Monday Is for Mothers: Mehitable Leonard (1747 - 1808)

Mehitable was born on September 28, 1747, in Preston in New London County in southeastern Connecticut and was baptized 14 months later in nearby Griswold. She was the daughter of Captain Samuel Leonard and his wife Lydia Stanton, both of whom came from families who had lived in Connecticut for generations.

[Connecticut. (to accompany) Harriet E. Baker's Book of Penmanship & Map. At Mr. Dunham's School Windsor Vermont March 31, 1819. Source: David Rumsey Historical Map Collection.]

Mehitable was only 12 when her parents died within a few days of each other in the spring of 1760. Since Captain Leonard left no will, her two oldest surviving brothers Samuel and Ebenezer were named administrators of their father's estate on June 9th. In the division of the estate filed with the Court in April of 1761, Mehitable share was the 7th item listed.

[Probate Files Collection, Early to 1880; Author: Connecticut State Library (Hartford, Connecticut); Probate Place: Hartford, Connecticut. Ancestry.com. Connecticut, Wills and Probate Records, 1609-1999 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2015. Original data: Connecticut County, District and Probate Courts.]

7th Wee Set out to mehitable Lenard the Daughter of the
Said Dec'st a Lot of Said Land Containing about fourteen
acres and is Buted and Bounded as followeth 
(the text here is a long and complicated description of
the boundaries to the property allotted to Mehitable
which I'm not going to attempt to transcribe here)
Wee also Set out to the Said mehitable of the Personal
Estate of the Said Dec'st Sundrey goods to the value of
L49 = 13 S = 0 d at Inventory Price

Existing online records are silent about Mehitable until her marriage to Aaron Baldwin in 1771 but she almost certainly lived with some of her relatives in Preston. After the wedding she moved to Aaron's home in Canterbury, Windham County, Connecticut. One of their seven children was one of my maternal fourth great grandmothers Olive Baldwin.

[Ancestry.com. Early Connecticut Marriages [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012. Original data: Bailey, Frederic W. Early Connecticut Marriages as Found on Ancient Church Records Prior to 1800.

Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1997.]

Mehitable Leonard Baldwin died on April 6, 1808, and is buried in Joseph Roode Farm Cemetery in Windham County, Connecticut.

[Ancestry.com. Connecticut, Hale Collection of Cemetery Inscriptions and Newspaper Notices, 1629-1934 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012. Original data: The Charles R. Hale Collection. Hale Collection of Connecticut Cemetery Inscriptions. Hartford, Connecticut: Connecticut State Library.]

[Find A Grave Memorial# 84270575. Photo by Nate Bramlett (#46874243)]

The last record we have for Aaron is the 1810 U.S. Census but we don't have a death date or place of burial for him.

It turns out that I wrote an earlier post about Mehitable Leonard. (And I forgot to add the link to Christine's Ancestors' Page--lesson learned.)


© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Monday Is for Mothers: Olive Baldwin (1778 - 1843)

Olive Baldwin and her husband Joseph Gates (1779-1854) are the parents of my great great great grandmother Mary "Polly" Gates. As you will find if you follow the link to my post about Polly Gates, Olive was added to this line in 2015.*

[Hyde genealogy; or, The descendants,in the female as well as in the male lines, from William Hyde, of Norwich...

by Reuben Hyde Walworth, , 1788-1867. Source: Internet Archive]

Olive was born in Canterbury in Windham County, Connecticut on September 2, 1779. Her parents were Aaron Baldwin and Mehitable Leonard.

She married Joseph around 1794, probably in Windham although I haven't found any online record of their marriage. Their first child was born in 1795--a daughter whose name isn't known.

As always with women before 1850, we have to follow Olive through records in her husband's name. In 1800 according to the federal census they were living in Preston in New London County. Most likely the Dorothy Gates whose name follows Joseph's in the enumeration is his widowed mother.

[Year: 1800; Census Place: Preston, New London, Connecticut; Series: M32; Roll: 3; Page: 708; Image: 220; Family History Library Film: 205620. Ancestry.com. 1800 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2010. Images reproduced by FamilySearch. Original data: Second Census of the United States, 1800. NARA microfilm publication M32 (52 rolls). Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29. National Archives, Washington, D.C.]

Dorothy Gates died in February of 1805 and by September of that year Joseph, Olive and their family were living in Otsego County, New York, where Polly Gates was born. Here's the household in the 1810 U.S. Census for Unadilla.

[Year: 1810; Census Place: Unadilla, Otsego, New York; Roll: 34; Page: 173; Image: 00098; Family History Library Film: 0181388. Ancestry.com. 1810 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010. Images reproduced by FamilySearch. Original data: Third Census of the United States, 1810. (NARA microfilm publication M252, 71 rolls). Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29. National Archives, Washington, D.C.]

[Image from The pioneers of Unadilla village, 1784-1840 by Halsey, Francis Whiting, 1851-1919; Gaius Leonard Halsey, 1819-1891.

Source: Internet Archive.]

By 1820 the Gates family had moved to Virgil in Cortland County, New York.

[1820 U S Census; Census Place: Virgil, Cortland, New York; Page: 621; NARA Roll: M33_66; Image: 341. Ancestry.com. 1820 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010. Images reproduced by FamilySearch. Original data: Fourth Census of the United States, 1820. (NARA microfilm publication M33, 142 rolls). Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29. National Archives, Washington, D.C.]

Olive died in 1843 so this 1840 U.S. Census record is the last official document she's represented in.

[Year: 1840; Census Place: Cortland, New York; Roll: 275; Page: 8; Image: 20; Family History Library Film: 0017184. Ancestry.com. 1840 United States Federal Census [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010. Images reproduced by FamilySearch. Original data: Sixth Census of the United States, 1840. (NARA microfilm publication M704, 580 rolls). Records of the Bureau of the Census, Record Group 29. National Archives, Washington, D.C.]

Olive Baldwin Gates died on January 6, 1843, and is buried in the Snyder Hill Cemetery in Virgil.

[Created by: Larry Wales; Record added: Apr 04, 2011

Find A Grave Memorial #67882262.

Photo: Larry Wales (#47374334)]

Joseph survived Olive by 11 years. He moved in with Polly and David Darling in Iowa and is buried there in Jones County.



*Credit where credit's due--Christine found this reference. Olive is not a very common given name among my ancestors and I think it's significant that Polly and her husband David Darling named one of their daughters Olive G. Darling (1838-1852). (Note that the Hyde connection is not in my direct line.)

© 2017 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Monday Is for Mothers: Mehitable Leonard (1747 - 1808)

Mehitable was about 13 when her father Captain Samuel Leonard died in 1760 and her name appears in probate records on a list of his named children. Her oldest brother, also named Samuel, had to be appointed as administrator of the estate by the Court of Probate of Norwich, Connecticut, because his father had not made a will.*

[Notes : Probate Packets, Leffingwell, Christopher-Lester, Lucy, 1748-1880. Ancestry.com.

Connecticut, Wills and Probate Records, 1609-1999 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2015.

Original data: Connecticut County, District and Probate Courts.]

In the division of her father's property in Preston,** Mehitable's share included both a 14-acre lot and a selection of goods from her father's personal estate valued at over £49.***

 

[Notes : Probate Packets, Leffingwell, Christopher-Lester, Lucy, 1748-1880. Ancestry.com.

Connecticut, Wills and Probate Records, 1609-1999 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2015.

Original data: Connecticut County, District and Probate Courts.]

In 1771 Mehitable married Aaron Baldwin from neighboring Canterbury**** where the couple had seven children that we know of, including my fourth great grandmother Olive Baldwin (1778-1843)*****

[Book 4; Ancestry.com. Early Connecticut Marriages [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012.

Original data: Bailey, Frederic W. Early Connecticut Marriages as Found on Ancient Church Records Prior to 1800. Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1997.]

There are several Aaron Baldwin's in Connecticut at this time and I'm unsure of my ancestor's date of death. Mehitable died on April 6, 1808, and is buried in the Joseph Rood Farm Cemetery in Plainfield.

As you can see from the map below, Mehitable almost certainly never traveled far from her birthplace in eastern Connecticut.

[Detail from Connecticut From the best Authorities. B. Tanner, del. & sculpt. Engraved for the American Edition of Winterbotham's History of America, Published by John Reid, 1796. Source: David Rumsey Historical Map Collection.]

*It appears that her mother Lydia Stanton died at about the same time so perhaps the younger children found a home with Samuel Jr. and his wife Mary Freeman.
**You can visit Preston Historical Society's facebook page here.
***Captain Samuel's estate was was appraised at over £700 in the inventory completed on April 24, 1760.
****Of course Canterbury Historical Society has its own facebook page.
*****Olive's marriage to Joseph Gates (1776-1854) was one of Christine's most exciting finds last year.


© 2016 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

2015: Looking Back

When I agreed to join my daughter's blog on October 1, 2014, I decided on two ground rules: we had to post every day and each post had to have a picture. (I'm a visual person.) Looking back over the past year I'm proud of what we've done here and in the process we've both learned a lot.

[Art and Picture Collection, The New York Public Library. "Best wishes for a happy New Year." The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1909. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e3-47d9-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99]

Two of the most exciting names added to my paternal family tree in 2015 are Cheney Boyce (1591?-1643?), Ancient Planter of Jamestown, and John Whitney (1592-1673), member of the Company of Merchant Tailors of London before his departure for Massachusetts in 1635. Christine's recent discovery that Olive Baldwin (1778-1843) was the mother of my maternal third great grandmother Mary (Polly) Gates (1805-1883) has opened up new lines of research that will be covered next year.

Another fascinating discovery was that my paternal fifth great grandfather Abraham Heath (1740?-1807?) served with the Virginia line of the Continental Army during the American Revolution and was one of the cold and hungry soldiers at Valley Forge. In case you missed it, you can read about what the records said here: Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, and Six. (Parts Three through Five were posted on the 168th anniversary of the events described.)

My two most popular posts in 2015 were Sunday Drive: Train Travel in Victorian England which looked at the ubiquity of mid-19th century British train lines, and Fantastic Find: Catholic Parish Registers at the National Library of Ireland which passed on the news that the National Library had just made their microfilm collection of parish records available online (and for free).

Another fantastic find, The McAdory House, was particularly useful in helping me understand the kind of dwelling my early Alabama ancestors probably lived in. (Spoiler alert: No white pillars or oak allies in sight.) And for those of you who also have ties to Alabama, let me recommend again Letters from Alabama, written by the Englishman Philip Henry Gosse about his experience there in 1838.

Christine and I have been having fun posting photos of Christmases we have known (or have pictures of) for the past ten days as a way of slacking off but still maintaining our goal of daily posts. With the new year we'll be getting back to genealogy.

Have a safe and happy New Year's Eve!

© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.