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]). 

Happy Halloween! The Story of the Willey Family of Crawford Notch

Crawford Notch State Park October 2010
The Site of the Willey House

Many writers, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, have told the sad story of the Willey Family of Crawford Notch. The tragedy was also included in songs, poems and paintings of the time period. This remote mountain pass was used by Native Americans, who told Timothy Nash its whereabouts. He is generally credited with its discovery in 1771. The first permanent settlers in the notch were the Abel Crawford family in 1792, on land originally granted to Nash.

In 1825 Samuel Willey, Jr. of Bartlett, New Hampshire built a small house in Crawford Notch at the foot of what is now called Mt. Willey. He brought his wife and five children to live there. On 28 August 1826 there was an extended drought, followed by heavy rain. The Saco River, which has its headwaters in Crawford Notch, rose 20 feet overnight. Two days later, friends came to the valley and were horrified to find the house unharmed, but the surrounding slopes littered with landslide and avalanche boulders. A large ledge above the house had divided the landslide, which passed around the house. The bodies of the Willey parents and two children were found, and three other children remained missing.

Poets and writers have dreamed up many versions of scary tales about what happened the day of the tragedy. Did the family flee the house when they heard the landslide? Were they escaping the flood when caught by an avalanche? Were they warned ahead of time? The house stood untouched, with a bible on the table and a dog still inside.

The Willey house stood as an inn to travelers until 1898 when it burned to the ground. Its site is marked by a large boulder with a bronze plaque. As a child we used to camp nearby, and my Dad would tell the story of the Willey family in his best Halloween voice. We would get the shivers standing there looking at the park and historical marker. We were there just two weeks ago to see the Fall foliage and visit the site. I still get the shivers even today!

1971, my sister and I at Crawford Notch
(the hills still bear the marks of the landslide 150 years before)

Willey Family Lineage (Thanks to Sue and Rick Willey, please see below)

Generation 1. Thomas Willey was born 1617 in Lincolnshire or Lancashire, England, died September 1681 in Oyster River (now Durham), New Hampshire; married Margaret Geaffit, born about 1615 in England.

Generation 2. John Willey, born between 1655 and 1656 in Oyster River, died 10 Sept 1770 in Oyster River; married Alice Dorcas about 1688.

Generation 3. Samuel Willey, born 1693 in Dover, New Hampshire; married about 1715 to Sarah Stevenson, daughter of Bartholomew Stevenson and Mary Clark.

Generation 4. Samuel Willey, born before 6 March 1719/20; married 16 June 1749 to Sarah Glazier.

Generation 5. Captain Samuel Willey, born 31 January 1753 in Lee, New Hampshire, died 14 June 1844; married on 23 October 1782 to Betsey Glazier, born 1 January 1761, and died 7 April 1844 in Conway, New Hampshire.

Generation 6. Samuel Willey, born 31 March 1788, died on 28 March 1826 in Crawford Notch Avalanche; married to Polly Lovejoy, born 1791, died on 28 March 1826, daughter of Jeremiah Lovejoy and Elizabeth Spring. (Polly had a royal ancestral lineage from King Edward III of England through her ancestor Edward Carleton of Rowley, Massachusetts, see Ancestral Roots of Sixty Colonists who came to New England between 1623 and 1650, by Frederick Lewis Weis, Genealogical Publishing Co., 1988 ).

For more information:

The story of the Willey Family from the NH State Park’s Website (scroll down under History)
http://www.nhstateparks.com/crawford.html

“The Ambitious Guest” a short story from Twice Told Tales, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1837

“The Story of the Willey Family”, brochure by the New Hampshire State Parks (from Crawford Notch State Park, picked up in October 2010 at the gift shop, free)

This link has a beautiful painting by Thomas Cole of Crawford Notch “A View of the Mountain Pass Called the Notch of the White Mountains”, 1839, an excerpt from Hawthorne’s version of the tale, and also a passage from Cole’s journal, 1828, just two years after the incident.
http://www.nga.gov/education/classroom/19th_century_america/art_crawfordnotch.shtm

The New Hampshire Willey Family Tree, by Sue and Rick Willey
http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/pearl/www.geocities.com/Pentagon/6315/family/willeynh.pdf

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To cite/link to this blog post:  Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Happy Halloween!  The Story of the Willey Family of Crawford Notch", Nutfield Genealogy, posted 28 October 2010, ( https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2010/10/happy-halloween-story-of-willey-family.html: accessed [access date]).