Surname Saturday ~ ROLLINS of Dover (Newington), New Hampshire

ROLLINS / RAWLINGS / RAWLINS

My 9th great grandfather, James Rollins (about 1613 - about 1687) first lived in Newbury, Massachusetts and then removed to Dover, New Hampshire where he was made a freeman on 14 May 1634.  He was granted six acres at Dover on 18 March 1648.  His occupation is unknown, but sometime around 1661 he returned to London where "he received cloth to be delivered to Mr. Cogswell of Ipswich and Mr. Raynes of York" [Genealogical Dictionary of Maine and New Hampshire, page 595].  This is interesting to me because John Cogswell (1650 - 1724) of Ipswich is my 8th great grandfather.  James Rollins was back in New Hampshire again in 1663.

Around 16 December 1685 James Rollins made his will which mentioned his wife Hannah; sons Benjamin, Ichabod, and Joseph; and his sons-in-law Obadiah Morse and Phillip Chesley.  He must have died sometime between writing this will and 13 September 1689 when his son had a deed written that mentioned him as "Benjamin Rawlings son of James Rawlings deceased".  His will was not proven until 25 July 1691.

Very little is known of James Rollins' life, but he did sign the Dover Combination on 22 October 1640, and the May 1654 petition.  The Dover Combination was the document that established the town government, and a copy was found in the Public Record Office in London with the names of the men who signed (including my ancestors James Rollins, Thomas Leighton, John Heard, Anthony Emery, and Peter Garland).

I descend from James Rollins' daughter Sarah who married Phillip Chesley about 1678.  They lived at Oyster River (Durham), New Hampshire.

Some ROLLINS resources:

The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England, 1620 - 1633, by Robert Charles Anderson, Volume III, pages 1552 - 1555.

Records of Families of the Name Rawlins or Rollins in the United States, by John R. Rollins, 1874 [errors in the children of James Rollins in generation 1]

Granite Monthly: The New Hampshire Magazine, Volume 1 (September 1877), pages 129 - 134

My ROLLINS genealogy:

Generation 1: James Rollins, born about 1613, died between 16 December 1685 and 13 August 1687 at Bloody Point (now the town of Newington), Dover, New Hampshire; married about 1638 to Hannah Unknown; seven children.

Generation 2:  Sarah Rollins, born about 1658; married about 1678 to Phillip Chesley, son of Phillip Chesley and Elizabeth Leighton.  He was born about 1646 at Oyster River, New Hampshire, and died 18 December 1695 at Oyster River.  Six children.

Generation 3:  Jonathan Chesley m. Mary Weeks
Generation 4: Comfort Chesley m. Stephen Perkins
Generation 5:  Mary Perkins m. Nathaniel Batchelder
Generation 6:  Jonathan Batchelder m. Nancy Thompson
Generation 7:  George E. Batchelder m. Abigail M. Locke
Generation 8:  George E. Batchelder m. Mary Katharine Emerson
Generation 9:  Carrie Maude Batchelder m. Joseph Elmer Allen
Generation 10:  Stanley Elmer Allen m. Gertrude Matilda Hitchings (my grandparents)

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Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Surname Saturday ~ ROLLINS of Dover (Newington), New Hampshire", Nutfield Genealogy, posted January 5, 2019, ( https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2019/01/surname-saturday-rollins-of-dover.html: accessed [access date]).

Surname Saturday ~ CHESLEY of Oyster River (Dover), New Hampshire

CHESLEY / CHESSLEY / CHESLIE

The first record I can find of my 9^th great grandfather, Phillip Chesley, is when he witnessed a deed from Rev. Thomas Larkahm to William Waldron on 13 September 1642.  There are some online sources that say he arrived at the Oyster River Plantation at age 15 in 1633, but I have not found any source for that.  There are also some who say he was from the Isle of Jersey, son of Thomas Chesley and Margaret Rogers, but I have not seen any proof of his origins.

Phillip Chesley’s first wife was Elizabeth Leighton, with whom he had two sons.  Elizabeth and Phillip signed a deed for a house lot on Dover Neck.  Some time after this he remarried to a woman named Joan or Joanna.  On 12 August 1663 he and Joan deed his land and house to his sons, keeping only one room in the house for himself.  He had three daughters with his second wife.

Life was difficult on the New Hampshire seacoast. It was on the border of the frontier with French Canada.  Most of the settlers were involved with logging and lumber which was dangerous work.  In 1657 he was on the jury that investigated a drowning of a logger.   In 1660 he was the local constable when Thomas Canyda was killed by a falling tree.   He was present at the coroner’s inquest of an Alexander McDaniel who drowned in the Piscataqua River in 1663.  Chelsley was chosen to lay out the road from Oyster River to Cochecho with Patrick Jamison in 1664.

My ancestor appears to have been a drunk and a belligerent neighbor.  He was also the Oyster River constable for a time, which seems incongruous. Because of his behavior, the court records are full of mentions of Phillip Chesley.  Otherwise, I wouldn’t know much about his life in early New Hampshire. He appeared in court with Stephen Jones in 1668 “upon suspicion of having a hand in ye untimely death of Edmond Green blacksmith” [NH Provincial Deeds, 2: 150b, 151a].  In April 1661 there was a bond issued to Phillip Chesley to keep the peace, especially towards his wife, and to appear in court in Dover to answer the complaint of his wife, Joan. 

In June of the same year two witnesses claimed Chesley called Edward Colcord “Rogue & Rascall, & that he deserved to be sold to the Berbadoes or Virginia, & he would doe it if he Could.”   In another slander case Mr. Samuel Hall claimed that Chelsey was “Cozening and cheating saying yt he was a Knave & yt he had Cozened & cheated him the sd Chesley of 10 pounds or more wch was a Just debt whereby the sd Hall is damnified in his Credit 500 pounds.”  The jury found him guilty but only chared him 50 shillings in damages and 21 shillings court costs.  [New Hampshire Court Records 1640 – 1692, Court Papers 1652 – 1668, in the New Hampshire State Papers Series, 40 (State of New Hampshire, 1943), 172, 474 – 7, and Court Papers, 1: 69, 89, 93, 95, 115 – 123.]  This case is explained in great detail in Diane Rapapport’s 2007 book The Naked Quaker: True Crimes and Controversies from the Courts of Colonial New England, on pages 83 – 88 in a sketch she calls “Chesley and the Cheating Knave”. 

In the second generation I descend from his son, Phillip Chesley, Jr.  His older brother, Thomas Chesley, was killed in an Indian massacre near Johnson’s Creek on 15 November 1697, leaving seven children and a widow.  Phillip, Jr. married Sarah Rollins and had six children.

In the third generation I descend from Philip’s youngest son, Jonathan.  He lived in Greenland, and was a representative to the General Court in 1745.  He married Mary Weeks and had three children.  I descend from their daughter Comfort Chesley, my 7^th great grandfather, who married Stephen Perkins of Wells, Maine, and they had twelve children born in Wells and in the part of Canterbury, New Hampshire that became the town of Loudon.  

Some other Chesley resources:

History of Durham, New Hampshire, Volume 1, by Everett Schermerhorn Stackpole, 1913.

Genealogical Dictionary of Maine and New Hampshire, by Charles Thornton Libby, Walter Goodwin Davis and Sybil Noyes, 1928.

Batchelder Genealogy, by Frederick Clifton Pierce, 1898

My CHESLEY genealogy:

Generation 1:  Phillip Chesley, born about 1606 and died after 30 April 1685 at Oyster River, New Hampshire; married first to Elizabeth Leighton, daughter of Thomas Leighton and Joanna Sisbee.  She was born about 1625 in Dover, New Hampshire; married second to Joan Unknown.  Two sons with the first wife, three daughters with the second wife.

Generation 2:  Phillip Chesley, born about 1646 in Oyster River, and died 18 December 1695 at Oyster River; married about 1675 to Sarah Rollins, daughter of James Rollins and Hannah Fry.  Six children.

Generation 3:  Jonathan Chesley, died about 1785; married on 17 November 1720 in Greenland to Mary Weeks, daughter of Joshua Weeks and Comfort Hubbard.  She was born about 1700 in Greenland and died about 1755. Three children.

Generation 4:  Comfort Chesley, born about 1735 and died 12 February 1818; married to Stephen Perkins, son of Jacob Perkins and Anna Littlefield.  He was born about 1736 in Wells, Maine and died 13 May 1818 in Loudon, New Hampshire.  Twelve children.

Generation 5:  Mary Perkins m. Nathaniel Batchelder

Generation 6:  Jonathan Batchelder m. Nancy Thompson

Generation 7:  George E. Batchelder m. Abigail M. Locke

Generation 8: George E. Batchelder m. Mary Katharine Emerson

Generation 9: Carrie Maude Batchelder m. Joseph Elmer Allen

Generation 10:  Stanley Elmer Allen m. Gertrude Matilda Hitchings

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Heather Wilkinson Rojo, “CHESLEY of Oyster River (Dover), New Hampshire”, Nutfield Genealogy, posted November 10, 2018, ( https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2018/11/surname-saturday-chesley-of-oyster.html: accessed [access date]). 

Caverly Family Reunion 2010

Last week I attended the Caverly Family Reunion in Strafford, New Hampshire. The Caverly Family Association meets every two years, and produces a newsletter. The first known Caverly in New Hampshire was William Caverly, born about 1650 and died about 1732 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. For more lineage information see my updated (with changes to the family tree) blog post http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/search/label/Caverly

A 15 foot long Caverly Family Tree was on display

This year the reunion was held at the historic Bow Lake Grange Hall, next to the dam on Bow Lake. This is a pleasant community hall for Strafford. Families have been summering on Bow Lake for over 100 years, and there are photos and maps inside the hall. The family association put on a great cookout lunch, complete with hamburgers, hot dogs, and grilled sausages. Homemade salads, baked beans and desserts were also served. Over thirty Caverly cousins were in attendance.

Dick Caverly is the association president. He has tried to get me to attend quite a few of these reunions, and we surprised him this year when we showed up at the door! He graciously introduced me to all my distant Caverly kin. I was pleased to meet Mary Caverly, the association treasurer who is also a volunteer at the New Hampshire Vital Records room in Concord. On one wall there was a Caverly family tree over fifteen feet long, printed out on a plotter by Bruce Caverly of Arkansas. It was exported from Family Tree Maker 2005 to the plotter, and was the first of the kind I had ever seen! (Usually I have to tape together large trees from regular 8x10 paper from my home printer).

Lenny Caverly and Roger Leighton
give a historical talk about the Bow Lake section of Strafford, NH

I also met Lenny Caverly, the association historian, who filled me in on some new revisions to the Caverly genealogy. He, along with 91 year old Roger Leighton, gave a great talk after lunch, and discussed the Bow Lake neighborhood of Strafford. Roger remembers seeing his first parade right in front of the Grange Hall, led by a Civil War veteran on a white horse! He also told stories of the houses along Caverly hill, where every cellar hole and antique home was once owned by a Caverly family member. Another Caverly cousin graciously presented an old photo album (with labeled photos!) and a bible with a genealogical register to the Caverly Association that morning. Some of the surnames in those books were Caverly, Ricker, Leighton and Hill.

Following the historical talk, there was a raffle of several historical books and a goody bag of Stonewall Kitchen jams and sauces. Two cousins from California won the prize for traveling the greatest distance to attend the reunion. After the family meeting, Lenny took interested family members on a tour of Caverly Hill and the Caverly Family burial ground. It was wonderful to attend this family gathering, even though my nearest Caverly ancestor (Elizabeth Caverly who married Thomas Wilkinson in 1715) is 9 generations removed!

To join the Caverly Family Association, send inquiries to the Caverly Family Association, c/o Mary Caverly 280 Hale Road, Sanbornton, NH 03269-2202 or email maryecav@metrocast.net

Caverly Books I learned about at the reunion:

Becky, Grandmother of New Hampshire, by Alice Clark Haubrich, 1966. This is a novel, based on facts, about some early Piscataqua Pioneers including Caverly ancestors. Hard to find.

Genealogy of the Caverly Family, by Robert Boodey Caverly, 1879 reprints available at Higginson (note, the first two generations have had revisions since this book was printed)

Escape from the Deep, by Alex Kershaw, 2008 A nonfiction book about the legendary submarine Tang, and the survivors who escaped from 180 feet under the sea only to be captured by the Japanese in 1944. Only nine of the original eighty man crew survived, including Floyd Caverly. (I won this book in the raffle!)

New Caverly Links:

http://www.nh.gov/nhdhr/publications/documents/caverly_strafford.pdf New Hampshire Division of Historical Resources notes on the Reverend John Caverly House in Strafford, New Hampshire

http://www.usgennet.org/usa/nh/town/strafford/index.htm Strafford, New Hampshire genealogy page

http://www.kimvarneychandler.com/caverly Website of Caverly Genealogy, some mistakes in the first two generations, so be aware and check your own sources.

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Copyright 2010, Heather Wilkinson Rojo