one from J. about a family
related to my Ames line. I didn’t have much that was of help I’m
afraid but she filled in some information about Sally Ames’ family
for me.


Lastly, I heard recently from H., another Barker relative who has
given me a lot of information about our ancestor Jonathan Barker
and his brothers Jesse and Benjamin. You’ll be seeing that in
upcoming posts I’ll be doing on the Barker Brothers. H. has also
given me the means to contact two other Barker relatives.


Before my blog, I had made a contact with a West descended
relative through Family Forums who shared some files on the
family of Louisa Almata Richardson, Jonathan Phelps West’s wife.
I am ashamed to admit that I can’t recall his name; it and his
email address was on the computer I used at the time which has
long since gone to Computer Heaven and I hadn’t yet added his
name to my printed backup list of email addresses beforehand.
So if that person ever reads this, thank you again and please get
in touch with me again using the comments link so I can share
some of what I’ve found with you!


So far all my contact with these newfound relatives has been
through the email, which I think is the least intrusive. I’ve
learned a lot I hadn’t known before and I am more than glad to
share anything I know in return with them or anyone else,
related or not, because I believe that knowledge should be
shared.


There are some folks who I have alluded to with just an initial
because for privacy issues I won’t give full names unless I have
the person’s permission.


It’ll be a year on January 23rd since I started this blog and given
how many relatives I’ve found met in the first year, I look
forward to meeting many more in the years to come. I may
never become rich or famous through my blog but that wasn't
the reason I started blogging, and the knowledge and contacts
I've gained have made it well worth the effort, relatively
speaking!

UPDATE 1/17: I've just made another connection, this time with
someone who is descended from my Griffith and Boyden lines!

((This post was written for the Carnival of Genealogy. Check it
out for links to other genealogy bloggers and great reading.))

RALPH & THE RELUCTANT BRIDE

Chris Dunham’s post over on The Genealogue about the
upcoming book “The Naked Quaker” by Diane Rapaport
reminded me of a story about a divorce that might or might
not be among those in the book:


In June 1682, a twenty five year old man named Ralph found
himself being divorced by his young wife Katharine, who stated
words to the effect that she’d rather be dead than live with him.
She sued on grounds of her husband’s insufficiency to consummate
their marriage.


Ralph for his part did what any man in 17th century Salem Ma.
might do when faced with such an embarrassing situation: he
claimed that it had to be witchcraft. Not exactly original, and
highly ineffective in the light of the character witnesses Katherine
called to testify in her behalf.



It must have been the talk of the town. Both husband and wife
were given physical examinations, Katherine by a panel of
“goodwives” and Ralph by two men(one of them a chirurgeon)
appointed by the Court. Based on their reports the Court granted
Katherine her divorce and ordered she be allowed to take
whatever clothes and property that she had brought with her into
marriage.


All of this might have been lost in the mists of time except that
there was a court record of the proceedings and several centuries
later the case was cited in articles and a book about women in
Puritan society. I’ve not been able to read any of them in their
entirety but what I have read makes no mention of what
happened after. So in the interest of fairness to Ralph, here’s the
rest of it:

Ralph remained single for nearly 9 years but in August of 1691 he
wed Martha Rowlandson. The marriage lasted nearly 20 years
before her death.


They had 7 children


We don’t know what happened to Katherine after her divorce
from Ralph, There is no record of her maiden name. Hopefully
she too remarried and with a man she loved and who gave her
children of her own.


We’ll never know the exact reason why the marriage of my
ancestor Ralph Ellingwood and his first wife Katherine ended so
scandalously. Possibly it was an arranged match between a man
and a deeply unhappy younger bride. Possibly Ralph was not the
perfect husband and possessed bad manners and lousy personal
hygiene. Perhaps there just wasn't any...spark.

Perhaps he could have used a talk with Dr. Phil, but alas, there
was no Dr. Phil on 17th century Salem.


But obviously Ralph felt he had a point to prove to all of Salem,
and judging by the 7 children he fathered, I guess he did it.


He wasn’t “insufficient”!

BLOGGING BRUNCH2

Another midmorning at the keyboard with toast and coffee.


Transcribing John Ames’ Pension File has been fun although I
once again wish I could type faster. But it’s gone faster than I
thought it would. One reason is I am using the split screen method
Randy Seaver talked about over on Genea-Musings. The other
reason is that Nathaniel Weston had good penmanship.Believe me,
that’s a BIG help.


You know all those documents we see with the graceful writing?
Well, they most likely were copied from drafts by clerks and
secretaries who had a “good hand”. Some of the records I dl from
Footnotes take a bit to decipher, and one for a Benjamin Abbott is
well…it’s impossible to read. The writing looks like some child had
drawn waves across the page. It took me several times before I
realized that it’s not about Benjamin Abbott but about a Joshua
Sargent of Lyndsborough,N.H. I can make out John Abbott’s
name and references to the Battle of White Plains and then a Lt.
Benjamin Abbott. I’ve tabled that one for now until I finish with
John Ames and Asa Barrows.


Another thing that I’ve noticed is how much they tried to cram
onto one page. Yankee frugality, perhaps? Waste not, want not!
At any rate the writing gets smaller and the lines closer together
as the end of the pages draw near. The next image I’m working on
is from Obadiah Wetherell, and it appears the image after that is
of the backside of his statement, where the various entries go all
about the middle of the page picture frame style. That’s going to
be fun to transcribe!


I find myself stopping to check out the names mentioned in
John’s statement, first over at J.L. Bell’s Boston 1775, then at
Chris Dunham’s Maine Genealogy and Oxford County Genealogy
Notebook sites, and finally by Googling the names. John’s
statement and what I’ve found will give me more to post about
after I’m done with the transcriptions. I’d like to finish these
before my nephew’s wedding a week from this Saturday where
I’ll have a chance to talk with my Aunt Dorothy.


Good thing I’m on vacation this week. It’s hard to stop working
on this.


Guess I am a genea-holic!

A GRAVE MATTER

I got an email from Chris Dunham (with whom I share
Dunham ancestry) about a news story concerning an
interesting discovery up in Maine. The clipping is from a
weekly named the Advertiser Democrat which I believe
is a paper from Norway, Maine but the farm in question
is in North Paris, which is in Oxford County.

Chris tells me Dunham Road is likely not named after our
Dunham line but for another family in the area with the same
name. The name and death date of Sally Dunham plus the
name of the husband, James, matches up with my ancestress
Sally Houghton who was married to James Dunham. She’s
buried in West Paris and there’s a headstone on her grave
there.

So, why another gravestone? James and Sally’s family moved
about a bit after her death and it’s not improbable that her
grave was moved as well and the stone left behind.

As to why it ended up under the barn I suppose the next owners
of the farm found it and in an example of true Yankee frugality
perhaps might have decided it might come in handy one day!