Falmouth (Portland) Maine Church Baptisms & Admissions

In honor of the February birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, here are some records from the First Church of Falmouth, Maine. Falmouth is now Portland. You probably don't think of slaves being part of life in New England, but a little research reveals its existence was much more common than one might believe.

page 5
Traphena, negro child belonging to Maj. Moodey and born in his house.

page 15
1745
Coffee, a negro man servant to Mr. Bucknam, a.

page 19
Adults baptised
Phillis, a negro servant belonging to Mrs. Frost, b.
Rose, a negro servant belonging to Moses Pearson, Esq., b.

page 29
1784
Portsmouth, negro, c. Sept. 26.

page 49 - The following persons were married by the Rev. Thomas Smith. These records are in the handwriting of Mr. Smith, all upon one page, but as the ink has at least three shades it is not probably that all were recorded at one sitting. Why he omitted to enter upon the church book his earlier and later marriages is not explained.

1753
Negro Prince and Indian

page 73
Hager, a negro child belonging to Jeremy Riggs, August 13, 1727.
Hager, a negro child belonging to myself, 1739.

page 103
Triphena, a negro child belonging to Maj. Moody, and born in his house, 1726.
Triphosa, a negro child belonging to Samuel Moody, who came under particular engagements for its religious education, June 10, 1733.

Source
King, Marquis Fayette. ... Baptisms and Admission from the Records of First Church in Falmouth, Now Portland, Maine. Portland, Me.: Maine Genealogical Society, 1898. Internet Archive. MSN, 8 Sept. 2008. Web. 11 Apr. 2015.

Tuesday's Tip - One Piece of Advice

I was recently contacted by a former student and asked for advice about how to start researching his family history. He had one line that his grandmother had researched back for thirteen generations but many other lines with brick walls. He is using Ancestry.com. I gave him my abbreviated version to get him started and I know there are many, many resources out there that describe the process but I was wondering this...

1. What was the biggest mistake you made when you started? 
2. What is one thing you wish someone told you when you were starting out? 
3. What is your most helpful resource today? 
4. What is one piece of advice that helps you keep your enthusiasm going when you feel lost and frustrated? 

My answers - if you are willing to contribute to a follow-up post, please leave your answers in the comments and if you blog about your genealogy, leave me a link so I can include it in the future post. 

1. Biggest mistake - not keeping track of/documenting sources of information
2. I wish I knew - how poorly documented and inaccurate many of the online family trees are
3. Most helpful resource - probably Dropbox - it's where I save images of the documents I find online to source my family tree. It's important to source but it's taken awhile to find a way to keep electronic images so I can easily go back to them. I create a surname folder and then subfolders for each family group and file census records, relevant images from NEHGS etc. in the appropriate folder. A very close second is the online geneabloggers community. I encouraged him to start a blog. 
4. One piece of advice - keep two trees. One that is carefully documented and one that is undocumented or partially documented to be used a clues for future research. When one line gets you down, switch to another so you get some success to keep you motivated. 

I don't believe that genealogy is the realm of the retired. I know plenty of young people like this 21 year old who are very interested and excited by exploring their ancestry. It's a matter of finding the time in their busy schedules and encouragement. Like most of us, they will make rookie mistakes but they will get better with practice. 

Genealogy & High School Students

Once again we are at the end of the school year and some of my students have chosen to research their ancestry as their final project. Each year, I get better at structuring the project for student success. The AP US exam was later this year than in the past and students did not have as much time to work on their projects but still achieved exciting results. Some highlights from this year include:

• A girl who got so caught up in her findings that she exclaimed, "This is so much fun! I spent two hours last night because I got so caught up in researching." She found many documents including her great-grandmother's immigration record. Her great-grandmother arrived on the Mauritania from Germany. The student thought it was really cool that she found a picture of the ship. Then I told her it was a sister ship to the Lusitania - that we learned about when studying the events leading to the First World War. It was fun to see her connect her family to the history we studied during the year. Students are required to find a minimum of 10 records to document their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents. 
• A girl who knew her family heritage was Italian but had no idea who the immigrant ancestor was or when he arrived in the United States. I was able to help her locate her great-grandfather's immigration record and we also found she had a great-grandmother from Quebec - something she did not know. She found numerous records to show how her family moved around from Vermont to Massachusetts to Maine. I have encouraged, and most have included, maps to show places their family has lived over time. 
• A boy who got a large packet of information from his grandmother. I love that this project opens the conversations between the generations. Many have never discussed the family with their grandparents. The project also includes a mandatory interview with a grandparent or if that is not possible, with someone who can share what they know about the life of a grandparent. 

Photos of people or of family heirlooms, gravestones, family homes are also highly encouraged. Most students haven't thought of including pictures of things in telling their family's story. They begin to realize that the things can help tell the story of the lives of their ancestors. 

Over the past few years, I've found success in encouraging students to go where the research takes them. Many times school-based family history projects are all about filling in the tree and finding pictures of the people in the tree. I allow my students to focus on one line or multiple lines. Many ask how many generations they need to find. I tell them I would rather have them do it carefully with good research and documentation even if they only get a few generations done. The flexibility to follow the evidence has made it a more fulfilling experience for them. They don't get stressed out about finding "enough" ancestors and focus on finding the stories and learning about the lives of the ancestors they can document. 

Lost & Found

Over the years of working on my genealogy I have lost and found more ancestors than I can count. Think of your clothes over the past decade. You find something that you think is amazing and awesome only to discover later that it doesn't really fit or isn't quite right and you discard it. Watching an ad for ancestry.com makes doing genealogical research seem so easy; just type in a few details and up pops a leaf that leads to fascinating facts about your ancestors. Unfortunately, real research is not that easy. Oh, you can just click on those leaves and add all sorts of things to your family tree but do so at your own peril - it's a bit like buying clothes on impulse. There is a lot of sloppy research and erroneous information out there. I am finding an increasing number of hints where the record does not even have the same name as the person for whom it is being suggested. The family trees that others have done are often equally misleading and not all sources/records are created equal. 

This is not, however, a rant about the horror of amateur family historians or an attempt to discourage you from starting your family tree. Quite the opposite. I remember the thrill of clicking and adding relatives when I first started. There were no shaking leaves then but still plenty of information that was easy to find. If it had been more difficult, I might have gotten frustrated and given up. I have seen my students experience that same thrill. I admit that I am not a purist. I jump around from branch to branch and work on whatever part of my tree captures my attention in that moment. I do not work methodically on a single line until it is done. 

However, I have learned to temper my enthusiasm with a healthy dose of skepticism about what I find online. I use trees of other members as starting points for research and look for records to back up what is recorded. I have made my trees private after being ripped into several times by those who believe no information should be recorded until it is completely verified. 

Finding ancestors is like being a private detective. You have to follow the clues and collect enough evidence to make your case solid. You will receive lots of tips and most of them turn out to be irrelevant and misleading but with persistance, you can find reliable information and solve the mystery. Sometimes it's a preponderance of circumstantial evidence and that's the best you can do.

Assembling ancestors into a family tree is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. Sometimes a piece seems to fit but later you notice the subtle clues that show it isn't quite right and you begin again to find the piece that goes in that spot. Each piece you correctly identify and fit into place goes into making the larger family picture come to life. 

I do make errors but even when I have to lop off a branch from the tree because I've made a mistake, I always learn something and often find interesting stories of people and history. So get in there and start looking. Use the easy hints to get some traction but go back and evaluate with more care. I suggest using two trees - one for leads and possibilities and one that is as carefully documented as you can make it. 

Tombstone Tuesday - Where Is the Body?

Simeon F. Brown died while serving in the Civil War. He contracted swamp fever in New Orleans and died in Marine Hospital. Records show he was initially buried in Cypress Grove Cemetery but was disinterred and moved to the Chalmette National Cemetery. However, he has a grave stone in his hometown of Bethel, Maine. That stone is inscribed for both Simeon and his wife, Harriet C. Bean, who apparently never remarried. I wonder where his body actually remains. What type of records would show whether his body was moved a second time and brought home to Maine? Was it common to erect a gravestone at home even if the body remained in the National Cemetery? I'm interested in hearing from anyone with similar stories. So far, the consensus seems to confirm what I suspected - that it is unlikely the body was moved from Louisiana and that the tombstone in Maine is a memorial marker for Simeon and marks the grave of his wife Harriet. 

1870 Census shows Harriet, her two daughters, and her mother living with her brother's family. 

Simeon F. & Harriet C. (Bean) Brown were the great-grandparents of my grandfather, Clayton L. Blake. Isabelle Brown was his grandmother.

It's All Relative

I was absent from blogging for about a month - from mid-May to mid-June. I was, however, heavily involved in research. I had a group of students who wanted to find out about their families and I was helping them rather than doing my own research and writing. I have done this with students before but this time I tried to give emphasis to the story aspect of family history.

Some of my observations:

• Nothing warms my heart more than to see a student whip out his cell phone and call grandma to find out information and observe an extended meaningful conversation between them. This is an approved use of a cell phone in my class!
• In today's mobile society, families are often spread out and don't have (or take) the time to talk about their lives and pass on family stories. I'm certain many of my students have not had more than a superficial conversation with their grandparents. It makes me sad because I know a lot of stories from my grandparents' lives. 
• Everyone can find information and stories. It was great to see students who thought there was nothing interesting in their family, find something special. Even ordinary people have interesting stories. The internet makes it easy to find information if you have some basic information on ancestors who lived in the early 20th century. Almost everyone can get that information on at least one branch of their family. 

Some things my students found out

• My father was raised as a Mormon
• There were two Pillsbury families: "One brother founded the baking company and I'm descended from the other one"
• There's a historic house in Topsham that belonged to one of my ancestors
• My (how ever many) times great-grandfather designed the logo for Humpty Dumpty potato chips
• My mother's ancestor and my father's ancestor both fought for the Union at the same battle in the Civil War in different regiments and from different states.
• My Civil War ancestor survived one of the bloodiest battles of the war and then got a land grant in Maine where he broke his back in a fall while building his home. 
• Hey, I'm related to Ms. Carter! 

They discovered accused witches, artists, inventors, politicians and writers. Their origins were very diverse: Canada, Germany, Austria, Sweden, Norway, Italy, England, Ireland, Scotland and more that I can't remember. 

Aftermath of the Shot Heard 'Round the World

The case of Uriah Thayer illustrates some of the challenges of documenting service in the Revolutionary War. It would seem from the pension requests of my ancestors that virtually no one kept any paperwork pertaining to their service and in some cases there was no paperwork to be kept. I have seen a few that state they were verbally discharged without formal papers. These verbal discharges seem to be from the beginning of the war. Uriah came from Braintree and joined Silas Wild's Company of minutemen who assembled on April 19, 1775. After 9 days he was sent home but would later join the army again at least 3-4 times and possibly more. His wife, Phebe (Hayden), states in the pension records that he was gone for most of the first three years of their marriage. Other soldiers state that they believe he served for the better part of 5 years. Despite these testimonies, there is only documentation of a little over a year of service when it is all consolidated. Further complicating the process of obtaining a pension, Uriah died in 1805, well before the 1818 law providing for pensions. Phebe was illiterate (based on her signing the application with her mark - see below). She ended up getting a pension for $39 that was later raised to $50 per annum. At the age of 92, she was still corresponding with the government, applying for a land bounty. I cannot find proof that the land bounty was granted but it may have been.

Piecing together the 74 pages of his pension record (the longest I have encountered), Uriah responded to the call for troops when the British marched on Lexington and Concord. He spent time in Boston guarding the harbor and was serving with General Benjamin Lincoln when he supervised the evacuation of the British. He may or may not have fought at Saratoga or gone on an expedition to Canada.

I doubt any of the men responding to the alarm from Lexington and Concord gave a thought to pensions or what their families might need from the government in the future. I'm sure they didn't envision the bureaucracy and red tape they or their spouses would encounter when trying to access their benefits.

Raising the Alarm

Uriah Thayer - 4th cousin 7 times removed (closest relationship)
Common ancestors - Samuel Bass to T. Richard Carter
John Alden to Linona Alice Yates

Thomas Rogers to Fern Lyndell Cotton

Turn the Page

Genealogy can be an adventure and sometimes a lesson in frustration. Today I was going through records I found for my great-grandparents. I looked at the marriage record on ancestry.com and noticed that I could go to the next record in the batch. So being curious, I clicked to advance the page. Well, the next page was actually the back of the marriage record. I didn't even know it had a back side! On the back were the names of the groom's and bride's parents. The name of my great-grandfather's mother did not match what I thought I knew. Oops!! It turns out that my great-great-grandfather was married not twice but three times. Just like the commercial for ancestry.com. I thought the mother of his children was Lillie Esther Shaw but she was actually wife number 2. Wife number 1 was Lizzie M. Philbrick - thus solving a family mystery of the identity of "Grammie Philbrick"  - a name my father's generation heard often but didn't know to whom it referred. It solved the mystery of Civil War enlistment papers, for a Benjamin Philbrick, in the possession of one of my cousins. And of course, it has sent me on a new hunt for ancestors - a new adventure. I'd done a pretty good job of tracking down the ancestors of Lillie Shaw but they are not actually related not me...oh well. The lesson I am taking from this is to TURN THE PAGE. You never know what you might find. 

Francis L. Cotton & Lizzie M. Philbrick

Ray Everett Cotton & Annie Florilla Gibbs

Fern Lyndell Cotton - my grandmother

Remembering Our Veterans

Yesterday I wrote about Dominicus Smith, my 5th great-grandfather, who served in the Revolutionary War. It was exciting to learn he served with General George Washington at the Battle of Trenton. I got the information from his pension application which I accessed on Fold3. It was interesting to read his circumstances in 1818 and again in 1823 when he applied for his pension and then updated his financial status. I found it interesting but sad that it appears one had to be destitute in order to receive a pension. Below are the images and transcriptions of this portion of his application. He was awarded a pension of $8/month paid in semi-annual installments of $48. He got $77.16 for back pension payments. His daughter, Patience, age 33 and feeble, is my 4th great-grandmother and his granddaughter, Sarah, age 7, is my 3rd great-grandmother. 


Seeing the inventory in these images, I am reminded of the debt we owe our veterans for their sacrifices and our duty to care for them and their families. 

Maine                                           been wholly applied    

Dominicus Smith                                 to the discharge of his

Privat 1 year 1776                              first Debts -

1 Schedule, June 1820                           His age 68. Farmer -

14 acres of poor Land –                        Patience – 33 – very feeble

A small house & Barn                            Jedediah – 11 – Christiana 8

1 Cow – 1 pair of small                        Sarah – 7 -

Cattle – 6 sheep – At Home

a few articles of furniture

amt. of Schedule $219                           Recorded 2 Sep 1823

2 Schedule – 2^nd May 1823

Real Estate – none –

an old Home & a few

articles of furniture –

The Real Estate in

first Schedule was sold

to Elisha Smith, Febry

6. 1821 – Deed made and

acknowledged same day –

Consideration $150 – the

proceeds of said sale have

Schedule of real and personal estate, (necessary clothing and bedding excepted) belonging to me the subscriber viz:

Real estate – I have none

Personal estate – One old horse and a few mean (unk. Word) or cooking utensils and household stuff.

      Since the exhibition of my first schedule the following changes have been made to my property and circumstances. The fourteen acres of poor and rocky land mentioned in said schedule I sold to Elisha Smith in February 1821 – for one hundred and fifty dollars, with which I paid [Doet?] Emerson about sixty dollars – and an execution in favor of [Dort?] Aaron Porter against me for about 50 dollars and the rest has been appropriated to pay sundry small demands I owed to different individuals and for my family’s support. The Stock mentioned in said schedule has also been consumed in the support of myself and family – I have no income or prospect of any

                        Dominicus Smith

May 2, 1823

      Signed and sworn to

            Before me Asher Ware D.J. of U.S.

Schedule of family residing with me Dominicus Smith,who by occupation am a farmer – which I am not able to pursue by reason of bodily infirmity – am not able to do a days work

Names       Ages              Capacity of each to contribute to their support

Patience – a daughter 33     very feeble

Jedediah          11                     

Christiana         8          young children not able to support themselves  

Sarah             7

11.769 R

District of Maine

Dominicus Smith

of Biddeford in the state of Dist. of Maine

who was a private in the regiment commanded by

Colonel Patterson of the Massachusetts

Line for the term of one year

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­______________________________________

Inscribed on the Roll of the Dist. of Maine

At the rate of 8 Dollars per month, to commence on

The 16^th of May 1818

­____________________________________________

Certificate of Pension issued 11 of June 1819

and sent to [unreadable]

Saco, District of Maine

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­______________________________________________

Arrears to 4^th of Mar 1819 [unreadable] $77.16

Semi-anl. all’ce ending 4th Mar 1819  $48 ~

                                       $125,16

            {Revolutionary claim,}

            {Act 18^th March, 1818}

                        Yorke County


Dominicus & Jedidiah (Tarbox) Smith
David & Patience (Smith) Shepard
Jacob & Sarah (Shepard) Emmons
Gilbert & Laura (Emmons) Yates
Estes & Eva (Hayes) Yates
Linona Yates - my grandmother

1940 Census

My finds so far: Carter - Grandparents & Dad

Yates - Grandmother and Mom

Yates - Great grandparents & great aunts and uncles

Blake - Grandfather