Our Thomas Tolmans, Four in a Row

Tollman “He who collects the King’s levy.”

This is a story of a dynasty built by a Great Migration immigrant of 1635, of opportunity taken and hard work given, wives who produced up to a dozen children, slavery, and genocide of Native Americans.

We have a genealogist’s nightmare here - four consecutive generations of grandfathers all named Thomas. 9th GGF Thomas Sr. (1608-1690), 8th GGF Thomas Jr. (1633-1718), 7th GGF Thomas III (1665-1738), and 6th GGF Thomas IV (1689-1724). All were still alive when the youngest Thomas was born.

Thomas Tolman, Sr. (1608-1690) and Sarah, 9th GGPs

Born in 1608 in Lancaster, Lancashire, England, Thomas was about 27 years old in 1635 when he, wife Sarah, and two young children joined the second wave of immigrants to Dorchester, Massachusetts. He and Sarah married in England in about 1630.

Lancaster is situated on the west coast of England where the River Lune opens into the Irish Sea. When the Tolmans lived there, Lancaster would have been market town and the site of an old Roman fort, the medieval Norman Priory of St. Mary, and the Lancaster Castle built by Elizabeth I. The red rose of the15th c. War of the Roses symbolized the House of Lancaster.

The first wave of Puritans arrived in Dorchester in 1630 and set up a church/meeting house on Meeting House Hill by 1633. Richard Mather, progenitor of the Mather preachers including Cotton and Increase and a famous preacher in his own right, joined the Puritan exodus in 1635 after he was suspended from the Anglican Church for non-conformity, and Thomas’ family was in this group. Mather was recruited for the  town’s First Church in Dorchester (originally Calvinist Puritan, now Unitarian Universalist), and served as their minister during the lifetimes of Thomas Sr. and Jr. until his death in 1669.

Thomas Sr.’s name was added to the Dorchester Church Covenant in 1636. He was appointed receiver of all goods arriving for unknown parties in 1639 and made freeman May 1640. His occupation was listed as wheelwright on one of his deeds, and early town records in 1654 show the town paid him a pound for wheels for the “gun,” presumably a cannon.

In 1636, a group of about 60 people left Dorchester en masse and trekked overland to an English trading outpost on the Connecticut River subsequently named Windsor. That left available land in Dorchester for those who arrived in the Richard Mather contingent. 

The original Tolman property is part of today’s Garvey Park in Dorchester, South Boston, south of Tolman Street. Thomas’s youngest son and his heirs lived there for more than 200 years.

Thomas Sr. had land not only in old Dorchester, but also grazing and farm lands on Pine Neck. As land became limited with growth of the community, he acquired forest and meadowlands in what later became Canton when the English forcibly moved the Praying Indians to Deer Island after King Phillip’s War. His large tract of land west of Old Dorchester reportedly extended a length of seven miles. Today’s Canton is among the country's most wealthy, affluent, and exclusive communities and, more importantly, headquarters for Dunkin’ Donuts.

Children of Thomas Tolman Sr. and Sarah:

1. Mary, b.  In Lancaster, England 1631/32, married Henry Collins, six children, died 1722 in Lynn, age 91.
2. THOMAS Jr, b. 1633 in Lancaster, England, soldier in King Phillip’s War, married Elizabeth Johnson of Lynn, MA, 5 children, died 1718, age 85.
3. Sarah, b. 1636 in Dorchester, married Henry Leadbetter, 8 children, died before 1691, the year Henry remarried.
4. Hannah, b. 1638 in Dorchester, married 1) George Lyon, and 2) William Blake, died 1729 in Milton, age 91, five children.
5. John, b. 1642 in Dorchester, also a wheelwright and freeman in Lynn, soldier in King Phillip’s War in 1676 and selectman of Dorchester for several years; married 1) 1666 in Lynn to Elizabeth Collins (sister to Mary’s Henry above). She died 1690 and he married 2) Mary Breck. John and Elizabeth had nine children over a period of 20 years and she died 3 years after the last; he died 1724 in Lynn, age 82.
6. Ruth, christened 1644 in Dorchester, married Isaac Ryall, carpenter who built the First Church of Dorchester. Isaac and Ruth had five children. She died 1681 in Dorchester, age 37, a year after her last child was born.
7. Rebekah, b. 1647 in Dorchester, married James Tucker, died in Milton sometime after her father’s will 1688, five children. James was son of an immigrant from England. Reportedly, Queen Elizabeth I conveyed a manor in Gravesend to the Tucker grandfather in 1572.

First Church of Dorchester,
 built by Thomas Jr.'s son-n-law

Built by Ruth’s husband, Isaac Ryall in 1670 on the site of the original meetinghouse, the church houses the oldest congregation in the boundaries of Boston. The original parishioners were the “first wave” of Puritans to Dorchester in 1630 and the first church a log cabin with thatched roof; this was the congregation to which Thomas and family belonged.

Thomas and Sarah had at least 38 grandchildren. Sarah died in 1677 in Dorchester, age 65, and Thomas lived another 13 years.

In his 1690 will, Thomas Sr. gave money and household goods to the daughters, and land to the two sons. Thomas Jr. received the dwelling house and barn, a “great chub axe,” and meadows and uplands already conveyed at Jr.’s marriage. John, also a wheelwright, received meadows and uplands as well as iron hoops for wheels.

Find-a-Grave erroneously lists Thomas Sr. and Sarah buried at the Canton Corner Cemetery, but this is unlikely as the cemetery wasn’t opened until the early 1700s. Thomas and Sarah are likely buried in the historic Dorchester North Burying Ground at Upham’s Corner.

Thomas Tolman, Jr. (1633-1718) and Elizabeth Johnson (1638-1720), 8th GGPs

Thomas Tolman, Jr., was one of the Thomas Sr. and Sarah’s two children who crossed the Atlantic as a toddler in 1635. He married Elizabeth Johnson of Lynn, Massachusetts in 1654.

Elizabeth’s father, our 9th GGF Richard Johnson, (1612-1666) was an immigrant to Watertown, Massachusetts, in 1630 and moved to Lynn, Massachusetts, about 12 miles north of Dorchester. As an immigrant, 18 year-old Richard first lived with Sir Richard Saltonstall, an older gentleman who led a group of English settlers up the Charles River to settle in Watertown. Sir Richard had been knighted in 1618 by James I, son of Mary Queen of Scots, and in his mid-forties brought his family to the Watertown area to set up the Saltonstall Plantation. Our Richard Johnson was perhaps his servant or aide, but after one winter in Massachusetts Sir Saltonstall threw in the towel and returned to England with his family, except for two sons and Richard. Richard, a farmer, was admitted as a freeman to Watertown in 1637, but moved to Lynn the same year. He received a grant of 30 acres in Lynn the following year.

Thomas’ occupation listed in his will was a wheelwright as was his father, an important trade for a colonial town, and he engaged in farming as well. He received ten acres in Great Lots of Dorchester in 1668, likely from his father for his marriage, and the family homestead and other meadows in his father’s will.

Both Thomas and his brother, John, served in King Phillip’s War of 1675-78. They were part of the Dorchester company who pursued King Phillip during the summer of 1676 leading to his death.

Massasoit, a Wampanoag chief, had an alliance with the Plymouth colonists that grew out of a peace treaty in 1621, but the Europeans continued to encroach on Indian lands. His son, Metacomet, who took the name King Phillip, led the Wampanoag against Massachusetts settlers, a rebellion that extended throughout New England and beyond Metacomet’s death in 1676. Atrocities were committed on both sides. King Phillip was shot and killed in Mount Hope, Rhode Island in August 1676 after he was tracked down by Captain Benjamin Church.  His dead body was hung, beheaded, drawn and quartered, and his head placed on a spike in the Plymouth colony for two decades.

Captain Church is our 8th great-uncle, grandson of Mayflower Richard Warren, and commander of the first Ranger company in America. His military tactics are still used by the US Army Rangers.

 Children of Thomas Tolman, Jr, and Elizabeth Johnson:

  

1. Thomas Tolman III,  b. 1665 in Dorchester, married Experience Adams in1689 in Bridgewater, d. 1738 in Stoughton; 7 children

2. Daniel Tolman, b. 1668, Dorchester, died in infancy

3. Mary Tolman, b. 1671, Dorchester, married Ebenezer Crane of Milton, a cordwainer (shoemaker) and tanner in Milton; Mary died 1759 in Milton, 12 children

4. Samuel Tolman, b. 1676 in Dorchester; in 1704 married Experience Clapp who died in 1726 and Samuel married secondly Patience Humfrey of Dorchester; 12 children.

5. Daniel Tolman, b. 1679 in Dorchester, married Sarah Humphries in 1708 in Dorchester, died 1761, 4 children.

Thomas made his will in 1711 several years before his death, leaving his “mansion house,” barn and gardens as well as his slave to Elizabeth. In 1718, the year of his death, he added an amendment, "my cattle I intend and comprehend in the moveables given her (Elizabeth), and the power to dispose of the same, and of my man servant, either by sale, testament or deed of gift to whom she will." All in the same sentence ... you may sell my cattle and my slave. Slavery ended in Massachusetts in 1783.

Substantial land went to his sons, including 60 acres in what later became Canton to Thomas III. He made an interesting, but not uncommon, provision that, should any of the kids dislike what they had been given such as to cause contention, half their inheritance would be taken away and divided among the others!

Thomas Jr. died in 1718, age 85, and Elizabeth in December 1726, at age 82. Both are buried in Dorchester North Burying Ground.

Thomas Tolman III (1665-1738) and Experience Adams (1663-1762), 7th GGPs

Dorchester was first settled by Puritans in 1630, and our Tolmans arrived in 1635. The town centered around the First Church of Dorchester, but began to spread out and encroach further on lands belonging to indigenous Machuseusett whose population severely declined from infectious disease and violence from the colonial settlers. The large area of Dorchester was diminished piece by piece by creation of other towns, including Stoughton (incorporated from Dorchester in 1726), Sharon (incorporated in 1765), and Canton (incorporated in 1797 from Stoughton) and finally what was left was annexed to Boston in 1870. So, land and grants held by the Tolmans originally identified as being in Dorchester might be part of Boston or later be in the towns identified as Stoughton, Sharon and Canton.

Thomas III, the firstborn and first son of Thomas Jr. and Elizabeth, was a yeoman, meaning a non-slaveholding, small landowning, family farmer as contrasted with a planter who might have hundreds of acres. 

Thomas III married Experience Adams of Boston in 1689 and they lived in Dorchester until settling around 1713 on the 60 acres given to him by his father in what finally became Canton. He is identified as a yeoman in deeds.

Experience was the daughter of 8th GGPs Henry Adams of Boston and Mary Pittee of Weymouth, married in Boston in 1663. Mary’s father, William, was an early settler of Weymouth in 1638; Henry Adams background is unknown.

They had seven children over the next 18 years. It’s hard to imagine having seven pregnancies, much less strung out over 18 years, but this is a relatively small family for the times. In 1713, 48 year-old Thomas, Elizabeth and all the children, even adult, moved to the area of Dorchester New Grant that became first Stoughton and finally Canton; all except Nathaniel who became a physician in Needham. In those days, one didn’t need to go to medical school to be a doctor, but merely to apprentice to a doctor for a period of 3 years.

Thomas III and Experience children were all born in Dorchester:

1. Thomas IV, b. abt. 1689, married Mary Rice, died 1724
2. Nathaniel, b. 1691, moved to Needham, MA, where he was a physician, and died 1729 at the young age of 38 and his widow died soon after. Their four children were placed in guardianships. Four grandsons were soldiers in the Revolution; one son was severely wounded at the Lexington alarm.
3. Timothy, b. 1693, married Elizabeth Wadsworth of Milton, died age 80.
4. David, b. 1695, married Prudence Redman, died age 50.
5. Mary, b. 1697, married Joseph Hartwell, died 1782 in Stoughton, soon to become Canton in 1797.
6. Bliss, b. 1704, married twice, to Mary and then Judith, died age 71
7. Experience, b. 1707, married Silas Crane; they died a day apart in 1753 and were buried in one grave in Canton Cemetery.

Thomas III, 73, died in 1738 in Stoughton. Church records note “November 6, 1738, Thomas Tolman, our aged brother, fell down dead at his work.” Widow Experience lived another 24 years until 1762 “in ye 99th year of her age.” They are both buried at Canton Corners Cemetery. Thomas left no will, but had already distributed his considerable land to his heirs.

Thomas Tolman IV (1689-1724) and Mary Rice (c. 1695-1782), 6th GGPs

Thomas IV does not have a birth or baptismal record. His gravestone inscription reads “Here lyes Ye Body of Thomas Tolman, Dyed 3rd Feb 1724 in Ye 35th Year of his Age,” and from this we can extrapolate he was born in 1689. At the time of his birth, then, all four generations were still living - his 1st GGF Thomas Sr. who died in 1690, his GGF Thomas Jr. who died in 1718, his grandfather Thomas III who died in 1738, and little Thomas IV.

Thomas married 19 year-old Mary Rice from Dedham in 1714. Their firstborn, Thomas V, died in his first two years, soon followed by another child who bore the name Thomas V in 1718, our 5th GGF Isaiah, and a daughter Mary, born after her father’s death in 1724.

Thomas IV died young at only 34 years of age, very possibly from the smallpox epidemic which was so severe in Boston in 1721 the entire population fled the city taking it to surrounding areas and the other colonies. Cotton Mather - remember him from above? - used his pulpit to encourage the new technique of smallpox inoculation, “variolation" to lessen the severity of the disease.

Sons Thomas V and Isaiah were only five and two years old at the time of their father’s death and daughter Mary not yet born. All three children went into guardianship; that of Isaiah was granted to his uncle, Nathaniel, when he was four and to an Edward Glover in 1730 when he was nine years old. 

Probate records show Thomas IV was a husbandman and his possessions included a sword and other arms, cattle, sheep and swing, and 120 acres with a house and barn in Stoughton. He owed a debt to John Rice, Mary’s father.

'Yeoman' and 'husbandman' and Middle English occupation terms, with husbandman being a slightly lower rank than yeoman. Both were gradually replaced in the later 18th and 19th centuries by ‘farmer.’

The probate inventory was submitted to the court in 1728 and by that time Mary’s name was Hartwell. The widowed Mary whose three young children had gone into guardianship married Joseph Hartwell a little less than two years after Thomas IV’s death and had another six children.

A petition that evidently led to another probate hearing in 1742 was signed by Joseph Hartwell, husband of Thomas’ wife Mary. By this time 5th GGF Isaiah has turned  21 and soon to be married. Thomas III’s real estate was valued at one thousand eighty five pounds which Isaiah and brother Thomas split evenly after paying one hundred eighty pounds to their sister, Mary.

Children of Thomas IV and Mary, all born in Dorchester New Grant, later to become Stoughton (1726) and Canton (1797):

1. Thomas V, b. 1716, died 1718.
2. Thomas V, b. 1718, married Hannah Shepard, d. 1767 in Stoughton, age 48. Probate identified his occupation as husbandman.
3. Isaiah, b. 1721, married 1) Hannah Fuller by whom he had eight children, 2) 5th GGM Margaret Robbins by whom he had 10 children, and lastly to Jane Philbrook, by whom he had one child. His father’s probate in 1742 indicates Isaiah is a blacksmith, but with his inheritance he became a wealthy farmer. He moved to Thomaston, Maine  in 1769 at age 48, and to the isolated Matinicus Isle in 1790 where he died at age 90 in 1811.
4. Mary, b. 1724 after her father’s death, married Nathaniel Reynolds, died in Sidney, Kennebec County, Maine in 1806.

Elizabeth Hartwell, the eldest of 6th GGM Mary Rice Tolman’s children with 2nd husband, Joseph Hartwell (1726-1760), became the wife of Roger Sherman who began as a shoemaker in Stoughton and rose to become an astute businessman and lawyer in Milford, Connecticut, and the only signer of four of the great papers of the United States - the Continental Association, Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, and Constitution.

Thomas Tolman IV
“Here lyes Ye Body of Thomas Tolman,
Dyed 3rd Feb 1724 in
Ye 35th Year of his Age,”

Next: Isaiah and his daughter, Margaret "Peggy" Tolman, the last of our Tolman line.

Two Families, One Remote Island

Two men immigrated to New England in the Great Migration (1620-1640), 8th GGF Rowland Young in 1636, settling in the York, Maine, area and 9th GGF Thomas Tolman in 1630, settling in the Dorchester, Massachusetts area. Four generations later in the late 1700s, their respective grandsons chose to move their families to Matinicus Isle, 22 miles off Maine, still the most remote inhabited island off the Atlantic seacoast. The island is two miles long and one mile wide with few trees and devoid of mammals other than rats,

In 1950, 188 people lived on the island. These days the Island has 53 residents, mostly fishermen and lobstermen, and a few summer visitors looking for a low-key vacation. Getting there is not easy - a two hour ferry ride across rough water, though there is a small airstrip. The island has no doctor, no police, only a one-room schoolhouse for K-8 (older students have to go to the mainland), a library, and a church. The land used to support some cattle, pigs, geese, potatoes, and family gardens, but has been farmed out by now. The inhabitants are clannish and sometimes territorially violent when it comes to lobstering and fishing.

The 1800 census of remote Matinicus showed 12 heads of household - 5 Youngs, 2 Tolmans, and 3 Halls. Might there be an issue of consanguinity?

I thought about a day trip over to the ancestral island while on a road trip in 2015. A librarian in Rockport wasn’t terribly encouraging. I asked her about the people and after a pause she just said, “they’re different.”

The Penobscot were using the island for fishing and gathering when the first white settler, Ebenezer Hall, brought his family and claimed the island in 1750. He alienated indigenous mainland Native Americans by burning grasslands on Matinicus and nearby Green Island for pasture and farming. Nor did it help that he shot and buried two Indians who came onto the island in 1751. The tribe took their complaints to Royal authorities in Boston who issued an order for Hall to leave. After four years of Hall’s refusal, the tribe laid siege to the house, killed and scalped Hall, and took his wife and children. One son, Ebenezer Jr., was away on a fishing trip. 

The wife was taken to Quebec and eventually made her way back to Maine after a ransom was paid. While at York Harbor on another fishing trip soon after the attack, 22 year old Ebenezer, Jr., met and married Susannah Young, daughter of our 6th GGPs, Joseph Young and Susannah Johnson, and moved back to Matinicus in 1763 to the property inherited from his father. Ebenezer Sr’s 12 year-old stepson, Joseph Green, escaped out a window and hid, left alone with his dead and scalped father until rescued by a passing vessel. He later married Dorcas Young, sister of his stepbrother, Ebenezer, Jr’s. wife, and moved back to Matinicus. Unhappy with the parcel offered him by his step-brother, Joseph moved to nearby Green Island where he raised a large family. 

After a year on the island, Ebenezer, Jr., and wife Susannah (Young) visited family in York and, come time to leave, Susannah refused to return - perhaps from fear or loneliness - unless other family joined them. With this, her sister, Phoebe Young, married to her first cousin, Abraham Young - our 4th GGPs - moved their family to Matinicus in 1764.

Fast forward to 1790, 5th GGF 69 year-old Isaiah Tolman, originally from Stoughton, Massachusetts and a large landholder in the Rockland, Maine, area, moved to Matinicus with his wife and four of his children, including our 4th GGM, Margaret “Peggy” Tolman. A year after moving to Matinicus, Margaret married Joseph Young, son of Abraham and Phebe, who was born on the island in 1769. After 20+ years together on Matinicus, Margaret and Joseph moved the family back to the mainland, including our 3rd GGM 12 year old Harriet Young. Six years later she married Samuel Packard in Lincolnville. Remember him from the last blog post? Is your brain spinning with Halls and Tolmans and Youngs and Packards?

Our Ancestral Packards

Our family had six, maybe seven, generations of Packards in New England before the surname disappeared by marriage, i.e., Harriet Packard to George Studley. The Packard immigrant arrived in Massachusetts in 1638 and lived in Hingham, Weymouth, and then Bridgewater, Massachusetts. One, possibly two, linking generations cannot be identified and we next pick up our Packard line in Easton with Joseph, married to Hannah Manley. Their son, Samuel, married Bethiah Waters, a descendant of William Bradford, Mayflower passenger and governor of the Plymouth Colony. This couple set off in their 20s on a circuitous journey that landed them in Thomaston, Maine. Their son, another Samuel, married Harriet Young who was born on Mantinicus, a remote island off the coast of Maine. Their daughter, another Harriet, married George Studley, a carpenter and Civil War soldier who fought major battles including Gettysburg. Hence, the middle name of our grandmother, Alice Packard Studley. All generations down through the Samuels were landowners and farmers. 

The Packard name derives from Middle English pak(e) ‘pack bundle’ + the Anglo-Norman French pejorative suffix -"ard" = packard, probably a derogatory occupational name for a peddler.

Our Packard family story begins in Stonham Aspal in Suffolk County, England with the 1612 birth of Samuel Packard, believed to be the third son of George Packard (1575-1623), a yeoman, and his wife, Mary Wyther (1574-1652). Samuel and his wife Elizabeth are credited as progenitors of most of the Packards in the United States, and among their descendants are those of the Packard automobile and Hewlett-Packard.

Suffolk County lies in the what was the Kingdom of East Anglia formed in the 6th c. as an Anglo-Saxon settlement, conquered by the Danish Vikings in the 9th c., and incorporated into the kingdom of England under Edward I in the 13th c. Hence, part of our family Viking DNA. And, actually, Edward is also a grandfather ancestor through our New Hampshire 10th GGM, Rose Stoughton.

Samuel Packard (1605-1684) and Elizabeth

The Packard family lived in Stonham Asphal on the Red House Farm whose 14th c. homestead, with additions, is still standing and occupied. The church at Stonham Aspen where Samuel was baptized also still stands and has records of Samuel’s baptism.

Samuel and Elizabeth, last name unknown, married in 1634 and had a child, Mary, in 1637 while still in Stonham. As noted in the ship’s manifest, the family may have been living in Wyndham in Norfolk County prior to immigration. The mid-1630s was a period of economic depression and religious dissent in England. 

They joined over 20,000 English seeking religious freedom and economic opportunity in the 1630-1643 “Great Migration” to Massachusetts Bay Colony. Not a first-born son, Samuel may have held hope for land in the New World as the English tradition of primogeniture would have left him landless. For perspective, the Boston settlement had its beginning in 1630 when Winthrop’s eleven ships landed in the harbor.

In June 1638, the the family sailed out of Ipswich, England, about a hundred miles north of London, bound for Boston on the ship Diligent with little Mary not more than a year old. The 133 passengers were under the leadership of a minister, Robert Peck, so Samuel and Elizabeth may have had both religious and economic motivations. 

The Diligent passengers settled in Hingham, Massachusetts, where Samuel received a land grant. Just three years earlier, Hingham had been settled by English religious-dissenting colonists on land belonging to the indigenous Wampanoag without bothering to buy the land for another three decades.

Samuel and Elizabeth had another eleven children in Hingham between 1639 and 1652 before their move five miles south to Weymouth sometime between 1652 and 1654. Samuel is listed as a Weymouth selectman, i.e., like being on today’s town council. 

The effect on the family of several houses being burnt in Weymouth by local Indians in 1663 is unclear, but by 1664, 59 year-old Samuel and Elizabeth moved another ten miles south to an area near Town River now West Bridgewater. Samuel is listed as a Constable and there had another two children. He was licensed to keep an “ordinary” in 1671; i.e., a pub for travelers.

Historically, Plymouth Colony and Massachusetts Bay Colony were two separate entities that merged in 1691 to form the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Bridgewater was the first interior settlement of Plymouth Colony starting in 1650. Many came from Duxbury, but other settlements as well. Settlers were given six acres on each side of the Nippenicket in close proximity for mutual protection.

Somewhere in my notes I have that Samuel bought land in the Nippenicket area from local Indians, presumably located close to Lake Nippenicket in West Bridgewater.

Altogether, Samuel and Elizabeth had 14 children, six sons and eight daughters, over a span of 20 years. Two girls died young. His 1684 will left 370 acres and numerous meadows to four sons (Samuel, Jr., Zaccheus, John, and Nathaniel) and grandsons. Sons not named in his will were Thomas and Israel, presumably deceased by 1684.

Samuel and Elizabeth’s children and baptismal birthdates:

1. Mary, c. 1637
2. Elizabeth, c. 1646
3. Samuel, Jr. c. 1641.
4. Hannah, c. 1643
5. Israel, c. 1645, not an heir in his father’s will, so presumed deceased by 1684, possibly in 1675-76 Indian Wars.
6. Jael, c.1647
7. Deborah, c. 1648
8. Zaccheus, c. 1650

9.   and 10. Jane and Abigail, c. 1651, possibly twins who died young

11. Deliverance, c. 1652

12. Thomas, c. 1653

13. John, b. 20 July 1655, the only one who has a birth record

14. Nathaniel, c. 1657 

Samuel’s will provided well for Elizabeth, including land, use of the house, all his goods and cattle, forty pounds annually, and the ever important featherbed. Nevertheless, Elizabeth - in her 70s, well off, veteran of 14 pregnancies and child rearing - remarried within about a year to John Washburn of Bridgewater. He died about 1-2 years later and his will interestingly notes he owed her two pounds and ten shillings which he agreed to return.

Widowed a second time, Elizabeth herself died sometime after 1702 in Bridgewater, Massachusetts. Estimates are she had about 45 grandchildren.

Samuel’s childhood red brick, six bedroom farmhouse with 7 acres in Stoneham-Asphal was up for sale in 2012 for $875,000. Google for photos of the interior.

Missing generation(s)

The generational links between immigrant Hingham/Weymouth/Bridgewater Samuel (1605-1684) and 5th GGF Joseph Packard (1705-1777) are unproved in spite of various suppositions in Ancestry.

Joseph Packard and Hannah Manley, 5th GGPs

From the Karle Packard’s research published in Packard’s Progress, 1977, several Joseph Packards lived in the Bridgewater vicinity in the early 18th century. Our line descends from Joseph Packard (c. 1705-1777) whose first documentation is a marriage in nearby Easton. No direct evidence of his parentage has been located.

Joseph’s birthplace would have been either Bridgewater or Easton with an estimated birth year 1705 which would make him about 24 years old when he married a young widow, Hannah Manley (1711-1790). The original marriage record indicates they were “both of Easton.” Other than a cousin, Hannah Packard Briggs, there were no other Packards in the Easton area at that time, so no clues as to who might be Joseph’s parents.

Easton abuts Bridgewater 30 miles almost due south of downtown Boston and WNW inland 30 miles from Plymouth. These days, it would be part of the greater Boston area.

Hannah’s grandfather, William Manley, (abt. 1645-1717) was likely the Manley immigrant and had been living in Weymouth as early as 1675 when a marriage was recorded. An early settler in that part of Easton known as the North Purchase, William is described as a “squatter” as he and six other families were already living on their land in 1694 when lot divisions were made. He split his lot with Thomas Phillips, another guy from Weymouth. Five children later, his young wife died, perhaps from complications related to childbirth. The fourth child, 6th GGF Nathaniel (1684-1753), and Hannah Leonard (1679-1753) were Hannah’s parents. They died within a day of each other in April 1753. Infectious disease? It was a bad year for influenza and smallpox in that area.

Joseph and Hannah had ten children between 1730 and 1751:

5 sons - Joseph Jr., John, Benjamin, James, and Samuel (1751-1810), our 4th GGF.

5 daughters - Elizabeth, Hannah, Zeruiah, Mary, and Mehitable.

The fighting five, Joseph and Hannah’s military sons

• Joseph, Jr., (1730-1805) enlisted August 1754 with the colonial militia in the French and Indian War in Capt Perry's Company that went to Nova Scotia to “remove French encroachments.” The battalion laid siege and accepted the surrender of the French at Fort Beauséjour, a star shaped fort at the narrow neck of land between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. After his brother, John, died at Ticonderoga in 1758 at the Battle of the Carillon, Joseph and two Manley cousins were part of the British forces that drove the remaining French from Fort Ticonderoga in July 1759. Joseph Jr.’s son, Nathaniel, died in 1775 during the siege of Boston. Joseph’s children were all born in Easton and by the 1790 census the family was living in Westmoreland, New Hampshire. This is important as it may have been a later stopping off point for his brother SamueI. Surry and Westmoreland are but 13 miles apart in Cheshire County. More on that later.

• John (1738-1758) also enlisted with the colonial forces in the French and Indian War and was at the Battle of Fort Carillon (Ticonderoga) in July 1758 when 16,000 British attempted a frontal assault against 4,000 French just outside the fort, and were badly beaten. Unfortunately, 20 year-old John was among the casualties. The French later abandoned the fort and John’s brother was among those who returned the following year and removed the remaining French.

• Benjamin (1742-1825) married Azenath Bradford Waters, a great-granddaughter of William Bradford, Mayflower passenger and Governor of the Plymouth Colony. She was already twice widowed with only one child by age twenty seven and living in Stoughton. That child, Bethiah Waters, married Benjamin’s youngest brother, our 4th GGF, Samuel. In any event, Benjamin was a Minuteman from Stoughton in Captain William Briggs Company who responded to the alarm from Concord and Lexington on April 19, 1775. He signed up to serve in the Continental Army in May 1782 as the war was winding down. The British surrendered at Yorktown in 1781, but some didn’t get the memo and fighting didn't stop until 1783. Even so, Benjamin was not likely involved in further skirmishes.

• James (1750-1836) served several tours of duty during the Revolution. He was 83 years old when he applied for a pension in which he states “I was never drafted, I always enlisted voluntarily whenever I was called out to serve in the defense of my country.” He was a Minuteman who responded along with Benjamin to the Lexington alarm on the infamous April 19, and marched to Roxbury where he stayed for 11 days, “I saw General Washington at Roxbury and General Putnam when I was at Castle Island”. He also responded to the invasion of the British in Rhode Island, serving up to eight months at a time.
• 4th GGF Samuel (1751-c 1810) had service in the Revolution resistance against the British who had taken Newport, including a “secret expedition." Samuel, brother James, and a cousin Reuben Manley were in church at the Easton meetinghouse on December 8, 1776 when a horseman galloped up and announced the British had landed in Newport, RI, that everyone must march immediately to oppose their progress. Before the day was over, the Easton men were off to confront General Clinton for a fight that didn’t happen, instead just a series of skirmishes until the final battle in 1778. The guys remained on alert to help Rhode Island for the next three years. Samuel and brother James were part of Captain Shaw’s company for the “secret expedition” in September 1777 to attempt to dislodge the British from Rhode Island, if gathering 9000 men can be considered secret. Delays and inefficiencies led to the attack being called off until the Battle of Rhode Island in August 1778. By 1779, the Revolution was moving out of New England as the British pulled out troops to deploy in the action farther south. Samuel and Hannah had probably already left the area for part north. 

Husbands of daughters Elizabeth and Hannah, Hezikiah Drake and Benjamin Tirrill respectively, also served in the Revolution.

Samuel died in Easton August 20, 1777. Inventory of his estate at probate showed he owned seventy eight acres of pasture land, farm equipment, cattle, sheep, and the requisite feather bed and spinning wheel. Hannah was a co-executor on Joseph’s estate which seems to have dragged on into the 1780s. 

Hannah lived until 1790. Likely, she would have been able to stay in the family house as usually provided by a husband in a will. Son, John, had died in 1758 and two other sons had already moved out of the area - Joseph, Jr. to New Hampshire and Samuel to Maine. The only sons remaining in the area were Benjamin in nearby Stoughton and James in Easton.

Samuel Packard (1751- btw 1810-1820) and Bethiah Waters, 4th GGPs

Of a gazillion Samuel Packards named after the original Hingham/Weymouth/Bridgewater immigrant, the Easton Samuel is ours. Even in Easton, the Samuels will begin to proliferate among the descendants of Easton Joseph and Hannah.

We also see the Packards, including our Samuel, begin to spread out and disseminate into parts north as coastal Massachusetts became more crowded.

Born in September 1751 in Easton, Massachusetts, to Joseph and Hannah, Samuel was the baby of the ten children and youngest of five brothers. His brother, John, died at Ticonderoga when he was six.

Samuel was thirteen when his older brother, Benjamin married Azenath Bradford Waters and moved to Stoughton which abuts Easton to the north.

Twenty one year-old Samuel bought 15 acres of land in Easton from his father, Joseph, in 1773. The following year he married Bethiah Waters, daughter of Azenath and stepdaughter of his brother, Benjamin. We have a number of families in our ancestral lines in which brothers married sisters from the same family, even first degree cousins to each other, but Bethia and Azenath are the only mother-daughter pair marrying brothers I’ve come across.

Bethiah⁵ is one of our family’s Mayflower connections (Azenath⁴, Elisha³, Joseph², William¹ Bradford).

Samuel answered calls in 1776 and 1777 for townsmen to respond to the British issue in Aquidneck Island after the invasion of Newport, but something else was brewing with Samuel. 

In 1776, he sold 3-4 acres of his land in Easton on which his house stood, and it appears the family moved to land left to Bethiah by her father, Daniel Waters of Stoughton; the sale indicates Samuel is a laborer. The following year, just before his dad died, he sold his orchard. His father’s 1777 probate record indicates Samuel owed him two notes for five pounds each. In 1778, Samuel “of Stoughton“ sold more Easton land to his brother James, “the northeast part which Samuel Packard owns which was given to him by a deed of his father Joseph Packard.” This deed provides evidence of Samuel’s connection to Joseph of Easton, and indicates he moved to Stoughton after selling his Easton house in 1776.

With this last sale, Samuel, Bethiah, and baby daughter left for parts north. They may have moved briefly to Vermont as the next-born child, Nathaniel, gives his birthplace in Vermont in and birth year 1779 in the 1850 census. The next three children were born between 1782 and 1786 in Surry, Cheshire, New Hampshire, not far from Westmoreland where his brother Joseph, Jr., settled.

By 1788, the family had relocated to Meduncook Plantation, now called Friendship, Maine where our 4th GGF, Samuel, and the last son, John, were born, 1788 and1791, respectively. 

Friendship was originally Meduncook in the Waldo Patent Settlement of 1775. An English garrison was maintained on an island off shore for protection of settlers in the French and Indian war in 1756. Joshua Bradford and most of his family were massacred in Meduncook in May 1758 while trying to escape to the fort. The area was included in the incorporation of Lincoln County in 1760 and the town incorporated as Friendship in February 1807.

In the 1790 census, Samuel, Sr., is the only Packard living in Meduncook. The census indicates 7 people living in the household - 1 adult male, 3 males under 16 (young Samuel, Daniel, and Nathaniel), and 3 females (mom Bethiah, daughter Bethiah, and Mary). Oops! We’re missing two kids. Samuel and Bethiah had seven kids by this time. The census shows only two parents and five kids. It’s likely 15 year-old Hannah and 14 year-old James are the ones missing, perhaps working and living in other households.

By 1790, Samuel is nearly forty years old and his moving around days were not over. He removed to Waldoboro, Maine, area just north of Meduncook between the 1791 birth of his last child in Meduncook and the 1794 marriage of daughter Hannah in Waldoboro. With 245 families and as the seat of Lincoln County, Waldoboro was a relatively more bustling place than Meduncook.

The family made another and final move to Thomaston between 1794 and the 1802 marriage of daughter Mary in Thomaston. The entire family, including married daughter Hannah and husband, relocated to Thomaston. Samuel, Bethiah and all the offspring show in various subsequent records in the Thomaston/Rockland/Camden area after the move.

Thomaston was originally part of the Waldo Patent, and incorporated from part of St. George Plantation (now Cushing) in 1777. Land was set off from Thomaston to form East Thomaston (now Rockland) and South Thomaston in 1848. Known for its tall, straight trees, Thomaston was the source of timber for British ships from the time the first Englishman landed at the mouth of St. George’s River in 1605 until the Revolution.

From the Waldo Patent heirs, Samuel acquired a land grant on Mill Street that ran from Thomaston to Union, Maine, and built a log cabin on the west side of the 30-mile wall. A few years later he built the house in which family lived for over a hundred years.

Samuel’s cousins, Benjamin and Micah, sons of Solomon Packard in Bridgewater, removed to the Thomaston area about twenty-five years before Samuel although all three cousins departed the Easton/Bridgewater area around the same time. Samuel simply took a detour through Surry, New Hampshire, Meduncook Plantation, and Waldoboro.

Micah was in Cushing by 1775 when a meeting of the Committee on Safety was held at his house, and moved to Thomaston by 1800. His brother, Benjamin, a joiner, moved first to the St. George’s River area (Cushing) where his wife was lost at sea, thence to Union where he built the settlement’s first log cabin - all other settlers were living in lean-tos or shanties - and on to Owls Head, Thomaston by 1780.

The only Samuel Packard household in Thomaston in the 1810 census is likely Samuel and Bethiah (1 male and 1 female >45, 1 female, 16-25, young Bethiah).

Samuel died before the 1820 census at which time  Bethiah was living with son Samuel and Harriett. She can be found again in the Samuel/Harriet household in 1830, and died in 1837, age 79.

Samuel Packard (1788-1856) & Harriet Young, 3rd GGPs

Three Samuels later, we are down to the last. Third GGF Samuel was born in 1788 in Meduncook Plantation (now Friendship), Maine District of Massachusetts (since Maine didn’t become a state until 1820). Early records of Friendship were lost in a house fire in the early 1900s, and likely included Samuel’s birth records. We know he was born in Friendship from daughter Harriet’s death record.

Samuel was the seventh of Samuel Sr. and Bethiah’s eight known children. Two older siblings, Hannah and James, were born in Easton in 1775 and 1776. The 1850 census for the third child, Nathaniel, reports he was born in Vermont in 1779; whether factual or an error in census reporting is unclear.  At least two sibs were born Surry, New Hampshire, between 1782 and 1786 after the family left Massachusetts. Only Samuel and his younger brother, John, would be born in Meduncook/Friendship.

Samuel was two years old when the 1790 census of Meduncook showed it was a small settlement with only 48 families. The family relocated to Thomaston by the time he was 14 and, in 1807, nineteen year-old Samuel married Sarah Orbeton in Camden.

By time of the the 1810 census, Samuel is living in Thomaston with Sarah, and appears to be on Samuel Sr’s farm along with 19 year-old brother John, yet unmarried. 

The 1820 census shows Samuel still living in Thomaston with Sarah, his mother Bethiah, and two boys, one under 10 and the second between 10 and 15. These two boys possibly belonged to Samuel Jr. and his first wife, Sarah, who died within the next two years but no birth records for the boys are located. Brothers, James and Nathaniel, are living nearby. Samuel, Sr. is not in the 1820 census and the probability is he has died.

Thirty two year-old Samuel took a second wife in 1822, widow Harriet Young Fletcher, age 22, our 3rd great-grandmother. Harriet and her family lived on Matinicus Island until moving to Lincolnville, ME, just north of Camden, when she was twelve. In 1819, eighteen year-old Harriet married Nathan Fletcher in Lincolnville and they had a child, Antinette. A year and a half later, in December 1821, young Nathan died. In 1841, Antinette married Benjamin Studley, brother of our Civil War 2nd GGF, Lt. George Studley.

The 1830 census is somewhat a puzzle as it shows nine people living in the home, three males and six females. Certainly three of them are Samuel, wife Harriet, their three children (Lisetta, Harriet, and Eliza) as well as Samuel’s mom, Bethiah who didn’t die until 1837. Samuel and Sarah’s first son would have been old enough to be out of the home, but their second son might account for one of the males. That leaves what appears to be another couple, a male and female. The female may have been Harriet and Nathan's daughter, 10 year-old Antinette, who later married Benjamin Studley, brother of George Studley, husband of Samuel and Harriet's daughter, our GGM Harriet Packard.

Samuel’s 1840 census shows he and Harriet with their four children and an extra male between ages 20-29 who could be a farmhand or a younger son from Samuel’s first marriage.

In the 1850 census, the family has been pared down to 62 year-old Samuel, farmer, 49 year-old Harriet, their youngest, 13 year-old Samuel Edgar, and a 16 year-old Susan Herman, relation unclear.

By the 1860 census, 74 year-old Samuel is still living in Thomaston with his youngest son, 23 year-old Samuel, young Samuel’s wife, and two toddler grandchildren. Wife Harriet died four years earlier from an abdominal tumor at age 56. In two years, son Samuel Edgar and daughter Harriet’s husband, George Studley, would join the Union army to fight in the Civil war. Samuel Edgar served nine months in the 26th Maine plus another stint in the 9th Maine, and George with the 19th Maine for the duration of the war.

At the time of his death in 1866, only one sibling was still surviving, 90 year old James. Samuel is buried with wife Harriet in West Rockport Cemetery.

Samuel and Bethiah’s children:

Lisette (1823-1897), married Stephen Frost, farmer, resided in Rockland, 5 daughters.

2nd GGM Harriet (1827-1893), married George Studley, Civil War lieutenant and carpenter, resided in Camden, 6 children, moved in Boston about 1866. One daughter was named after her sister, Lisetta.

Altezera “Eliza” (1829-1902), married Ezekiel Vinal, farmer, lived in Camden, 3 sons, widowed at age 56 and lived with various children until her death in Vermont 20 years later.

Samuel Edgar (1836-1897), Civil War veteran and farmer in the Camden area, married Esther Vinal, 7 children.