Showing posts with label Talcott. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Talcott. Show all posts

Monday, September 17, 2018

Monday Is for Mothers: Sarah Talcott (1735 - 1809)

Sarah was only ten when her father John Talcott died in 1745. She and Obediah Willcox married in Hebron, Hartford County (now Tolland County), Connecticut* in February of 1749/50 when she was only thirteen.

[Title: Mack Genealogy : The Descendants of John Mack of Lyme, Connecticut.
Ancestry.com. North America, Family Histories, 1500-2000 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA:
Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2016.]


The couple had 13 children, the last six of them, including my ancestor Lydia Wilcox (Porter), were born after the family removed to Surry in Cheshire County, New Hampshire. Sarah and Obediah are my fifth great grandparents.


[Ancestry.com]

Sarah died a year before her husband and they are buried next to each other in the Surry Village Cemetery.

[Photo added to findagrave.com memorial of Sarah Willcox #63426137 by Cheshire #47921031]


*This link from the Hebron Historical Society shows a map of Hebron in 1744 with the homesites of early residents marked, including those of Talcot[t] and Wilcox.


© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Thursday, December 3, 2015

Where Were My Ancestors About 1796? Abraham Bradley's Map of the United States: Part 2

This is a continuation of my post earlier this week using Abraham Bradley's postal map of 1796.  This is just an exercise to get a handle on where all of my American ancestors were during the Federalist Era.  I can already see the fatal flaw of adding ancestors by going up and down my tree as opposed to grouping by location--for instance, I actually have a lot of people who were in the western Pennsylvania area, but there will be separate maps for the family groups in this iteration because they are on different branches of my tree.  I will put together a more concise version at a later date.


In Bertie County, North Carolina, possibly in the Salmon Creek area, John H Hardy, 23, was married to his first wife, Jamima Wilson, and they had a toddler Etheldred.  Jamima would die in the next year.  John's mother Sarah Sowell, 63, had been widowed 3 years before when her husband William Hardy died, and she would be listed in the 1800 Federal Census as head of household in Bertie County, North Carolina.   John's future second wife, Elizabeth Ward, 21, daughter of Thomas Ward (who had died the year before at about age 60) and Pheraby Sowell, about 47.  John Hardy and Elizabeth Ward were distant cousins--their mothers were both descendants of Richard Sowell (born c. 1659).


John Chappell, 33, had moved to Georgia probably in the mid to late 1780's from Sussex County, Virginia, likely with his parents, Revolutionary veteran John C Chappell, 58, and Nancy "Nannie" Harrison, 55.  Like Jesse Warren Sr he was in the area that would become Hancock County, Georgia. John and his wife, Sarah "Sallie" P Heath, 25, had several small children by the time the map was made.  Sallie was the daughter of Valley Forge veteran Abraham Heath, 56, and Winnifred "Winny" (??), 50, who had moved from Surry County, Virginia to Burke/Warren County, Georgia 10 years earlier.
Josiah Freeman, 33, was likely in Oglethorpe County, Georgia with his first wife, Susannah Hawkins, and at least 5 small children.  He had likely moved to Georgia sometime between 1786 and 1790.  He was originally from Virginia, possibly Sussex or Surry counties.  His parents William Freeman, 58, and Sarah Williams(??), about 56, were in Surry County, North Carolina, and may have originally been from Surry County, Virginia.  All these Surry counties!!  It gets confusing.  Elizabeth Jordan, Josiah's second wife, was only about 9 in 1796.  I have not yet figured out who Elizabeth's parents were.  Elizabeth was born in either Georgia or possibly South Carolina.
Richard Turner, 17, had been born in Cascade, Pittsylvania, Virginia, and had moved with his family to Wilkes County, Georgia (part of which became Lincoln County) when he was about 5.  His parents, Shadrack Turner and Margaret Hill, were both about 45.  Mary Henderson, 15, would marry Richard about 3 years later in Wilkes or Lincoln County.  She had Virginia as place of birth on the 1850 and 1860 Censuses, but I have not yet been able to determine who her parents were, although there were numerous Henderson families in Elbert County (neighbor county to both Wilkes and Lincoln) at the time she would have married Richard.



William Porter was born in May 1796 in Sheffield, Caledonia, Vermont, to Benjamin Porter, 24, and Lydia Wilcox, 21.  It is not clear why they were there, as they had married in Surry, Cheshire, New Hampshire the year before, and were back there by the 1800 federal census.  Benjamin's widowed mother Esther Carpenter, 57, allegedly didn't die until 1827 in Lyme, Grafton, NH, but apparently didn't head a household in the censuses and probably lived with one of her adult children.  Lydia's parents, physician Obediah Willcox, 72, and Sarah Talcott, 61, were likely living in Surry, Cheshire, New Hampshire.
Joshua Shepard, 43, and Lucia "Lucy" Farnsworth, 34, were living in Alstead, Cheshire, New Hampshire.  Joshua's parents, Jonathan Shepard, 87, and Love Palmer, 79, had divorced 32 years earlier (about 1764), and had both subsequently remarried.  Love had married a Mr. Heard or Herrick (date unknown), and she died 23 July 1796 in Alstead, Cheshire, New Hampshire.  Jonathan had married Mary Underwood in 1765 and lived in Windsor, Windsor, Vermont, where he died 2 years after this map was made (26 March 1798).  Lucy's parents, Thomas Farnsworth, 65, and Elizabeth Davis, 68, also lived in Alstead (they had moved there sometime between 1776 and 1790).








© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Working on Wednesday: Obediah Willcox (1724 - 1810), Town Clerk, Selectman, Justice of the Peace, Rebel

This paternal fifth great grandfather left his native Connecticut for Gilsum in Cheshire County, New Hampshire, in 1764,  fifteen years after his marriage to Sarah Talcott.* That same year he acted as clerk to the Proprietors and later supported the incorporation of the town of Surry**, signing his name to a petition for the creation of the new town to the west of Gilsum dated July 4, 1768. He was Surry's first town clerk, first town treasurer, served as a selectman for a number of years between 1769 and 1788. He was also a Justice of the Peace for Cheshire County in 1776.

Internet Archive, original source: University of New Hampshire Library]

In the Spring of 1776, 52-year old Obediah was one of the signers of the Association Test which called on all males over the age of 21 residing in New Hampshire to declare their willingness to take up arms against "the Hostile Attempts of the British Fleets and Armies." We don't know if he ever served in a military unit but his signature on that document alone is enough to qualify my daughter and me for membership in the Daughters of the Revolution, if we were so inclined.

Obediah continued to live in Surry--his name appears as head of household in the 1790 and 1800 U.S. Census records. He died there*** on February 20, 1810, and is buried in the Surry Village Cemetery next to his wife Sarah, who had died the year before.

The inventory of his estate is still in existence and among his possessions are listed a number of books, mostly medical tomes, and "one Set of Instruments to pull teeth." There is no evidence that Obediah ever formally trained as a doctor but it looks as if he may have practiced medicine and dentistry in Surry.
["New Hampshire, County Probate Estate Files, 1769-1936," images, FamilySearch ( https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-1951-32658-23447-44?cc=2040042&wc=M7M1-KM9:383109201,384131401 : accessed 27 Apr 2014),
Cheshire > Case no W194-W264 1808-1814 > image 1010 of 1554.]

*Obediah and Sarah's daughter Lydia Willcox married Benjamin Porter whose great great granddaughter Letta Estella Porter Warren Williams is my paternal grandmother.
**The petition was granted and Surry was incorporated in 1769.
***Without having made a will.
© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.