Who We Were, Are & Will Be Our Family: Massachusetts

Showing posts with label Massachusetts. Show all posts

22 July 2021

Signature of 9xG-Grandfather Capt. Samuel Walker (1639)

(Click to Enlarge.)

This is the signature of my 9xg-grandfather Capt. Samuel Walker (1615-1684). He was the first of my Walkers to come to North America, we think immigrating in 1637, seventeen years after the Mayflower. Because he was a Scottish Presbyterian, the English Presbyterians would not let him settle in Massachusetts Bay Colony. So he and his fellow travelers went to Exeter, New Hampshire for some years, before moving back to Reading, Massachusetts and finally settling in Woburn, Massachusetts.

The document is The Exeter (New Hampshire) Combination of 1639, pledging loyalty to God and King, but also saying "We are not like those from Massachusetts."

19 July 2021

Another Case of Family Tree Serendipity (years 1668 and 1855)

"In 1668 Thomas Dutton [of Woburn] brought an action of slander against Michael Bacon Jr., who had charged him with being a thief…The following paper also appears as evidence in this case and is very valuable for its autographs: Wee whose Names are under written testyfy that Thomas dutton having lived amongst us in the Towne of woburne nere the space of tenne yeares, has bine very Industrus in his calling and and has not to our knowledg bine any way given to steall or to take any thing that is not his owne. Josias Conuars, William Johnson, Mathew Johnson, James Conuars, Samuell Conuars, John Broockes, Thomas Peirce, Samual Walker senyer, John Russell Junior, henry broockes, Isack Broockes, Edward win, Richard Gardner, John Russell Sen., John Carter.
"The plaintiff obtained a verdict of fifteen pounds."

-- Johnson, E. F. (1906). Woburn Records of Births, Deaths, and Marriages. United States: Andrews, Cutler, & Company, 3:83, footnote to Dutton.
-- AmericanAncestors.org,, Middlesex County, MA, Abstracts of Court Files, 1649–1675 (online database, 2003). Unpublished abstracts by Thomas Bellows Wyman, "Abstract of Middlesex court files from 1649," n.d.: 2:48, Dutton vs. Bacon.

Thomas Dutton (1621-1687) was my 8xg-grandfather, and Samuel Walker, Sr. (1615-1684) was my 9xg-grandfather.

One hundred and eighty-seven years later, in 1855, in the small town of Metamora, in central Illinois,

my 2xg-grandfather Henry Walker, Sr. (1829-1865) married my 2xg-grandmother Louisa Dutton (1833-1913). Direct descendants of Samuel and Thomas.

03 July 2014

Genealogical Serendipity?

In the year 1661 there were five selectmen (members of the local government board) in Dedham, Massachusetts. One was Richard Everett and a second was Ralph Day. Sr. Little did they know.........

Two hundred and fifty-six years later in 1917, Richard Everett's 7xg-grandson Keith G. Walker (1894-1980) would marry Ralph Day's 6xg-granddaughter Mattie Mae Needham (1884-1938) in Custer County, Nebraska. Little did they know.

And their sixth child would be my father. :-)

Now you know.

Copyright © 2014 by Kevin W. Walker

21 June 2014

Archeological Dig on Ancestral Home

From the Boston Globe newspaper, June 10, 2010 --

Over centuries, trash to treasure

By Brian MacQuarrie

DEDHAM — Nason Sinkula, placing his trowel to the side, looks quizzically at the slender, dirt-covered root he has just unearthed from a pit near busy Dedham Square.
There, cradled in its gnarled elbow, lies a broken piece of white ceramic, decorated with the image of a shepherd that might have adorned the base of a 19th-century teacup.
“Awesome,’’ Sinkula says.
Such small victories are occurring nearly every day on the grounds of the Fairbanks House, the oldest wood-frame home in North America, where the day-to-day life of one of the country’s original families is being illuminated with every artifact plucked from the soil off East Street.
The work is dirty and tiring. But the efforts of Boston University archeology students and their volunteer crew are paying off with thousands of artifacts tossed aside by eight generations of a family who lived in the house since 1641.
“None of us expected that it would be so productive,’’ said Mary Beaudry, director of archeology graduate studies at Boston University.
The dig, which is in its third and final week, has yielded a trove of jagged pieces of tableware, bits of clothing, a broken chamber pot, a bone-handle knife, dozens of buttons, and even a thick glass bottle for “Cocoaine,’’ a form of coconut-based hair oil.
“You scrape your trowel, and something pops up,’’ said Travis Parno, a BU doctoral student who is supervising the digging at the site. In this hands-on work, Parno explained, one generation’s trash is often another’s treasure.
The Fairbanks House, with its sturdy beams raised by English carpenters in the East Anglian style, has long been celebrated for its age. But what makes this dig so significant, Beaudry and Parno said, is the sheer volume of common household items being discovered.
“It’s telling us about the practices of the typical family in the 19th century,’’ Parno said. “We’re digging the history of the ordinary people.’’
That history had its American origins in Jonathan and Grace Fairebanke, a couple from Yorkshire, England, who settled in Dedham with six children in 1636. Scientific analysis revealed a date of 1641 for the two-story house, which is still owned by a Fairbanks family organization. Rebecca Fairbanks, who left the house in 1904, ended 263 years of continuous habitation by one family.
The Fairbanks organization, which has about 1,200 dues-paying members, is spread across the country. The original Puritan couple were ancestors of Charles Warren Fairbanks, a vice president under Theodore Roosevelt and the namesake of Fairbanks, Alaska.
Today, what once was a 12-acre farm has dwindled to 2.5 acres. The site is on the National Register of Historic Places, offers tours to the public, and boasts a curator, who lives in a separate building.
“This is such an amazing house," said Alicia Paresi, a National Park Service curator who visited the site this week.
Such fascination has long been confined to the home itself, which is filled with hundreds of family mementos that include a Revolutionary War bayonet, a large 1816 map of the United States, a 17th-century wooden trunk, and a museum-like array of farm and household implements.
But Parno and his crew, including BU doctoral student Alex Keim, have found another piece of Fairbanks history that had vanished from memory. Their work has discovered the foundation boulders and cobbled floor of what appears to have been a large barn close to the rear of the original house.
The find surprised the archeologists, because the barn does not appear on maps or documents of the estate or in early photographs from the mid-19th century.
“It’s really strange because it’s pretty massive, and it’s hard to imagine that it’s forgotten because it’s right under the ground,’’ Beaudry said. “It’s certainly not an army of beheaded Roman gladiators or anything, but it’s something that will tell how the family was surviving well into the 19th century.’’
Fortunately for the archeologists, those clues exist because the Fairbanks family discarded many of its unwanted and worn-out possessions there.
“It’s fascinating what they've uncovered," said Allen Blood, 66, of Norwood, president of the board of the Fairbanks Family in America. “It means a great deal to us.’’
The hard work of putting the findings into context remains to be done. For now, the artifacts are being bagged and shipped to the BU archeology lab, where they will wait to be cleaned, labeled, and meticulously analyzed.
Until then, the unglamorous grunt work continues, but with certain benefits. “There’s a lot of lifting, bending, and struggling,’’ Keim said. “It’s also a great excuse to be outdoors."

25 April 2014

"Portrait of James Walker (1732-1806) in His Militia Uniform"

This is a copy of a drawing in the possession of the Stone House Museum, Belchertown, Massachusetts. Their button is in the column on the right.

This is James Walker, my 5xg-grandfather.

Lineage:
James Walker -> Hezekiah Walker (1760-1845) -> Aaron Walker (1788-1862) ->
Henry M. Walker, Sr. (1829-1865) -> Henry M. Walker, Jr. (1864-1952) ->
Keith G. Walker (1894-1980) -> (living father) -> me.

Copyright © 2014 by Kevin W. Walker