John Hull, Mintmaster ~ 52 Ancestors #39

Earlier this week, while reading an article in The Boston Globe about one of the oldest American coins being put up for auction, I thought I saw a familiar name and checked my family tree.

John Hull, authorized as "mintmaster" by the Massachusetts General Court in 1652, is my 8th great grandfather.

He and a colleague, Robert Sanderson, established a mint in Boston, about where Macy's currently is located, according to the Boston Globe article. The earliest coins minted in America were at this mint in Boston in 1652. The men continued to mint coins for several decades, but all were dated 1652 to be able to claim that the coins were made during the period right after the English Civil War. (Otherwise minting of coins in the colonies was a treasonous act!)

Image from The Boston Globe article

John Hull was born in Market Harborough, Leicestershire, England, on December 18, 1624, to Robert and Elizabeth Hull. The family immigrated to Boston in 1635, where his father, was granted 25 acres for farming, though he primarily worked as a blacksmith. 

1796 Deed, Moses Hull to Stephen Pyle ~ 52 Ancestors #36

FamilySearch Full Search Text is a wonderful new resource, released just over six months ago, and it's quite a genealogical rabbit hole. Some Canadian records have recently been added and among several other deeds naming Stephen Pyle, I found one from 1796 in which my fourth great-grandfather, Moses Hull, sold land to his future son-in-law, my third great-grandfather, Stephen Pyle. 

From Guysborough Land Records. 1810-1818 (though many are from the 1780s and 1790s).

Appreciative of Automobiles ~ 52 Ancestors #29

My husband and I traveled to Nova Scotia for eight days at the end of June. This was a place I had wanted to visit for years. We drove from eastern Massachusetts to Bar Harbor, Maine (over five hours), took the CAT Ferry to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, and spent one night there before driving to Halifax (over three hours) and spending four nights. There was a stop in Liverpool for lunch.

Halifax, the capital of Nova Scotia, was a good "home base." We did a couple of day trips from Halifax where we drove at least an hour each way (one day to Burntcoat Head Park to see the Bay of Fundy at low tide and another day to see Peggy's Cove). In Halifax, we visited the Citadel, a centuries-old hilltop fort, the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, and Fairview Lawn Cemetery. The Maritime Museum has interesting exhibits about the April 15, 1912, sinking of the Titanic and the December 6, 1917, Halifax Explosion. The Fairview Lawn Cemetery has a somber memorial to victims of the Titanic as well as a memorial to those who died in the Halifax Explosion.

The next drive was from Halifax to Guysborough with a stop in Truro for lunch. 

We had a wonderful two days in Guysborough, where I spent some time in the old Court House Museum, home of the Guysborough Historical Society. I met a fifth cousin (a Hull) and a fourth cousin (a Pyle) who showed us the sights: cemeteries, churches, and the house built by Stephen Pyle probably in the 1790s in which my second great-grandfather, James Pyle, was likely born in 1823.

The Stephen Pyle house in Boylston, Nova Scotia.

DNA - Narrowing Down the Non-Paternal Event

My Pyle line can be found at Surname Saturday ~ Pyle of Chester, Pennsylvania.

I wrote about the results of Y-DNA testing (of my brother) at Y-DNA Test Results ~ A Non-Paternity Event where I noted that my presumed Pyle line is not genetically possible, based on the results of the Y-DNA test: Nicholas Pyle > Robert Pyle (1660-1729/30) > John Pyle (1687-1752) > Stephen Pyle (1730-bef 1789) > Stephen Pyle (1762-1840) > James Pyle (1823-1900) > James Tolman Pyle (1855-1912) > Charles McAlpin Pyle (1893-1966) > Charles McAlpin Pyle, Jr. (1924-1993) > my brother.

FamilyTreeDNA graphic
showing how Y-DNA is inherited

A reminder: Y-DNA refers to the DNA found on the Y chromosome, which is found only in men (passed from father to son to son, etc.). Testing of Y-DNA can reveal ancient origins (described as a haplogroup) as well as connecting cousins with the same surname in a family where surnames are passed down from father to son.

First of all, I would like to share how helpful genealogy groups on Facebook can be. In January 2015, I joined the Guysborough County Genealogy group and listed my Guysborough County, Nova Scotia surnames: Pyle, Whitman, Hull, Morgan, Hadley, Atwater, and Ives. (I just searched the group for "Pyle" to take a look back at that post and I noticed that it generated quite a conversation.) I connected with some relatives who are 5th cousins (and 5th cousins once removed), who still live there and descend from Moses Hull. (See Surname Saturday ~ Hull of Connecticut for that line.)

In May, I decided to contact my 5th cousin and ask if she knew if there were any male Pyles still living in the Manchester / Boylston area of Guysborough County. She replied yes and provided me with contact information. I got in touch with the daughter of the Pyle male (who'd be about my dad's age, if dad were still living) and arranged for him to take a Y-DNA test. I will refer to him as Guysborough Pyle.

Test results are in!

Elizabeth / Betsey Hull - 52 Ancestors: #8

For this week's 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks writing challenge from blogger Amy Crow Johnson of No Story Too Small, the theme is "Good Deeds" which can be interpreted in a couple of ways. I thought about an ancestor for whom land records / deeds were important, and then moved down a generation.

Several of my paternal ancestors were Loyalists during the American Revolution and fled to Nova Scotia after the war. Several were granted land via different land grants, and Moses Hull, my 4th great grandfather, was granted land as part of the Hallowell Grant in Guysborough County.

I shared the little bit I know about Moses Hull at Surname Saturday~Hull. He and his wife, Mary Ives, had nine children with the youngest being Elizabeth Hull (also known as Betsey), my third great grandmother. I can find a few records for her, but nothing that tells me about her as a person. I can only infer that she led a challenging early life, with her earliest memories not of Connecticut, where she was born, but of Guysborough County, Nova Scotia, where her Loyalist family had fled after the American Revolution.

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

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.

Nova Scotia Research

Thank you to my brother who gave me a gift membership to the Genealogical Association of Nova Scotia (GANS). I hope to glean some information about my Loyalist ancestors (as well as some maternal Maine ancestors who traveled back and forth to N.S.) as a member of this genealogy society.

The Members Only site includes transcriptions of Canadian Censuses for Nova Scotia, among other items. (Note that I need to view the microfilm to be sure that the transcription is accurate.) Only part of the Nova Scotia 1817 census survives, but it includes Guysborough County. Robert Kim Stevens, the editor, notes that the 1817 census is "the first census taken after 1770, and the first Nova Scotia census to record the population impact of Loyalist migration to Nova Scotia after the Revolutionary War."

The original census schedule is found in the microfilm series NSARM 13580.

In the transcription for 1817, I find in Manchester Twp., Guysborough County:

PILE, Stephen
1 Male 60+  [Stephen, my 3rd great-grandfather, was about 55 years old.]
0 Males 16+
4 Males 16-  [John, William, Moses, Stephen, Samuel? - James was not born until 1823.]
1 Female 16+  [Elizabeth (Hull) Pyle, my 3rd great-grandmother was about 36-37 years old.]
1 Female 16-  [A daughter, possibly Mary Amelia, born in 1812.]
7 total in household

In 1817, there are five WHITMAN families in Guysborough County, three in Guysborough Twp., two in Manchester Twp., including:

WHITMAN, George
1 Males 60+  [George, my 4th great-grandfather, was about 57-60 years old.]
0 Males 16+
4 Males 16-  [presumably including Thomas C. Whitman, his youngest son, and my 3rd great-grandfather.]
1 Females 16+
7 Female 16-  [Including Esther, Sabina, Annabelle, Julia.]
13 total in household

I also found families under the surnames of Hull (possible brother-in-law of Stephen Pyle and a Loyalist from Connecticut), and Hadley and Morgan (known as pre-Loyalists) in Manchester Twp.

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Guysborough County is missing from the 1827 Canada Census.

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The 1838 Nova Scotia Census has an entry for Stephen PYLE, farmer, living in Manchester Twp., with two males over 14 years of age, and two females over 14 years of age. I am guessing that the two males over 14 are father (and head of household), Stephen Pyle, who was about 76 years old, and James Pyle, who was about 16 years old. The two females would be wife, Elizabeth (Hull) Pyle, and possibly a daughter.

Thomas C. Whitman and Diana Morgan had married in 1827, and I find Thomas WHITMAN, farmer, living in Manchester Twp. in the 1838 Canada Census with what must be an error, as no male over the age of 14 is indicated. Esther, about ten years old at the time of this census, is likely one of the three females between ages 6-14.

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And in an email conversation with the website technical administrator, I learned that there are Guysborough County school records that show Elizabeth Pyle (age 10) and James Pyle (age 7) in the Manchester School District in 1831. Those records are not yet posted to the member site.