Category Archives: genealogy

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From Plow Blades and Horseshoes to Automobiles: A Metal-working Skill Lived On

Earlier this year I was researching Hingham’s Irish immigrant neighborhood in preparation for the launch of a Hingham walking tour tied to the South Shore Irish Heritage Trail.   As described in Not All Is Changed: A Life History of Hingham (1993, Hingham Historical Commission), “by the 1870s, Crowe’s Lane, Hersey near Elm Street, upper Elm, Emerald Street, and Bates Court, were an Irish village . . . .”  I spent time reviewing pages about these streets in the Loring Notebooks in our Society archives. These “notebooks” actually are binders filled with historic details about Hingham streets and properties, assembled by local historian Julian Loring (1899-1978).  The description of a property at the corner of Lafayette and Elm Streets — in the heart of the “Irish village” intrigued me.  Daniel Hickey, a blacksmith, and his family, lived on this corner from late 1889 until around 1910. I did some additional digging and felt rewarded for the effort:  the multi-generational Hickey family story that emerged paints a vivid picture of life in Hingham, and America, in the late 19th and early 20th century.

Daniel Hickey was born in Hingham to Irish immigrant parents. And it was with his father John that a metal-working family tradition began.

Irish immigrant John Hickey, from Kilkenny, met Bridgett Hackett, of County Cork, on Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia. They arrived in Boston in 1832 and married there that November.  They had settled in Hingham sometime before 1835 when their first daughter, Mary, was born. John described himself as a laborer on his 1845 naturalization form but would soon develop far more specialized skills.

Howard Foundry at Hingham Harbor, 1896. Kimball Family Photo Collection, Hingham Historical Society.

The Hickey genealogy in the 1893 History of the Town of Hingham tells us that John and Bridgett found a place to live on North Street near the harbor. Successive federal and state census records tell us that by 1850, John was employed as an “iron melter,” a “furnace man,” then an “iron screener” and, by 1860, a “moulder.”  Although no surviving record could be found, almost certainly John was working at the Howard Foundry at Hingham Harbor.

John and Bridgett’s 9 children—5 daughters and 4 sons–were born in Hingham. (John died in 1866 and his wife Bridget in 1873.) Three of their four sons–James, born in Hingham in 1839; Thomas, born in 1841; and Daniel, born in 1851–followed their dad into hot metal work.

Their eldest son James became an iron screener and moulder as a teenager (likely joining his dad at the local foundry) and then took his trade into the Civil War, where he served in the 4th Regiment of the Massachusetts Cavalry—perhaps making cannon balls as well as horseshoes for his unit. After the war James married and moved to Canada.

Second son Thomas, described as a blacksmith when he joined the 1st Cavalry in 1861, later served in the 4thCavalry. His 4 plus years of service were eventful and admirable as related in The Town of Hingham the Late Civil War (1876, F. Burr and G. Lincoln.) He mustered out at the war’s end in 1865 as a second lieutenant. James and Thomas were among the 24 young men from Hingham who were in cavalry service during the Civil War.

Burr-Brown Tassel Factory, Fearing Road, Hingham, c. 1865. Hingham Historical Society

Thomas returned to the family’s Hingham home on North Street, where in 1865, he (aged 23) and 4 younger siblings were living with their parents. His 21-year-old sister Ellen worked at the nearby Burr, Brown Tassel Factory, a popular employer for young women from Irish immigrant families, and John Jr., 19, was a periodical dealer, perhaps selling reading material to commuters from the then-downtown train station. Thomas married in 1866. By 1879, records show that Thomas had a 2-man blacksmith business in Hingham. It is quite possible that the second blacksmith at Thomas’ shop was younger brother Daniel, who would have been in his 20’s by that time. By 1880, Thomas and his wife Mary Jane had a home on Cottage Street and three young sons. They moved to Quincy in 1883.

Daniel stayed in Hingham. In 1876, he married Margaret Hanley of East Weymouth, whose parents, John Hanley and Margaret Keane, were both Irish immigrants. John Hanley, a farmer, was born in Tipperary County. Perhaps Margaret met Daniel Hickey when he provided blacksmith services for her dad’s farm animals. After they married and started a family, the couple first lived on Ship Street. By 1892, Daniel and Margaret had 5 children — 3 sons and 2 daughters.

Detail from “A Bird’s Eye View of Hingham,” map published by A. F. Poole, Brockton, Mass. (1885). Hingham Historical Society

In November 1889, Daniel and his family moved to the corner of Elm and Lafayette, where the property included a barn suitable for horseshoeing. This excerpt from an 1885 illustrated map of Hingham shows the corner as it likely looked when Daniel bought the property in 1889, before the surrounding Maple Street neighborhood was developed, around 1900. Daniel also had a business location for his blacksmith business within walking distance, at 23 North Street. Daniel bought the corner property at 49 Elm Street from Alfred Howard, a carpenter and cabinetmaker, who may have built the home (c.1860) which still stands at this address. Alfred was the son of a blacksmith, Edmund Howard. Daniel had likely known the Howard family for years, as it was Alfred’s uncle, Charles Howard, inventor of the Howard Plow, who had started the Howard Foundry at Hingham Harbor.

A horse-drawn open wagon passes the Cushing House on North Street c. 1896. Kimball Family Photo Collection, Hingham Historical Society

The late 19th century was a busy time for livery stables and the blacksmith trade as horse and buggy was a primary means of transportation.  In the 1860 census there were 14 blacksmiths doing business in town, as related in a fascinating program on the history of transportation in Hingham researched and presented by archivist Bob Malme (and now available to view on the Society’s YouTube channel.

But times were about to change. The first automobile in Hingham, arriving in 1902 according to Not All Is Changed, was owned by Francis Willard Brewer (1846-1907), an affluent local “gentleman farmer.” By 1912 Hingham had acquired its first motor-powered fire engine, replacing one team of horses. That year, with their family now grown and local blacksmithing businesses gradually being replaced by auto repair shops, Daniel and Margaret downsized to a home at 37 Elm Street. But the family interest in horses, and in metal work, continued with their sons Daniel Jr. and Herbert.

Daniel Hickey, Jr., born in Hingham in 1883, and later living in Boston, was, at age 34, a riding instructor, according to his WWI draft registration.  He worked for a time at Boston’s Park Riding School, which was operated by a J. B. Ferry.  Daniel was also described as an “automobile driver”—which suggests he worked as a chauffeur in early automobiles, in addition to teaching students to ride horses.

Hudson Motors dealership, Summer Street, Hingham, 1926. Kimball Family Photo Collection, Hingham Historical Society

Indicative of the changing times, Daniel’s oldest son Herbert, born in 1878, moved to Detroit sometime after 1910, and had a long career in the fast-growing auto industry. For a time, he was an inspector at the Hudson Motor Car Company, which had an early dealership on Summer Street at Hingham Harbor. Hudson Motor Company, founded in 1909, merged in 1954 to become American Motors Corporation.  It was fascinating to learn how the Hickey family’s livelihood evolved with changes in transportation, while the skills in metal work continued through the generations.

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Irish in Hingham: Hannah and her Brothers

From the 1880s through about 1920, Irish immigration to America was led by women. Fleeing poverty and lack of opportunity in their native land, they came alone or with a friend or cousin. They took jobs as domestic servants or mill workers, managing to send a bit of money home, which enabled other family members to follow. In Hingham, we see this unique immigration pattern played out in the life of Hannah Ferris. Whether or not she paid her brothers’ passage, she and her husband, Henry Trowbridge took them in when they came.

Hannah Ferris Trowbridge (1856-1934)

Hannah (Ferris) Trowbridge and Henry Trowbridge, circa 1885

She came, Hannah Ferris, a young woman, out of the impoverished west of Ireland early in the 1880s. She came, first, to the industrial town in central Massachusetts where she found work as a servant. In the summer of 1884, she came to Hingham, the bride of Henry Trowbridge, farmer, butcher, shop owner, and Civil War vet. He was more than a dozen years her senior, a recent widower, with no children.

How Henry and Hannah met is unknown. There were a number of Irish families in town. Henry’s cousin had a live-in Irish servant as did his several of his neighbors. Did one of them introduce the couple? Someone had to because she lived in Worcester, he lived in Hingham, and because more than miles separated them. She was a domestic servant; he was a business owner. She was Catholic; he held a pew in the Old Ship.

Raymond Trowbridge (1896-1962), son of Henry and Hannah, as a child. Raymond was a WWI and WWII Navy vet. His father was a Civil War Naval Vet.

They married in the Catholic church in Worcester in July 1884 and returned to Hingham where she moved into his house on the corner of Union and Pleasant streets. They had five children. Three of them died young. Their first born, Isabel, died of croup at “2 years, 2 months, 2 days.” Frances died of meningitis at 15 months, and they lost Henry Jr. to tuberculosis at 14. The Catholic cemetery was still new when they buried their young ones.

Henry was more than busy with work, farming, and family, but in 1982, he undertook a new project. He built three new houses on his Pleasant/Union Street property:  a new one for his family and two others that came in handy when his relatives needed them and when Hannah’s brothers started coming to town.

* * * *

Hannah Ferris was the second of twelve children born in a small cottage in rural Killarney. Eight of her siblings immigrated into Massachusetts. Her younger sister Kate went to Worcester where she married, died and was buried in an unmarked grave with her six-month old son. Her seven brothers started their new lives in Boston or Worcester and have stories of their own, several marred by tragedy. The brothers were all in Hingham at some time, and many of their names are inked into St. Paul’s Church records as Godfather to one of Hannah’s children. Of the seven brothers, Morgan, Robert and Daniel lived in Hingham.

Morgan Ferris, my great-grandfather (1859-1938)

The Morgan Ferris family, School Street, 1921. Front, from left: Morgan Ferris, Oliver Tower, Oliver Ferris, Annie Tower, Annie (Tower) Ferris. Back, from left: Kathryn Ferris, Marjorie Ferris, Oliver Ferris, Amy (Litchfield) Ferris, Richard Ferris, Gordon Ferris.

Morgan Ferris came to Boston in about 1884 when he was in his twenties and soon followed Hannah to Hingham. He was a skilled carpenter and set up a business. Over the years, he built many houses on the South Shore. In 1892, he married Annie Tower, daughter of Oliver and Anne Tower of School Street. A minister of the First Baptist Church performed the ceremony in her family home; the record shows she was 19 and he was 29. (He was actually 33.)  They bought a house on School Street at the intersection of Spring Street and had three children, Oliver, Kathyrn, and Gordon. All three children attended Hingham schools, married, and stayed in town. Oliver married Amy Litchfield, Katheryn, Bob McKenzie, and Gordon, Evelyn Staples. They, in turn, had children; many of them made Hingham their home.

Morgan died in 1938 at age 78. There are a few stories that came down the years; most are about his story-telling prowess and his big belly laugh. One is about his love of sports, another says that when he died, the rosary beads he brought with him from Ireland were found in his bureau drawer.

Robert Ferris (1868-1957)

In November 1892, twenty-three-year-old Robert Ferris married Irish-born Margaret McCarthy, a laundress, in Boston. At the time, he was living in Hingham with Henry and Hannah and, more than likely, working on building their new houses. He was a carpenter like several of the brothers, but he wanted something else and became a Boston police officer. He and his family moved closer to the city, and he returned the Union Street house to Hannah in a legal transaction. He began his career patrolling the South Boston waterfront. The only picture I have of him accompanies an article in The Boston Globe in 1901 which recognizes him for saving a nine-year old boy from drowning.  He and Margaret had three children and lived relatively long lives.

Daniel Ferris (b. 1874)

Daniel and Gertrude Ferris’ children, Frances and John, c. 1902.

In 1898, Daniel was a U.S. Marine stationed in Boston, but his home was with Henry and Hannah. In 1899, he married their next-door neighbor, Gertrude Stephenson, daughter of Ezra and Clara of Pleasant Street. Daniel was 23 and she was 20. According to the Hingham Journal, the marriage “took place at St. Paul’s parsonage” on a Wednesday night. After their marriage, the couple lived with her family. Their daughter Francis was born in 1900 and son John in 1901.  Things did not go well, however. Daniel was arrested for theft, court martialed and discharged from the service. Soon after, he left Hingham. Gertrude took a job as shoemaker and lived with her parents before eventually moving to Bank Street.

Daniel disappeared from the record until  September 12, 1918, when he completed a WWI draft registration card. On that day, he was a logger living in a camp in Washington state. In addition to the birthdate, we know he is “our” Daniel Ferris, because he reported his nearest relative to be Robert Ferris, Police Headquarters, Boston, Mass.

Daniel’s problems and subsequent move may have hit Hannah hard – he was her youngest. brother When she was 18, she had walked to a civil registration office in Ireland to report his birth: “Informant, Hannah Ferris, present at birth.”

* * * *

Hannah’s life was full and her door, it seems, was always open. She kept in touch with her brothers and their children. She was Godmother to many and responded when they needed help. When her brother Eugene’s wife died of a fall at their home in Malden, her body was brought to Hingham and buried in Hannah and Henry’s plot in St. Paul’s cemetery.

Henry died in 1930 at 87, “one of the oldest GAR men in the state.”  When Hannah died four years later at 78, she left a detailed will. To her son Raymond she left $1,000, to her daughter Mabel went her house worth $4,100, and to St. Vincent DePaul, a Catholic charity committed to serving the poor and suffering, her entire savings of $3,269.93.

Hannah, Henry and four of their five children are buried in St. Paul’s Cemetery. Morgan and his family are buried in the Hingham Centre Cemetery.

The Trowbridge Ferris graves. Four of Henry and Hannah’s five children and Hannah’s sister-in-law, Emma, are buried here. Henry and Hannah’s names are on the other side.

 

Notes

  1. There are a number of good sources on the subject of Irish female immigration. “The Irish Bridget: Irish Immigrant Women in Domestic Service in America, 1840-1930 written by Margaret Lynch-Brennan, is a good one. N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2009.
  2. The National Women’s History Museum website says: “Strong female networks sustained the immigration flow of Irish women, even during times of economic depression … Irish women were the only immigrant group to establish immigration chains … Whereas other ethnic groups sent their sons to America, Ireland sent its daughters.” Raising a glass to Irish women, March14, 2017,
  3. On dates, names and ages: Hannah and Morgan consistently shaved four or five years off their ages on official documents. Their other siblings were only marginally more accurate. Daniel alternately used Donald as his first name.
  4. On quotations in this post: “2 years, 2 months, 2 days”: Isabel Trowbridge death notice, Hingham Journal, Nov. 13, 1887; “took place at St. Paul’s parsonage”: Hingham Journal, June 1899; “one of the oldest GAR men in the state”: Henry Trowbridge obituary, Daily Boston Globe, May 7, 1930.
  5. Eugene’s wife, Emma Ferris, 64, died in a fall from the second-story piazza of her Malden home. “She was cleaning rugs when the railing broke.” The Boston Globe, Sept. 1, 1923.

 

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Marion Teague, Hingham History Maker

Hingham History Makers Awards Ceremony, May 14, 2021. Photo courtesy of Veronica Hodges

Marion L. Teague, Hingham History Maker

On Friday, May 14, 2021, the Hingham Historical Society awarded Marion Teague the designation “Hingham History Maker,” to honor her pioneering role in researching and preserving the history of Black and Indigenous people in Hingham.  At a necessarily small (owing to COVID restrictions) ceremony at Harbor House in Hingham, State Rep. Joan Meschino presented a citation from the Massachusetts House and Senate to 98-year old Marion and congratulated her on a “life well-lived” in the Town of Hingham.  Paula Bagger, President of the Society, spoke about Marion’s eventful life and work and presented a framed “History Maker” award.  Paula’s remarks may be read here.  Additional tributes to Marion were offered by Elizabeth Dings, on behalf of the Hingham Historical Commission; Joseph Collymore, of Harbor Media and also a longtime family friend; the Rev. Geoffrey Dana Hicks of Hingham’s First Baptist Church; and Marian’s daughter, Joyce Barber.  Katie Sutton attended as a representative of the Hingham Unity Council and Marian’s family and friends filled out the highly appreciative audience.

Tuttleville — detail from 19th c. Plymouth County Atlas

Marion is being celebrated for the pioneering role she has played in helping to preserve the history of Tuttleville, a two hundred year old Black neighborhood around Ward and High Streets in Hingham, and its families, some of whom have lived in Tuttleville throughout those two centuries. The eponymous James Tuttle (1780-1834), was the first Tuttle in Hingham, and he settled in the Ward Street/High Street area around the turn of the 19th century.  He was preceded as a landowner in the area, however, by members of a Black family named Humphrey; on November 29, 1801, James Tuttle and Rebecca Humphrey (1797-1843), a daughter of that family, were married by the Rev. Nicholas B. Whitney at Hingham’s Second Parish.

Marriage Record, James Tuttle and Rebecca Humphrey

Believed to be John Tuttle and his half-sister Betsy. Photo in collection of Hingham Historical Society

James and Rebecca’s son, John Tuttle (1810-1886), described in the federal census as a farmer, was an important member of this growing Black community, as was his half-brother, James King Tuttle (1834-1906), whose mother was James Tuttle’s second wife, Margaret Quacum Leonard (1796-1806).  James King Tuttle was a shoemaker; many of the Tuttles worked in the shoe factories then operating in Weymouth.  John and James King Tuttle were instrumental in the founding of a village church, the Free Christian Mission, in 1876.

Lewis Legare Simpson as a member of the GAR

James King Tuttle married Henrietta Simpson (1840-1921) on November 13, 1856, thus joining the Tuttle family to the large (Henrietta had 15 siblings!) Simpson family, whose heritage was Black and Native American (the Chappaquiddick tribe). Henrietta’s brother, Lewis Legare Simpson (1843-1918), enlisted in the Massachusetts 54th volunteer infantry, the first Black fighting regiment in the Civil War.

Marion’s grandfather, Walter Thomas Tuttle (1859-1931), was a son of James King Tuttle and Henrietta Simpson.  Also employed in shoe manufacturing, he married Laura Vickers (1869-1931), from Worcester County.  Laura’s heritage was also Indigenous; she was a member of the Nipmuc nation.  Their daughter Mabel, who married Herbert Lindsay, was Marion’s mother.

 

 

 

Walter Thomas Tuttle. Photo courtesy of Joyce Barber.
Laura Vickers Tuttle. Photo courtesy of Joyce Barber

So, once again, thank you, Marion Laura Lindsay Teague, and we look forward to continuing to discuss Hingham history with you for a long time!

Generations of Tuttle-Simpson women. Photo courtesy of Veronica Hodges

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Charlotte Gardner Briggs: an Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times

Charlotte Briggs, c. 1871

When Charlotte Briggs died in 1940 in her 99th year, she was “reported to be Hingham’s oldest resident.”  According to her descendants she had another claim to fame: when she was young, she shook hands with Abraham Lincoln. She left no written account of this, or of any other matter, but it is the story she told her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Charlotte, my great-great grandmother, was born 179 years ago, in May 1842, to Hiram and Lucinda Bailey Gardner. Hiram was a widower with four children when he married Lucinda. They proceeded to have nine more. From their farm in Hanson, Hiram supplied timbers and masts to shipbuilders on the North River. For some years, the farm was on the Boston to Plymouth stagecoach road and when the stage pulled in to change horses in Hiram’s barnyard, it was met with great excitement by Charlotte and her siblings.

The oldest of her mother’s nine children, Charlotte spent her days taking care of children, baking, gardening, and providing community service. She and her mother attended meetings at the Quaker Meeting House in Pembroke as Lucinda was drawn to the Quaker religion of her Bailey grandfather and uncles, who were preachers and abolitionists.

As a girl, Charlotte was a student at Hanover Academy, and stayed to teach for a while after she completed her education. During the Civil War, she lived at home with her parents and worked as a shoemaker. In 1871, at age 28, she married William Briggs, who was 16 years her senior, and moved to his nearby farm in Norwell.

Marriage and Motherhood

Charlotte and William Briggs in front of their house.

So began Charlotte’s busy life as a wife and soon-to-be mother of a girl and two boys. The large farm was a family business; in addition to growing crops, William cut ice from their pond and stored it in an ice house on the property until summer when they would sell it. The boys worked with their father, and daughter Frances helped her mother cook, clean and care for the gardens.

Charlotte’s child-raising years passed unrecorded, as did most women’s at a time when their work revolved around the home, family, farm and church. But Charlotte’s children grew, and married and two of them had children of their own.  It is here that we get a glimpse of Charlotte’s life and the farm her grandchildren remember so fondly, because her granddaughter, my great-aunt Ruth, did record her memories.

Ruth details “the garden lands, hayfields, pasturelands, and orchards … The upland pasture had grown into delicious high-bushed blueberries. In back of all this was acres of woodland. The barn housed four horses, two cows and pigs. Around the house to the side and back were pear trees, sour apple trees, grapevines, blue and raspberry currant and gooseberry bushes … In the fall, the cellar was full of vegetables, barrels of apples, and a closet full of preserves.”

These descriptions leave little doubt as to what Charlotte did with her days. Ruth also remembers “going to the Quaker Meeting House with my grandmother Charlotte.”

Thirty years in Hingham

4. William Briggs, Charlotte’s husband, with granddaughters Ruth and Amy Litchfield. 1897.

Hard work did nothing to shorten the lives of the Briggses. William lived to be 83, and Charlotte lived into her 99th year. When William died in 1910, Charlotte was only 68. Her children were married and had homes of their own. The farm was too big and too much work for her alone, so she sold it, living first with her son and then moving permanently to her daughter Frances’s house in Hingham.

To understand the Hingham household Charlotte moved into is to understand the shattered lives of widows, young and old, aging without a safety net, and the challenges facing women who lost their income with their husbands, because the family had been devasted by death.

At home were matriarch Sarah Trowbridge Litchfield, 75, who was mourning the deaths of her only two sons who died within two years of each other, her widowed daughters-in-law, Martha and Frances, as well as Frances’s daughters, Amy and Ruth, 18 and 16. It was a house of loss—the sons, the husbands, the father. It was a house of mourning. It was a house of women.

But, this house of women would provide the support they each needed. In the winter of 1916, they buried homeowner Sarah Litchfield, 80. The matriarch gone, the house stayed in the family, and the women supported themselves through dressmaking, real estate sales, and savings. They sent Amy to Skidmore School of Arts and Ruth to nursing school.

Charlotte was there for all these years and more. Her granddaughter Amy married in 1917, and her new husband Oliver Ferris moved into the house of women. They had three children, but not before a pandemic stuck and a world war was fought. Four generations were at home now. Granddaughter Ruth married and moved to the house next door and the corner of School and Pleasant streets became a family enclave.

In the ’20s, the introduction of radio made baseball fans of the whole family, and throughout the Great Depression of the ’30s, Charlotte’s gardening and farming skills helped keep the family fed. She was often seen crossing the lawn between her granddaughters’ houses, checking on this and that, stopping to pull a weed or talk to a child. She saw her grandchildren grow to be young adults.

Charlotte Gardner Briggs, 95; her granddaughter, Amy Litchfield Ferris, 42; her daughter, Frances Briggs Litchfield, 66. 1937. School St., Hingham.

In her 90s, she grew frail and her daughter and granddaughters cared for her at home until she died of old age “after a week’s illness.” Funeral services were held at her home on School Street, a minister of the Old Ship Church officiated, and she was buried with her husband in the Hanover Center Cemetery

Charlotte and Lincoln

Did Charlotte shake hands with Abraham Lincoln? He was in the Boston area in 1848; Charlotte was only six years old and would have been with her mother or relatives. Would the tall congressman have bent down to shake hands with a child? Maybe. He was in New England again in 1860; Charlotte was 18. Did she see him then, or did she travel out of state to hear him speak? Maybe. But I am quite sure that, at some time, Charlotte Gardner Briggs did shake hands with the man. She was not a woman who would have made up a story.

Notes

“[R]eported to be Hingham’s oldest resident,” “after a week’s illness.”:” Obituary, Hingham Journal, Dec. 12, 1940.

William S. Briggs married Charlotte S. Gardner on Feb. 15, 1871. Three children: (1) Frances m. Wilbur Litchfield, had two children. (2) Joseph married Maude Whiting. (3) Walter S. m. Charlotte Osborne, had two children.

The Hingham Historical Society thanks Meg Kenagy not only for this post but for permission to share family photos.

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Six Sons of Hingham and the Boston Tea Party – PART TWO

In PART ONE of this blog, you learned about three men who were part of the Boston Tea Party event on December 16, 1773: Jared Joy, James Stoddard II, and Abraham Tower.

In addition to the three participants whom both Hingham and Cohasset can claim as their own, there were three other sons of Hingham involved in the Boston Tea Party:  Adam Beal, Jr., Amos Lincoln, and Samuel Sprague, each of whom relocated from Hingham as young men.

• ADAM BEAL, Jr.: Age 19 on the day of the Boston Tea Party. Adam was born in Hingham on November 3, 1754. His parents, both born in Hingham, were Adam Beal (1725-1796) and Jael Worrick (also 1725-1806). When Adam Beal Jr. was born, his family lived on Hull Street in the Second Precinct of Hingham.

The Beal family in Hingham began with John Beal, “Shoemaker,” who emigrated from Hingham, England in 1638, traveling with his wife, five sons, three daughters, and two (presumably indentured) servants. John received a land grant of six acres on what is now South Street near the corner of Hersey Street. In 1659 John was chosen to represent the town at the General Court of the colony.

Adam Beal, Jr. left Hingham soon after marrying Lydia Beal, a cousin who was the daughter of Lazarus Beal, a teacher for several years in Hingham, and his wife Lydia Wheat, originally of Newton, MA. Adam and Lydia relocated to St. Albans, Franklin County, Vermont, where Adam worked as a cabinet maker. (The young couple may have briefly lived in Goshen, Hampshire County, MA, where Adam’s parents had moved, as the second of Adam, Jr. and Lydia’s sons was born in Goshen.)

In addition to his participation in the Boston Tea Party event, Adam, Jr. served multiple enlistments during the Revolutionary War, between 1776 and 1778. Adam died on July 21, 1834. He and his wife Lydia are both buried in St. Albans, Vermont.

• AMOS LINCOLN: Age 20 on the day of the Boston Tea Party. Amos was born in Hingham on March 18, 1753. His parents were life-long Hingham residents Enoch Lincoln (1721-1802) and Rachel Fearing Lincoln (1721-1782), who are both buried at Hingham Cemetery. The family (Amos was one of nine children) lived on Lincoln Street in Hingham. One of Amos Lincoln’s brothers, Levi, who later would serve as Thomas Jefferson’s first attorney general, was part of the convention that drafted the Massachusetts Constitution in 1779 and supported Quock Walker of Worcester County as he successfully sued to win his freedom from slavery citing language in that constitution.

Amos was a descendant of Samuel Lincoln, “Weaver,” who was born in Hingham England and settled in Hingham Massachusetts in 1637.  The future town leader and historian Solomon Lincoln of Hingham, as well as President Abraham Lincoln of Kentucky, would therefore have been distant cousins of this participant in the Boston Tea Party.

Amos left Hingham to be a carpenter’s apprentice to Thomas Crafts, Sr. in Boston.  Amos is known for marrying two of Paul Revere’s daughters: he married Deborah Revere, they had 9 children, and after her death, her sister Elizabeth Revere, with whom he had 5 children, and later Martha Howard Robb, with whom he had 3 more children. He most likely met the Revere sisters when serving in their father’s regiment during the Revolutionary War. J.L. Bell, author of the “Boston 1775” blog, wrote: “We know from Massachusetts records that Amos Lincoln served mostly close to home. He joined the state artillery regiment commanded by his master’s son, Thomas Crafts, Jr. On 10 May 1776, Col. Crafts submitted a list of officers to the state government, and Amos Lincoln was made a captain-lieutenant. He was promoted to captain in January 1778 and remained at that rank as command of the regiment passed to Lt. Col. Paul Revere in 1779.” Captain Lincoln died on the 14th or 15th of January of 1829 in Quincy, Massachusetts but is buried in Boston, at Copps Hill Burial Ground.

• SAMUEL SPRAGUE: Age 20 on the day of the Boston Tea Party. Samuel was born in Hingham on December 22, 1753. His parents were Jeremiah Sprague, “Weaver,” (born in Hingham in 1714, died “before 1778”) and Elizabeth Whiton (born in Hingham in 1718/1719, died in Hingham in 1800). Samuel’s father Jeremiah served as constable in Hingham in 1755 and 1756.

Samuel was a direct descendant of William Sprague, born in 1609 in Dorset, Upway, England, who came to the American colonies in 1629 with his older brothers, who are credited with being founders of Charlestown. William Sprague married Millicent Eames in Charlestown. After settling in Hingham in 1636 (“land was granted to him that year on ‘the Playne’”) they lived on Union Street “over the river.” This would be the paternal homestead for generations to come. William served Hingham as a Selectman and as a town constable.

Samuel Sprague served in the Revolutionary War in the artillery company of Maj Thomas Pierce. Samuel was a mason by trade and it likely was work that first brought him to Boston from Hingham. He married Joanna Thayer, of Boston, a daughter of Obediah Thayer, born in 1756 in Braintree. The Spragues became most well-known for their fourth son, Charles Sprague, who was a famous poet in the nineteenth century, at times referred to as the “The Banker Poet of Boston.” They lived in a house on Orange (now Washington) Street.

In his book “Tea Leaves,” which provides considerable detail about the Boston Tea Party, Francis S. Drake (1828-1885) includes an account that Samuel Sprague reportedly shared with his son regarding the tea dumping event of December 1773:

“That evening…I met some lads hurrying along towards Griffin’s wharf…I joined them, and on reaching the wharf found the “Indians” busy with the tea chests…I obtained a quantity of soot, with which I blackened my face. Joining the party, I recognized among them Mr. Etheredge, my master. We worked together, but neither of us ever afterwards alluded to each other’s share in the Proceedings.”

Samuel Sprague died June 20, 1844.

He is buried in the Central Burying Ground, on Boston Common off Boylston Street (as is his son the poet) in the Sprague family tomb, Number 5—gravesite shown here. His wife Joanna died a few years later—in 1848.

I came across a fun Hingham history-related story about Samuel and Joanna’s son Charles, the poet. There is a collection of Sprague family papers in the Hingham Public Library archives, collected and donated by John Richardson.  Among the items archived in the collection is a letter from poet Charles Sprague written in 1835, to Jairus Lincoln, stating that he will be unable to write an ode for Hingham’s Bicentennial Celebration, as had been requested of him. 

Were there any consequences for those who participated in the Boston Tea Party?

One important aspect about Hingham at the time of the Boston Tea Party, and throughout the Revolutionary War, is that there were residents who were Loyalists, faithful to the King of England, living alongside the Patriots fighting for independence. Jotham Gay, whose letter I referenced earlier, was not alone in expressing disapproval of the “destruction…of private consignments” of tea. Reportedly, George Washington thought the protestors, whose concerns about taxation he agreed with, had gone too far in dumping the tea, and that they should compensate the East India Company for the damages. But at the time, many of those involved fled from Boston, and their identities were kept secret.

Others of our founding fathers disagreed. John Adams wrote in his diary, “This destruction of the tea is so bold, so daring, so firm, so intrepid and inflexible, and it must have so important consequences, and so lasting, that I cannot but consider it as an epoch in history. The question is whether the destruction of the tea was necessary? I apprehend it was absolutely and indispensably so…. To let it be landed would be giving up the principle of taxation by Parliamentary authority, against which the continent has struggled for ten years…. But it will be said, it might have been left in the care of a committee of the town, or in Castle William. To this many objections may be urged.” 

Benjamin Franklin wrote the following, from London, to the Honorable Thomas Cushing on March 22, 1774 concerning potential legal consequences for those involved in the dumping of tea at Boston:

Franklin before the lord’s council, Whitehall Chapel, 1774; painted by C. Schuessele, engraved by Whitechurch. Digital file from Library of Congress.

A footnote to this letter on Founders Online adds that when witnesses from Boston were interrogated—presumably, the “enquiries” to which Benjamin Franklin refers—the law officers decided that such testimony did not provide sufficient evidence for a charge of high treason.  “Only one member of the Sons of Liberty, Francis Akeley, was caught and imprisoned for his participation.”  A partial listing, of 58 of those involved in the Boston Tea Party, was published decades later, in 1835–after many of the protestors had died.

And here we are, in 2020, a year of many challenges, when protest and activism by citizens of all ages has been a constant throughout our nation.

I will end this blog by noting that December 16, 2023 will be the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. But I am not waiting to celebrate these young activists of their day. When this year’s 247th anniversary arrives, I plan to brew a pot of tea and have a high tea salute to our six Hingham Sons of Liberty!

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REFERENCES for this blog post (parts one and two) include:

PATRIOT LEDGER, November 4, 2019, article by Sue Scheible; The 1893 History of Hingham, published by the Town of Hingham; the 1827 History of Hingham by Solomon Lincoln; article on the Boston Tea Party by MABEL PRATT Registrar, Col Thomas Lothrop, DAR, AMERICAN MONTHLY MAGAZINE March 1901; http://www.Founders.archives.gov (Founders Online repository); the Boston Tea Party Museum website, the Library of Congress online archives; Tea Leaves, Being a collection of letters and documents relating to the shipment of tea to the American colonies in the year 1773, by the East India Company, by Francis S. Drake, 1884; Out of the Archives, the Hingham Historical Society’s blog; the Gay family papers at the Hingham Historical Society; the work of J. L. Bell on Boston 1775, on-line articles provided by the History Channel; various family histories available on Ancestry, the Plymouth Colony Pages, and other genealogy websites. I also benefitted from the insights, suggestions, and access to items in the Hingham Historical Society collection provided by Ellen Miller (who, in addition to her work for the Old Ordinary House Museum, is involved, with Susan Wetzel, in a collaborative Hingham Historical Society/DAR project to identify Hingham men connected with the Revolutionary War) and by Hingham Historical Society Collections Manager and Registrar, Michael Achille.

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Six Sons of Hingham and the Boston Tea Party – PART ONE

A headline in the Patriot-Ledger a year ago caught my eye: “Boston Tea Party participants honored at Cohasset Cemetery.” The story described ceremonies at two Cohasset cemeteries to recognize young patriots involved in the famous December 1773 act of protest. It got me thinking: Might some Hingham men have been among those who dumped the tea on that day? As this year’s anniversary of the Boston Tea Party approaches, I decided to find out more.

Destruction of the Tea in Boston Harbor, December 16, 1773. Engraving from a Painting by Darius Cobb. Boston Public Library.

As described by Walter L. Bouve in the 1893 History of Hingham:

At three o’clock in the afternoon of December 16, 1773, young Josiah Quincy finished his great speech [to the Boston Town Meeting, at] the Old South Meeting-house, and the people reaffirmed the vote of November 29, that the tea in the ships in Boston harbor should not be landed. Towards twilight…a war whoop rang from the gallery of the Old South; it was taken up from the outside. The meeting adjourned…and the populace flocked towards Griffin’s wharf…Here were moored the “Dartmouth,” (Captain Hall);  the “Eleanor,” (Captain Bruce,) and the  “Beaver,” (Captain Coffin). Led by some twenty persons disguised as Mohawk Indians, a party numbering some hundred and forty boarded the vessels, and in two hours three hundred and forty-two chests of tea were emptied into the harbor.

An artifact at the Hingham Historical Society’s Old Ordinary museum may include a memento of the event. An antique tea caddy, donated to the Society by Mary Henrietta Gibson Hersey, the widow of Alfred Henry Hersey, shortly before her death in 1941, came with a small quantity of loose tea and a note capturing the history of the tea — as provided to the family by an Elizabeth Hersey (unclear which, of a number of Elizabeth’s in the family, this would have been): “Tea from one of the vessels whose cargo was thrown overboard in Boston harbor by the Patriots at the beginning of the Revolution, December 16, 1773.”

Loose tea from Hersey family tea caddy at the Old Ordinary

Alfred H. Hersey’s great grandfather, Thomas Hersey, was a patriot during the American Revolution. Alfred was also known to be a collector of historic items. But it is unknown how long this tea may have been in the care of the Hersey family. Recently, Ellen Miller, who knew of the note and the tea from the many hours she spends at the Old Ordinary as a docent and as a trainer of volunteers for the house museum, told me she had asked a museum docent at the Boston Tea Party Ships and Museum if loose tea from the event may have been saved as souvenirs. Ellen was told that, because the tide was out at that time of day on the sisteenth of December in 1773, the dumping of the tea would have created quite a mess on and near Griffin’s Wharf, and participants likely left the site with loose tea in cuffs and pockets. The Massachusetts Gazette of December 23, 1773 reported that “When the tide rose it floated the broken chests and the tea insomuch that the surface of the water was filled therewith a considerable way from the south part of the town to Dorchester Neck, and lodged on the shores.” The Massachusetts Historical Society has in its collection a glass bottle full of tea leaves that were collected on the shore of Dorchester Neck on the morning of December 17, 1773. So perhaps the tea in the caddy at the Old Ordinary is indeed from the famous Boston Tea Party. 

I found it interesting to learn that there was at least one additional protest involving dumping tea into Boston Harbor. As described on history.com, the website of The History Channel: “Three months after the Boston Tea Party, Bostonians once again sent tea splashing when 60 disguised men boarded the Fortune, in March 1774, forced the crew below deck and dumped tea chests into the harbor. The sequel wasn’t quite as impressive as the original, however, as only 30 chests were sent overboard.”

This March 1774 event was referenced in a letter sent by loyalist Jotham Gay to (British) Colonel Joshua Winslow. The original of the full letter, which Michael Achille kindly scanned for me to read, is in the archives at the Hingham Heritage Museum. On March 23, 1774, Jotham wrote to the Colonel: “…There has lately been another destruction of tea–private consignments–in Boston, about 28 chests more being thrown into the dock. No accounts have been received as yet from England, … and it is only conjecture what the consequences will be….”

Jotham Gay, a son of Reverend Ebenezer Gay, minister of Old Ship Church for 69 years, was born in Hingham in April of 1733 and would be a Captain “in the King’s service from 1755 until near the close of the last French war.” (Among Gay’s company fighting in Canada in 1759, as part of the British forces during what we know as the Seven Years War, were Hingham men recruited from the local militia including: George Lane, Lieutenant; Noah Humphrey, Caleb Leavitt, Israel Lincoln, Charles Ripley, Luther Stephenson, John Sprague, Daniel Stoddard, Daniel Tower, and Seth Wilder.)

Jotham’s loyalist inclinations during the Revolutionary War (his brother Martin was also a loyalist) led the brothers to live for a time in Canada. Their loyalist father, Reverend Ebenezer Gay, stayed in Hingham, serving the Old Ship congregation, then a mix of loyalist and patriot sentiment. Both Jotham and Martin returned to Hingham after the Revolution where Jotham died in 1802 and Martin died in 1809.

The “Old Tory” in the Kelly Gallery at the Hingham Heritage Museum

The beautiful drop-front desk and bookcase shown here–built for Martin Gay and his wife Ruth as a wedding gift (by the bride’s brother Gibbs Atkins) and on display in the Kelly Gallery of the Hingham Heritage Museum)–is called the “Old Tory” in recognition of Martin’s political leanings. The desk traveled to Nova Scotia when Martin left Hingham as part of the British evacuation of Boston in 1776, traveled with him to England in 1788, and then back to Boston in 1792. The desk descended in the Gay family until Ebenezer and Diana Gay donated it to the Hingham Historical Society in 2014.

In addition to the Boston Tea Party and additional tea dumping in March of 1774, similar protest involving tea dumping would occur in East Coast colonial port cities throughout 1774.

Now, back to my original question: Were any men from Hingham involved in the Boston Tea Party on December 16, 1773?

YES! While the protestors kept their identities secret for many years after the event, knowledge of many, though not all, participants has emerged over time. (The graves of  about 85 known participants in the Boston Tea Party have been identified in Massachusetts.) At this point we can fairly confidently name six men born in Hingham who participated. Four of them had been identified when Walter L. Bouve wrote his section on military history for the multi-volume, richly detailed 1893 History of Hingham. The remaining two names have surfaced as the work of the Boston Tea Party museum, the Daughters of the American Revolution, and local historians continues to fill out the story of events related to the Revolution. The family names of all six will sound familiar to those who follow Hingham’s history: Beal, Joy, Lincoln, Sprague, Stoddard, and Tower. They were all young men when they joined others in dumping British tea into Boston Harbor. Later each of them helped fight the British during the Revolutionary War.

Jared Joy Gravestone at Beechwood Cemetery, Cohasset, MA

The three men whose graves in Cohasset were being decorated as covered by the Patriot Ledger in 2019 are among these six sons of Hingham, though Cohasset can rightly claim them as well. Jared Joy, James Stoddard II and Abraham Tower are buried in Cohasset–two of them at the Cohasset Central Cemetery, and one (Jared Joy) at Beechwood Cemetery. They all grew up in what was, at the time of their births, the Second Precinct of Hingham. In 1770, this area became part of the new town of Cohasset, and so at the time of the Boston Tea Party in 1773, Jared, Samuel, and Abraham had become residents of Cohasset.

Here is more about their Hingham family backgrounds:

• JARED JOY: Age 24 on the day of the Boston Tea Party. Jared was born in Hingham on December 19, 1749. His father was Amos Joy (born in Hingham in 1720, died in Cohasset in 1813). His mother was Patience Bates (born in Hingham in 1723, died in Cohasset in 1818). Jared’s family lived on Beechwood Street, originally part of the Second Precinct of Hingham, which later (in 1770) became part of the new town of Cohasset. Amos Joy,  Jared’s father, was deacon of the Church—known as Second Parish when established in 1721, at a time when the area was still a part of Hingham.

Jared was a direct descendant of Thomas Joy, who arrived in Hingham (from Boston) in about 1646 “to erect or to enlarge a grist mill at the town cove, and also to establish a saw-mill in the same locality, perhaps adjoining the former” according to the 1893 History of Hingham (which references Solomon Lincoln’s earlier History of Hingham, as well as land deeds for what was then Suffolk County).

Jared Joy served in the Revolutionary War in a company primarily made up of men from the Second Precinct, as part of the 25th regiment of the Continental Army commanded by General William Heath, according to the 1893 History of Hingham. I have not yet discovered Jared’s field of work following the Revolution. He died young, at age 43, in 1792, when the republic he had fought for was in its infancy. Jared’s headstone at Cohasset’s Beechwood cemetery is shown above.

• JAMES STODDARD II: Age 17 on the day of the Boston Tea Party. James was born September 24, 1756 in Hingham. Parents were James Stoddard Sr. (born in Hingham in 1733) and Susannah Humphrey (born in Hingham in 1736). James Stoddard Sr. and his wife Susanna would both die in Winchendon, Massachusetts – he in 1816 and his wife in 1818. When James was young though, they lived in the Second Precinct, in the part of town that became the new town of Cohasset in 1770 (when James would have been 14). James was the first of 11 children. 

The family known over generations variously as Stodder or Stoddard, with some spelling variations, began with John “the planter” who had a land grant in Hingham in 1638. While I have not seen records of what John grew, he had many fields. When he died his estate included “land at Weymouth River, in Hockley field next to Moses Colyers, in the Plaine Neck, on the Great Playne at Conahasset, and in the Wayre Neck.”

At the time of the Boston Tea Party, according to the 2019 Patriot Ledger article, the teenaged James Stoddard II was an apprentice in a grist mill in Boston. According to an account written in a DAR publication in 1901, “He served in the militia during the siege of Boston and was stationed at Hull from December 12, 1775 to April 8, 1776. About this time an English brig bound for Boston with supplies for the British army was becalmed off Cohasset and captured by a boat’s crew of Cohasset men led by James Stoddard.  James Stoddard afterward served about three years in Knox’s artillery regiment.”  He is identified in the 1893 History of Hingham as a shipwright (perhaps an occupation that followed his youthful apprenticeship at a mill in Boston). James Stoddard died on March 11, 1833 at age 76.

• ABRAHAM TOWER: Age 21 on the day of the Boston Tea Party. Abraham was born April 18, 1752. Son of Daniel Tower and Bethia Nichols Tower, who both were born in Hingham.  Abraham’s family resided in the Second Precinct, which became part of new town of Cohasset in 1770, when Abraham was 18. He was one of 14 children of Daniel and Bethia, some of whom died in infancy.

Abraham was a direct descendant of John Tower, identified as “Farmer” or “Planter,” born in Hingham, England, who became a resident of Hingham in the Massachusetts colony in 1637. Upon his arrival he had a grant of three acres of land for a house lot on Bachelor (Main) Street, nearly opposite what is now Water Street. Other land grants he acquired over time included what became the family home for generations, on Main Street near “Tower Bridge.”

Abraham Tower fought in the Revolutionary War as a soldier in Captain Job Cushing’s company. He  married Elizabeth Kent in 1789; and after she died, married her sister Hannah Kent (in Oct 1800.) Abraham was a master shipbuilder, farmer, and fisherman. According to a 1901 publication of the Daughters of the American Revolution: “Tradition says that [Abraham’s] sister Persis sailed a vessel across the bay to Gloucester to get supplies when Boston Harbor was filled with British vessels.  Abraham served as a corporal in Captain Job Cushing’s company at the siege of Boston. This is the same company in which his “Second Precinct” neighbors Jared Joy, and, for a time, James Stoddard served as privates, based on a listing in the 1893 History of Hingham. Abraham later achieved the rank of sergeant. Abraham died on September 26, 1832.

There were three other sons of Hingham involved in the Boston Tea Party. PART TWO of this blog will cover more of the story…

 

 

Christmas Greetings from the Pacific Theater

Meg Ferris Kenagy, author and chronicler in this space of her family’s history in Hingham and beyond, recently donated three Christmas cards sent home to Hingham by her father and two of her uncles during their service in the U.S. military during World War II.  Each young man was stationed in the Pacific Theater–far from…

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From Plow Blades and Horseshoes to Automobiles: A Metal-working Skill Lived On

Earlier this year I was researching Hingham’s Irish immigrant neighborhood in preparation for the launch of a Hingham walking tour tied to the South Shore Irish Heritage Trail.   As described in Not All Is Changed: A Life History of Hingham (1993, Hingham Historical Commission), “by the 1870s, Crowe’s Lane, Hersey near Elm Street, upper Elm,…

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Memorial Day in Hingham

Memorial Day arose in the aftermath of the Civil War, to honor the Union war dead.  It was frequently called “Decoration Day” because flowers were laid at the graves of those who had died for the Union cause.  The Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), an organization of Union veterans which at its height had…

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Hingham Sailors in the Civil War: Where the Wild Winds Swept Them

In August 1862, three young Hingham men enlisted in the U.S. Navy. At the Charlestown Navy Yard, they were issued uniforms and entered into the record: Benjamin Jones, twenty-nine, hazel eyes, dark hair; George Merritt, twenty-one, blue eyes, brown hair; Henry Trowbridge, twenty-one, blue eyes, light hair. Ranked as landsmen, they will earn $13 a month.1

Trowbridge Henry NavalRec 1862 copy

U.S. Navy, Enlistments at Boston in 1862.  Henry Trowbridge of Hingham.

The war was in its second year. The month before President Lincoln had put out an urgent call for additional troops, and the town had rallied to meet its quota. On July 25, 1862, the Hingham Journal printed a powerful appeal that included increased bounties:

Within days of the newspaper notice, our three Hingham Centre boys enlisted, and the village must have been a hive of activity as family and friends gathered to wish the young men well. Benjamin and Henry were first cousins and related to George through the old Massachusetts families.

098665501After several months of training in the north, the three young men left for the sounds of North Carolina aboard the USS Hetzel, a side-wheel steamer, chartered to maintain blockades on southern ports. In North Carolina, they transferred to the gunboat USS Louisiana, “five guns,”2 whose mission was to intercept blockade runners and support ground troops. The ship was crowded and damp, the weather humid and, in addition to the enemy, sailors fought the plethora of diseases that haunted ships. At some time that winter, George Merritt got sick. Suffering from intense fevers and chills, he was moved to a hospital in North Carolina. On February 7, 1863, he died of “swamp fever” and was buried “from the hospital.”2

George Merritt II

Hingham Civil War Monument, Hingham Cemetery

A letter or telegram carried the news north. Adding to his parents’ grief was the fact their son was buried so far from home. They would eventually place a memorial headstone in the First Parish Cemetery in Norwell,3  and George’s name would be inscribed on the Civil War Monument erected by the town after the war. The publication produced for the monument’s dedication, details his service and asks: “Is his sleep less sweet in the land where the wild wind swept him, than if soothed to rest at home, and kin and friends had wept him?”2

Benjamin and Henry remained aboard the USS Louisiana through the winter, and in April 1863, they took part in the sea and land battle at Washington, North Carolina. In August, their service complete, they were discharged and “granted passage home.”2 It must have been a subdued homecoming—of the three young sailors who had left the year before, only two came home. And Henry was ill. The Hingham Journal reports the homecoming:

September 4.

Henry Trowbridge has been confined to his father’s residence with fever, is getting better. Benjamin Jones has enjoyed good health since his return from the U.S. gunboat Louisiana, which were blockading Washington, N.C. The young and noble Merritt was one of the three from here in their company; his bones now rest on Southern soil, but his soul is in heaven.

At war’s end, Henry went to work with his father in a meat market in Hingham Centre. He married, moved out of his parent’s house on School Street, and built a house at the corner of Pleasant and Union streets. After the untimely death of his wife, Mary Ordway Trowbridge, he married Hannah Ferris, an Irish immigrant, and had five children. In addition to rebuilding the house at 51 Pleasant Street after it burned to the ground, he built two houses on Union Street, the one at 11 Union survives. Throughout his long life, he lived to be 87 years old, he was involved in the work of US Grand Army of the Republic post, which Civil War veterans started after the war.  When he died in 1930, he was remembered as “one of the oldest GAR men in the State.”4

Henry Trowbridge age 21

Henry Trowbridge, age 21. Hand-tinted dagurreotype from family collection.

Footnotes

  1. “United States Naval Enlistment Rendezvous, 1855–1891,” NARA microfilm publication M1953. Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration. Henry Trowbridge, Benjamin L. Jones, George H. Merritt, Aug 1862. FamilySearch. Web. Author note: Henry and George were actually both 20, not 21 as indicated in the records.
  2. Burr, Fearing, George Lincoln, The Town of Hingham in the Late Civil War. Includes biographical information Benjamin Jones, pp. 312–313; Henry Trowbridge, p. 313; George Merritt pp. 388–389.
  3. See photo of memorial headstone, George H. Merritt, First Parish Cemetery, Norwell, Plymouth County. Find a Grave website, findagrave.com
  4. Henry Trowbridge obituary: Daily Boston Globe, May 7, 1930.

About the author

Meg Ferris Kenagy is a freelance writer who grew up in Hingham, Massachusetts. She is the author of The House on School Street, Eight generations. Two hundred and four years. One family.

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Searching Early Massachusetts Deeds from Home — For Free!

Deed Search Image 0 Old OrdinaryIf you are curious about property your Massachusetts ancestors or other persons of interest might have owned, there is a way to locate deeds online. All it takes is a free familysearch.org account and a little patience.

I have been researching The Old Ordinary, the Hingham Historical Society’s 1686 house museum at 21 Lincoln Street (aka “the road to Broad Cove”) in Hingham, and its former owners and have found on-line resources such as FamilySearch helpful.  I’ll use The Old Ordinary as my example for how to search early deeds on-line.

In order to set up an account, go to familysearch.org, where you will be asked to provide an email address, set up a password, and choose a userID.  (Make sure to write these down.) You will also be asked to provide some basic information to start “your” family tree but rest assured that information on any living persons remains private, and you don’t have to continue creating a family tree to do research on the site.

You will get a confirming email which you must respond to promptly, and you’re all set.

FamilySearch menus can be deeply nested. Rather than go through all of the menu items to find the deeds, just use your browser to search for: familysearch massachusetts deed search

Screen Shot 2020-04-21 at 9.19.09 AM

From the menu of results, choose: Massachusetts Land Records, 1620-1986 — FamilySearch.org

Click and on the next screen choose: Browse through 5,766,135 images.

Don’t be daunted!  On the next screen, you are presented with a list of the Commonwealth’s counties. When searching deeds, it’s important to know which county a town was in when it was registered.  For instance, Hingham was in Suffolk County from 1643 until 1803, at which point it became part of Plymouth County.   If I am researching the early years, I need to choose Suffolk County.

I am now presented with a long list of links arranged in two columns in the following order:

  • Deed indexes (grantee), grouped first by time period and then alphabetically by surname in successive volumes
  • Deed indexes (grantor), grouped first by time period and then alphabetically by surname, again in successive volumes
  • Deed books, containing the actual deeds, organized by years and volumes.

(A little terminology:  “grantors” are the sellers and “grantees” are the buyers.)

Deed Search Image 1The grantee and grantor index books help you locate a deed more quickly within a certain set of deed books.  As you will see below,  using them on-line is a little bit more cumbersome than using the physical index and deed books, but you do get to search from the comfort of your home and on your own schedule.

An advantage to researching older deeds is that the index books cover a huge span of years, so you don’t have to know exactly when a property changed hands.  For purposes of my example, I know that Francis Barker owned The Old Ordinary in the mid to late 1700s. He was both a grantee when he bought the property and a grantor when he sold.

To find the record of his purchase, I need the grantee index for the period 1639 to 1799 for grantees whose last names start with B

  • Deed index (grantee) 1639-1799 vol 1-2, A-B

A click on the link brings up image 1 of the index book. Now it’s a matter of jumping around in the book until I find Francis Barker. Surnames are listed alphabetically at the top of the page, and given names are listed in the second column.  I like to jump about 50 images at a time until I get close.  I find that records for Francis Barker start at image 211 and end at image 215.  Happily, the one I am looking for is the first entry, which shows that on 5 Jan 1741 Francis Barker (grantee) purchased from Samuel Gill (grantor) a property in Hingham on the Highway to Broad Cove one acre in size. For the actual deed I am directed to consult Deed Book 62 page 171.

Deed Search Image 3I navigate back to the main page for Suffolk County by clicking at the top of the page and find myself at the long list of index books and deed books,  I look for Deed Book 62 and choose the link for

  • Deeds 1740-1741 vol 61-62

Deed Search Image 2This file of 619 images has two volumes, so Volume 62 probably starts halfway through about image 310.  Now, I need to find page 171.  A little browsing shows that each “page” is actually the front and back of a sheet.  Page 171 is, in fact, on images 495 and 496.  There, you can see “Gill to Barker” in the left margin of the left page of image 496. I can read the deed on my screen and/or download or print it.

Deed Search Image 4

[A bonus is that the document immediately prior to this is the deed by which Samuel Gill—Francis Barker’s grantor—himself acquired The Old Ordinary from Baruch Jordan!]

To find the deed for the sale of the property, I would go back and look at the grantor index books and repeat the process.

Not all deeds were registered in a timely fashion, and some land transfers were not registered at all. Some property passed through wills and other means. But most are listed, and you can often learn a lot about an ancestor by searching to see what land holdings he (or sometimes she) might have had.

Some of the terms in land records are archaic. For help understanding them, see: http://www.directlinesoftware.com/legal.htm

For help in understanding deeds and other property records in general, see: https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/U.S._Land_Records_Class_Handout

Happy hunting!

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Ruth Litchfield Marsh (1893-1991), Hingham Visiting Nurse

Ruth Briggs Litchfield, 19 years old, 1912. Photo courtesy of Meg Kenagy

At the end of August 1918, the worldwide influenza pandemic hit the Boston area. Doctors and hospitals were overwhelmed. Red Cross volunteers and nurses stepped in to help. In Hingham, Ruth Litchfield Marsh, two years out of nursing school, worked throughout the crisis. She was 25 years old. It was through this experience that she became committed to public health, working over her long life with the Hingham Visiting Nurses Association and as a volunteer for South Shore Hospital.

 

Ruth, the elder of S. Frances and Wilbur Litchfield’s two daughters. Photo courtesy of Meg Kenagy.

Ruth was born in April 1893 at 11 Union Street, Hingham, the first of two daughters of Sarah Frances Briggs and Wilbur Trowbridge Litchfield. She lived most of her life on School Street. She married George Marsh in May 1919, had four children and many grandchildren. Her house and gardens were always beautifully kept and she always had time to bake a casserole for a neighbor, talk to a child, and teach sewing. When she died at 97 years old, she was remembered for her many contributions to the town:  Girl Scout leader, nurse, volunteer, member of the Women’s Alliance of the Old Ship Church.  She was my grand-aunt and I, as well as many others, remember her compassion and gentle sense of humor.  For more about the life of Ruth Litchfield Marsh, you can read: The House on School Street, Eight Generations, Two hundred and four years. One family.

 

 

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To My Children

After recuperating from a wound suffered during the Saratoga Campaign at his home in Hingham, Massachusetts, Major General  Benjamin Lincoln of the Continental Army was well enough to rejoin George Washington in New York in early August 1778.  Although he did not yet know it, he would be given the command of the Southern Division of the Continental Army in September 1778.  He would not be home again for any period of time for five years.

When General Lincoln left Hingham, his wife Mary was recovering from smallpox.  His eldest son, Benjamin, Jr., was 22 and away from home, studying the law.  Six children were at home:  Molly, 20; Elizabeth, 19; Sarah, 17; Theodore, 15; Martin, 9; and Hannah, 5.  Molly, the oldest daughter, who is referenced in this letter, was intellectually disabled and lived with her parents throughout her adult life.

On July 28, 1778, en route to New York, the General penned this letter to his children:

My Children:

The ill health of some of you, joined to my great hurry, prevented my making some general observations to you relative to your future conduct before I left home—some of which are of the greatest importance.

In the first place you will never forget your God—the duty you owe to him as your creator, preserver and best benefactor.   The duty you owe to your neighbor and to your selves you will learn from divine revelation, which you will attentively study, and the example of our dear redeemer.

I must mention to you the peculiar state of your mother whose cares and burdens are greatly increased by my absence. I need not urge; I am sure your own feelings will always suggest to you the propriety of your lessening her cares, lightening her burden, and treating her with every mark of tenderness, duty. and respect.  Never wound her by doing a wrong action. You may safely confide in her advice.

I must in the next place recommend to your constant notice your sister Molly. Consider who made you to differ.  You owe her every attention.  Make her life as happy as in your power. Some are made strong to bear the infirmities of the weak.

You will love each other.  Those of you who are grown up will counsel those who are not. Never set an ill example before the little ones.  Encourage them to every act of goodness, charity, and benevolence by precept and example.

As our happiness is connected with the happiness of those about you, always watch over yourselves; let your deportment at all times be such, if possible, that even the malicious shall be constrained to acknowledge its fitness.

I am in haste, must close ,but cannot do it without saying again remember your God, love your fellow creatures, injure no person.

I am, with every wish for your present and future happiness, your affectionate father,

B. Lincoln