Banned in Boston

On a wintry March day in 1638, twenty-three followers of Anne Hutchinson gathered in the Boston living room of William Coddington, one of the city’s wealthiest merchants, and put their names to what became known as the Portsmouth Compact. Interestingly, Anne was not among the twenty three signers of the Compact. Political agreements were men’s business in the 17th century.

The Compact submitted the signers to Jesus Christ and biblical law and paved the way for separating civil authority from enforcement of religious conformity. Rhode Island’s 1663 charter eventually expressed that principal.

We whose names are underwritten do hereby solemnly in the presence of Jehovah incorporate ourselves into a Bodie Politick and as He shall help, will submit our persons, lives and estates unto our Lord Jesus Christ, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords and to all those perfect and most absolute laws of His given us in His Holy Word of Truth, to be guided and judged thereby.

This was not a secular government in the modern sense. What was revolutionary was their conviction that civil government should not dictate a person’s religious beliefs. More than a century later, the principle that a society in which religious belief became a matter of individual conscience rather than government enforcement found its way into the protections of the First Amendment.

A large part of our family was present at this creation of one of colonial America’s great experiments in religious liberty.

Anne Hutchinson challenged the authority and theological interpretation of the Puritan ministers who dominated Massachusetts Bay Colony. In turn, she was tried and found guilty of heresy in November 1637 and sentenced to banishment, not just from Boston but all of Massachusetts Bay Colony. In a second trial in March 1638, she was excommunicated as well.

Mother of fifteen and well along in another pregnancy, Anne walked six days on foot from Boston to Providence through April snow, and from there to Aquidneck Island where her husband and followers were already establishing a new community.

Roger Williams, himself banished from Massachusetts several years earlier, helped negotiate for Aquidneck Island with the Narragansett. The deed was taken in the name of William Coddington and his associates. The settlement was at the northern end of the island in what became Portsmouth. The following year, some more commercially oriented colonists moved south to become founders of Newport.

Our Alice and Her Stephen

Our grandmother, Alice Packard Studley, and grandfather, Raymond Nute, were the first of our direct ancestral line to leave New England in roughly three hundred years.

Alice’s grandfather, Stephen Bailey Borden (1838-1901), was born and died in Fall River, Massachusetts. Stephen’s ancestors, both maternal and paternal, had lived for generations in southeastern Massachusetts and neighboring Rhode Island, many going back to the earliest years of English settlement in the 1600s.

They came on the Mayflower, the ships that followed in the 1620’s, and with the Great Migration of the 1630’s-1640’s. To a person, these ancestors came from England.

Only about 1,800 English immigrants arrived in New England during the 1620’s. From 1630 to 1640 over 20,000 left their homes in England and made the voyage to New England. As nearly all of Raymond and Alice’s ancestor lines immigrated during the 1600’s, our family tree has an astonishing number of early New England lines - nearly 500.

At least fifteen families in Stephen’s paternal ancestry settled the Rhode Island in those early years of the Great Migration.

This is the story of those intrepid colonists and the great experiment of the Colony of Rhode Island.

The Original “Rhode Island”

Aquidneck Island sits in Narragansett Bay, about fifteen miles long and five miles across at its widest point. This is the place originally known to English settlers as “Rhode Island.”








The island still has just three towns, Portsmouth, Middletown, and Newport. Three bridges connect the mainland today, but back in the day travel was by boat.

The Hutchinson group initially thought to settle the New Netherland area, but Roger Williams encouraged they buy Aquidneck Island from the Narragansett. Roger had been banished himself, and escaped Boston in 1636 when he was about to be arrested. He survived the winter with help from the Narragansett and established Providence Plantation, meant to be a refuge for people persecuted for their religious beliefs.

In 1644, Williams obtained a parliamentary patent bringing Providence, Portsmouth, and Newport under a common colonial authority. Voila! We have the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.

Land around Portsmouth was parceled among original settlers and grants were given to later arrivals. With families having 10-15 children, sons eventually left the water-locked island to settle the areas of Fall River, Freetown, Little Compton, and Tiverton.




Two of our direct ancestors, Philip Shearman and John Walker, and step-grandfather, John Roome, were among the 23 signers of the Compact exiled from Boston along with Anne. Other direct ancestor colonists were exiled, but non-signers.

The colonists arrived over the next few months in 1638 to settle the colony, including direct ancestors Ralph Earle and Richard Borden, followed by the Briggs, Cornells, Cookes, Pearces, and others. To a person, they had substantial personal resources and/or skills, but they were literally entering a wilderness.

At the first town meeting in May 1638, the first rule made was “no person within the said colony, at any hereafter, shall be in any wise [ways] molested, punished, disquieted or called into questions on matters of religion - so long as he keeps the peace.”

Direct ancestors Ralph Earle and Anthony Payne were among 28 other men who signed the Compact of Loyalty in April 1639 following a schism among the Portsmouth settlers. Signers committed loyalty to the English crown, a political statement in contrast to the theological and independent statement of the Portsmouth Compact. The signers soon left Portsmouth to establish a new settlement at Newport at the south end of the island.

The Walker family

Twenty nine year-old John Walker (c.1603-1647) immigrated from England, probably Essex or Suffolk, in 1633 with his wife Katharine (1605-1676) and young daughter Sarah, settling in Roxbury, Massachusetts where he became a freeman in 1634. A second daughter, Mary, was born in 1636 in Roxbury.

Likely drawn to the religious teachings of Anne Hutchinson, John moved to Boston by 1637 and was disarmed and exiled as one of Anne's adherents. He was also one of the signers of the Portsmouth Compact in Boston and went with the group to establish the new Colony of Rhode Island. Admitted as a freeman to Portsmouth in 1638, he received a 100 acre grant, served on the town council in 1639 and a Portsmouth jury in 1640.

Based on the date of his will, John died around 1647, only in his forties. Perhaps illiterate, he signed with his mark. His land was divided between his two daughters while wife Katharine maintained control of 60 acres until her death in 1676. Sarah was already married when her father died. John and Katharine’s burial site is unknown.

Mary Walker (1636-1718), only about eleven at her father’s death, married William Earle in 1654, and with that marriage the Walker family joined the Earle line.

A note about “freeman”: In seventeenth New England, a freeman meant the person was entitled to participate in government, including holding office and the right to vote. The man was not a slave, had filled his obligation as an indentured servant, was free of debt, and in some areas it gave the right to own land. There was usually a waiting period of two years while a colony sized you up before giving the right to vote.

The Shearman Family

Another signer of the Portsmouth Compact was Philip Shearman (1611-1687). Like Walker, Phillip arrived in Roxbury in 1633 and became a freeman the following year. Walker, though, originated from another area of England than Shearman who came from Dedham in Essex, England.

The surname Shearman originally referred to someone who sheared or finished woolen cloth. Later, the name was more commonly spelled Sherman.

Church records show Philip married Sarah Odding in Roxbury in 1633, both about 23 years old, and started their large family in Roxbury in 1634 - at least eleven are documented. Two children died in early childhood and four died in adulthood the year of the 1717-1718 influenza epidemic in New England.

Philip returned to England briefly in 1635 and came back to Roxbury. He and his father-in-law John Porter became involved with the religious dissent surrounding Ann Hutchinson and both he and Porter were disarmed in 1637. A few months later, they both signed the Portsmouth Compact and left Massachusetts for Aquidneck Island.

Sarah Odding (before 1612-1681) was born in Essex. Current research identifies Margaret as the daughter of William Oddyn, probably born in Essex, England. She came to New England as a young woman with her widowed mother, Margaret (b. abt. 1590), and Margaret’s second husband, John Porter. (1605-abt 1674). John appears to be about the same age as Margaret’s daughter Sarah.

Margaret, John, Sarah, and half sister, Hannah, arrived in Roxbury in 1630 with Winthrop’s fleet. John Porter was a signer of the Portsmouth Compact and became a wealthy and prominent landholder in Rhode Island.

John acquired a large tract of land on the western side of Narragansett Bay, later South Kingstown, Rhode Island, and left his aging wife behind in Portsmouth. The marriage ended in 1665. She sued for support and the Portsmouth government granted her suit, forcing John to sell part of his South Kingstown land.

But back to Phillip and Sarah.

Sarah already had two young children and would have been about seven months pregnant when she and Philip made their wintery journey from Boston to Aquidneck. Phillip was given 200 acres along the Portsmouth Path (now East Main Road) extending toward the Sakonnet River. Clearly literate, he became the first secretary/recorder of the colony and held a number of other offices, including town clerk, deputy, and council member for a number of years.




Sherman - as the name spelling was now changed - built a fine house in 1670 which still stands, though moved from its original location. During King Philip’s war in 1676, The Rhode Island General Assembly included Philip among a group of “judicious inhabitants” for advice during the crisis.

Sarah lived to be seventy two and Phillip to seventy seven years old. By the end of his life he had become a substantial landholder and prominent citizen, driven out of one British colony to establish a separate Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.

In the 1650s, Quaker missionaries arrived in Portsmouth, a community that had been colonized by Puritan dissidents. They found a warm welcome not given in any other part of New England.

Among those who joined the Society of Friends were the Shermans and Bordens.

Philip and Sarah’s youngest child, Philippa (1652-1731). married Benjamin Chase about 1672 and and moved to Freetown, Massachusetts. Their daughter, Philippa Ruth Chase (1679-1754), married Jacob Hathaway of the Freetown Hathaways and joined our Hathaway ancestor line.

The Earle Family

Captain Ralph Earle (1606-1678) married Joan Savage (1609-1780) in Bishops Stortford, Hertfordshire, England in 1631. Both had been baptized in the small village.

Ralph and Joan had four children before sailing from Exeter to Boston in 1634, and a fifth child after arrival in New England. Ralph was one of fifty nine inhabitants admitted as a freeman in Portsmouth in October 1638.

In early 1639, Ralph was among thirty one men who signed a Compact of Loyalty, split off from the Portsmouth settlers, and relocated to the southern end of the island where they established Newport. Farming dominated life in Portsmouth; Newport founders envisioned more commercial interests - a port with maritime trade and economic opportunities.

Ralph Earle was a man of consequential standing in the colony. He was a large landholder, holder of numerous offices, and chosen by town council to run an inn in 1647. He joined a troop of horse in 1667 and became their Captain.

Four of the five Ralph Earle-Joan Savage children are our grandparent ancestors:

• William Earle (abt 1634-1715), born in Roxbury, married Mary Walker (1636-1718) in 1654, joining two of Portsmouth’s founding families. By age 20, he was already buying and selling property. He was accepted as a freeman in Portsmouth in 1658 and moved the family to Dartmouth in 1670 where they had substantial land holdings. His will indicated he had slaves, one of whom he passed on to a daughter. William and Mary are buried in the Portsmouth Friends Churchyard. William and Mary’s second daughter, Mary Walker Earle (1654-1734), married John Borden in 1670 and became our 8th great-grandparents in the Borden line.
• Mary Earle (1631-1717) married William Corey (1634-1682) in 1657 in Portsmouth and settled in Tiverton in about 1665; 10 children; died age 86. Daughter Mary Corey (1662-1743) married Thomas Cooke (1667-1726) about 1696, becoming 8th great-grandparents of our Cooke line.
• Martha Earle (1633-1696) married William Wood (1634-1696) in 1667 in Portsmouth and relocated to Dartmouth in 1686; 10 children, died age 63. They are 10th great grandparents in out Wood family line. 
• Sarah Earle (1640-1690), one of the strangest stories in our family lines, was born in Portsmouth and married Thomas Cornell (1627-1673) in 1668 in Portsmouth.

Sarah and Thomas lived in the household of his widowed mother, Rebecca Briggs Cornell. On February 8, 1673, Rebecca was found dead and badly burned near the fireplace in her room. At first her death appeared to be an accident, but accusations of murder arose and Thomas became a suspect. The trial was held in the White Horse Tavern in Newport. Evidence was flimsy, circumstantial, and witnesses spoke of seeing apparitions, but Thomas was nevertheless found guilty and hanged on May 23, 1673 on a slight hill not far from the tavern

Sarah was pregnant with her third child in 1673 when Thomas was accused and executed. The child, Innocent (1673-1720), was named because Sarah, present in the home at the time of the incident, believed her husband to be innocent.

The murder was the subject of Elaine Forman Crane’s book, Killed Strangely: The Death of Rebecca Cornell.

Sarah remarried four years later to David Lake and settled into his hundred-acre farm in Tiverton. She was 44 years old at the birth of her last child and died around the same time, possibly related to the birth.

In another twist, Innocent married Richard Borden and they were fourth great-grandparents to Lizzie Borden, another famous Fall River patricide. They are our 8th great-grandparents

Pedigree Collapse

That four children of Ralph and Joan Earle became our direct ancestors might seem extraordinary until you consider how their choices were narrowed.

Mathematically, ten generations of this paternal line would have 512 direct ancestors. In a small, isolated community some of those positions are occupied by the same people more than once as happened with our Earle family. Aquidneck was particularly conducive to this phenomenon known as pedigree collapse.

For decades, the social world of the Aquidneck children consisted of neighboring families geographically contained on an island. Religion narrowed the choices even further once the Quaker religion was introduced.

When population and land pressures entered the picture, succeeding generations were pushed to the mainland, but still didn’t scatter far.

The same names keep appearing over and over: Earle, Borden, Sherman, Cornell Cook, Walker, Wood, Chase, Hathaway and others. These were not usually close relative marriages. More often, the common ancestor was several generations back. The tree branches keep separating, crossing, and growing back together again.

The Three Gilded Portraits: Rediscovering the Eastwood Siblings

Sometimes a mystery waits quietly for years before enough pieces come together to suggest an answer.

While reviewing old family research and photos, I came across a digital copy of a small, gilded portrait photo sent to me about fifteen years ago. The woman in the photograph was believed to be Ellen Eastwood, my second great-grandmother.

Ellen Eastwood as a young woman

The image appeared to be an ambrotype, an early photographic process popular from the mid-1850s into the early 1860s in which the image is mounted on glass in a protective cover. The photograph was preserved in an ornate gold-colored mat and frame typical of the period. 

The young woman had center-parted hair, long side curls, a broad white collar, fitted front-buttoned bodice, and full sleeves narrowing at the wrists. Based on the clothing, hairstyle, photographic process, and case design, the portrait was probably made sometime between about 1855 and 1862.

The woman appeared to be in her late teens or early twenties. Ellen Eastwood was born in 1837; she would have been nineteen in 1855 and twenty six in 1862. And so, the apparent age of the sitter fits Ellen quite well. 

We also had a known photograph of Ellen taken around 1888-1895 in Fall River. Although comparing faces in photographs taken decades apart cannot establish an identification, several features appeared reasonably consistent: the general shape of the face, the eyes, the spacing between the eyes, the nose, and the set of the mouth. Aging, expression, lighting, photographic methods, and the angle of the head make such comparisons difficult, so this resemblance should be treated as supporting evidence rather than proof.

Ellen Eastwood (1837-1900)
Gay's Studio, Fall River

Still, the possibility that the young woman was Ellen seemed convincing—especially once two companion portraits came to light.

Two Young Men in Matching Frames

Another portrait in the same digital photo group sent by a relative was also an ambrotype - a young man wearing a dark, broad-lapeled waistcoat, a high collared white shirt, and an unusually large bow tie. He appeared to be in his early twenties. His hair, clothing, and the style of the photograph suggested approximately the same period as the woman’s portrait.

Eastwood Eastwood as a young man

The two photographs were also nearly the same size and were mounted in similarly ornate gilded mats. That suggested they may have been commissioned at about the same time, perhaps by members of the same family.

The young man’s identity was unknown, but Ellen had two brothers who were living in or near Fall River during this period: Benjamin Eastwood, born in 1826, and Eastwood Eastwood, born in 1834.

Of these options, the younger brother, Eastwood Eastwood, 24 years old when he arrived from England, would be the more likely candidate. 

At this point, I recalled I had a small gold framed portrait in glass of an unidentified young man dressed in clothing from the same period somewhere in my office. 

Benjamin Simpson Eastwood as a young man

This third ambrotype showed another young man, dressed in much the same fashion. He wore a dark coat, white shirt, and bow tie, but he had a small beard beneath his chin and appeared older than the clean-shaven man in the first portrait. The lines around his eyes gave him a more mature appearance.

We now had a group of three unidentified ambrotypes:

• one young woman
• one younger-looking, clean-shaven man
• and one somewhat older man with a chin beard

All three photographs came down through the same family. They were similar in size, format, and presentation, and all appeared to date from the late 1850s or very early 1860s. The Eastwood family had three adult children in Massachusetts at precisely that time: Benjamin, Eastwood, and Ellen.

The most plausible interpretation is that the portraits show the three Eastwood siblings. If so, the younger, clean-shaven man would probably be Eastwood Eastwood, born in 1834, while the older man with the chin beard would be Benjamin Eastwood, born in 1826.

This identification cannot be proven from facial appearance alone. The case rests on the combined circumstances: family provenance, matching photographic formats, compatible dates, the apparent ages of the sitters, and the fact that the Eastwood family consisted of two adult sons and one adult daughter living in Massachusetts.

John Eastwood and Jane Simpson of Burnley, Lancashire, England

3rd great-grandfather John Eastwood and great-grandmother Jane Simpson were born, raised, married, and had children in Burnley, civil parish of Clitheroe, county of Lancashire, England. Patty and I passed 35 miles to the north when we walked through Kirkby Stephen on the Coast to Coast trail. Little did we know.

John Eastwood, 1798-1864

The surname Eastwood is Anglo-Saxon in origin and associated particularly with Lancashire and other parts of neighboring England. It originally described someone who lived near or came from an “east wood.”

John Eastwood, born September 12, 1798, Burnley, Lancashire, was the son of John Eastwood (1767-1838) and Anne Salmon (1769-1848), both from Burnley. Jane was christened December 25, 1796 in Pediham, about three miles west of Burnley. Her parents were Benjamin Simpson and Mary Ann Schofield.

John married Jane Simpson on January 22, 1819, at St. James Church in nearby Haslingdon, Lancashire.

The family lived in the Burnley area, about 20 miles north of Manchester and a center of textile printing in the 19th century. Burnley had been a market town since medieval times, holding a market for 700 years.

The town has survived ups and downs, but in 2013 Burnley was given an Enterprising Britain award from the UK Government for being the 'Most Enterprising Area in the UK’. From a thriving medieval market and cotton mill town, Burnley has morphed into a digital town, named one of England’s top tech towns by Financial Times.

In the 1851 census, John, 53, and Jane, 55, were living in Burnley with head-of-household Thomas, 31, Eastwood, 16, Ellen, 10, and Benjamin 4. This young Benjamin was perhaps a son of Thomas.

Crossing the Atlantic

John and Jane Eastwood and their nineteen year-old daughter, Ellen, sailed from Liverpool aboard the packet ship Chatsworth, captained by J. Gorham, and arrived at Boston on December 22,1855, after a winter Atlantic crossing of approximately six weeks. The Chatsworth was a three-masted, square-rigged vessel that regularly sailed the trans-Atlantic route carrying mail “packets,” cargo, and passengers who slept in steerage.

Although a few tiny cabins might be available for wealthy passengers, poorer immigrants were in crowded, dark, damp, foul smelling steerage. Rats and disease were common problems.

From the October, 15, 1851 New York Daily: 

“Each passenger from Liverpool receives weekly 5 lbs. of oatmeal, 2 1/2 lbs. biscuit, 1 lb. flour, 2 lbs. rice, 1/2 lb. sugar, 1/2 lb. molasses, and 2 ounces of tea. He is obliged to cook it the best way he can in a cook shop 12 feet by 6! This is the cause of so many quarrels and many a poor woman with her children can get but one meal done, and sometimes they get nothing warm for days and nights when a gale of wind is blowing and the sea is mountains high and breaking over the ship in all directions.

 

An Artisan Master Block Printer

John was a master calico block printer, a skilled textile worker who stamped colored patterns onto cotton cloth by hand using carved wooden blocks and wooden mallets. As an artisan with highly specialized knowledge, John would have been a sought after worker in Fall River, a major hub of the textile industry in the 19th century. Color block printing launched the city’s calico printing industry in the 1820s before mechanized cylinder printing largely replaced it. 

At a sailing age of 57, was he recruited by a Fall River textile mill, or did he have a reason to leave England? One son was already here, but they must have left behind other family.

Our Borden family drove the rise of Fall River to be a premier 19th-century cotton-textile manufacturing center of the world. John possibly worked for the American Print Works, a giant textile printing giant along the Fall River waterfront founded by Holden Borden in 1835. He brought highly specialized knowledge of dye mixing and alignment chemistry that American mills desperately needed. At present, though, we have no employment record linking John directly to a company.

Living and working in Fall River during the mid-1800s placed John in the midst of a massive industrial shift. Manual block printing was highly respected but slow. As automated copper-cylinder machines took over the mills to churn out thousands of yards of fabric a day, hand-block printers like Eastwood either transitioned into color mixing, became roller-engravers, or were kept on exclusively for high-end, short-run luxury fabrics that machines could not replicate.

In 1867, three years after John’s death, a disastrous fire destroyed much of the American Print Works. The original 1835 manufacturing complex completely burned down, causing heavy uninsured financial losses that ultimately contributed to the firm's failure and reorganization into the American Printing Company in 1880.

Life in Fall River

By 1860, John, 62, Jane, 65, Eastwood, 25, Eastwood’s wife, Sarah, and the young couple’s three year-old daughter, Sarah, were living in the same household along the southwestern waterfront district of Fall River where dense worker housing and tenements were rapidly constructed to support the manufacturing boon in the city. Their personal estate was valued at just $50. They had been poor in England, and remained poor in America.

Jane died December 27, 1860, age 65, with cause of death listed as chronic diarrhea for 7 years. John died a little more than three years later on  February 26, 1864; age 66, cause of death apoplexy.

Even with the short span they were in America, their decision to emigrate changed the future of the family.

The Eastwood Children

All of the couple’s children were born in Burnley, England. We know a son Thomas was born in 1820, but there are gaps in birth years in which other children may have been born. Only 19 year-old Ellen accompanied the parents across the Atlantic, but Benjamin preceded them and Eastwood came on his own later.

Benjamin Eastwood, 1826-1899

Benjamin Simpson Eastwood was born in Burnley on October 1, 1826. He was the oldest of the three siblings we believe may be represented in the gilded photographs.

In 1848, at the age of twenty two, Benjamin married Ann Nicholson in London. Ann, a thirty-six-year-old widow, was fourteen years his senior and had four children from her previous marriage. She and Benjamin had three more children together, Benjamin Simpson Eastwood, Jr., and twins Julia and James Sterling. 

Ann died in Brompton, Kent, in 1852, only three months after giving birth to the twins, leaving Benjamin a widower with a young son, infant twins, and four stepchildren. Within the four years since his marriage, Benjamin had become a father or stepfather to seven children, and now a widower.

Six months after Ann’s death, Benjamin left London aboard the American Eagle. Traveling with him were his three year-old son and his three stepdaughters, Elizabeth, 15, Emily, 13, and Mary Ann, 11. They arrived at the port of New York on June 13, 1853. The ship’s manifest lists his profession as clergyman.

Ann’s oldest son, already adult, remained in England. The infant twins were not on the ship’s manifest, but were nevertheless with the family in 1855 when they were recorded in the Massachusetts state census. How they got across the Atlantic is another mystery.

Within two months of his arrival, Benjamin married Lucretia Miner (1829-1922) in Dennis, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod. He ministered in the area as a Methodist circuit rider. Benjamin and Lucretia had two daughters: Carrie, who died in infancy, and Nellie.

During his years on Cape Cod, Benjamin  became interested in the local agriculture and used his observations to write and publish The Cranberry and Its Culture, 1856, regarded as the first book on the commercial cultivation of cranberries. This young man must have had indefatigable energy.

By 1860, Benjamin and his family had moved to Williamsburg, a hill town in the Berkshire foothills of western Massachusetts. As the area had only Congregational churches at the time, Benjamin continued to be a Methodist circuit rider, spending much of his time appealing to industrial workers in Haydenville. 

They subsequently moved to Connecticut, where Benjamin attended the Berkeley School of Divinity in Middletown. Founded in 1854, Berkeley was an Episcopal seminary that later became associated with Yale. Benjamin’s ordination in the Episcopal church in 1863 marked an important transition from Methodist circuit rider. 

Benjamin served as the rector at Trinity Episcopal Church in Torrington, Connecticut from 1869-1872. During these years his 18 year-old daughter, Julia, died with tuberculosis.

In 1872, Benjamin became rector of the newly organized Church of the Good Shepherd in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. He remained associated with the parish for approximately twenty-five years and was named rector emeritus in 1898.

Benjamin died in 1899 in Pawtucket of a cerebral hemorrhage. His death notice described him as one of the best-known Episcopal clergymen in New England.

His will directed his burial by "plain and simple with no display whatever." He elected to be buried in the High Street Cemetery in Haydenville where he served as a Methodist circuit rider in his younger years. Named on his memorial are his English wife, Ann and second wife, Lucretia, who lived another twenty three years. 

His life had taken him from industrial Lancashire to London, Cape Cod, western Massachusetts, Connecticut, and a prestigious rectorship in the Episcopal church. Along the way he cared for a large and complicated family, suffered the loss of a wife and two children, and wrote a pioneering book on cranberry cultivation.

Eastwood Eastwood, 1834-1900

Eastwood was born in Burnley, Lancashire in 1834. In England, Eastwood worked in the metal trades as a tinner and brazier.  

Eastwood married Jane Elliott in Lancashire in 1856, and the following year sailed for Boston  aboard the ship R. Robinson from Liverpool. Jane remained behind, either pregnant or with the new infant, and joined him later.

By 1860, Eastwood and Jane were in Fall River with their three year-old daughter, Sarah. Eastwood was still working as a tinner and brazier. The young family was living in his parents’ household, together with Ellen. 

Ellen married and left to set up her own household and his mother Jane died, both in 1860. Jane was buried in Oak Grove Cemetery in Fall River. 

Eastwood's father, John, moved to Central Falls, Rhode Island, where Eastwood had moved to find work as a tinsmith at Robert Plews, a large company with a global market that made patented tin cylinders. He died within four years and was buried in Central Falls.

Eastwood's wife, Jane, died in 1870 at age 42 with rectal cancer, leaving Eastman a widower with a thirteen year-old daughter, Sarah.

The following year, Eastwood married the boss’s daughter, Sarah Gosling Rowse, a widow who also had  a young daughter, Maud. Together, they had another child, Thomas, who died in infancy. Eastwood's daughter, also Sarah, from his first wife, died in Central Falls at age 26 with tuberculosis. Eastwood's father-in-law, a prominent manufacturer, took Eastman into business as a partner and Eastman eventually became president of the company. 

Politically active, Eastman served on the town council, as an alderman, in the Rhode Island General Assembly (1893-1895) as a Republican, and eventually as mayor of Central Falls, Rhode Island. He was a thirty second degree Mason, and belonged to a number of secret societies.

Eastwood Eastwood
From the Internet

Unfortunately, Eastwood was diabetic. Soon after his re-election as Mayor, surgery on a corn  resulted in gangrene and blood poisoning. He died at home in 1900, age 66.  His death was noted in many newspapers, making headlines in the Providence Journal:

 "Words of sorrow are extended on every hand, for the Central Falls mayor had won a strong place in all the hearts of its people. While a Republican in politics, he was not the offensive kind. He would do a kind act in his official capacity for anybody without regard to politics, and it was common talk on the streets that his popularity was such that there was no man who could defeat him for the office."

Eastwood is buried in Moshassuck Cemetery in Central Falls.

Ellen Eastwood, 1837-1900

Our second great-grandmother Ellen Eastwood was born in Burnley, Lancashire, England, and married into the Fall River Borden family in 1860, albeit not the wealthy side.

Stephen Bailey Borden was the eldest son of a laborer, one of nine children. As a young man, he worked as a dyer in the fabric mills and later as a machinist. Ellen and Stephen married in a Providence church on June 26, 1826.

The following year, Stephen went to serve in the Massachusetts Third Infantry, a nine-month regiment that saw minimal fighting. Chronology suggests Ellen became pregnant just before he left to serve duty, and their first child was born soon after his return.

Stephen and Ellen had three daughters, Amy, Nettie, and our great-grandmother, Martha Hathaway Borden. They bought a home at 195 Barnaby Street in Fall River in 1885. Stephen died in 1895, and Ellen died five years later, age 62, with pneumonia. They are buried in Oak Grove Cemetery in Fall River.

Three siblings in the gilded portraits, all likely as talented as the other, but circumstances of the times allowed two to grow and prosper, while the third followed the traditional cultural role of women.

What the Photographs May Tell Us

The gilded ambrotypes do not carry written names, and no facial comparison can supply certainty without an inscription. Nevertheless, the evidence forms a persuasive pattern. The three images are of approximately the same period and are presented in similar ornate frames. 

They descended through the same family. The apparent ages of the sitters correspond reasonably well with Ellen, Eastwood, and Benjamin in the late 1850s. 

The young woman resembles the later identified portrait of Ellen, and the two men appear to differ in age by about the amount expected between the brothers.

Perhaps most importantly, the three photographs make sense as a family group. John and Jane Eastwood had three adult children who settled in New England: two sons and one daughter. Here we have three similar portraits from that generation and that period: two men and one woman.

After spending so many years unidentified, these three faces may finally have names. They are not simply anonymous people in ornate gold frames. They may be - I daresay probably are -Ellen, Eastwood, and Benjamin—the children of John Eastwood and Jane Simpson, who left the textile districts of Lancashire and began again in New England. They are our only paternal ancestors who did not emigrate to America in the 1600s.