Weathervane Wednesday ~ Another Ancestral Church

I post another in a series of weather vane photographs every Wednesday.  This started with images of weathervanes from the Londonderry, New Hampshire area, but now I've found interesting weather vanes all across New England and across the globe.  Sometimes my weather vanes are whimsical, or historical, but all are interesting.  Often my readers tip me off to some very unique or unusual weathervanes, too!  If you know a great weather vane near you, let me know if you'd like to have it featured on this blog.

Today's weather vane was photographed in New Hampshire.

Do you know the location of weathervane post #361?  Scroll down to find the answer.

This is the Community Lutheran Church in Enfield, New Hampshire.  It was built originally in 1852 as the Universalist Meeting House.

My ancestor, Abner Poland, was buried in the churchyard behind this building in 1835 [see the photo below].  There was no earlier church in Enfield.  The first Meeting House was built in 1837, but there was no resident minister.  The Universalists first became active in 1840, and held meeting above the store on Main Street.  Around this time the first Universalist minister was called to Enfield, and this building was constructed in 1852.  If Abner and the rest of the Poland family attended church services, they must have been held in someone's home.  This was the first church building in Enfield, although the Shakers lived here as early as 1793 on the other side of Mascoma Lake.

The grave of Abner Poland
in Oak Grove Cemetery
behind the Community Lutheran Church
in Enfield, New Hampshire

My Tombstone Tuesday blog post about Abner Poland:
https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2017/10/tombstone-tuesday-my-5th-great.html

Community Lutheran Church website:   http://clcenfield.org/

Click here to see the entire collection of Weathervane Wednesday posts!

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Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Weathervane Wednesday ~ Another Ancestral Church", Nutfield Genealogy, posted May 2, 2018, (https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2018/05/weathervane-wednesday-another-ancestral.html: accessed [access date]). 

A Visit to the Canterbury Shaker Village

Welcome to the Canterbury Shaker Village in Canterbury, New Hampshire

The Shakers were known for their pacifist, celibate religion,
and also for their simple, rural lifestyle

This is the schoolhouse of the Canterbury Shaker community.
The Shakers took in orphans, hoping some would stay
to expand their community population.

The outhouse of the orphanage

The schoolhouse interior

Besides farming, the Shaker community had many industries such as
furniture and box making, seed catalogs, medicines and syrups, home made brooms, etc.
This is the bee house

This is the interior of the syrup house (not maple syrup, but medicinal syrups)

The workshop for canning syrups and other food products

Shaker boxes are still made here, and locally, and sold in the gift shop

The Shakers invented the flat broom, and there were many steps involved
in the manufacture of these brooms.  They were so popular that they sold extra brooms
for additional income.  You can still buy these brooms in the gift shop. 

A demonstration of flat broom making, and the machinery that the
Shakers developed to make these brooms is still in use.

Beautiful Shaker chairs for sale in the gift shop

The Canterbury Shaker Village website  http://www.shakers.org/

Yes, I had Shakers in my family tree!  Click here to read a blog post from last Tuesday that lists the Shakers I found in my family tree, and how you can see if there are any Shakers in your family.  http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2015/06/tombstone-tuesday-shaker-cemetery.html"

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Published under a Creative Commons License
Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "A Visit to the Canterbury Shaker Village", Nutfield Genealogy, posted June 19, 2015 ( http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2015/06/a-visit-to-canterbury-shaker-village.html : accessed [access date]). 

Tombstone Tuesday ~ Shaker Cemetery, Canterbury, New Hampshire

The Canterbury Shaker Village is located at 288 Shaker Road in Canterbury, New Hampshire.

The cemetery is right on the main road, next to the parking area. 

I was told by a docent that at one time there were individual gravestones to the deceased, 

but the community voted to remove them all and have one large stone simply engraved "SHAKERS".

This is symbolic of their life as a community, where they shared everything.

The Shakers were formed in England in the mid 1700s.  They were called the "United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing", more commonly known as the Shaking Quakers because they used dance as part of their worship services.  The Shakers established 19 communities in the United States. 

In 1792 some followers of Mother Ann Lee established the Shaker community at Canterbury, New Hampshire.  It lasted for more than 200 years.   In 1972 it opened as a museum and the few remaining Shaker sisters lived there until the last one died in 1992.  There are still living Shakers at the community in Sabbathday, Maine.  The Shakers were famous for celibacy, pacifism and a community lifestyle, but remembered for their labor saving inventions and simple furniture. 

At its height there were over 300 people at the Canterbury Shaker village living in over 100 buildings on 3,000 acres.  Because they lived as a celibate community, they took in many orphans and foundlings who were free to stay at age 21 or leave the community.  Hundreds of children were cared for and educated by the Canterbury Shakers, and these children have left thousands of descendants.  

The following members of my family tree are buried in Shaker burial grounds:

Thomas Hammond (1744 - 1824) and his wife, Sarah Winchester (1764 - 1848) joined the Shaker community at Harvard, Massachusetts on 10 January 1811.  Four of their six children also joined the Shakers:   Thomas Hammond (1791- 1880), Mary Ann Hammond (1795 - 1838), Lucy A. Hammond (1797 - 1881) and Benjamin Franklin Hammond (1803 - 1828).  Sarah Winchester Hammond was my 3rd cousin, 7 generations removed, cousins through the Jewett and Story families.  

Nathan Merrill (1743 - 1818) joined the Shakers at New Gloucester, Maine and was a deacon.  As a trained mason and bricklayer he built the Shaker Meeting House in 1794.  It is still open for tours at the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village. 

Anne Hovey (1720 - 1806) and her husband Elijah Wildes, converted to the Shaker religion and their estate in Groton, Massachusetts became a Shaker community.  Three of their seven children also joined the Shaker sect:  Elijah (1746 - 1829), Ivory (1751 - 1777), Phoebe (1761 - 1837).  

Elizabeth Dowtey ( 1711 - 1785) was the wife of my 1st cousin 8 generations removed Jonathan Southwick (1694 - 1745).  The Southwicks were Quakers from Salem, Massachusetts who removed to New Salem in Western Massachusetts.  As a widow Elizabeth joined the Shakers at Hancock, Massachusetts and died there.  [About Towne, Volume XIX, No. 4, December 1999 - the newsletter of the Towne Family Association] 

Also:

Isaiah Lord (1807 - 1882) lived with the Shaker community in Alfred, Maine for a while but did not stay there.  He followed some of their customs all his life.  He married Ruth Keay in 1838 and had seven children.  

Check the following book to see if your family members or distant relatives were Shakers:

A Concise History of the United Society of Believers called Shakers, by Charles Edson Robinson, East Canterbury, NH: 1893.   Available to read online at Archive.org, and searchable. 

A panoramic view of the Shaker cemetery

UPDATE 13 October 2016:
For a great post about the Canterbury Shaker cemetery and the infirmary (with a plot plan of the Shaker cemetery), see Barbara Poole's blog post at this link:
http://lifefromtheroots.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-shakers-of-canterbury-nh-in.html

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To Cite/Link to this blog post:  Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Tombstone Tuesday ~ Shaker Cemetery, Canterbury, New Hampshire", Nutfield Genealogy, posted June 16, 2015
( http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2015/06/tombstone-tuesday-shaker-cemetery.html : accessed [access date]).

Fruitlands in Winter

There is a wonderful view of Mounts Wachusett and Monadnock
from the ridge in Harvard, Massachusetts where you can
find the Fruitlands Museum.

This beautiful cafe is open April to October
but closed all winter, the giftshop is open year round

The red farmhouse at the bottom of the hill
is where Louisa May Alcott lived as a child when her father
joined the transcendentalists at Fruitlands in 1843

The Native American Gallery

In 1914 a wealthy Boston Brahmin, Clara Endicott Sears, bought the site of Bronson Alcott's utopian community, Fruitlands, to start a cultural museum.  She included Native American Art, Shaker collections, and an art gallery, as well as the buildings where the transcendentalists attempted to live as an experimental community.  The museum is surrounded by 210 acres of meadow and forest full of nature trails open year round.  Only the art gallery is open in the winter, the entire museum complex is open April through October.

The visitor's center

There is an exhibit of New England primitive portraits at the art gallery until April 15th.  Click on this link to read my blog post from last week about this wonderful exhibit:  http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2013/02/fruitlands-exhibit-of-new-england.html

Click here to see photos of Fruitlands Museum in the summertime:
http://seeingnewengland.blogspot.com/2010/09/sights-of-summer-part-1_02.html

www.fruitlands.org

Fruitlands Museum
102 Prospect Hill Road
Harvard, Massachusetts 01451
(978) 456-3924

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Copyright 2013, Heather Wilkinson Rojo

A Blast from the Past!

I found this news clipping in my cookbook.  The cook book is Seasoned with Grace by Eldress Bertha Lindsay of the Canterbury, New Hampshire Shaker Village.  Years ago when you visited the Shaker Village the Eldress Bertha would greet you and shake your hand, and in her later years she would greet you from her rocking chair.  Eldress Bertha passed away in 1990, one of the last surviving Shakers in the United States.

I entered this summer squash casserole recipe to the local newspaper column of the Nashua Telegraph in 1988.  It was chosen as "recipe of the week" and printed on June 1, 1988.  At the end of the year all the weekly recipe winners were invited to a Cook-Off at the Fairgrounds Junior High School in Nashua.  We all had to cook our recipe and we were judged by a panel of local restaurant chefs.  I remember that I did not win, and the judges suggested I steam my squash in the future (I tried that later at home, and my squash was too mushy).   I also remember that my daughter was a toddler running around the home economics classroom kitchen with my husband in hot pursuit during the entire ordeal.   Although I didn't win the top prize, I did win first place in my category of casseroles and received the Shaker cookbook as a prize.  Imagine my surprise when I opened up the cookbook the next day to peruse the pages, and I found my Squash Casserole recipe in the book!  It was almost exactly word for word the very same recipe.  No steaming either.

Nashua Telegraph, Nashua, NH, June 1, 1988

click images to enlarge

Another thing I remember is that for several years after this event, the phone would ring and complete strangers would ask me what brand of packaged croutons I used.  It was always the same question every time.  "What brand do you use?"  I was always too embarrassed to say I always used the cheapest brand on sale, so I used to tell them I used Pepperidge Farm brand to sound like I was an expert.  This is life in a small town, when complete strangers call to ask questions about recipes in the local paper for three or four years after it is printed!

P.S. Don't you love those 1980s eyeglasses!

The Nashua Telegraph, Nashua, New Hampshire http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/

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Copyright 2013, Heather Wilkinson Rojo

John Cragin, Scots Prisoner of War 1651 in Woburn, Massachusetts

After the heavy snows of the previous week, this weekend perfect for a drive in the countryside. One of our favorite rides is to the Frye Measure Mill in Wilton, New Hampshire. Since the weather had been bad, I Googled the website for the Frye Measure Mill, and found the schedule and directions, but then (of course!) I was sidetracked by the link labeled “history”. After clicking there, I became enthralled with the story of Daniel Cragin, the founder of the Mill. I was even more surprised to find his ancestor had been a 1651 passenger on board the “John and Sara”.

The Frye Measure Mill
in winter is absolutely beautiful!

I knew the sad story of the “John and Sara” because my own ancestor, William Munroe (1625 - 1718), was on board the same ship. It was full of prisoners of war, Scotsmen captured during the English Civil War, bound for Boston to be sold into servitude. It is one of the few ships of this era to have a fairly complete passenger list, because the human cargo was actually valuable merchandise. For this reason only, the proprietors made a list. Other ships of the era did not keep passenger lists.

wooden measures

According to the Frye Measure Mill website, and the Wilton, NH town history, John Cragin had small pox during the voyage, and was going to thrown overboard. A young English woman, Sarah Dawes, asked for his life to be spared. However, this is easily disproven by one look at the passenger list. There are no women on the list, and no English passengers. The truth is more interesting. Sarah Dawes was a servant to John Wyman in Woburn, and was with child with her second bastard child by another servant in the Wyman household, Daniel Mecrist. She was sentenced to twelve stripes in 1657. He could not marry her because he was already married to a woman he left behind in England. John Craggin married her in 1661, and took in her two illegitimate children, Mary and Benoni Mecrist.

In looking at my own family tree, I saw that John Cragin and Sarah Dawes had eight children, and two of the Cragin siblings married two Skelton siblings, grand children of my own ancestor Reverend Samuel Skelton (1593 – 1634) of Salem, Massachusetts. John Wyman (1621 – 1684), Sarah’s master in Woburn, Massachusetts, was the brother to my own ancestor, Francis Wyman (1617 – 1699). Another one of John Cragin’s daughters, Sarah, married Francis Nurse, Jr. (the son of Rebecca Towne Nurse, hung as a witch in 1692 Salem, her brother Edmund is my 10x great grandfather), my first cousin ten generations removed. There are many, many connections between my own family tree and John Cragin’s descendants.

The Cragin/Craggen/Craggin Family

Gen. 1. John Cragin, b. Scotland, died 27 October 1708 in Woburn, Massachusetts. He was captured at the Battle of Worcester in 1652 and sent to America as a prisoner of war on board the “John and Sarah” to be sold into servitude; married on 4 November 1661 to Sarah Dawes, at Woburn, Massachusetts. Eight Children.

Gen. 2. John Cragin, born 29 September 1677 at Woburn, Massachusetts; died 26 January 1703; filed an intention to marry Deborah Skelton on 13 April 1700. Three children.

Gen. 3. John Cragin, born 25 Mar 1701; married Judith Barker of Concord, Massachusetts settled in the part of Concord which is now Acton, Massachusetts, and then removed to Temple, New Hampshire. Nine children.

Gen. 4. Francis Cragin, born in Acton; married Sibyl Piper. Ten children.

Gen. 5. Captain Francis Cragin, born 24 October 1773; married Sarah Cummings,

Gen. 6. Augustus Cragin born 19 July 1802; died 21 June 1886; married on 14 December 1830 to Almira Boynton, born 5 December 1807, and died 30 October 1883. . Removed to Temple, New Hampshire from Merrimac, about 1837. Ten children.

Gen. 7. Daniel Cragin, born 31 December 1836 in Merrimac; married 20 March 1859 to Jane L. Dolliver, daughter of John Dolliver and Lucetta Draper of Lyndeborough. Was apprenticed at age 17 to John Newell, cabinet maker, of Lyndeborough, New Hampshire. He was engaged in a furniture shop in Wilton three years later. Then he returned to Lyndeborough, with a partner, and purchased John Newell’s business in 1858. In 1876 he began the manufacture of dry measures at his own mill.


Frye's Measure Mill
Wilton, New Hampshire

Frye’s Measure Mill, in Wilton, is on the New Hampshire Preservation Alliance’s 2008 list of “Seven to Save”, among the most endangered Granite State properties. It dates back to a time when mills were made of wood, not brick like those in Manchester, and located along the streams and small rivers of backwoods New Hampshire, not just along the mighty Merrimack. Local manufacturing and locally made products were the backbone of the American economy in the 1800’s. Frye’s Measure Mill has been run by only three families over the years, Cragin, Frye and Savage. There is still a continuing battle to maintain the mill, dam, ponds and outbuildings. In 1982 the Measure Mill was accepted to the National Register of Historic Places.

Built in 1878 by Daniel Cragin, the Frye Mill still produces wooden ware measures, similar to Shaker style boxes also produced there. Using an elaborate system of wooden cogs and leather belts, the energy produced from a small waterfall turns the lathes and machinery that cuts, shapes and shaves the wooden containers that become “measures.” Measures were made in sizes from a dry cup to a quart, and each can be considered a small work of art. The shaker boxes and measures are still made of native maple, hand bent around wooden molds and fastened with copper tacks.

Frye’s Measure mill is one of the few waterpowered mills still operational, and the only measure mill still operating in the United States. Woodenware produced at Frye’s is still made by the mostly water powered equipment. It is located on 12 Frye Mill Road in Wilton, New Hampshire


There is a small display of historical information
about the Mill inside the gift shop, including
information on the Cragin, Frye and Savage families

For more information on the Cragin family or Frye’s Measure Mill:

History of the town of Wilton, Hillsborough County, New Hampshire, by Abiel Abbot Livermore and Sewall Putnam, Lowell, Massachusetts: Marden & Rowell, Printers, 1888 (the Cragin Genealogy is on page 353)

The American Genealogist, Volume 15 (1838-9), page 218- 220

Woburn Massachusetts Vital Records

History of Woburn, Massachusetts, by Samuel Sewall, Boston: Wiggin & Lunt, 1868

"Francis and Sarah Graggen Nurse of Reading Massachusetts; with notes on John and Sarah Dawes Craggen of Woburn, Massachusetts and Benoni MacKrest of Salisbury, Massachusetts", by Barbara J. Matthews, The American Genealogist, 1994, Volume 69, pages 81 - 85.


websites:

http://www.usgennet.org/usa/topic/colonial/main/john&sara.html  the passenger list for the “John and Sara” which left London 11 November 1651.

http://www.fryesmeasuremill.com/ the website for Frye’s Measure Mill, Wilton, New Hampshire with historical data, how to book tours of the mill, and shop information

Disclosure:  I have not been compensated in any way by the owners and proprietors of Frye's Measure Mill

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To Cite/Link to this blog post:  Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "John Cragin, Scots Prisoner of War 1651 in Woburn, Massachusetts", Nutfield Genealogy, posted January 27, 2011, ( https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2011/01/john-cragin-scots-prisoner-of-war-1651.html: accessed [access date]).