Samuel and Elizabeth Waterhouse, buried in Portsmouth, New Hampshire - Tombstone Tuesday

This tombstone was photographed at the Point of Graves, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

HERE LYES Ye BODY OF

Mr. SAMUEL WATERHOUSE

WHO DYED JANUARY

THE 1st 1744/5

AGED 38 YEARS

also Mrs. ELIZth WATERHOUSE

the wife of Mr. SAMUEL

WATERHOUSE Aged 29

YEARS, DYED 1736

Captain Samuel Waterhouse, a mariner, was born about 1706 in Portsmouth, son of Richard Waterhouse and Sarah Wells.  He died in Portsmouth on 1 January 1744/5.  About 1730 he married Sarah Pierce as his first wife, and she was the daughter of George Pierce and Elizabeth Langdon.  Samuel Waterhouse apparently had a second wife named Debora [maiden name unknown].  Although he was a relatively young man, he left a will in Portsmouth a few days before his death, knowing he was in his last illness:

"In the Name of God, Amen -

The twenty Sixth day of December in the Year of our Lord Christ, one thousand Seven hundred and forty four I Samuel Waterhouse of Portsmouth in Newhampshire in New England Marriner, being Sick and Weak in Body

Item.  I give and bequeath to my well beloved wife Debora, one hundred Pounds (Old Tenor) to be paid her by my Exetrix hereafter named.  I also give her two Silver Canns and all the Goods and Chattels that I had with her, also I give her the one third part of all my Real and personal Estate beside wt is above mentioned to her use during her Life Then the Real Estate to return to my Children as the rest of my Estate to be divided between them -

Item I give and bequeath all my Real and Personal Estate of what Name or Nature So Ever the Same may be, to my two Daughters Elizabeth and Sarrah to be Equally Divided between them: the Real Estate to be to them (after the Divission) and their Heirs & assigns for Ever, and I do hereby Nominate & appoint my Uncle Mark Langdon to be Sole Executor of this my Last Will and Testament: and I do hereby Revoke Disanul and make void all other Wills and bequests by me heretofore made - allowing and holding this and no other to be my last Will and testament In Witness whereof I have hereunto Set my hand and Seale

Samuel Waterhouse

Signed Sealed & Declared by the Testator, to be his Last Will and Testament in the presence of us the Subscribers Witness who Saw the Testator signe the above in presence of us that signed as Witnesses at the Same in the Testators presence

Thos. Hatch

Jacob Randell

James Jeffry

[Proved Jan. 17, 1744/5]"   

- from the Provincial and State Papers, Volume 33, pages 234 and 235

His daughter Sarah Waterhouse later married John Titcomb.  

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Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Samuel and Elizabeth Waterhouse, buried in Portsmouth, New Hampshire - Tombstone Tuesday", Nutfield Genealogy, posted May 19, 2020, ( https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2020/05/samuel-and-elizabeth-waterhouse-buried.html: accessed [access date]).

Chinook's Operation

Walden and his dog, Chinook

Boston Herald 1928 February 8

CHINOOK, FAMOUS LEAD

DOG, HAS OPERATION

    Chinook, famous former lead sled dog

in the racing team of Arthur T. Walden,

of Wonalancet, N.H., which was oper-

ated on yesterday morning by veteran-

arians at the Angell Animal Hospital

was resting comfortably last night and

within a week or so will be in as good

condition as ever, according to officials

of the hospital last night.

    The dog was operated on for an abcess

on the orbit of the eye, and the opera-

tion was entirely successful, the sight of

the eye being saved.

    Walden, who is president of the New

England Sled Dog Club and well known

both in the United States and Canada

where dog sled races are held, is pre-

paring for the South Pole trip of Comdr.

Byrd, which will depart next September.

He will accompany the expedition and is

planning to take Chinook with him.

    The dog has taken part in many point

to point races and led his team to vic-

tory many times.  He is now 11 years old

and too old for racing and was retired

after his last point to point race two

years ago, which took place in New

Hampshire.  He is the pal of his master

and accompanies him wherever he goes.

How famous was Chinook? 

In February of 1928, before Walden even took his dog, Chinook, on the Byrd Expedition to Antarctica, Chinook was admitted to the Angell Animal Hospital in Boston.  Angell is a world-renowned veterinary hospital still in existence.  We adopted our first cat from Angell when we were first married in 1983.  The newspapers in Boston and across the country reported the news that Chinook had been admitted.

Why was this dog so famous even before he left for Antarctica?

There was a bit of a mania about sled dogs in this early part of the twentieth century.  The Alaskan God Rush just at the turn of the century renewed interest in using sled dogs as transportation.  Then the Peary Expedition in 1909 featured sled dogs, and in 1925 the famous serum run to Nome, Alaska by sled dogs (featuring the famous Siberian Husky dog named Balto) took place and established the Iditarod Trail.  Sled dogs, sled racing, the Arctic and Antarctic expeditions made sled dogs a very popular news item.

Chinook was already a champion racer during the early 1920s.  Chinook’s record as a champion persuaded Admirial Richard Byrd to accept Walden as the head of the sled dogs for his 1928 expedition. By the time this news article had been written, Chinook had already been selected as the lead dog, so he was already a celebrity!  Even his overnight in a veterinary clinic in Boston made headlines locally, and across the USA.

Boston Herald 1928 February 16

CHINOOK READY TO

      TAKE TRAIL AGAIN

     "The famous sled dog, Chinook, which

has been at the Angell Memorial Hos-

pital for the last nine days for treat-

ment of abscesses behind the ear, has

now recovered and tomorrow will ac-

company his master, Arthur T. Walden,

noted musher, back to Wonalancet,

N.H.

    Chinook was a happy dog yesterday

when Walden called at the hospital to

get him.  He thumped his tail on the

floor of his cage and bounded against

the bars, and when he was let out of

the cage he leaped to Walden’s chest

and made dog sounds expressing his

delight.  Walden took the dog with him

to the Hotel Statler, and tomorrow they

start back to New Hampshire and the

snow."

Part One of this series "Who was Chinook" is available at this link:
https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2020/05/who-was-chinook.html

Part Three of this series "Chinook's Final Great Adventure at the South Pole" (to be posted May 21st):
https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2020/05/chinooks-great-adventure-at-south-pole.html 

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Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Chinook's Operation", Nutfield Genealogy, posted May 14, 2020, ( https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2020/05/chinooks-operation.html: accessed [access date]).

William Henry Wilkinson, buried 1926 in Rochester, New Hampshire - Tombstone Tuesday

This tombstone was photographed in Rochester, New Hampshire.

WM. HENRY WILKINSON

SEPT. 12, 1849

JAN. 23, 1926

William Henry Wilkinson, son of William Henry Wilkinson (1797 - 1882) and Mary Lord (1809 - 1886) was born 12 September 1849 in Rochester, New Hampshire and died 24 January 1926 in Rochester, New Hampshire.  He married Josephine Chase, daughter of John Chase and Nancy Berry on 16 December 1872 in Conway, New Hampshire.   They had six children:  Millie, John, Franklin, Henry, Charles and George.  

William Henry Wilkinson is my first cousin four generations removed. His grandfather, William Wilkinson (d. 1840), is my 4th great grandfather.  

You can see a story I wrote about William Henry Wilkinson and Josephine Chase at this link:

https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2012/08/william-henry-wilkinson-and-josephine.html  

Here is a link to my WILKINSON surname blog post:

https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2011/09/surname-saturday-wilkinson.html  

If you click on "Descendants of Thomas Wilkinson" at the top of the blog page above (under the photo of the cannon salute at Londonderry's Morrison House Museum), you can see all the descendants of Thomas Wilkinson, the original immigrant ancestor from Portsmouth, New Hampshire:  https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/p/thomas-wilkinson-descendants_15.html  

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Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "William Henry Wilkinson, buried 1926 in Rochester, New Hampshire - Tombstone Tuesday", Nutfield Genealogy, posted May 12, 2020, ( https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2020/05/william-henry-wilkinson-buried-1926-in.html: accessed [access date]). 

Happy Mother's Day! My Matrilineal Line

My matrilineal line:

My Mom, she graduated from Beverly, Hospital School of Nursing

My grandmother, Gertrude Matilda Hitchings.

She was born 1 August 1905 in Beverly, Massachusetts and died 3 November 2001 in Peabody, Massachusetts. She married Stanley Elmer Allen on 14 February 1925 in Hamilton. They had seven children. 

My great grandmother, Florence Etta Hoogerzeil.

She was born 20 August 1871 in Beverly, Massachusetts and died 10 February 1941 in Hamilton, Massachusetts. She married Arthur Treadwell Hitchings on 25 December 1890 in Beverly, Massachusetts. They had eight children. 

My great great grandmother, Mary Etta Healey, seated in the front row with the baby on her lap.

She was born 19 May 1852 in Beverly, Massachusetts and died 23 July 1932 in Beverly, Massachusetts.  She married Peter Hoogerzeil on 14 March 1870 in Salem, Massachusetts.  They had six children. 

My 3x great grandmother was Matilda Weston.   

She was born October 1825 in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada, and died 19 August 1909 in Beverly, Massachusetts.  She married Joseph Edwin Healey on 3 February 1848 in Canada.  They had four children.

My 4x great grandmother was Mary Clements.  She married Zadoc Weston in Nova Scotia and had two children. She was his second wife.  My matrilineal line ends here because not much is known about Mary Clements, even though she is part of of my Mayflower application lineage.  I don't know her birth date, death, marriage, or her parents names.  Her husband, Zadoc Weston, is the descendant of ten Mayflower passengers, and he is named in at least two Silver books.  Zadoc was the son of Nathan Weston and Hannah Everson of Plymouth County, Massachusetts.  His first two wives were Sarah MacDuffie and Mary Pratt, and the two Marys are part of the confusion. Altogether, Zadoc was the father of a total of eight children. 

-------------------------

To cite/link to this blog post: Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Happy Mother's Day! My Matrilineal Line", Nutfield Genealogy, posted May 10, 2020, ( https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2020/05/happy-mothers-day-my-matrilineal-line.html: accessed [access date]). 

2020 COVID-19 Pandemic Memorial Day Honor Roll Contributions

Civil War Soldiers Monument, Londonderry, New Hampshire

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, I'm not going to encourage volunteers to visit local war memorials this Memorial Day 2020 for the Honor Roll Project.  Usually I invite everyone to visit their local park or military memorial, photograph an honor roll, transcribe it and submit it to the Honor Roll Project.  But, it just isn't safe for people to be visiting parks and memorials now.  Please wait until later this year, and we will collect the names and photos again for Veteran's Day in November 2020.

If you have photographs you had taken last year, or earlier this year, and would like to submit them, please email me at vrojomit@gmail.com or leave a comment on this blog post.  I will accept them for the Honor Roll Project and save them for November.

Please check back again here at the Nutfield Genealogy blog or the Nutfield Genealogy Facebook page in November 2020.

Thank you for your understanding!
And thank you to everyone who contributes to the Honor Roll Project!


The Honor Roll Project is an effort to transcribe and photograph military honor rolls found in nearly every town or county in the United States and around the globe. The transcribed names make the soldiers available for search engines, so that descendants and family members can find them on the internet. It is a simple, but very rewarding volunteer project:
 https://honorrollproject.weebly.com/ 

Great Great Grandpa Wilkinson's Store, circa 1865

Several years ago I blogged about my Great Great Grandfather Robert Wilson Wilkinson ( 1830 - 1874) and his little shop in Peabody Square, in Peabody, Massachusetts.  You can read that blog post HERE.  In that post I described how I was surprised to learn that my ancestor owned a small store at 13 Main Street.  The city directory described it as selling "periodicals", "confectionaries", and "fruits and vegetables".  The 1870 census listed his occupation as a "huckster"!

Since he was described as a huckster, and not as a store owner or store manager, I imagined his store to be very small.  There was not much else available on this business from town records, directories or from the historical society.  I didn't even know the name of his shop!

One of my hobbies is creating miniatures. This started when I was a girl.  I bought a dollhouse kit with my babysitting money and created a farmhouse, which I furnished with miniature furniture and small creations I built from kits or collected over the years from shops or antique stores.  In the 1990s I built a similar dollhouse for my own daughter, and last year I renovated that dollhouse for my granddaughter.  Over the years I've collected boxes of extra miniature "stuff".  A few months ago I decided that I would take all those extra miniatures and create a shop to display it all.  Somewhere along the way I thought maybe I could recreate Great Great Grandpa's store.

Since I really don't know what Robert Wilkinson's store looked like, I was free to create this store from my own imagination.  Peabody Square today is full of brick buildings, so I decided to recreate that look.  I knew his shop was small.  Other than that, the rest is not based on any historical fact.  Somewhere along the way I posted a photo of my store when it was half built, and a cousin, descended from Robert Wilkinson's wife's family, sent me this photo of her ancestor's store, Raymonds, which operated in the same location about 25 years after Robert Wilkinson's store (see below).  I loosely used these photos as reference for the Wilkinson store.

Raymond's Store, 14 Peabody Square, courtesy of Sue Bates Gosselin

Interior view of Raymond's Store, 14 Peabody Square, Peabody, Massachusetts
courtesy of Sue Bates Gosselin

For the truly curious:

My previous blog post about Robert W. Wilkinson's store in Peabody, Massachusetts:
https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2013/07/who-are-you-calling-huckster.html

My WILKINSON lineage:
https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2011/09/surname-saturday-wilkinson.html

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Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Great Great Grandpa Wilkinson's Store, circa 1865", Nutfield Genealogy, posted May 8, 2019, ( https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2020/05/great-great-grandpa-wilkinsons-store.html: accessed [access date]).

Who was Chinook?

Chinook 1924 (signed) Arthur T. Walden

Did you know that the official state dog of New Hampshire is a Chinook?  What is a Chinook? For the next few weeks I will be exploring the origins of the Chinook dogs in New Hampshire.  Why? Because I’m the proud auntie of a Chinook dog in Tamworth who is about to have her first litter of puppies.  The history of this breed is fascinating, and there are many family ties to the origins of these dogs, too.

Arthur Treadwell Walden of Wonalancet (a village of Tamworth), New Hampshire founded the breed of sled dogs known as Chinooks. They are considered one of the rarest breeds of AKC dogs.  Walden learned about sled dogs when he went to the Klondike during the 1896 Gold Rush.  He was well known as a breeder, and supplied sled dogs for Admiral Robert Peary’s expedition to the North Pole.  One of Peary’s sled dogs bred with a mixed breed mastiff and St. Bernard mutt and produced his lead sled dog, Chinook.

Chinook, Walden’s dog, became the father and grandfather of this breed of sled dogs.  All known dogs of this breed are descended from Chinook.  He was large, about 100 pounds, and could haul about 150 pound sleds. This new dog was extremely well built for sledding and pulling heavy loads of freight.  It was no surprise that Chinook and 16 of his descendants accompanied Walden and Admiral Richard Byrd to Antarctica in 1928.  Chinook was very popular in the press during the Antarctic expedition, and when he disappeared during the trip to the South Pole the newspapers were full of stories about this faithful and unique dog.

Walden and his dog, Chinook

When Walden returned to New Hampshire after the South Pole expedition, the state wanted to name a highway after him.  He convinced the legislature to name the road after Chinook.  Today Route 113A in Tamworth and Wonalancet is called “The Chinook Trail”.

Arthur Treadwell Walden died in 1947 of a heart attack following a fire at his house in Wonalancet.  After his death the Chinook breed almost went extinct.  By 1965 there were only 125 Chinooks alive, and the numbers went even lower in the following years. By 1981 there were only 28 Chinooks (and only eleven breedable dogs).  A group of Chinook breeders staged a comeback for this dog to save it from extinction.  In 2009 the Chinook became the state dog of New Hampshire, and by 2013 the Chinook joined the AKC as a working dog.  

Today there are about 400 purebred Chinooks registered with the AKC, so the breed is still considered rare.  This summer my puppy “nieces” and “nephews” will be some of the first Chinooks born in Tamworth in many, many years.

In the next few weeks on Thursday I will feature some of the stories and newspaper accounts of Chinook and his descendants here at my blog Nutfield Genealogy.

Genealogical Information:

Arthur Treadwell Walden was born on 10 May 1871 in Indianapolis, Indiana, the son of Reverend Treadwell Walden and Elizabeth Leighton.  He married Katherine Sleeper in 1902 at the farm in Wonalancet, New Hampshire.  He died on 26 March 1947 at the farmhouse after a fire.  He was found dead in the kitchen trying to rescue his wife and the house with buckets of water from the sink. They did not have children.  Katherine and Arthur are buried at the burial ground next to the Wonalancet Union Chapel in Tamworth near the former farmstead. 

Arthur was a descendant of Captain Thomas Walden (Waldin) (1681 – 1724) and Sarah Cotton of Portsmouth, New Hampshire.  Their son, another Captain Thomas Walden (about 1721 – 1768) married Anna Treadwell, the daughter of Jacob Treadwell and Sarah Cotton.  Jacob Treadwell (1699 – 1770) is my 7^th great uncle, born in Ipswich, Massachusetts.  I descend from Jacob's brother, Jabez Treadwell (1713 – 1780).  You can read more about Jabez Treadwell at these two links:  https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2014/03/tombstone-tuesday-jabez-treadwell-died.html  and https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2009/10/jabez-treadwells-will.html 

Katherine “Kate” Sleeper was Arthur’s cousin (by marriage) and wife.  She owned the 1300 acre farm in Wonalancet where they raised their sled dogs.  She was the daughter of Charles Frederick Sleeper and Zilpha Loring Thomas, and the granddaughter of Captain John Sleeper. Mount Katherine in the Sandwich Range was named for Kate Sleeper Walden.  There is also a Kate Sleeper Trail nearby. 

Charles Frederick Sleeper, born 27 December 1826 in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, married Zilpha Loring Thomas on 24 October 1855 in Roxbury, Massachusetts.  Zilpha was a descendant of the John Alden and Priscilla Mullins family from the Mayflower.  The Sleepers originated in Hampton, New Hampshire and are the descendants of the immigrants Thomas Sleeper (1607 – 1696) and his wife Joanna.  I’m related to the family of Kate Sleeper through the Sleepers, Sanborns, Batchelders, and other early seacoast New Hampshire families.

For more information on the genealogy of Arthur Treadwell Walden, please see Janice Webster Brown’s article on him at her blog Cow Hampshire:  http://www.cowhampshireblog.com/2006/05/27/wonalancet-new-hampshire-chinook-breeder-dog-trainer-and-antarctica-dog-driver-arthur-treadwell-walden-1871-1947/  

For the truly curious:

Arthur Treadwell Walden wrote two books about his dogs, A Dog puncher on the Yukon, 1928, and also, Harness and Pack, 1935. 

A book by Norman Vaughan and Cecil B. Murphey, With Byrd at the Bottom of the World, 1990, has a lot of good information on Walden and his Chinook dogs. 

The American Kennel Club, Chinook webpage:   https://www.akc.org/dog-breeds/chinook/ 

Chinook Owners Association:  https://chinook.org/   

Wikipedia:    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinook_(dog)  

Chinook Club of America:   http://www.chinookclubofamerica.org/  

“A leisurely hike up Mount Katherine”, March 14, 2014, https://www.conwaydailysun.com/outdoors/a-leisurely-hike-up-mount-katherine/article_32b32540-b81d-57ac-b22e-5199861739b1.html  

And a previous blog post from 2014 about the Chinook dogs:

https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-new-hampshire-state-dog-chinook.html    

"Chinook's Legacy: From Mutt to the New Hampshire State dog" 

https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2020/06/chinooks-legacy-from-mutt-to-new.html  
 

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To cite/link to this blog post:  Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Who was Chinook?", Nutfield Genealogy, posted May 7, 2020, ( https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2020/05/who-was-chinook.html: accessed [access date]).

Captain William Wilkinson, died 1868, Sanford, Maine - Tombstone Tuesday

This tombstone was photographed at the Riverside Cemetery in Springvale, Maine.

Capt. 

Wm. Wilkinson

DIIED

July 15, 1868

AE 76 yrs, 6ms.

William Wilkinson was the son of Joseph Wilkinson and Dorcas Nason, born January 1792 in Sanford, Maine, and died 15 January 1868 in Sanford, Maine.  Joseph was my 5th great uncle, and I descend from his brother William Wilkinson who died about 1840.  Joseph and William were the grandsons of Thomas Wilkinson (about 1690 - before 1739) our immigrant ancestor from London, England.  

William Wilkinson married Hannah Nason on 6 January 1821 in Lyman, Maine, at the Baptist Church.  They had seven children:  Hosea, Flavilla, Julia Ann, William, Joseph, Jeremiah, and William Horace.  William served in the War of 1812.  

Click here to see a chart with all the known descendants of Thomas Wilkinson (about 1690 - before 1739) of Portsmouth, New Hampshire: 

 https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/p/thomas-wilkinson-descendants_15.html  

Click here to see more than 450 "Tombstone Tuesday" posts:

https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/search/label/Tombstone%20Tuesday   

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Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Captain William Wilkinson, died 1868, Sanford, Maine - Tombstone Tuesday", Nutfield Genealogy, posted May 5, 2020, ( https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2020/05/captain-william-wilkinson-died-1868.html: accessed [access date]).