June 1743, Connecticut

“Hooker and Company Journeying through the Wilderness from Plymouth to Hartford, in 1636”

June 17, 1743- A daughter, Mercy, is born to Benjamin Harris & Esther Cornwall in Middletown, Middlesex, Connecticut.

June 23, 1743- Jonathan Gipson, son of Deacon Samuel Gipson & Hannah Whitmore, marries Mary Goodrich, daughter of John Goodrich & Mary Tillotson at Middletown, Middlesex, Connecticut.

Places: Middletown, Middlesex, Connecticut

The city of Middletown, located in Middlesex County, lies along the west side of the Connecticut River in the central part of the state. Incorporated as a town in 1650 under its original Native American name of Mattabeseck. it received its present name in 1653.
At the time the first European settlers arrived in the region, the Mattabesetts were a part of the group of tribes in the Connecticut Valley, under a single chief named Sowheag.

Plans for the colonial settlement of "Mattabesett" were drawn up by the General Court in 1646; the first Europeans arrived from nearby Connecticut colonies in 1650.
It received its present name in 1653. The Name Middletown was chosen because the site was approximate halfway between Windsor and Saybrook on the Great River.

Life was not easy among these early colonial Puritans; clearing the land and building homes, and tending farms in the rocky soil of New England was a labor-intensive ordeal. Law, too, was often harsh among the Puritans; offenses legally punishable by death in the Connecticut colonies included, "witchcraft, blasphemy, cursing or smiting of parents, and incorrigible stubbornness of children."

Pequot Mohegans, at that time traditional allies of the English colonists and enemies of the Mattabesett and other local tribes, arrived in the Middletown area in the latter half of the 17th century; conflict between them and local Native American tribes ensued. The Mattabesett and other tribes referred to the Mohegan as "destroyers of men." Sowheag hoped that the colonists would intervene. They did not. Smallpox, too, afflicted the Mattabesett, significantly lessening their ability to resist and their cohesion as a tribe. Records show that, over time, Sowheag was forced to sell off most of the Mattabesett property to the local colonists; by 1676 the Puritans owned all but 300 acres (1.2 km2) of the former Mattabesett territory. Similar milieus of tragic interaction between Native Americans and colonists were common in 17th century New England.

Slavery was part of the early economy of Middletown; African slaves were brought to the town in 1661 from Barbados; by 1756 Middletown had the third largest African slave population in the state of Connecticut—218 slaves to 5,446 whites.

During the 18th century, Middletown became the largest and most prosperous settlement in Connecticut.

 In 1784, the central settlement was incorporated as a city distinct from the town, and in the early 2oth century the city and town consolidated. A busy sailing port and trading center in the 18th and 19th centuries, it later became an industrial and commercial center. Middletown is now mainly residential and is also home to Wesleyan University.

(Mercy Harris is my third cousin 8 times removed. Our common ancestors are William Cornwall & Mary Bailey.
Jonathan Gipson is my third cousin 8 times removed. Our common ancestors is John Whitmore.)

Related articles

• Yale researchers discover historic Mohegan writings
• When Christmas was banned in Boston
• Barbarous Blot on New England's Escutcheon
• 238-year-old Mohegan manuscript recounts deathbed words

December 1742, Rhode Island

A case of rape is brought before the Rhode Island court. The incident allegedly happened on December 23, 1742, when a 39 year-old woman, Comfort Dennis Taylor, traveled between Portsmouth and Bristol on a ferry navigated by a slave named Cuff.
Taylor knew how a woman who had been raped should act, and she comported herself accordingly: she screamed for help in order to demonstrate that she had resisted her attacker; she quickly reported the attack; and she had bruises to show from her ordeal.
In Rhode Island (but not elsewhere in New England) courts could rely on circumstantial evidence if there were no eyewitnesses. A second example concerns Rhode Island's laws about rape. Colonies did not have laws about attempted rape, so Taylor's accusation of Cuff fell into a grey area. But in the midst of her legal struggles to get redress in any forum, the Rhode Island General Assembly passed a law in August 1743 that pertained to attempted rape by a black man. The law made attempted rape by a black man punishable by branding, whipping, and transportation. This law, and others like it in colonial America, racialized laws about attempted rape by assuming that any advance by a black man toward a white woman would be unwanted, and thus the man was automatically guilty of rape

December 22, 1742- A son, Barthrum, is born to James Round & Susannah Seamans in Scituate, Providence, Rhode Island.
 Joseph Brownell marries Rebecca Tripp, daughter of Abiel Tripp & Elinor Waite, and George Sisson, son of James Sisson & Deborah Cook, marries Abigail Cook in Portsmouth, Newport County, Rhode Island.

(George Sisson is my first cousin 9 times removed. Our common ancestors are George Sisson & Sarah F. Lawton.
Barthrum Round is my second cousin 7 times removed. Our common ancestors are Thomas Seamans & Susannah Salisbury and William Wood & Susannah Beckwith.
Rebecca Tripp is my second cousin 9 times removed. Our common ancestors are William Hall & Mary Thomas.)

Related articles

• September 1742, Rhode Island
• April 1742, Rhode Island
• November 1742, Rhode Island
• May 1742, Rhode Island
• 1742, Rhode Island

November 1742, Massachusetts

  

November 15, 1742-A son, Tisdale, is born to Salisbury Sherman & Abigail Tisdale in Dartmouth, Bristol, Massachusetts.

(Tisdale Sherman is my third cousin 8 times removed. Our common ancestors are Thomas Lawton & Elizabeth Salisbury.)

 Life in New England

A majority of New England residents were small farmers. Within these small farm families, and English families as well, a man had complete power over the property and his wife. When married, an English woman lost her maiden name and personal identity, meaning she could not own property, file lawsuits, or participate in political life, even when widowed. The role of wives was to raise and nurture healthy children and support their husbands. Most women carried out these duties.
During the 18th century, couples usually married between the ages of 20-24 and 6-8 children were typical of a family, with three on average surviving to adulthood. Farm women provided most of the materials needed by the rest of the family by spinning yarn from wool and knitting sweaters and stockings, making candles and soap from ashes, and churning milk into butter.

New England farming families generally lived in wooden houses because of the abundance of trees. A typical New England farmhouse was one-and-a-half stories tall and had a strong frame (usually made of large square timbers) that was covered by wooden clapboard siding. A large chimney stood in the middle of the house that provided cooking facilities and warmth during the winter. One side of the ground floor contained a hall, a general-purpose room where the family worked and ate meals. Adjacent to the hall was the parlor, a room used to entertain guests that contained the family's best furnishings and the parent's bed. Children slept in a loft above, while the kitchen was either part of the hall or was located in a shed along the back of the house. Because colonial families were large, these small dwellings had much activity and there was little privacy.

By the mid-18th century in New England, shipbuilding was a staple, particularly as the North American wilderness offered a seemingly endless supply of timber (by comparison, Europe's forests had been depleted and most timber had to be purchased from Scandinavia) The British crown often turned to the cheap, yet strongly built American ships. There was a shipyard at the mouth of almost every river in New England.
By 1750, a variety of artisans, shopkeepers, and merchants provided services to the growing farming population. Blacksmiths, wheelwrights, and furniture makers set up shops in rural villages. There they built and repaired goods needed by farm families. Stores selling English manufactures such as cloth, iron utensils, and window glass as well as West Indian products like sugar and molasses were set up by traders. The storekeepers of these shops sold their imported goods in exchange for crops and other local products including roof shingles, potash, and barrel staves. These local goods were shipped to towns and cities all along the Atlantic Coast. Enterprising men set up stables and taverns along wagon roads to service this transportation system.
After these products had been delivered to port towns such as Boston and Salem in Massachusetts, New Haven in Connecticut, and Newport and Providence in Rhode Island, merchants then exported them to the West Indies where they were traded for molasses, sugar, gold coins, and bills of exchange (credit slips). They carried the West Indian products to New England factories where the raw sugar was turned into granulated sugar and the molasses distilled into rum. The gold and credit slips were sent to England where they were exchanged for manufactures, which were shipped back to the colonies and sold along with the sugar and rum to farmers.

Other New England merchants took advantage of the rich fishing areas along the Atlantic Coast and financed a large fishing fleet, transporting its catch of mackerel and cod to the West Indies and Europe. Some merchants exploited the vast amounts of timber along the coasts and rivers of northern New England. They funded sawmills that supplied cheap wood for houses and shipbuilding. Hundreds of New England shipwrights built oceangoing ships, which they sold to British and American merchants.

Many merchants became very wealthy by providing their goods to the agricultural population and ended up dominating the society of sea port cities. Unlike yeoman farmhouses, these merchants resembled the lifestyle of that of the upper class of England living in elegant 2 ¹⁄₂-story houses designed the new Georgian style. These Georgian houses had a symmetrical façade with equal numbers of windows on both sides of the central door. The interior consisted of a passageway down the middle of the house with specialized rooms such as a library, dining room, formal parlor, and master bedroom off the sides. Unlike the multi-purpose space of the yeoman houses, each of these rooms served a separate purpose. In a Georgian house, men mainly used certain rooms, such as the library, while women mostly used the kitchen. These houses contained bedrooms on the second floor that provided privacy to parents and children. -Wikipedia

Related articles

• October 1742, Massachusetts
• July 1742, Massachusetts
• April 1742, Massachusetts
• Touring New England - Four Sites You Need to See
• October 1742, Connecticut

October 1742, Connecticut

October 13, 1742- Nathaniel Bacon III, son of Nathaniel Bacon & Hannah Wetmore, marries Amy Sage Harrison, widow of Edmund Harrison, in Middletown, Middlesex, Connecticut.

October 14, 1742- A son, Oliver, is born to Daniel Doolittle & Elizabeth Dayton in New Haven, New Haven, Connecticut.


Official seal of Middletown, Connecticut (


(Nathaniel Bacon is my first cousin 9 times removed. Our common ancestors are Nathaniel Bacon & Ann Miller and Deacon Thomas Wetmore.
Oliver Doolittle is my second cousin 9 times removed. Our common ancestors are Abraham Doolittle & Abigail Moss and John Cornwall & Martha Peck.)

MIDDLETOWN

Before Europeans arrived, the territory where Middletown now sits was held by the Wangunks on the east bank and the Mattabesetts on the west bank of the Connecticut River. These two peoples shared a common chief, Sowheag, at the time of the initial European settlement in 1650.
In 1650, the first English families arrived from Hartford, Wethersfield, and Windsor. The new community became officially a town the following year, adopting the name "Middletown" in 1653, a reference to its distance halfway between the mouth of the Connecticut River and Windsor.
The first Africans were brought from Barbados to Middletown as slaves eight years later in 1661. Slavery remained a part of Middletown life throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; by 1756, 218 slaves -- at the time the third largest African population in the colony-- lived among a population of approximately 5,44 Europeans.
Middletown and other Connecticut towns had their own militias, or train bands, and held regular training days. Colonial statute required Middletown to have a force consisting of at least eight armed men and a sergeant acting as guard at any assembly for public worship. The militia kept watch around the meeting house, a structure 20 feet square enclosed by a palisade.
During the fifty years before the guns of Lexington, Middletown merchants developed an extensive trade between New England and the West Indies. Middletown enjoyed booming times while the trade lasted. So closely was Middletown's economic life tied to the sea that, by the outbreak of the Revolution, one third of the population was engaged in maritime trade and merchant activities.
_The Society of Colonial Wars

Related articles

• February 1742, Connecticut
• September 1742- Connecticut
• January 1742- Connecticut
• May 1742, Connecticut
• 1742, Connecticut

June 1742, Connecticut

June 4, 1742- A son, Abel, is born to Ebenezer Doolittle & Lydia Warner. The infant does not survive, passing away June 13th.

June 17, 1742- A daughter, Hannah, is born to William Sisson & Hannah Mullins in Stonington,New London,Connecticut. Hannah does not reach adulthood, dying in her eighth year.

(Abel Doolittle is my second cousin 8 times removed. Our common ancestors are Abraham Doolittle & Abigail Moss.
Hannah Sisson is my second cousin 8 times removed. Our common ancestors are George Sisson & Sarah F. Lawton.)

"In 1742, Sarah Grosvenor of Pomfret, Connecticut, died, apparently from the effects of a combined medicinal-surgical abortion that had produced a miscarriage. Four years later, Grosvenor's sexual partner, Amasa Davis, and the abortion provider, Dr. John Hallowell of Killingley, were indicted for her murder.
It was quite common for couples like Grosvenor and Davis to conceive a child before marrying. Indeed, in the mid-1700s historians have counted 30% of New England couples' first children being born within seven months of their marriage.
In eighteenth-century New England, if a young unmarried woman became pregnant, the father-to-be was expected to marry her. Then they'd have as many more children as they could, with little said about the circumstances of the first pregnancy. In some cases, such as Ebenezer Richardson, the father-to-be couldn't marry the mother-to-be because he already had a wife. Amasa Davis was unusual in being free to marry Sarah Grosvenor, but refusing."
-Taken from the blog Boston 1775.

Related articles

• May 1742, Connecticut
• February 1742, Connecticut
• January 1742- Connecticut
• 1742, Connecticut
• April 1742, Connecticut

August 1741, Rhode Island

 Newport County, Rhode Island

August 2, 1741- Richard Sisson and Deliverance Tallman are married in Portsmouth, Newport County, Rhode Island.
The son of Richard Sisson & Ann Card, Richard is 33 years old. Ann is 26, the daughter of Benjamin Tallman & Patience Durfee.

August 25, 1741- David Lawton is born to Benjamin Lawton & Mary Arnold in Portsmouth, Newport County, Rhode Island.


(Richard Sisson is my first cousin 9 times removed. Our common ancestors are George Sisson & Sarah Lawton.
Deliverance Tallman is my second cousin 9 times removed. Our common ancestors are William Hall & Mary Thomas.
David Lawton is my third cousin 8 times removed. Our common ancestors are Thomas Lawton & Elizabeth Salisbury.)

Related articles

• July 1741, Massachusetts
• August 1741- Connecticut
• July1741, Pennsylvania
• Winning Photograph of Providence Rhode Island Announced
• Cousins