Trip to Fairfield Connecticut: Humphrey Hide and William Frost Ancestors

After spending the morning trying to figure out what we might be likely to be able to see when we arrived in Fairfield.  I decided that it made the most sense to first visit the museum there.  Much to my pleasant surprise, the library was open as well.



The museum is located smack dab in the middle of the historical area of Fairfield.  I had copied the map that is found in Schenck's book that showed where the original settlers lived.  The librarian found for us an exceptional book that had been compiled in 1936.  It showed the same land in three different time periods.  The first was the original settlers.  The second was 1779.  The third was 1936 when the book was written.  What made that so helpful is that some of the 1936 landmarks are still in place.  And from that I was able to identify approximately where my ancestors may have lived.



So the museum is the buildings closest to the water with a circle around it.  Between the museum and the water was a undeveloped area that would have been Wolves Swamp and the great meadow that is shown on the map of the home lots of the original settlers.  The man who seemed to be the most knowledgeable at the museum said that this naturalized area would have been huge in that time period ....not just the small amount of area that exists now.  Below is a photo of the swamp/great meadow that still exists between the museum and the water.



This is the first landmark for interpreting the map in Schenck's book depicting where the first settlers of Fairfield lived.

When we looked out the back door of the museum the librarian explained and others in the museum agreed that the depression that we could see was Edward's Pond.  A second landmark on the old map.







You can barely make out the depression that had been Edward's pond in the below photo....but at least you get the idea that Edward's pond is still an identifiable landmark for the original land plats.  I think perhaps the street that one sees in the below photo would have been Ludlow Ave.  Perhaps it still is?



And here is the map found in Schenck's book on page 65:



Below is a larger version of this map.  You will have to manipulate it in order to see it in it's entirety

When I first finished this blog post and got ready to push update, I realized that some of my assumptions the day that we visited are not correct.  So I will go back to Fairfield on another visit and relook at the area with new eyes.  I am removing some information and saving the rest of the explanation for another day.  

In the below modern map from Google you can see that the streets in the very old map above are not north-south nor east-west.   The village green would fall into place where St. Paul's Episcopal Church and First Church Congregational sits today....or just beside it.  I did see one reference somewhere this day that commented on the fact that the founding father's would "turn over in their graves"  (not exactly what the reference said) if they could now see the Church of England on their square looking smack dab at their church.  I actually found this reference after I pushed update in Schenck's book and will update this with her actual words when I have time.



Comparing all of the maps, I believe that Humphrey Hide lived in the area shown above in the bend in the road on the map just above (modern).  This land would be where the words Public is found in the notation Fairfield Public Library.  If you look at the very first map on this blog post, it will be where the Theater is located.  And that the well platted area on the ancient map would fit into the squares that now hold the Funeral home, Museum, Episcopal church and YMCA.....more or less.  This is my best interpretation.  The comment made by the most knowledgeable man in the museum encouraged me to believe I was interpreting Humphrey Hide's land correctly.  When I asked him about it, he said yes that the old Hide pond and been drained and the theater that sits there now always has water in the basement.

But this gives the best figuring that I can do on my ancestor's land....the Hide land.

As for the land on which father and son William and Daniel Frost lived on.  If you scroll back up to the modern map above....the very first map on this site....you will see the Episcopal church and the First church.  The sign on the First church says that it is called the First Congregational Church.  From my trip, I have learned that First Church Congregational.... the modern version of the church that the Puritans of New England attended.  My photo below is of this First Congregational church today:

While googling to make sure that I was calling the church the right thing, I found the following information:

Puritans, then, were distinguished for being "more intensely protestant than their protestant neighbors or even the Church of England". As a term of abuse, Puritan was not used by Puritans themselves. Those labeled Puritan called themselves terms such as "the godly", "saints", "professors", or "God's children".

and

And further proof that I am sorting this out in a way that makes sense is the below photo of the identification of this church giving the date founded as 1639....although they use the term gathered.

Obviously this is not the original church ....this church was built in 1891.

William Frost left money in his will to be used towards the cost of building the first structure to be used for services.  It is thought that perhaps a multi use building had been used before his death.  He said that his son-in-law was to give the money towards the building when it was half finished.  There is no proof that this did indeed occur.  But it shows that the church was important to our ancestor.  You will see that the original meeting house sat on the town green that is located smack dab in the middle of the village.....scroll up to the ancient map.

So where did the Frost family live?  I will work on that better next trip. 

The Volumes by Schenck that are about the history of Fairfield can be found at:

https://archive.org/details/historyoffairfie02sche/page/n4/mode/2up

I think it is also available on Google Books.

Proof that Ben Carey found as first jailor of Logan is same Ben Carey born in Orange County, NY

Nagging in the back of my mind as I work on this genealogy jaunt coming up was the fact that I didn't know how the entire group of descendants of Ben Carey knew that Ben Carey who dies in Kentucky is the same Ben Carey who was born in Orange County, NY.  I found it today.  Lynda McGinnis had posted on her Ancestry Tree the answer to this.  It is from the War of 1812 Pension Application Files Index 1812-1815.  The record says that Ben Carey's wife is Mariah Ketchum and that the couple was married in Orange County, NY in 1817.  But the important piece of information in addition to this fact is that Benjamin Carey is living in Lawrence County (PO Louisa) NY when he makes application for his pension in 1871.  YEA!  Very exciting to have this documentation!



Also on the Ancestry site, Nancy has posted the Census of 1850 for Lawrence County, Ky where Ben and Hannah are living at that time.  This further corroborates the birth of Ben to have been in New York art 1797.  He is 53 at the time the census is taken.  Living in the house hold are children:  Lewis 15, Henry 13, Sarah 11, Margaret 8,  Nancy (who is my ancestor) who is 6,  and Geo. who is 3.

Orange County, NY

I didn't get to Orange County NY this trip.  So I want to put down a few of my thoughts so that I don't loose the before I visit another year.  I found that much of what I expected to do in Orange County could be done just as well on-line.

The book:  The History of Orange County NY compiled by Ruttenber and Clark can be read on Google books

https://books.google.com/books?id=iuXFDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA54&lpg=PA54&dq=murder+of+the+widow+Walling+in+1758&source=bl&ots=N0kq_tLhIr&sig=ACfU3U1p_nUiEhs9RN4w2NTqU7xzbrf7fA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwia4LLX0qbnAhWalnIEHZaUA0kQ6AEwBXoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=murder%20of%20the%20widow%20Walling%20in%201758&f=false

Sources for my research on the Cooley and Carey family and related family members

History of Milford, Connecticut, 1639-1939  This is a book written for the 300th anniversary of the founding of Milford in 1939.

https://archive.org/stream/historyofmilford00fede/historyofmilford00fede_djvu.txt

There is an excellent bibliography on the wiki:

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Prudden-40

Families of Early Milford. Connecticut viewed on Ancestry

https://www.ancestry.com/interactive/48021/FamMilfordCT-007130-i?backurl=&ssrc=&backlabel=Return#?imageId=FamMilfordCT-007347-213

Carey resources:

I found the following book while browsing at NEGHS Feb 2020:

A Genealogical History of the Rehoboth Branch of the Carpenter Family in America by Amos B. Carpenter.  What I read seems to indicate that this is the right family

https://archive.org/details/genealogicalhist00carp/page/n5/mode/2up

Cooley family in Fairfield Connecticut

I have not finished my information on Samuel Coley and his wife Ann Prudden.  I assume at this point that their wills were written in Milford Connecticut and that both died in that community.  I descend from son, Peter Coley who others tell me married Sarah Hide.  I do not yet know why Peter moved to Fairfield.  Perhaps the best lots to settle on were all taken in Milford.  Or perhaps Sarah's family lived in Fairfield.

But I do know that Peter was baptised 25 April 1641 in Milford according to the records of the First church of Milford.  According to the book Early Families of Milford Connecticut that I viewed on Ancestry in Feb 2020,  he renewed his covenant at Fairfield Church 2 Jun 1695.  His wife, Mary was baptized 28 Nov 1703 in the Fairfield Church.  So it is likely that Peter moved his family to Fairfield before 1695.  He seems to have died before 6 May 1713 as brother Peter and son, Daniel are chosen adminstrators of his estate.  I take this to mean that he had no will.  In the list of those who receive distribution there is only one female who does not have last name Coley.  I take this to indicate that Peter died relatively young before all of his daughters had been married.

Today I am reading Families of Old Milford Connecticut compiled by Susan Woodruff Abbott.  In the forward the compiler says:




It was an interesting coincidence that this past month I was reading some of these books and manuscripts in preparation for this trip.  At the same time I was browsing through old genealogy magazines.  In one of the issues of NEGHS magazine there was an article about the history of genealogical research.  The author of the article made a point to mention that Donald Lines Jacobus was an excellent researcher and genealogist of the 20th century.  Which made me feel more comfortable about accepting much of this research without consulting all of the old documents myself.  Although I may do just that in the future.

Another source to look at is The History of Fairfield, Fairfield Connecticut from the settlement of the town in 1639 until 1818 by Elizabeth Hubbell (Godfrey) Schenck

https://archive.org/details/historyoffairfie02sche/page/32/mode/2up

So why did Peter Cooley/Coley move to Fairfield County?  That is the next mystery to solve.

Milford Connecticut and Samuel Coley

The historical texts say that Samuel Coley was in the Massachusetts Bay Colony by 1631.  But tell little else about that time period.  The historical texts say that Peter Prudden and the Puritans who accompanied him arrived in Boston in

In May, 1637, the Hector sailed from London to Boston, 
carrying a company gathered by John Davenport and Theo- 
philus Eaton of London. Five weeks later another ship 
arrived with a group headed by Peter Prudden, a native 
of Hertfordshire. Among the original Milford settlers 
known to be of this company were Edmund Tapp, James 
Prudden, William Fowler, Thomas and Hannah Bucking- 
ham, Thomas Welch, Richard Piatt, Henry Stonehill, and 
William East, all from Hertfordshire. The new arrivals 
stayed in the Massachusetts Bay Colony for almost a year, 
and were considered such desirable colonists that efforts were 
made to induce them to settle there permanently. 

Davenport and Prudden, however, desired to establish 
their own colony, and when the potentialities of the region 
at the mouth of the Quinnipiac River in Connecticut were 
verified by an expedition made in August, 1637, by Eaton 

https://archive.org/stream/historyofmilford00fede/historyofmilford00fede_djvu.txt

James Prudden is likely my ancestor....father to Ann Prudden.  Ann Prudden and Samuel Coley married 14 Feb 1640.  This is probably the connection to Milford for Samuel Coley.  Although I do not yet know if he moved to Milford and met Ann or if they had become interested in each other while living in the Mass Bay Colony and Samuel followed Ann to the new colony or perhaps Samuel Coley had lived in the same area as the Prudden family in England and had just arrived a bit earlier than the rest of the group.  It is even possible that some of the younger men with no families had gone ahead of the group to scout out the prospects for the rest of the group.

The Milford Colony was thus a settle- 
ment of Mr. Prudden's followers, recruited from towns in 
England and NevvEngland where he had preached, and 
held together by personal devotion to their leader. <£: 

Sergeant Tibbals suggested the region about the mouth 
of the Wepawaug River, ten miles west of New Haven, 
for their plantation. On February 12, 1639, Edmund 
Tapp, William Fowler, Benjamin Fenn, Zachariah Whit- 
man, and Alexander Bryan from New Haven, journeyed 
to the Wepawaug and purchased land from Ansantawae, a 

It was very interesting to me that in the early days of Milford, they were not connected to any government.

The church was the controlling force in colonial govern- 
ment, education, and social life. The leaders in the church 
were the leaders in civil affairs. Except for allegiance to 
the English Crown, which did not weigh too heavily upon 
the Fathers, they acknowledged no authority but the word of 
God, and "combined into a little republic." Their constitu- 
tion was the Scriptures. 

 There is a list of the original 44 free planters of Milford on this same site.

 The first General Court (town meet- 
ing), held on November 20, 1639, granted forty-four church 
members the franchise as "free planters." 

Here is information about Meeting House Bridge from the History of Milford that I am viewing on Internet Archives...all of the information in the boxes comes from this site that can be reached by the link above.

Although the river was not navigable, it was too deep to 
cross except by fords, of which there were many. The cross- 
ing was easy for riders on horseback or in wagons, but the 
slippery "stepping stones" made it difficult for those on foot. 
During spring freshets the stream was not fordable. The 
Court, therefore, instructed the judges "to consider in what 
place, and after what manner, a bridge may conveniently be 
made over the mill [Wepowage] river, and let it out to be 
don with convenience and Expedition." A site for the church 
had already been selected about one hundred and fifty feet 
south of the present church building at the junction of West 
Main and West River streets. Nearby was a small island, 
suitable for the location of bridge piers. The bridge afforded 
easy access to the church for those living across the river, and 
successive bridges at this point have been appropriately called 
"Meeting House Bridge." 

Massachusetts Bay Company and Samuel Coley

As I work on figuring out a time line of  where my ancestor, Samuel Cooley lived I found that I know almost nothing about the northern part of our country when it comes to research.  So I start this blog post with some information about the early years in the northern part of our shores.  The book that I am looking at via Ancestry:  Families of Early Milford Connecticut says Samuel Coley was of the Mass Bay Colony in 1631, and in 1639 a free planter in Milford.  So perhaps one of the things that I want to do while I am at NEGHS is find out about his stay in the Mass Bay Colony.

The Massachusetts Bay Colony (more formally The Colony of Massachusetts Bay, 1628–1691) was an English settlement on the east coast of America in the 17th century around the Massachusetts Bay, the northernmost of the several colonies later reorganized as the Province of Massachusetts Bay. The lands of the settlement were located in southern New England, with initial settlements situated on two natural harbors and surrounding land about 15.4 miles (24.8 km) apart—the areas around Salemand Boston.

Ann's will names the children of this couple that I have not included at this point.  What is of interest to me is the term free planter.

In the Massachusetts Bay Colony, a man had to be a member of the Church to be a freeman; 

A "free planter" (as opposed to a "freeman") was any land holder who possessed land outright that was usually given to him by the colony after he had finished his probationary period,

Initially, a male was not formally considered free when first entering into a colony, or just recently having become a member of one of the local churches; he was considered common. Such persons were never forced to work for another individual, per se, but their movements were carefully observed, and if they veered from the Puritan ideal, they were asked to leave the colony. There was an unstated probationary period, usually one to two years, that the prospective "freeman" needed to go through, and he was allowed his freedom if he did pass this probationary period of time. A Freeman was said to be free of all debt, owing nothing to anyone except God Himself.

McNeely connections?

I am in Boston with Sarah and her family this weekend.  I was working on cleaning up my home screen a bit and found the below.  I have made no notes that I can find where I took this screen shot.  Nor anything about the validity of the information.  So this post is about what I am reading in this screen shot and what I might know.




If this screen shot has any validity, The Dickey family and the McNeely family that I look at may have come to our shores together.  Then the families traveling together went up the Shenandoah Valley via the Old Wagon Road to settle on Meachums River in what is now Albemarle County, Virginia.  

Ok this time I will note from where the screen shot below is taken.

The Presbyterian Historical Almanac and Annual Remembrancer of the ..., Volume 6

By Joseph M. Wilson

I viewed the below as a free ebook on Google books.

https://books.google.com/books?id=Ys4YAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA118&lpg=PA118&dq=Meachums+River+in+Albemarle+County,+Va&source=bl&ots=o64rUTIC0K&sig=ACfU3U0tHkOz-c8YUPHn3vm1OcbFz7VuCQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi55oOM5-fnAhXQlHIEHTSPBbUQ6AEwCHoECAwQAQ#v=onepage&q=Meachums%20River%20in%20Albemarle%20County%2C%20Va&f=false



So the question that is in my mind today is if this is my McNeely family.  Many researchers give the wife of David/Jagger McNeely as having been Rebecca Dickey.  Were the McNeely family and the Dickey family still traveling together in the late 1700s when David/Jagger might have been looking for a wife?

That is all the time that I have this morning.  I'll give this some more thought.  One more idea that I might want to look at is that there are road orders for Albemarle on-line.  If I did the research to find to whom the McNeely family sold their land after living in this area (if this is even true), I might use the road orders to zero in on just where they lived as well as the Dickey family and friends:  Woods

http://www.virginiadot.org/vtrc/main/online_reports/pdf/76-r27.pdf

Another thing to follow up on is information given by Laura McKenzie:

REPORTEDLY, Robert McNeely is the spouse of Dorotha <sic> WOODS.   Now if Dorotha is part of Michael Woods' family.......

 And Laura also sent the following link with information about connections between some of these families:

https://www.ancestry.com/boards/surnames.woods/5091.1/mb.ashx

The Carey family

Mike's match with me on Chromosome #13 has had me digging as fast as possible on my Cooley family as I felt sure of the fact that that is where we would find our common ancestors.  Why?  Because both of us had ancestors in Fairfield Connecticut from the 1600s.

However, I have decided to step back for a little while and look at my Carey line instead of the Cooley line.  The segment that we share on Chromosome #13 has to come to me from either Absolom Carey or his wife Temperance Cooley.

One of the first trees that I looked at on Ancestry belongs to jecinri and can be found at:

https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/tree/35313052?cfpid=18782313747

in order to get to Elihu Carey and his wife, Elizabeth North one follows the ancestors of the very top name, William Cox, Jr..

Somehow the Cooley connection would make more sense.  I am not ready to abandon the Cooley search for the Carey connection yet.

Fairfield Connecticut and my Cooley family

I was writing to Mike Tillman about our connections and decided to brush up on what I know about Mike's ancestors.  In my mind I was sooooooo sure that Mike had Cooleys in his tree.  Much to my surprise, when I pulled up his tree on Ancestry there are NO Cooleys in his tree.  So this magic chromosome that I am looking at comes down from another family in the area around Fairfield Connecticut that married into my Cooley family or there is a Cooley ancestor in Mike's family that he hasn't found yet.   So as a part of getting ready to go on this trip, I am going to do some thinking about Mikes' family.  From Mike's ancestry tree I find these people in Fairfield Connecticut.

Sarah Reynolds and her husband Josiah Henry Smith.



Sarah Reynolds' mother, Sarah Blackman and her husband Amos Smith



Sarah Blackman's mother, Sarah Brown, and Sarah's father, Josiah Blackman.  Josiah's father was  Joseph Blackman who was born in 1675.  Joseph does not show up in these pictures.



I do not see any other surnames on Mike's tree that are found in the area around Fairfield Connecticut.  So these will be the names that I am looking at while I am in that area:Smith, Reynolds, Brown, Blackman....Oh, wait I found one more.  Josiah Smith born 1803  has a wife named Betsey Lockwood.  Mike has very little information about Betsey's ancestors....could she have a Cooley in her tree?  This will be fun!

Ok, I woke up this morning thinking about the next step.  Next I look at Terry Lee's tree and read the Jacobus book to see if I can find Cooley clues.