52 ANCESTORS IN 52 WEEKS 2018 WEEK 37:SAMUEL DUNHAM OF PLYMOUTH, MA.

Alright, I'm finally trying to move on after being tangled up in the Samuel Dunham conundrum.Here's a brief biography of Samuel, who is my 7x great grandfather:

(III) Samuel Dunham, son of John, born Feb. 25, 1651, at Plymouth, married (first) in 1680 Mary Harlow and (second) Jan. 15, 1693, Mrs. Sarah Watson. In 1699 he and his son Samuel enlisted under Capt. James Warren. His will was probated in 1718 at Plymouth. His children were: Samuel, born in 1681; William, born in 1684; Mary, born in 1687; Ebenezer, born in 1692; and Nathaniel, born in 1698.-p1648

Representative Men and Old Families of Southeastern Massachusetts: Containing Historical Sketches of Prominent and Representative Citizens and Genealogical Records of Many of the Old Families  Vol3.. J.H. Beers & Company, 1912 - Barnstable County (Mass.)



Mary Harlow, Samuel's wife, was the daughter of  Willism Harlow and Mary Faunce.

I've found Samuel's Probate file over on American Ancestors. He died intestate and the estate was administered by his son Samuel Jr.

I am descended from Samuel's son Ebenezer Dunham.

THE SAMUEL DUNHAM CONUNDRUM

One of the most frustrating and sometimes painful things that happens for family historians is finding out that someone you believed to be your ancestor isn' t.The most common reason for this is that there is more than one person in a family or community that have the same name, and for one reason or another you have the wrong one.

And this is what happened to me in the case of John Dunham Jr. and consequently his son Samuel Dunham.

Oops.Let me explain.

I had John Dunham Jr in my tree as my 8th great grandfather and his son Samuel Dunham as my 7th great grandfather. But when I finally got around to transcribing John's will the other day, there was no mention of Samuel anywhere in it. So I started checking the other information I had on the family and discovered that John Dunham Jr's son Samuel died in a house fire in August 1687/88, five years before John's will was written, and had never married. So he wasn't my ancestor.

Eventually I figured it out. The Samuel Dunham I am descended from was John Dunham Jr's nephew, who was married to Mary Harlow. And his father Samuel Dunham Sr was John's btother.

So how did this happen? Well, the Ellingwood and Dunhams were the first of my ancestors I added to my family tree, using my cousin Florence O'Connor's book. And she used the book by Isaac Watson  for her Dunham information. All of her Ellingwood research has checked out but I hadn't worked extensively on the Dunhams until now. And as I've mentioned in a previous post, Isaac Watson's  book has since been proven to have some erroneous information. But fifty or so years ago the book information was widely accepted.

I made a classic newbie error when I didn't double check the information  when I entered it on my family tree.

Luckily for me, I don't have to remove a whole branch from that tree, just one generation from my line of descent. I've already done that on Ancestry and RootsMagic. And I will have to redo Week 37 of the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks with the correct ancestor this time.

Live and Learn!

52 ANCESTORS IN 52 WEEKS #16:SAMUEL DUNHAM SR. "UNDER ADMONITION'

Fellow geneablogger Amy Johnson Crow of No Story Too Small has issued the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Challenge. Basically, we have to post something every week
on a different ancestor, whether a story, picture, or research problem. For this prompt
I've tried to concentrate on ancestors I haven't researched as much as I have others in
my family tree. But I ran across some new interesting stories about my 7x great grandfather Samuel Dunham Sr. (1651-1718) of Plymouth Colony. So they will be
the subject of my Week 16 post.

I've written before about the Dunham men and the court records I'd found of some of
their shenanigans, but I'd found no evidence of Samuel Sr. having broken any laws.
Well, today I discovered that while he hadn't broken any civil laws, he seems to have strayed a bit off the straight and narrow as far as the Church was concerned. I found
two instances in the Googlebook edition of Plymouth Church Records, 1620-1859,
Part 1 .The first is from 1683:

June, 17: Samuel Dunham senior was called forth to manifest his Repentance publickly in order to his Reconciliation with the church, his speech was psenitentiall & well tending to satisfaction, but one Brother alleadged some matter of scruple upon his spirit as to the sincerity of his Repentance, intimating he had both spoken & done something inconsistent therewith, upon which it was concluded to respite the issue of the matter a fortnight longer.

June, 27: at the conference-meeting, it was propounded to the church concerning Sam: Dunham; sundry of the Bretheren spake charitably concerning him that Brother who before had spoken in publick, said he should rest in the act of the church:

July, 1: Samuel Dunham senior was Reconciled to the church. p252

While the first incident played out over the course of a few weeks, the second took nearly
a year befored it was resolved, starting in 1689:

Nov: 20: the church stayed after the Lecture After prayer by the Pastor the Elders then declared matter of offence against Brother Samuel Dunham, partly in that he had taken the Name of God in vaine before many witnesses, in [o]ften saying those words, the curse of God is upon the head & pluck with many other unsavoury speeches; partly by intemperance in drinking which sister Jackson testifyed against him before [t]he Elders to his face, as to the next day after the sacrament in October last; others of the church then testifyed, that it was commonly reported of him, & they had divers times seene him disguised with drinke; said offender though he spake some good words yet not soe as to satisfy the church, & therefore by an universall vote of the church he was laid under Admonition & not to come to the Lords supper till he had manifested his Repentance for his inordinate walking by a reformed conversation, the Elder then concluded with prayer.p267

And it appears that's where matters stood until September of 1690:

Sep: 8: The church met at the Pastors house, after prayer performed by the Pastor, the Elder propounded to the church the desires of Samuel Dunham to be reconciled to the church, he being called to manifest his Repentance before the church, did expresse himselfe humbly & penitently, some bretheren1 Testifyed that of late they had observed some amendment of his conversation, the Issue was, by the vote of the bretheren he was accepted againe to communion with us.p270

Plymouth Church Records, 1620-1859, Part 1 (Google eBook) First Church of Christ (Plymouth, Mass.), Plymouth (Mass.). First Church  Colonial Society of New England 1920

I need to see if there's any mention of my other Plymouth area ancestors in this book!

A FAMILY REUNION OF SORTS2

When I got home from the laundromat on Thursday night I started
researching Cornelius Thomas Dunham. I found him on quite a few
family trees on Rootsweb, along with records at FamilySearch
Record Search and Ancestry.com. Matters were complicated by
the existence of a Cornelius Livingston Dunham born in Abington
in March 1823 while the birth record for Cornelius Thomas Dunham
listed his birth as April 1820, not the April 1823 date on the
monument at Mt Cedar Cemetery. ((Cornelius L was the son of
another Cornelius Dunham, and the father of yet another Cornelius.
It's a New England thing: find a good name and keep using it until
it's all used up.)). Best of all I found an image of the Boston Deaths
registry for August 1895 which had the cause of death (apoplexy)
and the names of  Cornelius T.'s parents, Ezra Dunham (born in
Plymouth) and Polly Cary(born in North Bridgewater).

Using that information I was able to work back to our common
ancestors John Dunham and Abigail Barlow/Ballou. My family
is descended from their son Samuel Dunham, while Cornelius
was descended from Joseph Dunham. Cornelius Thomas Dunham
was my Dad's 6th cousin 3x removed through our Dunham line.
There's also a connection through Patience Barrows by way of
my Ellingwood line. My 3x great grandfather John Ellingwood
Jr was married to Rachel Barrows, Patience Barrow's grandniece.

Besides establishing the degree of relationship between my Dad
and Cornelius Dunham, my research also turned up some other 
interesting facts on Cornelius T. and his branch of the Dunham 
family, such as his wife and children being born in South Carolina,
I'll explore these in the next post

To be continued...

JOHN BARNES

I don’t know about other folks tracing their genealogy
but I have some favorites on the West side of the family.
It’s a bit unfair, I know, because there’s so much about
the Whites and McFarlands that I’ve yet to discover.
The majority of Dad’s ancestors were “salt of the earth”
people, ordinary folks dealing with the daily struggle to
survive. But there are a few rare souls who stand out
for one reason or another. Among these are some who
did things that made me (and probably their friends
and neighbors) wonder “What WAS he thinking?”


Case in point: John Barnes of 17th century Plymouth,
Massachusetts,


I found John while researching backgrounds of Mayflower
ancestors a few Thanksgivings back at The Plymouth
Colony Archive Project website. I discovered other later
ancestors listed there and John was among them.


He lived between 1633 and 1671, apparently a prosperous
merchant and citizen most of that time. All that seemed
to changed in 1651 when his first wife Mary Plummer
died. By 1653 John had married a woman whose name is
recorded only as Joan and began a long spiral down from
respectability, most of which is attributed to drunkenness.


In May 1648 he was granted permission to brew and sell
his own beer in Plymouth. There were a few incidents of
fines for public drunkenness during the next few years
but they were much more frequent after he married Joan
who was herself quite a contentious woman (and from
whom the Barnes line is descended). The details can be
read at the Plymouth Colony Archive Project, along with
John’s will and other information about his life.


It wasn’t the sad story of John’s trouble with alcohol that
struck me when I first read his story. It was the manner
of his death.


John lost his license to brew and serve beer and in 1661
the General Court forbade any one from selling or
serving him beer or liquor at all. This seemed to help
because he had only one recorded drunken incident after
the Court took that drastic measure. Judging from the
inventory of his estate at his death he was still fairly well
off by March of 1671.


This is where the “WHAT was he thinking?” comes into
the story. One day in early March, 1671, according to
the Plymouth Court Records, John Barnes stood at his
barn door and stroked his bull. The bull took exception
to that, turned, and gored John Barnes, giving him a
wound which caused his death approximately a day and
a half later.



Among those on the coroner’s jury who ruled on his death
was another ancestor of mine, Samuel Dunham.



Dad had passed away long before I first read the story
of John Barnes’ death but I I had no trouble imagining
what a Maine country boy like him would have said
about it:


“Damn idiot. That’s what happens when you pet a bull!”