December 8th, Before the Revolution

December 8, 1724- Jonathan Tuttle, son of Simon Tuttle & Elizabeth Abernathy, marries Mary Cooper, daughter of John Cooper & Sarah Thomas, in Connecticut.
Jonathan Tuttle is my second cousin 8 times removed.

December 8, 1726- Jabez Carpenter marries Elizabeth Mitchell, daughter of Richard Mitchell & Elizabeth Tripp, in Rhode Island.
Elizabeth Mitchell is my third cousin 9 times removed.
Jonathan Tuttle, son of Nathaniel Tuttle & Esther Doolittle, marries Rebecca Gilbert, daughter of Samuel Gilbert & Hannah Little, in New Haven, Connecticut. They would have no children.
Jonathan Tuttle is my second cousin 8 times removed.

December 8, 1742- Daniel Seamans is born to John Seamans & Priscilla Wood in Swansea, Bristol, Massachusetts.
Daniel Seamans is my first cousin 8 times removed.

December 8, 1743- Nehemiah St. John marries Lois Cornwall, daughter of Paul Cornwall & Susannah Bowden in Connecticut.
Lois Cornwall is my first cousin 9 times removed.

December 8, 1747- A son, Preserved, is born to Preserved Sherman & Sarah Lawton in Portsmouth, Newport, Rhode Island.
Preserved Sherman is my third cousin 8 times removed.

December 8, 1742- A daughter, Deborah Adamson, is born to Thomas Adamson & Mary Burson in Richland Township, Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
Deborah Adamson is my second cousin 6 times removed.

William Penn  (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

December 8, 1761- John Lukens, (1720-1789), was  appointed by Thomas and Richard Penn to the position of Surveyor General under the Proprietaries, December 8, 1761.
On the death of Nicholas Scull, the surveyor-general, he was commissioned,  to fill the place, and continued in the position until his death, in the fall of 1789, -the long period of almost twenty-eight years, from the colonial period to the establishment of the State government.
William Penn's early decisions about Pennsylvania land distribution gave the Land Office significant power from the beginning of settlement. The land office was comprised of the secretary for proprietary affairs, the surveyor general, and the receiver general. Over time, the surveyor general became the most powerful position in the land distribution system because his duties were an integral part of that system.
A prospective settler made "an application," that is, a request for land, in a particular place. Barring any problems such as a previous application for the same land, the secretary of proprietary affairs would issue a warrant for a survey of the property. The surveyor general then assigned a deputy in the appropriate district to perform the survey. After its completion, the surveyor general certified the survey's accuracy and returned a report to the secretary who could then formally grant the land.
Lukens remained Surveyor General for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania until the American Revolution.
John Lukens is my second cousin 8 times removed.

Related articles

• On This Day in the Colonies: December 7
• December 1742, Rhode Island
• December 1742, Connecticut
• Shop Farm Aid, for Gifts that make a difference
• Today in History, December 8th

Connecticut, after 1742

St. John-Ashwell House (1742)

In 1742, Jonathan Huested purchased a newly built house, on what is now Park Street in New Canaan, from Henry Inman. The house was next owned by Lt. David St. John. It was later home to the Lieutenant’s granddaughter, Hannah, who married the Congregational minister, Rev. Theophilus Smith in 1831. Her brother, Dr. Samuel St. John, was born in the house in 1813. A notable scientist, he was a professor at the Western Reserve College in Ohio and later the Cleveland Medical College. He later returned to New Canaan, serving for twenty years as Professor of Chemistry at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of New York, and lived in a house across from the old St. John House. A few months before his death, he gave a Historical Address in the Congregational Church on the Centennial, July 4, 1876. The old house remained in St. John family until it was sold to Helen M. Ashwell in 1919. The entrance was originally on the north side, but the current front door faces Park Street. Historical Buildings of Connecticut.

Esther Moss, daughter of John Moss & Martha Lothrop, dies at age 64 some time before November, 1743, in Wallingford, New Haven, Connecticut. In 1742, she had married her third husband, Samuel Frary.

(Esther Moss is my first cousin 10 times removed. Our common ancestors are John Moss & Abigail "Goody" Charles.)

Related articles

• February 1742, Connecticut
• November 1742, Connecticut
• September 1742- Connecticut
• October 1742, Connecticut
• January 1742- Connecticut

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

November 1742, Connecticut

Map of Connecticut highlighting New Haven County (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

November 8, 1742- A daughter, Submit Dowd, is born to Janna Dowd & Desire Cornwall in Guilford, New Haven, Connecticut.

November 16, 1742- My eighth great grandmother, Mary Cornwall, dies at the age of 75 in Middletown, Middlesex, Connecticut.
Mary was born in November 20, 1666, the daughter of John Cornwall & Martha Peck.
In 1688, on her 22nd birthday, she married Samuel Doolittle, son of Sergeant Abraham Doolittle & Abigail Moss. Solomon received land in Wallingford in 1689, and there they first settled.
After their second child was born they moved from Wallingford to Middletown.
Samuel suffered from poor health by 1714, and in 1717 he died at the age of 52. Mary survived him by nearly thirty years.
They had eleven children, all of whom lived to adulthood.

November 29, 1742- A son, Isaiah, is born to Isaiah Tuttle & Susanna Doolittle in North New Haven, New Haven, Connecticut. The child would not reach adulthood, and dies young.

November 30, 1742- Solomon Moss, son of Solomon Moss & Ruth Peck, marries Elizabeth Fenn, daughter of Theophilus Fenn & Martha Doolittle in Wallingford, New Haven, Connecticut.


(Submit Dowd is my second cousin 8 times removed. Our common ancestors are John Cornwall & Martha Peck. Elizabeth Fenn is her second cousin.
Isaiah Tuttle is my second cousin 8 times removed. Our common ancestors are Sergeant Abraham Doolittle & Abigail Moss. Elizabeth Fenn is his second cousin. Solomon Moss is his second cousin once removed.
Elizabeth Fenn is my second cousin 8 times removed. Our common ancestors are Sergeant Abraham Doolittle & Abigail Moss and John Cornwall & Martha Peck. Solomon Moss is her second cousin once removed.
Solomon Moss is my second cousin 9 times removed. Our common ancestors are John Moss & Abigail "Goody" Charles.)

Related articles

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

September 1742- Connecticut

 

September 14, 1742- Mindwell Cornwall, daughter of Benjamin Cornwall & Mary Ward, dies in Middletown, Middlesex, Connecticut. She is four years old.

A son, Samuel, is born to John Cornwall & Mary Foster in Middletown, Middlesex, Connecticut.

September 18, 1742- Noah Dowd, son of Janna Dowd & Desire Cornwall, dies in Guilford, New Haven, Connecticut. He is four years old.

September 30, 1742- A son, David, is born to David Moss & Mindwell Doolittle in Wallingford, New Haven, Connecticut.

(Mindwell Cornwall is my first cousin 9 times removed. Samuel Cornwall and Noah Dowd are her first cousins once removed. Samuel and Noah are first cousins. Samuel Cornwall is my second cousin 8 times removed. Noah Dowd is my second cousin 8 times removed. Our common ancestors are John Cornwall & Martha Peck.
David Moss is my third cousin 8 times removed. Our common ancestors are John Moss & Abigail "Goody" Charles and Abraham Doolittle, and Paul Peck and Martha Hale.)

Ebenezer Evans House

 

According to the sign on the Ebenezer Evans House at 17 Long Bottom Road in Southington, the house was built “before 1767.” According to Heman R. Timlow’s Ecclesiastical and Other Sketches of Southington, Conn. (1875), Ebenezer Evans was the

son of Ebenezer and Mary Gridley, his wife, b. Sept. 19, 1742, in Farmington (Southington parish); m. Jan. 19, 1769, Sarah, daughter of Reuben Munson, of Southington. He resided in Southington, where Josiah H. Merriman now lives. He removed to Conway, Mass., where he was living in 1782; but returned to Southington, where he died of influenza, March 24, 1816, aged 75 years.

Anson Merriman (1786-1853) moved to the house in 1832. His father, Chauncey Merriman, had already started a farm on land purchased from Ebenezer Evans in 1809. Anson started the apple orchard on the farm that was continued by his son, Josiah H. Merriman (1834-1912), and then by Josiah’s daughter Sarah (1867-1957) and her husband (m. 1888) Elijah Rogers (1861-1949), who was one of the first farmers in Connecticut to grow peaches commercially. The Rogers Orchard continues today.









Related articles

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

March 1742, Connecticut

Official seal of Middletown, Connecticut (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

March 2, 1742- A son, Robert, is born to  Robert Hubbard & Elizabeth Sill in Middletown, Middlesex, Connecticut.
The child will not survive infancy.

(Robert Hubbard is my third cousin 7 times removed. Our common ancestors are George Hubbard & Elizabeth Watts and Deacon Thomas Wetmore & Sarah Hall.)

Related articles

• February 1742, Connecticut
• January 1742- Connecticut
• 1742, Connecticut
• October 1741, Connecticut
• December 1741- Connecticut