Fort Ticonderoga

Fort Ticonderoga

Fort Ticonderoga saw two wars, the French and Indian War and the American Revolution. It was originally built by the French to control the southern end of Lake Champlain, and it is located in upstate New York.  It has been controlled by the French, British and Americans at different time periods.  During the Revolution, the cannons were removed from Ticonderoga and dragged across Massachusetts all the way to Boston during the winter of 1775 and 1776.  In May 1776, the cannons played a key role in the British evacuation of Boston.

My father, the history buff, took my mother to visit Fort Ticonderoga during their honeymoon in 1957.  We visited here in 2003 with my in-laws from Spain.

He's holding his ear because a
cannon just went off! 

The view of Lake Champlain
from Fort Ticonderoga's walls

The following men in my family tree were stationed at or marched to Fort Ticonderoga:

1. Eli Skinner (1760 - 1851) enlisted at age 14 as a fifer, and marched to Fort Ticonderoga on 6 January 1777, where his regiment remained for three months.  Eli is the brother to my 5 x great grandfather, Charles Skinner (1748 - 1837)

2. Israel Hutchinson (1727 - 1811) was the Lt. Colonel of a regiment from the Salem, Massachusetts area that captured the cannons from Ticonderoga, and helped to bring them to Boston. He is a 2nd cousin, 7 generations removed, we have a common ancestor in Richard Hutchinson, (1602- 1682)  immigrant to New England.

3. Francis Towne (1737 - 1811) Served as Captain of a regiment garrisoned at Fort George and Fort Ticonderoga from 3 December 1776 to 12 March 1777.  He is a second cousin 8x removed on the Towne lineage, and his wife, Phebe Towne is a 6x great aunt, half sister to my 6x great grandmother, Ruth Johnson (1731 - 1800). (They were both daughters of Rebecca Towne, born 1700)

4. Amos Towne (1737- 1793) another 2nd cousin, 8 generations removed, was a Lieutenant in Colonel Brewer's regiment at Ticonderoga, Saratoga and Valley Forge.

5. Abel Platts (1704 - 1777) was a Captain who marched with his company to Fort Ticonderoga in 1777, just months before he died at home in Rindge, New Hampshire. He was a brother to my 7x great grandfather Moses Platts (1707 - abt. 1753).

6. Nicolas Caverly (no dates) was a soldier under Colonel Pierce Long at Fort Ticonderoga in 1777.  He is a second cousin 6 generations removed.

7.  John Caverly (1725 - 1790) first cousin, 7 generations removed, nephew of my 7 x great grandmother Elizabeth (Caverly) Wilkinson.  He was a soldier under Captain James Arnold at Fort Ticonderoga.

8. Henry Dearborn (1751 - 1829) was a doctor in New Hampshire and an officer in the American Revolution who served at Ticonderoga, Valley Forge, Monmouth and was in command of the 1st New Hampshire Regiment at Yorktown.  He was later retired, but then appointed Major General of the Militia, he was a congressman, and secretary of war in 1809 under President Thomas Jefferson, minister to Portugal in 1822 and 1824.   He was a nephew of my 7x great grandmother, Elizabeth (Dearborn) Garland (1692 - 1770).

9.  Timothy Mixer (1748 - 1831) served in many battles in the Revolutionary War starting with the Lexington Alarm in 1775.  He was in Captain Alexander Robbe's company which answered the Ticonderoga Alarm in 1777.  He was the brother to Lucy (Mixer) Munroe Simonds, my 5x Great Grandmother.

10.  John Pember (1751 - 1827)  served as a Sergeant in Captain Benjamin Throop's company, stationed at Ticonderoga in 1776 during a smallpox epidemic.  He married my 4x great aunt, Lucretia Bill in 1774.

11. Jacob Flint (1751 - 1835) enlisted for five months at Ticonderoga under Captain Stinson.  He is a second cousin 6 generations removed.

12. Eliezar Gould (b. 1720) was on the expeditions to Ticonderoga and Crown Point during the French and Indian War.  He is a second cousin, 9 generations removed.

The following men were killed in Battles at Fort Ticonderoga:

1.   Nathan Burnham (1721 - 1758)  was killed at Braddock's Defeat at the Battle of Ticonderoga on 8 July 1758.  He was the brother of my 6x great grandfather Stephen Burnham (1715 - 1790).

2. Andrew Gould (1751 - 1777) killed at the Battle of Ticonderoga on 20 September 1777.  He is my third cousin, 8 generations removed.  Our common ancestor is immigrant Zaccheus Gould (1589 - 1668) of Topsfield, Massachusetts.

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Fort Ticonderoga Website http://www.fortticonderoga.org/

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Copyright 2011, Heather Wilkinson Rojo

Weathervane Wednesday - A Trolley Car

I've been collecting photographs of the many, many weather vanes in the Nutfield area (Derry and Londonderry, New Hampshire).  Today's weather vane is nearby, but not in Derry or Londonderry.  If you want a challenge, I'll post the locations at the bottom of the page so you can scroll down far enough to see the photo, but not the location, and try to guess where you may have seen these lovely weathervanes.

Do you know the location of weather vane #21?

Today's weather vane #21 is located in Library Park, Hudson, New Hampshire, at the intersection of Derry Street and Ferry Street (the intersection of Rt. 102 and Rt. 111) .    Recently the Hudson Historical Society gave a presentation about the old railroad and trolley lines in Hudson, and they mentioned that this was the old trolley stop for the line that ran to Litchfield and Manchester.  The trolley stop is the stone bench on the corner, near the old library, and the weather vane atop the bandstand honors it's history.


Click here to see the other weather vanes in this series

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Copyright 2011, Heather Wilkinson Rojo

Tombstone Tuesday - The Lake Family

These gravestones were photographed at the Pine Ground Cemetery in Chichester, New Hampshire

Pine Ground Cemetery, Chichester, New Hampshire
on Route 28

[Front of the stone]

THOMAS LAKE
BORN IN ENGLAND 1734
DIED IN CHICHESTER 1816
HIS WIFE
       EUNICE SEAVEY  1804
1767    THOMAS LAKE   1856
HIS WIFE
      REBECCA BLAKE  1832
1837   ANN LAKE   1840

[Back of the stone]

1775     ROBERT LAKE  1858
HIS WIFE
        HANNAH BLAKE  1813
1778  WILLIAM LAKE  1852
HIS WIFE
HANNAH TRUE  1836
1812  JOHN LAKE  1814
1809  EUNICE LAKE  1866

Thomas Lake was born about 1734 in Portsmouth, England.  He arrived in New Hampshire at age 14, and appears in records in Portsmouth and Rye, and then settled in Chichester.  He married Eunice Seavey, the daughter of William Seavey and Hannah Unknown, who was the widow of John Davis.   Eunice and Thomas had eight children (she had four Davis children, too).   The sons marked with * are listed on the gravestone.

1.  James Lake born 13 August 1765, married Mehitable Berry

2. *  Thomas Lake born 10 June 1767, married Rebecca Blake

3.  John Lake born 21 March 1769, 

4.  Anna Lake born 26 May 1771, married Richard Rand

5.  Martha Lake born 21 March 1773

6. *  Robert Lake born 8 May 1775, married Hannah Blake

7.  Rebecca Lake born 23 December 1776, married Jonathan Leavitt

8.  * William Lake born 20 February 1779, married Sally Leavitt    

The John Lake b. 1812 and Eunice Lake b. 1808 were children of William Lake and Hannah True, grandchildren of Thomas Lake the immigrant from England. 

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Copyright 2011, Heather Wilkinson Rojo

Blog Caroling - The Holly and the Ivy

This is my 2011 contribution to the Blog Caroling Carnival hosted by the Genealogy blogger named Footnote Maven at this link:
http://www.footnotemaven.com/2011/12/do-you-hear-what-i-hear.html

The Holly and The Ivy

The holly and the ivy, when they are both full grown,

Of all the trees that are in the wood, the holly bears the crown.

Refrain:

Oh, the rising of the sun and the running of the deer,

The playing of the merry organ, sweet singing in the choir.

The holly bears a blossom as white as lily flower,

And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ to be our sweet saviour

Refrain

The holly bears a berry as red as any blood,

And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ to do poor sinners good.

Refrain

The holly bears a prickle as sharp as any thorn,

And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ on Christmas Day in the morn.

Refrain

The holly bears a bark as bitter as any gall,

And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ for to redeem us all.

Refrain

This is me, trying to learn to play a few Christmas Carols on my ukulele.  That was my husband, sneaking around with his iPhone recording me in secret.  The cat is hiding... (can you blame her?)

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Copyright 2011, Heather Wilkinson Rojo

Surname Saturday - Hull Update

Hull Update

This is an update to my HULL surname sketch posted earlier at this link http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2011/12/surname-saturday-hull.html

I have some additional information about Reverend Joseph Hull thanks to reader Martin Hollick, a former genealogy blogger.  He informed me that Hull had two wives and seventeen children as listed below, and his English ancestry has been confirmed.    Again his TWO wives are still unknown, although even more has been found about Reverend Hull.   

Martin gives some good sources I didn’t have:

Robert Charles Anderson The Great Migration: Immigrants to New England 1634-1635 (NEHGS, Boston, 2003), Vol. III: 452-460

Ancestral Lines by Carl Boyer, 3rd (Santa Clarita, CA, 1998, 3rd ed.)

Genealogical Dictionary of ME and NH by Sybil Noyes, Charles Thornton Libby, and Walter Goodwin Davis (Portland, 1939, reprinted Baltimore, 1988)

The American Genealogist Vol. 68 (1993) p. 149

Heard-Hurd Genealogy 1610-1987: Some Descendants of John and Elizabeth (Hull) Heard of Dover, New Hampshire by Charles Samuel Candage and Ralph Ernest Peak (Picton Press, Camden, ME, 1988)

The Ancestors and Descendants of George Hull 1590-1659 and Thamzen Michell of Crewkerne, Somerset England, Dorchester, MA  . . .  by Robert E. Hull (Gateway Press, Baltimore, 1994)

Generation 1:  Reverend Joseph Hull, son of Thomas Hull and Joanne Peson, born in 24 April 1596 in Crewkerne, England, died on the Isles of Shoals, New Hampshire on 19 November 1665. He married first about 1620 to Joanne Unknown in England.  She died about 1635.  He married second to Agnes about 1635.  Seventeen children:

With Joanne:

1. Joanna, born about 1620

2. Joseph, born about 1622

3. Tristram, born about 1624, died about 1666, married Blanche unknown (see Bill West's post at this link http://westinnewengland.blogspot.com/2011/12/bad-blanche-hull.html)

4. Temperance, born about 1626, died after 1685, married John Bickford

5.  Elizabeth (see sketch in yesterday’s post)

6.  Griselda, born about 1630

7.  Dorothy, born about 1632

With Agnes:

8.   Hopewell, born about 1637, died about 1693

9.  Benjamin, born 1639, died before 1693, married Rachel York

10. Naomi, born 1639

11. Ruth, born 1641

12. Dodovah, born about 1642, died about 1682

13. Samuel, born about 1644

14, Phineas, born about 1646, died about 1693

15. Captain Reuben, born 1649, died about 1693, married Hannah Ferniside

16. Ephraim, born about 1650

17. Priscilla, born 1651, died 1652

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Copyright 2011, Heather Wilkinson Rojo

Surname Saturday - Hull

HULL

Please see an important update at
 http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2011/12/surname-saturday-hull-update.html

The Isles of Shoals are
six miles off the coast of New Hampshire

My 9x great grandfather Joseph Hull was a minister.  He left a great paper trail.  Ministers can be dream ancestors for genealogists because of the plethora of records.  He graduated from Oxford on 14 November 1614 with a Bachelor of Arts degree.  He served as curate at Colyton in Devonshire.  Later he was ordained in the Church of England on 14 April 1621 as called to be rector at Northleigh in the Diocese of Exeter.  During this time period he began to believe in “non-conformist” ideas.  There is no record of his marriage, and his wife’s name is known only as "Agnes".   This is odd, considering how much other information is known about Joseph Hull’s life.

Reverend Hull led 106 people from Somersetshire (about 20 families, his wife, 7 children and 3 servants) and arrived in Massachusetts on 7 June 1635.  He was a freeman in Weymouth in September 1635 and preaching in a church as an Episcopalian, but causing dissention.   He moved to Barnstable in 1639 and Yarmouth in 1641 (both towns are on Cape Cod) but was temporarily excommunicated by Governor Winthrop because he left Weymouth without asking permission. 

By 1643 he was the minister in York, Maine.  By 1652 he was back in Launceston, Cornwall leaving all his children but one In Massachusetts.  In 1662 he was “ejected from the rectory of Buryan, Cornwall County, England.”  Again he came to America and this time went to New Hampshire.   He first served as minister at Oyster River (now the city of Durham, New Hampshire) and then settled as minister at the fishing colony on the Isles of Shoals where he remained until his death in 1665.  Although he moved around New England and back and forth across the Atlantic, he left enough of a paper trail along the way for historians to follow his movements as a minister. 

The Hull’s Company ship had a list of passengers compiled by John Porter, deputy clerk to Edward Thoroughgood on 20 March 1635.  They left from Weymouth, England and named their settlement in Massachusetts after this port. 

The Hull Genealogy:

Generation 1:  The Reverend Joseph Hull was born about 1595 in Crewkerne, Somersetshire, England, and died 18 November 1665 on the Isles of Shoals off the coast of New Hampshire.   The name of his wife is known only as Agnes.  Seven children all born in England:

1. Joanna, born about 1620, married first to John Bursley, second to Dolor Davis who is my 10x great grandfather with his first wife, Margery Willard.

2. Joseph, born about 1622

3. Tristram, born about 1623, married Blanche Unknown (see Bill West's post at this link: http://westinnewengland.blogspot.com/2011/12/bad-blanche-hull.html )

4. Temperance, born about 1626, married John Bickford

4. Elizabeth, born abut 1628 (see below) my 8x great grandmother

5. Griselda, born about 1629, married James Warren

6. Dorothy, born about 1631, married Oliver Kent

Generation 2: Elizabeth Hull, born about 1628 in Northleigh, Devonshire, England, and died 30 November 1706 in Dover, New Hampshire; married about 1643 in Northleigh to John Heard, who died 17 January 1689 in Dover.  Fifteen children.

Generation 3.  Mary Heard, born 26 January 1650 m. John Ham

Generation 4.  Mercy Ham m. Richard Nason

Generation 5. Richard Nason m. Mary Thompson

Generation 6. Mercy Nason m. William Wilkinson

Generation 7. Aaron Wilkinson m. Mercy F. Wilson

Generation 8. Robert Wilson Wilkinson m. Phebe Cross Munroe

Generation 9. Albert Munroe Wilkinson m. Isabella Lyons Bill

Generation 10. Donald Munroe Wilkinson m. Bertha Louise Roberts (my grandparents)

Accounts of the Reverend Hull’s life can be found in the History of the Township of Durham, New Hampshire by Everett S. Stackpole, Lucien Thompson and Winthrop S. Meserve, 1913, in the book The Isles of Shoals in Lore and Legend, by Lyman V. Rutledge, 1965, and in The Isles of Shoals: An Historic Sketch by John Scribner Jenness, 1975.   A good account of his early years in Massachusetts can be found in Volume 1 of The History of Weymouth, Massachusetts, 1923, and page 73 lists the passengers in the Hull Company ship.

There are sketches of Rev. Hull’s life also in The Great Migration: Immigrants to New England, by Robert Charles Anderson, George F. Sanborn and Melinde Lutz Sanborn, 1999, Volume III, pages 452 – 460 and also in Ancestral Lines by Carl Boyer, 1998, pages 318 -324.

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Copyright 2011, Heather Wilkinson Rojo

Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories ~ Spanish Nativities

I'm writing this post for the Geneabloggers Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories at the link http://adventcalendar.geneabloggers.com/   Today is a "grab bag" when we are invited to write about anything, and I wanted to share some photographs of  the Spanish nativities  or "nacimientos" I have seen when celebrating Chrismas in Spain or Puerto Rico.

2005, San Juan, Puerto Rico
at the shopping Mall "Plaza de las Americas"

2006, Madrid Spain
A lifesize nativity made entirely of balloons!

2010 Londonderry, New Hampshire
Our "nacimiento" made of pieces bought
at the Christmas Fair on the Plaza Mayor, Madrid, Spain

For the story about our home nativity set from Spain, click this link:
http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2010/12/advent-calendar-grab-bag-nacimiento.html

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Copyright 2011, Heather Wilkinson Rojo

Pearl Harbor Day Interviews

Our visit to Pearl Harbor in 2010

Today is the anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, on 7 December 1941, a day President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed "a date which shall live in infamy." In 2003 my daughter interviewed several relatives about the bombing of Pearl Harbor for a class assignment. Here are her transcribed notes of those interviews.  Her first question "Where were you when you heard that Pearl Harbor had been bombed and what was your reaction?"

Phyllis (age 67 years at the time of the interview): I remember that day because I was six years old and the only thing I remember about it really is my mother crying because my brother was..., I had five brothers and the oldest one was sixteen I think at the time... and she knew that he was going to have to go to war. That really upset my mother. [Two of her five brothers ended up in the service; one in the Pacific and the other in Occupied Europe]

Shirley (age 76 years at the time at the time of the interview): I remember that. I was standing in the kitchen, ironing, I was ironing a blouse, getting ready to go to church. I heard the news, and I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t absorb what it actually meant to me. It really didn’t all sink in until later, but then I heard Kate Smith coming on and singing “God Bless America.” And standing there crying my eyes out as I ironed, because it was so touching. I was beginning to realize what it was going to mean to the country.

Robert (age 77 years at the time of this interview, he has since passed away): I was listening to a football game at my house on 7 Dearborn Avenue. I was about your age, in high school. And my reaction was “Japan? Attacking us? We’ll have them wiped out by Christmas time.”

Shirley: At the time.... I’m a nurse. And I was taking care of a lady whose father was the ambassador to Japan. At the time of the war, before, and during the war. And Ambassador Grew, his name was, from Manchester (MA), and he was... She showed me lots of papers and things that he had written about what he claims in writing. And they showed me a copy of the letter, the family owns. That he had told the president, that Japan was about to do something, he didn’t know that Pearl Harbor was actually going to happen, but it was going to be Pearl Harbor. But he knew because of his position, and contacts, that there was about to be some sort of a war with Japan, and he was ignored completely. When he went and had an interview, I saw the letter that he wrote to the president, Roosevelt, and told him what was happening, and what steps he thought should be taken. Because, perhaps, president Roosevelt was old and ill at the time, he wasn’t using good judgment and he never furthered that information on. And then Pearl Harbor happened.

Note: I still have the audio tapes of her interviews. I remember she was very serious about the assignment, since September 11th, 2001 was only just two years earlier during her first week of high school.  This is especially memorable because my uncle has passed away since the interview. My aunt, uncle and Mom spoke for over an hour about the Great Depression, Pearl Harbor and the home front during World War II. By the end of the war, my uncle Robert was serving as a paratrooper medic in Europe.

After the interviews we went over
to Patton Park in Hamilton, Massachusetts
where my daughter climbed on top of
General Patton's tank
(he was a resident of Hamilton,
the town where my Mom grew up)

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Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Pearl Harbor Day Interviews", Nutfield Genealogy, posted December 7, 2011, ( https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2011/12/pearl-harbor-day-interviews.html: accessed [access date]).