On This Date:
BIRTHS:
14 Sep 1697 8x great grandfather Isaac Morse was born at Sherborn, Ma.
14 Sep 1711 5x great grandmother Deborah Barrows was born at Plymouth, Ma.
On This Day:
BIRTH:
12 Sep 1771 5x great grandmother Hannah Williamson was born at Pownalborough, Me.
MARRIAGE:
12 Sep 1633 9x great grandparents John Barnes & Mary Plummer were married at Plymouth, Ma.
DEATHS:
12 Sep 1655 10x great grandmother Remember (Allerton) Maverick died Marblehead, Ma.
12 Sep 1706 8x great grandfather Thomas Sawyer died at Lancaster, Ma.
12 Sep 1725 7x great grandfather John White died at Lancaster, Ma.
12 Sep 1715 7x great grandmother Abigail Dexter died at Yarmouth, Ma.
On This Date:
MARRIAGE:
10 Sep 1778 4x great grandparents Amos Hastings & Elizabeth Wiley were married at Haverhill, Ma.
DEATHS:
10 Sep 1694 8x great grandfather Daniel Cheney died at Newbury, Ma
10 Sep 1696 8x great grandfather Samuel Davis died at Haverhill, Ma.
10 Sep 1731 8x great grandfather Eleazer Green died at Groton, Ma.
On This Day:
BIRTH:
3 Sep 1691 6x great grandfather John Hastings was born at Haverhill, Ma
3 Sep 1707 6x great grandmother Abigail Thorne was born at Salisbury, Ma.
DEATH:
3 Sep 1734 9x great grandmother Esther (Ware) Man died at Wrentham, Ma.
On this date in family history:
In 1862 the last of three children and two grandchildren of John Cutter
West and Arvilla (Ames) died during a diphtheria outbreak in Letter B
Plantation in Oxford County Maine. It started with the death of their
daughter in law Orpha Viette Reynolds West who died on New Year’s Eve,
Dec. 31st, 1861. She was 19 years old, and she was the first wife of my
2x great grandfather Jonathan Phelps West. They'd been married two
months.
((First posted in 2912))
Recently FamilySearch.org has been posting online the Maine State
Archives Collections 1790-1966, including the Court Records. So I
began searching them for any cases that might involve my ancestors,
which is how I found the following case involving my 3x great grandfather
John Cutter West:
Adams et al v West No.604
John M. Adams George F .Shepley and Asa W. F. Clap all of Portland in the
County of Cumberland gentleman doing business at said under the firm name
and style of Proprietors Eastern Argus Plaintiffs v. John West of Upton in the
County of Oxford Yeoman Defendant-In a plea of the case for that the said
Defendant at Letter B to wit at said Paris on the day of the purchase of this
writ being indebted to the Plantiffs in the sum of Ten dollars and Sixty
three cents according to the account annexed in consideration thereof
there and then promised the Plaintiffs to pay them that sum on demand.~
And also for that the said Defendant at Letter B to wit at said Paris on the
twenty-seventh day of May in the year of our Lord one thousand eight-
hundred and fifty-seven by his promisery note of that date by him signed
for value received promised one John Appleton & Co. to pay them or bearer
the sum of Twenty-four dollars on demand and interest, and the said John
Appleton and Company thereafterwards on the same day transferred and
delivered the said note then and still unpaid to the Plaintiff who thereby
became the lawful bearer thereof; by reason whereof the Defendant
became liable, and in consideration thereof, then and there, promised
the Plaintiff to pay him the contents of the said note according to the terms
thereof~
Yet the said Defendant, though requested, has not paid the same, but
neglects so to do, to the damage of the said Plaintiffs (as they say) the
sum of Seventy-five dollars. This action was entered at the present term
when the Plaintiffs appeared but the Defendant though called to come
into Court,does not appear, but makes default.
It is therefore considered by the court that the said Plaintiffs recover
against the said Defendant the sum of Forty-one dollars and eleven cents
debt or damage, and costs of suit, taxed at Ten dollars and Eighty-one
cents.
Execution issued, November 27, 1861~
Supreme Judicial Court records vol 09 Nov 1861-Nov 1862
So apparently my ancestor John Cutter West initially borrowed $10.63
from John Appleton and agreed to pay him back $24 which seems steep
interest. Then Appleton sold my ancestor's promisory note to the Eastern
Argus Company. (which seems sort of shady to me.) This took place on
May 27th, 1857 and the debt remained unpaid by November of 1861
when the owners of the Eastern Argus Company brought the debt to
court. John West didn't appear to answer the suit against him so he lost
by default.
The Court Records aren't indexed yet so I browsed through Vol9 until
I found this and as I did I saw case after similar case. They were
so common that they are recorded on a form, the top being blank
where the particulars of the case are written and the judgement written
in the blanks of the preprinted section on the bottom.(I've used my
usual boldface font to denote the preprinted part.)
Oxford County Maine is in the western part of the state and the primary
industries there in the nineteenth century were farming and logging.
It was not uncommon in those days for farmers to borrow money to
buy seed or equipment and pay the money back after harvesting their
crops. But if the weather was bad or some other disaster befell them
they might not be able to pay off the debt right away. I believe that
must have been the case with my ancestor.
I don't know when or if John Cutter West paid off the note.The court
decision was handed down in November of 1861. Shortly after that
a diphtheria epidemic broke out and John would lose three children,
three grandchildren, and a daughter-in-law to the disease by the end
of February 1862. John himself died the following June.. If John
didn't pay off the debt himself, then my 2x great grandfather
Jonathan Phelps West probably did.
So the next time you are worrying abut how you are going to pay the
bills, look at it as something you probably have in common with your
ancestors.
 |
| John Cutter West |
((First posted in 2007))
(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.
It's been awhile since I posted anything here but I'm hoping to change that. I'd been puzzling out how I wanted to proceed with the 52 ancestors posts because I was at a point in my West line where I'd already written quite a bit about John Cutter West and the next generations. So do I write entirely new posts or repost the earlier ones?
I decided on a mix of both, albeit most of the mix will be reposts. Too many good stories not to retell. And I've found new information to update some of them. So I beg my readers' indulgence if they've read most of this before.
My 3x great grandfather John Cutter West was one of the ten children of Paul West and Hannah Crowell but the only one not born in Nova Scotia. He was born on 8Oct 1802 in Plymouth, Ma. For years this stmied me until I reasoned out that his mother, if not both parents, probably were visiting their relatives in Plymouth or Cape Cod since that was where both thier families were from originally. When John was a teenager he was apprenticed to a blacksmith in Boston.
And then he purchased a blacksmith shop in Canton, Maine. While there he met and married Arvilla Ames at Sumner, Me. on 23 Sep 1827. Their two eldest children were born in Canton before the family moved to Letter B Plantation (now Upton)in Oxford County where the rest of their eleven children were born, one of whom was my 2x great grandfather Jonathan Phelps West.
John Cutter West died on 24Jul 1862 during a diphtheria epidemic that also killed three children, his daughter in law and several grandchildren. They are buried in a roadside cemetery in Grafton, Me.
Those are the facts. But as I said, there some good stories associated with those fats, and I'll be reposting some of them, and hopefully some new ones.
