Tombstone Tuesday ~ Rev. William Homes and wife, Katherine Craighead, Chilmark, Massachusetts

These gravestones were photographed at the Abel's Hill Cemetery, Chilmark, Massachusetts, pn the island of Martha's Vineyard by my sister Laurel Wilkinson, and her friend Kate Fournier.  They used an iPad to get these photos, which came out terrific considering the great age of the tombstones.  Genealogy blogger Barbara Poole, at "Life from the Roots" uses an iPad for her fantastic photography, too.   I was able to very clearly read the epitaphs on these photos so I could transcribe them below.  Someday I'd like to visit this cemetery, which my sister reports is full of names from our family tree, like MAYHEW and DAGGETT.

In MEMORY of

the Reverend learned

emenently prudent &

pious Mr.  William Homes

the pastor of the Church

of Christ in Chilmark

who departed this life

June ye 27th 1746 in ye

83rd year of his age.

HERE LIES

BURIED THE BODY OF

KATHERINE HOMES

THE VERY PIOUS RELICT OF THE

REVEREND MR WILLIAM HOMES 

LATE DECEASED WHO DEPARTED

THIS LIFE TO A BETTER. 

APRIL YE 10TH 1754

IN YE 82ND YEAR OF

HER AGE.

William Homes and Katherine Craighead are my 9th great grandparents.  The Reverend Homes was born in 1663 in Donaghmore, County Tyrone in Northern Ireland.  He was pastor of the church at Chilmark, on the island of Martha's Vineyard off the coast of Massachusetts.  His wife, Katherine Craighead, was the daugher of another Ulster Presbyterian minister from Northern Ireland, the Reverend Robert Craighead.

Don't you love the great use of adjectives on these two tombstones?  The Homes family, or perhaps their congregation, must have been quite wealthy to pay for all the extra adjectives carved onto Rev. William Homes's epitaph.

Click here to read my "Surname Saturday" blog posts on these families:

Homes:    http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2014/02/surname-saturday-homes-of-northern.html

Craighead:   http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2014/02/surname-saturday-craighead-family-of.html

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The URL for this post is
http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2014/06/tombstone-tuesday-rev-william-homes-and.html

Copyright (c) 2014, Heather Wilkinson Rojo

Surname Saturday ~ CRAIGHEAD, A family of Scots Irish Presbyterians

CRAIGHEAD

Reverend Robert Craighead received a Master’s degree from St. Andrews University on 15 February 1653.  He went to Northern Ireland for 30 years as the pastor of the Presbyterian church at Donoughmore.   He witnessed the siege of Londonderry, escaped and went to Glasgow, Scotland, but returned to die in Londonderry, Northern Ireland on 22 August 1711.

Robert Craighead married Agnes, the daughter of Reverend John Hart of Taughboyne, Northern Ireland.   Their daughter Katherine, my 9^th great grandmother, married the Reverend William Homes and came to Massachusetts.  They also had three sons.  Robert Craighead, Jr. also became a Presbyterian minister and studied at Glasgow, Edinburgh and Leiden where he received a Master’s degree.  He was a longtime minister in Dublin.  Another son, Thomas, also studied in Edinburgh and became a Presbyterian minister.  He came with his sister to New England and became a minster at Freetown, Massachusetts.  In 1724 he became a pastor at White Clay Creek, Delaware, and later went to Pennsylvania.

The Craigheads were a very important family in the history of Presbyterianism in America.  Many descendants became ministers in the New World.

For more information on Robert Craighead:

 Craighead Family, A Genealogical Memoir by Rev. James Geddes Craighead, Philadelphia, 1876.  This book is available at the New England Historic Genealogical Society library in Boston on the shelves and also on microfiche.  It is available online at the Hathi Trust Digital Library, too. 

A good book about the siege of Londonderry is Seige City: The Story of Derry and Londondery, by Brian Lacey, Blackstaff Press, Belfast, 1990. 

My Craighead Genealogy:

Generation 1:  John Craighead

Genreration 2: Thomas Craighead born in Scotland; married in 1620 in Aberdeen, Scotland to Janet Ferguson

Generation 3: Reverend Robert Craighead, born about 1630 in Scotland, died 22 August 1711 in Derry, Northern Ireland; married Agnes Hart, daughter of Reverend John Hart and Agnes Baxter.  She was born 17 December 1648 in Dunino, Fife, Scotland.

Generation 4: Katherine Craighead, born about 1678 and died 10 April 1754 in Chilmark, Massachusetts; married on 25 September 1693 in Londonderry, Northern Ireland to Reverend William Homes, born 1663 in Donaghmore, Tyrone, Northern Ireland and died 20 June 1746 in Chilmark. Nine children born in Straban, Tyrone, Northern Ireland.

Generation 5: Margaret Homes m. John Allen

Generation 6: Rebecca Allen m. Wilmot Wass

Generation 7: Sarah Wass m. Samuel Osborn

Generation 8: Sarah Osborn m. Charles Skinner

Generation 9: Ann Skinner m. Thomas Ratchford Lyons

Generation 10: Isabella Lyons m. Rev. Ingraham Ebenezer Bill

Generation 11: Caleb Rand Bill m. Ann Margaret Bollman

Generation 12: Isabella Lyons Bill m. Albert Munroe Wilkinson

Generation 13: Donald Munroe Wilkinson m. Bertha Louise Roberts (my grandparents)

For the truly curious:

My HOMES Surname Saturday post:
https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2014/02/surname-saturday-homes-of-northern.html 

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Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Surname Saturday ~ CRAIGHEAD, A family of Scots Irish Presbyterians", Nutfield Genealogy, posted February 22, 2014, ( http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2014/01/surname-saturday-craighead-family-of.html: accessed [access date]).

I found an Irish Ancestor!

My family tree is rather boring.  Everyone is WASPY.  Most arrived in New England with the Great Migration or before 1650, and if they left they returned within one or two generations.  My grandmother and her parents came through Ellis Island, which sounds exciting, but they were English just like everyone else.  I remember one aunt saying to me, “Didn't you even find an Irishman?”  Later, I found one German Hessian, and a Dutch ancestor, and several Scots.  How is that for diversity?  My DNA test came up 63% British Isles, 25% Scandinavian, 12% uncertain.

Well, I finally did find an Irish ancestor!  He was an Ulster Protestant, but at least it shakes up the family tree a bit.  My Boston Brahmin ancestors can now properly roll over in their graves!

My Northern Ireland ancestry dates back to Margaret Homes, born 28 February 1696 in Straban, Tyrone, Ireland.  She came from a family of Presbyterian ministers.  Her father, Rev.  William Homes, was a minister in both Ireland and on the island of Martha’s Vineyard off the coast of Massachusetts, and on her maternal side her grandfather, Rev. Robert Craighead,  was a minster in Londonderry, Ireland. Katherine’s brother, Rev. Thomas Craighead, became a Presbyterian minister in Pennsylvania.

The most interesting part of all this is the family connection to Londonderry, Ireland, since now I live in Londonderry, New Hampshire.  I’m living in a town that was settled in 1719 by Ulster Scots who fled Northern Ireland after witnessing the siege of Derry.  They settled in the Nutfield Grant, and renamed their town Londonderry.   It’s funny how things worked out, isn't it?

Margaret Holmes’s father, William Homes came to America in 1686 and taught school on the island of Martha’s Vineyard.  In 1691 he returned to Ireland to enter the ministry, and he was ordained on 21 December 1692 as the pastor at Strabane.  He received a degree from the University of Edinburgh in 1693.  Then in October 1714 the Reverend William Homes and his brother-in-law Reverend Thomas Craighead came to Boston from Londonderry, Ireland on the ship “Thomas and Jane”.  Samuel Sewall welcomed them to Boston.  Reverend William Homes went back to Martha’s Vineyard to be the minister at Chilmark until his death in 1746. 

In Rev. E. L. Parker’s History of Londonderry, page 34 he wrote that a young man named Homes, son of a clergyman, told the people of Ireland the opportunities in New England.  He supposed that this was Captain Robert Homes, son of Rev. William Homes.  In 1717 John McClelland and James Jameson visited Rev. Homes in Chilmark.  William Homes went to Boston to meet with Reverend Cotton Mather at the North Meeting House in Boston.   With Mather’s blessing, five ships of Presbyterians arrived in Boston in 1718 to settle in New England.

                                                           John Craighead
                                                                        I

                                                           Thomas Craighead m. Janet Ferguson
                                                                        I

                                                   Rev. Robert Craighead m. Agnes Hart
                                                                        I

                       Rev. William Homes (1663-1746) m. Katherine Craighead (1678-1754)
                                                                        I

                                    Margaret Homes (1696 – 1778) m. John Allen

For more information, please see The History of Londonderry by Rev. E. L. Parker, 1851 page 34.

The Diary of Rev. William Homes of Chilmark, Martha's Vineyard, 1689-1746, can be found at the Maine Historical Society in Portland, Maine.  This diary was transcribed in the Register of the New England Historic Genealogical Society over three years in the following issues:

Volume 48 (1894), Pages 446 – 453

Volume 49 (1895), pages 413- 416

Volume 50 (1896), pages 155 – 166

There was also a genealogy of the extended family at the NEHGS Register Volume 91 (1937), pages 159 – 176.

You can also see the Biography of William Homes from the book Scotch Irish Pioneers in Ulster and America by Charles Knowles Bolton (the entire book is view-able at Archive.org)

Ok, my ancestor was Scots Irish, but now I can officially celebrate St. Patrick's Day! 

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To cite/link to this blog post:  Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "I found an Irish Ancestor!", Nutfield Genealogy, posted March 14, 2013, ( https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2013/03/i-found-irish-ancestor.html: accessed [access date]).