Monday, October 27, 2014

Hallowell Grant ~ Guysborough County, Nova Scotia

In my recent Surname Saturday post about my Hull ancestral line, I mentioned that Moses Hull arrived in Guysborough County, Nova Scotia, from Connecticut, with the Hallowell Grant settlers.

Guysborough County, Nova Scotia
Wikipedia Commons

As I have mentioned before, my favorite "go-to" book for Guysborough County is Guysborough Sketches and Essays, by A.C. Jost (originally published in 1950 by Kentville Publishing Company, revised edition published Trafford Publishing Co., in 2009). There is a chapter titled "The Hallowell Grant Settlers" which is my source for most of this information.

The Hallowell Grant was a grant of land to one Benjamin Hallowell, a Customs Commissioner from Boston. On October 22, 1765, he officially acquired 20,000 acres of land, located on the north side of Chedabucto Bay, which in the image above is the area of water with the arrow going through it noting roughly where the community of Boylston is. (Manchester is just next to Boylston.)

In 1765, this was barren land with few inhabitants. In fact, this wasn't even known as Guysborough County yet.

As a Customs Officer in the city of Boston at the start of the Revolution, Hallowell was not a popular man. By April 1776, he fled Boston, ultimately returning to London. In 1785, Hallowell wrote to a colleague that he wanted to return to Nova Scotia to "look after his property," but it is not known if he ever did. Hallowell did recognize the value of the land and looked to somehow develop it, in order to improve his financial situation, which needless to say, had declined during the war. Ownership passed to his two sons, Benjamin Hallowell, Jr., a successful British naval officer, and Ward Nicholas Boylston, who had taken the name of a maternal uncle with the promise that he would inherit lands in Boston. (See Ward Nicholas Boylston's FindAGrave memorial here.)

A town plot, named Boylston, in honor of his son, was developed, providing for sixty town lots, with a town common, and farm lots of varying sizes, averaging about 150 acres. The surveying was completed by the summer off 1786, when the settlers arrived. The brothers mentioned above, recruited settlers from the New England states, especially Connecticut. They were referred to as "The New England Colonists" and were more adaptable to the conditions in the area than some of the previous settlers who had come from the Carolinas and New York. (Stephen Pyle came from New York, and George Whitman came from South Carolina.)

For those of you with colonial Connecticut ancestors, you might be interested in the names of the men who settled on the land known as the Hallowell Grant, in Guysborough County, Nova Scotia:
Mansfield Munson          David Smith
Andrew Leet                   Ira Atwater
Gideon Bryant                Samuel Hull [son of Moses, and brother of Elizabeth]
Willis Stillman                William Atwater
Aaron Andrews              Theophilus Yale
Isaac Andrews               Josiah Hart
David Scranton              William Atwater, Jr.
Matthew Hawley             Moses Hull [father of Samuel above]
Walter Munson               Ebenezer Merriman

Saturday, October 25, 2014

Surname Saturday ~ Hull of Connecticut

My immigrant Hull ancestor (my paternal line) is the father of John Hull, of New Haven, Connecticut. Several sources suggest that John Hull's father was Richard Hull, but Robert Charles Anderson's sketch for Richard Hull in The Great Migration Begins states: "Savage and others make him the same as a Richard Hull of New Haven in 1640 and later, but there is no particular reason to believe this. Likewise there is no obvious connection to the "Richard Hull, carpenter" who was in Boston in 1637."

So technically, I'm not sure of the origin of this Hull line, but it is likely somewhere in England. So the first generation of this Hull line that I am sure of is John Hull, who was born in New Haven, Connecticut, in May 1640.

New Haven County, Connecticut
Wikipedia Commons
Generation 2:
John Hull (1640-1711) spent his life in what was known as New Haven Colony until 1666, and then became New Haven County, Connecticut. He was baptized on May 24, 1640, and he married Mary Beach.

John was a doctor and was enticed to move to Wallingford to be that town's first physician.

John and Mary had nine children: John (b. 1662), Samuel (b. 1664), Mary (b. 1666), Joseph (b. 1669), Benjamin (b. 1672), Richard (b. 1674), Ebenezer (b. 1678), Jeremiah (b. 1679) and Andrew (b. 1685). Based on what is recorded in Families of Ancient New Haven [note 2], he lived in different towns in Connecticut during his life: Stratford, Derby, and Wallingford, where he died on December 6, 1711.

FindAGrave.com has a memorial for him with a photo of his gravestone. The stone reads:
Doctor
John Hull
The first Physician Who
Settled in Wallingford
DIED
Dec. 6, 1711
AE. 80 Years.
To induce Dr. Hull to
come here the inhabitants
at a Town meeting voted
him a tract of land over
one mile square.

I descend from his second to youngest son, Jeremiah.

Saturday, October 18, 2014

Today is Home Movie Day

According to a blog post from Dick Eastman, today is Home Movie Day. According to Dick, "Home Movie Day is an internationally organized event that began in 2003, when a small group of film archivists decided to try and save the countless reels of home movies shot on film during the 20th century." Read his post for a lot more about Home Movie Day.

Years ago, I collected the 8 mm home movies from my childhood (roughly 1969-1981) and had them put on a VHS video cassette. (Silly me, I didn't think I needed to keep the 8 mm films, so they no longer exist.)

Last spring, I had the VHS video digitized (at Play It Again Video in Newton, Mass.). It wasn't cheap, but in a way, you can't put a price tag on digitizing your childhood movies so I felt it was worth it!

The video is almost two hours long and is comprised of many, many three minute clips, which I believe was the length of each 8 mm reel. Luckily my dad marked each one with the date and sometimes the subject, and I did have the sense to put them in chronological order before they were combined on the VHS video. I now have an almost two hour video that I can edit in iMovie.

Following is a brief snippet of a 1971 home movie of me and my three younger brothers all sledding on a toboggan with my mother.

Enjoy!



Friday, October 17, 2014

Grandfather Out West ~ Photos #3

Here are more photographs my my Grandfather Lowell Townsend Copeland's 1917 trip to Wyoming and Montana. See the first group of photos here and group #2 here.

Wyoming 1917
"Bear-Tooth" Mountain and Lake

You can search the Internet for images of Beartooth Mountain and see recent photographs of this same mountain.


Wyoming Montana 1917
Mrs. Sidley and me/I [Lowell Townsend Copeland] at "Bear-Tooth" Lake.
Beautiful!!


Montana 1917
Mr. Sidley and Bill.

I wonder what they're doing hanging over the water?


Montana 1917
Bill and his horse "Bluebell" on our way to Red Lodge, Montana


And for the last photo: Can you figure out what is going on here before reading the caption?

Montana 1917
Bill + Mrs. Sidley.
Bill is having his hair washed at the last camp.

Thursday, October 16, 2014

Grandfather Out West ~ Photos #2

More photos from Grandfather Lowell Townsend Copeland's 1917 trip west. See the first installment of photos here.

Wyoming 1917
Pack horses fording a stream just before coming into a camp.


Wyoming 1917
Taken from the top of the "Great Divide" which was about 11,000 ft. above sea level.


Wyoming 1917
"Tex" and the pack horses on top of the "Great Divide."

I believe Tex was one of the group's guides on this trip.


Wyoming 1917
Taken from the top of the "Great Divide."


Wyoming 1917
L.T.C. [Lowell Townsend Copeland], Bill [Sidley], Mrs. Sidley, Miss Holt, and Mr. Sidley.
Index Peaks in the background, which marks the boundary line between Wyoming and Montana.


From the captions on this group of photographs, I can tell that my grandfather visited Wyoming and Montana, seeing the "Great Divide," Yellowstone National Park, Index Peak, Beartooth Mountains and Lake, and Red Lodge.

See the last installment of photos here.

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Wordless Wednesday ~ Grandfather Out West

In the summer of 1917, when my grandfather, Lowell Townsend Copeland, was not yet 17 (he was born December 21, 1900), he took a trip out west.

I have a set of 27 photographs that were taken during this trip, and they are all labeled on the back (likely Grandfather's handwriting). I will share a few each day for the next few days.


Wyoming 1917
Mrs. Sidley, Miss Holt, and Mr. Sidley
I don't know who Mr. and Mrs. Sidley or Miss Holt are.

I know the head is partially cropped in the following photo, but it is the only closeup photo in the collection of Bill Sidley, who looks like he might have been grandfather's age.


Wyoming 1917
Bill Sidley



Wyoming 1917
L.T.C. [Lowell Townsend Copeland] and Bill all ready for a day of fishing.
Catch anything? [unknown handwriting]



Wyoming 1917
L.T.C. [Lowell Townsend Copeland] in his fishing outfit with his rod.

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

My Great Migration Ancestors (1620-1635)

I am trying to go through some older files - printouts of things that I can get or have already gotten online - to see that I have updated my genealogy program to reflect these sources.
The Great Migration Begins has three volumes.
Image from Amazon.com.

The Great Migration series of books by Robert Charles Anderson and published by the New England Historic Genealogical Society include the following:

The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England 1620-1633 (3 volumes)
Great Migration 1634-1635 (7 volumes, alphabetically)

These have been available on the NEHGS website (AmericanAncestors.org) for several years (depending on publication date), but I still have printouts that I don't need and I'm trying to remove from my office files any paper that I don't need.

You can find a variety of resources at the Great Migration Study Project website at GreatMigration.org, including a list of over 2,400 sketches published in the Great Migration series and a link to AmericanAncestors.org where you can search for a family name. (Note you have to be a member of NEHGS to view results of these searches.) From the website:
"The aim of the Great Migration Study Project is to compile comprehensive genealogical and biographical accounts of every person who settled in New England between 1620 and 1640. Between these years about twenty thousand English men, women, and children crossed the Atlantic to settle New England. For a century and a half genealogists have been studying these families, and thousands of books and articles have been published as a result."
In going through my old printouts and looking at the list of names of my Great Migration ancestors, I am amazed at how many I have. I may have more, but there are plenty of my ancestral lines which I have not managed to trace back this far.

From The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England 1620-1633:

Maternal ancestors: William Bassett (9th ggf), Thomas Blossom (9th ggf), Daniel Brewer (9th ggf), Bernard Capen (11th ggf), James Chilton (12th ggf - Mayflower), Aaron Cooke (1st husband of 10th ggm), Thomas Ford (10th ggf), Simon Huntington (10th ggf), William Knopp (10th ggf), Richard Lyman (10th ggf), Thomas Mayhew (9th ggf), Francis Plummer (10th ggf), Edmund Quincy (9th ggf), Edward Rainsford (10th ggf), Thomas Richards (10th ggf), William Rockwell (10th ggf), Richard Silvester (9th ggf), Thomas Willett (9th ggf), John Winslow (11th ggf).

Paternal ancestors: William Cheeseborough (10th ggf), John Gallop (10th ggf), Giles Gibbs (9th ggf), Stephen Hart (8th ggf), John Howland (10th ggf - Mayflower), Thomas Minor (10th ggf), Walter Palmer (11th ggf), Valentine Prentice (10th ggf), John Tilley (11th ggf - Mayflower), Andrew Ward (9th ggf).

Both maternal and paternal (yes, my parents are distantly related): William Denison (10th ggf)

From Great Migration 1634-1635, Volume I (A-B):
William Beardsley (P 9th ggf), Thomas Blodgett (M 9th ggf)), Edmund Bushnell (M 9th ggf).

From Great Migration 1634-1635, Volume II (C-F):
Simon Crosby (M 9th ggf 2x), Robert Dibble (P 10th ggf), Thomas Ewer (M 9th ggf), John Farrow (M 9th ggf), Henry Flint/Flynt (M 9th ggf), Edmond Freeman (M 10th ggf), William French (M 8th ggf).

From Great Migration 1634-1635, Volume III (G-H):
Peter Gardner (M 8th ggf), John Gore (M 8th ggf), Samuel Hinckley (M 10th ggf), Robert Hull (M 9th ggf)

From Great Migration 1634-1635, Volume IV (I-L):
Henry Kingman (M 10th ggf), Thomas Lord (P 10th ggf), John Lothrop (P 9th ggf)

From Great Migration 1634-1635, Volume V (M-P):
Francis Newcomb (M 10th ggf)

From Great Migration 1634-1635, Volume VI (R-S):
Martin Saunders (M 10th ggf), Edmund Sherman (P 10th ggf) , Thomas Stanton (P 9th ggf)

From Great Migration 1634-1635, Volume VII (T-Y):
William Tuttle (P 9th ggf)

M = maternal line (all through Grandfather Copeland)
P = paternal line (some even through both my grandmother Adsit and grandfather Pyle)
ggf = great grandfather
ggm = great grandmother
2x = I descend from Simon Crosby in two lines: my maternal grandfather's parents are distantly related.