Birth year of 1654, old calendar, calculated by subtracting age at death in town records (102) from their cited death date. The new calendar result is 1655, still used now, which begins a new year each Jan 1..
Her church made a list of its first members when she was a girl of about age 8, after having formed when she was a baby. Only one Phelps and only one Alvord were among the members named on the church's 8-year anniversary. It's thus virtually assured that she was the daughter of Nathaniel, the sole Phelps listed. (Her spouse was most likely a son of the sole Alvord named, Alexander. If not the, then an early-born grandson.)
She is barely mentioned in a history of the Phelps descendants. printed in 1899. It listed her as third child of six, birth year 1655. (Sibling list is on page 91, with page 90 noting that Nathaniel was a church Deacon, that he continued to pay "slip rent" in Windsor a few years after going to Northampton, did so through Jan., 1659. Perhaps they moved in stages, not "all at once"? He was not recorded a freeman in Boston court records until 1681. This was relatively late in the Puritan era, given others were declared 1635-1640. This book was by Judge Oliver Phelps of Portland, Oregon, and Andrew Servin of Lennox, Mass.)
Much more is said about her in a history of the Alvord descendants (especially on page 35). That second book, by Samuel Morgan Alvord, was published in 1909, so over a century after her death (both books have the degree of error thats come with that time lapse. That second book said she married John Alvord (b. 1649 in Windsor, d. 1727 in Northampton). He was a presumed or known son of the first Alexander. (The first Alexander was the one joining the Northampton church in 1672, after trying to form a praying group or church society in Northfield in 1671. He was not declared a freeman until 1681, even though "a man of means",
illustrated by his donating flax to a recently created Harvard. It's purpose , back then, was to be a seminary, to line up educated ministers for the towns forming the seminary.)
Her spouse John Phelps was of written record in Northampton in Nov.1668, so at about age 20. He'd been granted six acres at a town meeting there in 1675. He would name her in his will, taken to probate in Dec. of 1727. They had no children, causing her to leave their property to nephew Joseph Alvord, b. 1697, whose family cared for her at the end. (Joseph's father was Ebenezer, 1655-1738, tenth child of the first Alexander.)
She had friends who did not always kowtow to the church-influenced laws, as she was taken to court "with twenty-two others" for the sin and crime of "wearing silk in a flaunting manner", but released due to the possibility that the witnesses might be wrong. The old Alvord book cited town records saying she had been born in the year that Northampton was formed and was one hundred and two at death on Aug. 26, 1756, but then noted there had been a change in how calendars tracked time. An writer named Savage had previously calculated her age at death on the old calendar as "101 years, four months and 11 days", so she would have died in 1755 if the old calendar used at her birth on April 5, 1654 had been kept up. one reult of the calanedar change is that count-backs show two different birth years for her, 1654 and 1655.
Her father was said in a family history by Brian McCullough (put at wikitree in 2017) to have been born in 1624, in Crewkerne, England (Somerset region). He was then said to have died in Northampton in 1702. This information eems to have come from a history
We use Brian's birthplace for Abigail (Windsor, Connecticut. That place was settled by people who originally immigrated to the Bay area of the Massachusetts colony. A sizeable group then moved down the Atlantic coast to the mouth of the Connecticut River, to take advantage of better farmland found around Windsor, than seen nearer a still tiny Boston. Some in the Windsor colony next traveled up the Connecticut River, to the western part of old Mass. Any place named "Hampton" was their way of signalling a river town, with the mother town of Northampton slowly spinning off daughter and grandaughter towns out of pieces of itself, the last river town spin-offf to be named Easthampton. As an expansioon outward stimulated teh new churches justifing the new town spin-offs, her in-laws and old neighbors and everyone's descendents might thus be found in varied spin-off towns, not just the original mother town.
Very early, Northampton settlers were taken by surprise, in a brutal fashion, when those natives they had NOT negotiated with reacted negatively to their farthest-flung settlers moving too far north up the river, into Deerfield. The natives were supported by their allies, French troops supervising territory along Canada's edge. The warring did not end until the mid-1750s,, with an out-march of the French troops by British troops negotiated at about the time of her death. With the warring done, the population began growing at a faster rate.
She died in the third year in which Rev. John Hooker would have led the Northampton congregation, after fifty years of Rev. Stoddard running things, the church originally staffed by Mather-trained Puritan ministers. What happened to her stone? A local history said there was a problem with the taking of gravestones to use as doorsteps.
The courthouse burned at a different time, with land and tax records inside. This also hid lots of history, though her rmother's will would be preserved in an old history book. An excerpt naming Abigail's father and her mother's survivors (Abigail and two brothers) can be viewed in a biography at her parents' gravepages.
SOURCES:
Excerpts from a local history:
"1662. The follow are the names of the inhabitants, eight
years after the settlement... Alex. Alvord, ... Robert Bartlett,
..John Miller...Nathaniel Phelps..."
" May 7. This town, Springfield, and Hadley constituted the
county of Hampshire."
"1675. King Philip's war began. Robert Bartlett..[and others]... were
killed by the Indians. Hadley was attacked, but the people
under Gen. Goffe repulsed the enemy."
"1676, May 19. In the 'Fall fight' so called, near Deerfield, of
the 38, who were killed, were Capt. Wm. Turner, and 14 others
from Northampton; among whom were John Miller..."
"1677. The number of church members was 76."
"1712. A Grammar school ordered to be supported for 20 years;
it has never been discontinued. To this time there was only a
bridle path to 'the Bay,' or to Boston."
"1720. Elder Preserved Clap died."
"1753, Dec. 5. Rev. John Hooker was ordained; he died of the
small pox Feb. 6, 1777. Southampton was incorporated as a sep-
arate district..."
" 1755, August 17. Capt. Hawley, Lt. Pomeroy and Thomas
Wait killed at Lake George."
" 1756, August 26. Died Abigail Alvord, aged 102; her name
before marriage was Phelps."
LARGER SOURCE: page labelled as "vii" inside larger source kept online here :
Files.USGWarchives.net/ma/hampshire/cemeteries/hampshirecemeteries.txt
TOWN NEWS AFTER HER DEATH:
"1770 ...As we have to do at present with the
grave yard, we will say, it would be strange, if any worth man
in Northampton, out of economy, should rob the grave yard of his
Father's Monument to make it a stepping stone to the door of his
house."
"1778, June 6. Rev. Solomon Williams was ordained: he was
in the ministry 56 years. Westhampton was incorporated as a
town, including a tract 4 miles wide from the west part of Northampton:
Rev. Enoch Hale, was ordained the minister the next year.
" 1785. Easthampton was incorporated as a district; and as a
town in 1809. ...
" 1790. The population was 1628; in 1800, it was 2100; in 1810,
it was 2631; in 1850 it was 5309.
"1801. March, a great flood.
[1803-1806, post-flood, too much lost, there was a migration to northern Ohio]
"1822. The Court House Burnt. It was built in 1813."
FAMILY OUT-MIGRATION.
The Alvord book has no death date or other outcome for the nephew Joseph, a weaver, b. Dec 1665, in whose house she lived at her death. The eldest surviving son in Ebenezer's large family, presumably Joseph and/or his children left Northampton, as no heirs held the old lands of record when the 1908 book had been researched.
the tendencey was to move, not as individuals, but as interrelated families providing a support system in a time of no EMS or daycare. Beriah Alvord's Frenches arrived pre-War of 1812 in northeastern Ohio, on Lake Erie, west of a baby version of Cleveland. Beriah was b. Northampton, 1743, so in Abigail's lifetime. She was three generations down from the first Alexander,via that two of Alexander's sons and grandsons both called Jonathan Alvord Buried with Beriah's daughter Rebecca French Clap McMillen, but arriving in Ohio decades later, are a father and son named French, said to descend of an Ebenezer French, from the part of Northampton spun off as Southampton.
Kezia/Keziah Phelps, born as a French, would be one of those to migrate along Lake Erie, but going further west into Ohio, passing through or by NY and Penn. on the way. (She was also said to be a daughter of an Ebenezer French left behind in Hampshire County. Was he the one for which old histories say his church-town became the spin-off called Southampton?)
Was Keziah already a widow of Timothy Alvord (d. 1821) when coming to Ohio? Did she migrate with her own adult children, including a married daughter, not with Timothy?
In general, many descendants of the intermarried Phelps, Alvord, Clapp, and Bartlett families would leave Hampshire County, pre-War of 1812. They would end in one of the two mega-townships recently carved out of northeastern Ohio, to be split into daughter and granddaughter places as time went on. The mega-townships forbade slavery, thir land having been purchased by the US from the French who had kearned lessons in controlling Louisiana, who insisted on no slavery as a condition of sale of the Northwest territory. Many incoming settlers liked these conditions, knowing of indentures too close to slavery required of children of those parents who died before all debts were paid, so the children had to "work off" the debt.
Mother Painesville township is now in Lake County, Ohio. At the time, it was in a larger version of Geauga County than exists today, with Geuuga holding the migrating families through their 1820 US Census, addresses changing in county by the 1840. Their portion in 1820 had split off from mother Painesville as Leroy Township. They at first wanted a different name, honoring the town in Hampshire County from which Spencer Phelps had come (Chesterfield), but were told a similar name was already used elsewhere in Ohio. So, they named their emerging township instead for Le Roy, NY, a place in the Genesee Valley of western NY, where some had spent time before coming to Ohio. The land there included the so-called Phelps-Gorham lands, with a NY City-based Phelps family prime investors. The New Yorkers' relationship to Ohio-settler Spencer Phelps? It is still murky, unknown, as of 2017.
The War of 1812 slowed new settlers going to the Painesille-Cleveland region in the Lake Erie region of Ohio and to the so-called Phelps Gorham land in upstate NY, death by war being added to the other kinds of deaths settlers faced. The owners of Phelps Gorham had sold some acreage, but could not make payments on the rest. Thus, most of the NY land in the east Genessee passed into other hands, said to be Dutch. The changes, the renamings of the tracts, caused some to think the new Ohio settlers came from NY, when their original home base had been Hampshire County, Mass..
The 1820 US Census found them concentrated in one place, as if LeRoy was still inside Painesville, presumably as maps were not good enough to split people accurately among the emerging townships (again, especially LeRoy vs Painesville). The migrants did spread out into still other townships, according ot their historian, Spencer Phelps. Some went further west into the Newburgh region of what was mother Cleveland Twp.. some into Mentor, which lay on the ridge top between Painesville/Leroy and Cleveland/Newburg Newburg was still rural, with mills alongside teep water ways, uphill of Cleveland proper. Baby Cleveland, pre-Canal, seemed the inferior section then, as its river bottoms were still too swampy and mosquito-laden to be healthy. To change all that, the Chio Canal came through in 1825, its ditches to drain swampy land and stop the mosquito problem. Cleveland boomed. Newburgh languished and was annexed into a bustling Cleveland.
Only one set of migrant descendants would clearly stay in the original Leroy, past the nearby canal construction in 1825. They were the children of Rebeccah, whose Leroy gravestone names her as the daughter of people we know to have been called Beriah Alvord French and Abiathar French Jr., when growig up back in Hampshire County, Mass. However, their names were mis-remembered and thus distorted when added to her stone as cenotaph, presumably done by grandchildren after their original stones were among the many disappearing 1850 and later. Rebeccah had been a young widow, had married Elah Clapp, good friend of Spencer Phelps and a son of Col. Amasa Clapp. She had several children by Elah before he died "too early". The young widow then married William McMillen, who had probably arrived from Pennsylvania as a teen. He may have gone first with his father to a Clapp-sponsored location in the Ohio Firelands (tobe researched, Milan, Ohio? Medina County, Ohio?). Once married to Rebeccah, Mr. McMillen tried his best to stop a takeover of her Clap children's inherited lands in the 1830s. A creditor and his lawyer son had come from Massachusetts, representing people named Mattoon (a name known in Hamsphire County, but late, not early). Mattoon and his lawyer held the long-deceased Col Amasa Clapp responsible for another party's unpaid debts back in Massachusetts.
The debt source? A Massachusetts sheriff was expected to collect taxes. He either could not gather all the owed taxes, so was expected to pay the difference, or he stole the money for himself. Either way, the accused absconded. Col. Amasa Clap/Clapp had signed a bond much earlier promising the sheriff would perform well. Amasa's estate was left owing the owed amount, even though decades had passed since the Col's death.
The creditor wishing to claim Clap's Ohio land succeeded in getting a friendly Ohio congressman to push through remarkable, history-making, controversial legislation. If Col. Clapp had bought and sold land inside Massachusetts, no claim could be made at a "too late" date as the statute of limitations stopped debts from bing permanenrt, protecting third-parties who unwittingly had bought the land suffficiently later that no one would remember the old upaid debt. The new precedent-setting law sponsored by the Mattoon's congressional friend in Geuaga County said soemthing new-- The statute of limitiations did not apply to any land was bought outside the original jurisdication. If people closeby in Masssachusetts had forgotten the debt, those in faraway Ohio were expected to know of it
Anyone owning land in Geauga County that was in Leroy Twp and bought or inherited from the Clapp/Clapps would now lose it. They would lose it after work had been done and moneys spent, for decades, to make the land habitable and productive, by planting fruit trees, by building fences to keep livestock from roaming, by trapping wolves and bears preying on the livestock. There had been well-digging, road and school and church building, not just house- and barn-building.
The loss of all this caused several unrelated neighbors who had also been innocent buyers, along with Rebecca's brother-in-law (Elah's brother, Paul Clap/Clapp, a school teacher) to give up theri work and leave for upstate New York. rebeccah and her children stayed, perhaps as relative Jacob French mamanged to recover some of the land at its auction. The loss iwas widespread, s presumed to have caused others to migrate through Ohio to southern Michigan, where territorial land near to Indiana and to Lake Michigan could be claimed. This was an early version of homesteading, malaria once again a problem, as it had been if too close to Lake Erie in Ohio.
The Phelps fmaily must have had other land, not just the land from Col. Clapp, as Spencer Phelps stayed in Ohio, in the Mentor area. He would write a history of Leroy for the Painesville Telegraph. Some Frenches of Rebeccah' brother David had moved on to Newburg, to be in parts later to become annexed as east Cleveland. They kept their land as well. Their father had been that David French murdered in 1835 by three rogue canal workers. David was an brother to Rebeccah and son of Beriah and Abiathar, not proven by legal paperwork, but inferred. (He was named with the other children of Abiathar and Beriah in Spencer's writings, when few other Frenches were around. Verys trong evidence would be family visits between decending cousins caught in censuses, beginning with the 1850. For example, one of David's grandsons named French went to work for Rebeccah's son named Clap. The descendant of David, Elah French, staying longest in what became east Cleveland, was visited by Jehial Alvord. Jehial was a nephew or grandnephew of Beriah Alvord through her brother, Jehiel the Sr. That older Jehial had married Abiathar Jr's sister, Dorothy French, their family one that stayed behind in Hampshire County when the rest moved out to northeast Ohio, presumably as they bought some of the family land.
Rebeccah's known older brother was Jacob French, his relationship as son of Abiathar French and Beriah Alvord clear in an old biography written for Jacob's grandson-in-law, a state legislator, attorney, and anti-slavery campaigner known as A.J. Williams. Jacob had married Abigail Bartlett before leaving Mass., about 1801. A considerable land owner once in Ohio, he seems to have purchased varied corner lots once the Clapp land (at the time still in Geauga County, now in Lake County) was auctioned off in a sheriff's sale (advertisements in the Painesville Telegraph), presumably as a result of the Mattoons' actions. Corner lots could be optimal locations for stores, taverns, and post offices, but also places for displaced relatives to live.
The Leroy land incident is why title insurance exists today. (No one today questions any longer why a move out-of -state would cancel any statute of limitations. We just shell out the money for the title insurance an dlet the insurer worry if the title is clear or contaminated.)
Little is said as to why Lake County split apart from Geauga County in 1840. The timing caused the Mattooon-favoring congressman to be left with the less prosperous, uphill remnant of Geauga that lay farther from the most prime lakeshore. Someone else was allowe to represent the new Lake County, in the Ohio Congress.
Painesville, Leroy, Mentor, Kirtland and other places would all be in Lake County. Newburg was later moved in to Cuyahoga County, maybe part of the same land exchange that moved future Willoughby into Lake County. Jacob Frenches' one wealthy grandson, by his son Edwin, would keep an estate in Willoughby. That grandson's sister married the state legislator Other relatives (their uncles, cousins) would go off to Michigan, 1830-1840. Two sons of Ransom French, an Ebenezer French and Eben's younger brother, Alford O. French, would join the Civil War from Berrien County. This writer's spouse descends from their younger sister, Michigan-born Mary Eliza French Williams, last known as Mrs. Overacker, last residence in Priest River, Idaho. Deforestation in the interior pushed lumber camps offering work to her sons out of Michigan, further west.
Copyright, JBrown, Austin, TX, last revised Oct. 2019. Relatives may copy parts for private use only, in-family only, not for public consumption.
Thanks to member "Love My Ancestors" (47233390) for locating the graves of Abigail Phelps Alvord''s parents and of Milan,Ohio-buried relatives, Kezia/Keziah French Alvord (d. 1830) and Keziah Alvord Gouch (d.1849), seen mis-pelled as Olvord. We are researching the volunteer transcriptions of the Painesville Telegraph that include Spencer Phelps' memoirs and the ads for sheriff-sold land in the 1830s.
Her church made a list of its first members when she was a girl of about age 8, after having formed when she was a baby. Only one Phelps and only one Alvord were among the members named on the church's 8-year anniversary. It's thus virtually assured that she was the daughter of Nathaniel, the sole Phelps listed. (Her spouse was most likely a son of the sole Alvord named, Alexander. If not the, then an early-born grandson.)
She is barely mentioned in a history of the Phelps descendants. printed in 1899. It listed her as third child of six, birth year 1655. (Sibling list is on page 91, with page 90 noting that Nathaniel was a church Deacon, that he continued to pay "slip rent" in Windsor a few years after going to Northampton, did so through Jan., 1659. Perhaps they moved in stages, not "all at once"? He was not recorded a freeman in Boston court records until 1681. This was relatively late in the Puritan era, given others were declared 1635-1640. This book was by Judge Oliver Phelps of Portland, Oregon, and Andrew Servin of Lennox, Mass.)
Much more is said about her in a history of the Alvord descendants (especially on page 35). That second book, by Samuel Morgan Alvord, was published in 1909, so over a century after her death (both books have the degree of error thats come with that time lapse. That second book said she married John Alvord (b. 1649 in Windsor, d. 1727 in Northampton). He was a presumed or known son of the first Alexander. (The first Alexander was the one joining the Northampton church in 1672, after trying to form a praying group or church society in Northfield in 1671. He was not declared a freeman until 1681, even though "a man of means",
illustrated by his donating flax to a recently created Harvard. It's purpose , back then, was to be a seminary, to line up educated ministers for the towns forming the seminary.)
Her spouse John Phelps was of written record in Northampton in Nov.1668, so at about age 20. He'd been granted six acres at a town meeting there in 1675. He would name her in his will, taken to probate in Dec. of 1727. They had no children, causing her to leave their property to nephew Joseph Alvord, b. 1697, whose family cared for her at the end. (Joseph's father was Ebenezer, 1655-1738, tenth child of the first Alexander.)
She had friends who did not always kowtow to the church-influenced laws, as she was taken to court "with twenty-two others" for the sin and crime of "wearing silk in a flaunting manner", but released due to the possibility that the witnesses might be wrong. The old Alvord book cited town records saying she had been born in the year that Northampton was formed and was one hundred and two at death on Aug. 26, 1756, but then noted there had been a change in how calendars tracked time. An writer named Savage had previously calculated her age at death on the old calendar as "101 years, four months and 11 days", so she would have died in 1755 if the old calendar used at her birth on April 5, 1654 had been kept up. one reult of the calanedar change is that count-backs show two different birth years for her, 1654 and 1655.
Her father was said in a family history by Brian McCullough (put at wikitree in 2017) to have been born in 1624, in Crewkerne, England (Somerset region). He was then said to have died in Northampton in 1702. This information eems to have come from a history
We use Brian's birthplace for Abigail (Windsor, Connecticut. That place was settled by people who originally immigrated to the Bay area of the Massachusetts colony. A sizeable group then moved down the Atlantic coast to the mouth of the Connecticut River, to take advantage of better farmland found around Windsor, than seen nearer a still tiny Boston. Some in the Windsor colony next traveled up the Connecticut River, to the western part of old Mass. Any place named "Hampton" was their way of signalling a river town, with the mother town of Northampton slowly spinning off daughter and grandaughter towns out of pieces of itself, the last river town spin-offf to be named Easthampton. As an expansioon outward stimulated teh new churches justifing the new town spin-offs, her in-laws and old neighbors and everyone's descendents might thus be found in varied spin-off towns, not just the original mother town.
Very early, Northampton settlers were taken by surprise, in a brutal fashion, when those natives they had NOT negotiated with reacted negatively to their farthest-flung settlers moving too far north up the river, into Deerfield. The natives were supported by their allies, French troops supervising territory along Canada's edge. The warring did not end until the mid-1750s,, with an out-march of the French troops by British troops negotiated at about the time of her death. With the warring done, the population began growing at a faster rate.
She died in the third year in which Rev. John Hooker would have led the Northampton congregation, after fifty years of Rev. Stoddard running things, the church originally staffed by Mather-trained Puritan ministers. What happened to her stone? A local history said there was a problem with the taking of gravestones to use as doorsteps.
The courthouse burned at a different time, with land and tax records inside. This also hid lots of history, though her rmother's will would be preserved in an old history book. An excerpt naming Abigail's father and her mother's survivors (Abigail and two brothers) can be viewed in a biography at her parents' gravepages.
SOURCES:
Excerpts from a local history:
"1662. The follow are the names of the inhabitants, eight
years after the settlement... Alex. Alvord, ... Robert Bartlett,
..John Miller...Nathaniel Phelps..."
" May 7. This town, Springfield, and Hadley constituted the
county of Hampshire."
"1675. King Philip's war began. Robert Bartlett..[and others]... were
killed by the Indians. Hadley was attacked, but the people
under Gen. Goffe repulsed the enemy."
"1676, May 19. In the 'Fall fight' so called, near Deerfield, of
the 38, who were killed, were Capt. Wm. Turner, and 14 others
from Northampton; among whom were John Miller..."
"1677. The number of church members was 76."
"1712. A Grammar school ordered to be supported for 20 years;
it has never been discontinued. To this time there was only a
bridle path to 'the Bay,' or to Boston."
"1720. Elder Preserved Clap died."
"1753, Dec. 5. Rev. John Hooker was ordained; he died of the
small pox Feb. 6, 1777. Southampton was incorporated as a sep-
arate district..."
" 1755, August 17. Capt. Hawley, Lt. Pomeroy and Thomas
Wait killed at Lake George."
" 1756, August 26. Died Abigail Alvord, aged 102; her name
before marriage was Phelps."
LARGER SOURCE: page labelled as "vii" inside larger source kept online here :
Files.USGWarchives.net/ma/hampshire/cemeteries/hampshirecemeteries.txt
TOWN NEWS AFTER HER DEATH:
"1770 ...As we have to do at present with the
grave yard, we will say, it would be strange, if any worth man
in Northampton, out of economy, should rob the grave yard of his
Father's Monument to make it a stepping stone to the door of his
house."
"1778, June 6. Rev. Solomon Williams was ordained: he was
in the ministry 56 years. Westhampton was incorporated as a
town, including a tract 4 miles wide from the west part of Northampton:
Rev. Enoch Hale, was ordained the minister the next year.
" 1785. Easthampton was incorporated as a district; and as a
town in 1809. ...
" 1790. The population was 1628; in 1800, it was 2100; in 1810,
it was 2631; in 1850 it was 5309.
"1801. March, a great flood.
[1803-1806, post-flood, too much lost, there was a migration to northern Ohio]
"1822. The Court House Burnt. It was built in 1813."
FAMILY OUT-MIGRATION.
The Alvord book has no death date or other outcome for the nephew Joseph, a weaver, b. Dec 1665, in whose house she lived at her death. The eldest surviving son in Ebenezer's large family, presumably Joseph and/or his children left Northampton, as no heirs held the old lands of record when the 1908 book had been researched.
the tendencey was to move, not as individuals, but as interrelated families providing a support system in a time of no EMS or daycare. Beriah Alvord's Frenches arrived pre-War of 1812 in northeastern Ohio, on Lake Erie, west of a baby version of Cleveland. Beriah was b. Northampton, 1743, so in Abigail's lifetime. She was three generations down from the first Alexander,via that two of Alexander's sons and grandsons both called Jonathan Alvord Buried with Beriah's daughter Rebecca French Clap McMillen, but arriving in Ohio decades later, are a father and son named French, said to descend of an Ebenezer French, from the part of Northampton spun off as Southampton.
Kezia/Keziah Phelps, born as a French, would be one of those to migrate along Lake Erie, but going further west into Ohio, passing through or by NY and Penn. on the way. (She was also said to be a daughter of an Ebenezer French left behind in Hampshire County. Was he the one for which old histories say his church-town became the spin-off called Southampton?)
Was Keziah already a widow of Timothy Alvord (d. 1821) when coming to Ohio? Did she migrate with her own adult children, including a married daughter, not with Timothy?
In general, many descendants of the intermarried Phelps, Alvord, Clapp, and Bartlett families would leave Hampshire County, pre-War of 1812. They would end in one of the two mega-townships recently carved out of northeastern Ohio, to be split into daughter and granddaughter places as time went on. The mega-townships forbade slavery, thir land having been purchased by the US from the French who had kearned lessons in controlling Louisiana, who insisted on no slavery as a condition of sale of the Northwest territory. Many incoming settlers liked these conditions, knowing of indentures too close to slavery required of children of those parents who died before all debts were paid, so the children had to "work off" the debt.
Mother Painesville township is now in Lake County, Ohio. At the time, it was in a larger version of Geauga County than exists today, with Geuuga holding the migrating families through their 1820 US Census, addresses changing in county by the 1840. Their portion in 1820 had split off from mother Painesville as Leroy Township. They at first wanted a different name, honoring the town in Hampshire County from which Spencer Phelps had come (Chesterfield), but were told a similar name was already used elsewhere in Ohio. So, they named their emerging township instead for Le Roy, NY, a place in the Genesee Valley of western NY, where some had spent time before coming to Ohio. The land there included the so-called Phelps-Gorham lands, with a NY City-based Phelps family prime investors. The New Yorkers' relationship to Ohio-settler Spencer Phelps? It is still murky, unknown, as of 2017.
The War of 1812 slowed new settlers going to the Painesille-Cleveland region in the Lake Erie region of Ohio and to the so-called Phelps Gorham land in upstate NY, death by war being added to the other kinds of deaths settlers faced. The owners of Phelps Gorham had sold some acreage, but could not make payments on the rest. Thus, most of the NY land in the east Genessee passed into other hands, said to be Dutch. The changes, the renamings of the tracts, caused some to think the new Ohio settlers came from NY, when their original home base had been Hampshire County, Mass..
The 1820 US Census found them concentrated in one place, as if LeRoy was still inside Painesville, presumably as maps were not good enough to split people accurately among the emerging townships (again, especially LeRoy vs Painesville). The migrants did spread out into still other townships, according ot their historian, Spencer Phelps. Some went further west into the Newburgh region of what was mother Cleveland Twp.. some into Mentor, which lay on the ridge top between Painesville/Leroy and Cleveland/Newburg Newburg was still rural, with mills alongside teep water ways, uphill of Cleveland proper. Baby Cleveland, pre-Canal, seemed the inferior section then, as its river bottoms were still too swampy and mosquito-laden to be healthy. To change all that, the Chio Canal came through in 1825, its ditches to drain swampy land and stop the mosquito problem. Cleveland boomed. Newburgh languished and was annexed into a bustling Cleveland.
Only one set of migrant descendants would clearly stay in the original Leroy, past the nearby canal construction in 1825. They were the children of Rebeccah, whose Leroy gravestone names her as the daughter of people we know to have been called Beriah Alvord French and Abiathar French Jr., when growig up back in Hampshire County, Mass. However, their names were mis-remembered and thus distorted when added to her stone as cenotaph, presumably done by grandchildren after their original stones were among the many disappearing 1850 and later. Rebeccah had been a young widow, had married Elah Clapp, good friend of Spencer Phelps and a son of Col. Amasa Clapp. She had several children by Elah before he died "too early". The young widow then married William McMillen, who had probably arrived from Pennsylvania as a teen. He may have gone first with his father to a Clapp-sponsored location in the Ohio Firelands (tobe researched, Milan, Ohio? Medina County, Ohio?). Once married to Rebeccah, Mr. McMillen tried his best to stop a takeover of her Clap children's inherited lands in the 1830s. A creditor and his lawyer son had come from Massachusetts, representing people named Mattoon (a name known in Hamsphire County, but late, not early). Mattoon and his lawyer held the long-deceased Col Amasa Clapp responsible for another party's unpaid debts back in Massachusetts.
The debt source? A Massachusetts sheriff was expected to collect taxes. He either could not gather all the owed taxes, so was expected to pay the difference, or he stole the money for himself. Either way, the accused absconded. Col. Amasa Clap/Clapp had signed a bond much earlier promising the sheriff would perform well. Amasa's estate was left owing the owed amount, even though decades had passed since the Col's death.
The creditor wishing to claim Clap's Ohio land succeeded in getting a friendly Ohio congressman to push through remarkable, history-making, controversial legislation. If Col. Clapp had bought and sold land inside Massachusetts, no claim could be made at a "too late" date as the statute of limitations stopped debts from bing permanenrt, protecting third-parties who unwittingly had bought the land suffficiently later that no one would remember the old upaid debt. The new precedent-setting law sponsored by the Mattoon's congressional friend in Geuaga County said soemthing new-- The statute of limitiations did not apply to any land was bought outside the original jurisdication. If people closeby in Masssachusetts had forgotten the debt, those in faraway Ohio were expected to know of it
Anyone owning land in Geauga County that was in Leroy Twp and bought or inherited from the Clapp/Clapps would now lose it. They would lose it after work had been done and moneys spent, for decades, to make the land habitable and productive, by planting fruit trees, by building fences to keep livestock from roaming, by trapping wolves and bears preying on the livestock. There had been well-digging, road and school and church building, not just house- and barn-building.
The loss of all this caused several unrelated neighbors who had also been innocent buyers, along with Rebecca's brother-in-law (Elah's brother, Paul Clap/Clapp, a school teacher) to give up theri work and leave for upstate New York. rebeccah and her children stayed, perhaps as relative Jacob French mamanged to recover some of the land at its auction. The loss iwas widespread, s presumed to have caused others to migrate through Ohio to southern Michigan, where territorial land near to Indiana and to Lake Michigan could be claimed. This was an early version of homesteading, malaria once again a problem, as it had been if too close to Lake Erie in Ohio.
The Phelps fmaily must have had other land, not just the land from Col. Clapp, as Spencer Phelps stayed in Ohio, in the Mentor area. He would write a history of Leroy for the Painesville Telegraph. Some Frenches of Rebeccah' brother David had moved on to Newburg, to be in parts later to become annexed as east Cleveland. They kept their land as well. Their father had been that David French murdered in 1835 by three rogue canal workers. David was an brother to Rebeccah and son of Beriah and Abiathar, not proven by legal paperwork, but inferred. (He was named with the other children of Abiathar and Beriah in Spencer's writings, when few other Frenches were around. Verys trong evidence would be family visits between decending cousins caught in censuses, beginning with the 1850. For example, one of David's grandsons named French went to work for Rebeccah's son named Clap. The descendant of David, Elah French, staying longest in what became east Cleveland, was visited by Jehial Alvord. Jehial was a nephew or grandnephew of Beriah Alvord through her brother, Jehiel the Sr. That older Jehial had married Abiathar Jr's sister, Dorothy French, their family one that stayed behind in Hampshire County when the rest moved out to northeast Ohio, presumably as they bought some of the family land.
Rebeccah's known older brother was Jacob French, his relationship as son of Abiathar French and Beriah Alvord clear in an old biography written for Jacob's grandson-in-law, a state legislator, attorney, and anti-slavery campaigner known as A.J. Williams. Jacob had married Abigail Bartlett before leaving Mass., about 1801. A considerable land owner once in Ohio, he seems to have purchased varied corner lots once the Clapp land (at the time still in Geauga County, now in Lake County) was auctioned off in a sheriff's sale (advertisements in the Painesville Telegraph), presumably as a result of the Mattoons' actions. Corner lots could be optimal locations for stores, taverns, and post offices, but also places for displaced relatives to live.
The Leroy land incident is why title insurance exists today. (No one today questions any longer why a move out-of -state would cancel any statute of limitations. We just shell out the money for the title insurance an dlet the insurer worry if the title is clear or contaminated.)
Little is said as to why Lake County split apart from Geauga County in 1840. The timing caused the Mattooon-favoring congressman to be left with the less prosperous, uphill remnant of Geauga that lay farther from the most prime lakeshore. Someone else was allowe to represent the new Lake County, in the Ohio Congress.
Painesville, Leroy, Mentor, Kirtland and other places would all be in Lake County. Newburg was later moved in to Cuyahoga County, maybe part of the same land exchange that moved future Willoughby into Lake County. Jacob Frenches' one wealthy grandson, by his son Edwin, would keep an estate in Willoughby. That grandson's sister married the state legislator Other relatives (their uncles, cousins) would go off to Michigan, 1830-1840. Two sons of Ransom French, an Ebenezer French and Eben's younger brother, Alford O. French, would join the Civil War from Berrien County. This writer's spouse descends from their younger sister, Michigan-born Mary Eliza French Williams, last known as Mrs. Overacker, last residence in Priest River, Idaho. Deforestation in the interior pushed lumber camps offering work to her sons out of Michigan, further west.
Copyright, JBrown, Austin, TX, last revised Oct. 2019. Relatives may copy parts for private use only, in-family only, not for public consumption.
Thanks to member "Love My Ancestors" (47233390) for locating the graves of Abigail Phelps Alvord''s parents and of Milan,Ohio-buried relatives, Kezia/Keziah French Alvord (d. 1830) and Keziah Alvord Gouch (d.1849), seen mis-pelled as Olvord. We are researching the volunteer transcriptions of the Painesville Telegraph that include Spencer Phelps' memoirs and the ads for sheriff-sold land in the 1830s.
Birth year of 1654, old calendar, calculated by subtracting age at death in town records (102) from their cited death date. The new calendar result is 1655, still used now, which begins a new year each Jan 1..
Her church made a list of its first members when she was a girl of about age 8, after having formed when she was a baby. Only one Phelps and only one Alvord were among the members named on the church's 8-year anniversary. It's thus virtually assured that she was the daughter of Nathaniel, the sole Phelps listed. (Her spouse was most likely a son of the sole Alvord named, Alexander. If not the, then an early-born grandson.)
She is barely mentioned in a history of the Phelps descendants. printed in 1899. It listed her as third child of six, birth year 1655. (Sibling list is on page 91, with page 90 noting that Nathaniel was a church Deacon, that he continued to pay "slip rent" in Windsor a few years after going to Northampton, did so through Jan., 1659. Perhaps they moved in stages, not "all at once"? He was not recorded a freeman in Boston court records until 1681. This was relatively late in the Puritan era, given others were declared 1635-1640. This book was by Judge Oliver Phelps of Portland, Oregon, and Andrew Servin of Lennox, Mass.)
Much more is said about her in a history of the Alvord descendants (especially on page 35). That second book, by Samuel Morgan Alvord, was published in 1909, so over a century after her death (both books have the degree of error thats come with that time lapse. That second book said she married John Alvord (b. 1649 in Windsor, d. 1727 in Northampton). He was a presumed or known son of the first Alexander. (The first Alexander was the one joining the Northampton church in 1672, after trying to form a praying group or church society in Northfield in 1671. He was not declared a freeman until 1681, even though "a man of means",
illustrated by his donating flax to a recently created Harvard. It's purpose , back then, was to be a seminary, to line up educated ministers for the towns forming the seminary.)
Her spouse John Phelps was of written record in Northampton in Nov.1668, so at about age 20. He'd been granted six acres at a town meeting there in 1675. He would name her in his will, taken to probate in Dec. of 1727. They had no children, causing her to leave their property to nephew Joseph Alvord, b. 1697, whose family cared for her at the end. (Joseph's father was Ebenezer, 1655-1738, tenth child of the first Alexander.)
She had friends who did not always kowtow to the church-influenced laws, as she was taken to court "with twenty-two others" for the sin and crime of "wearing silk in a flaunting manner", but released due to the possibility that the witnesses might be wrong. The old Alvord book cited town records saying she had been born in the year that Northampton was formed and was one hundred and two at death on Aug. 26, 1756, but then noted there had been a change in how calendars tracked time. An writer named Savage had previously calculated her age at death on the old calendar as "101 years, four months and 11 days", so she would have died in 1755 if the old calendar used at her birth on April 5, 1654 had been kept up. one reult of the calanedar change is that count-backs show two different birth years for her, 1654 and 1655.
Her father was said in a family history by Brian McCullough (put at wikitree in 2017) to have been born in 1624, in Crewkerne, England (Somerset region). He was then said to have died in Northampton in 1702. This information eems to have come from a history
We use Brian's birthplace for Abigail (Windsor, Connecticut. That place was settled by people who originally immigrated to the Bay area of the Massachusetts colony. A sizeable group then moved down the Atlantic coast to the mouth of the Connecticut River, to take advantage of better farmland found around Windsor, than seen nearer a still tiny Boston. Some in the Windsor colony next traveled up the Connecticut River, to the western part of old Mass. Any place named "Hampton" was their way of signalling a river town, with the mother town of Northampton slowly spinning off daughter and grandaughter towns out of pieces of itself, the last river town spin-offf to be named Easthampton. As an expansioon outward stimulated teh new churches justifing the new town spin-offs, her in-laws and old neighbors and everyone's descendents might thus be found in varied spin-off towns, not just the original mother town.
Very early, Northampton settlers were taken by surprise, in a brutal fashion, when those natives they had NOT negotiated with reacted negatively to their farthest-flung settlers moving too far north up the river, into Deerfield. The natives were supported by their allies, French troops supervising territory along Canada's edge. The warring did not end until the mid-1750s,, with an out-march of the French troops by British troops negotiated at about the time of her death. With the warring done, the population began growing at a faster rate.
She died in the third year in which Rev. John Hooker would have led the Northampton congregation, after fifty years of Rev. Stoddard running things, the church originally staffed by Mather-trained Puritan ministers. What happened to her stone? A local history said there was a problem with the taking of gravestones to use as doorsteps.
The courthouse burned at a different time, with land and tax records inside. This also hid lots of history, though her rmother's will would be preserved in an old history book. An excerpt naming Abigail's father and her mother's survivors (Abigail and two brothers) can be viewed in a biography at her parents' gravepages.
SOURCES:
Excerpts from a local history:
"1662. The follow are the names of the inhabitants, eight
years after the settlement... Alex. Alvord, ... Robert Bartlett,
..John Miller...Nathaniel Phelps..."
" May 7. This town, Springfield, and Hadley constituted the
county of Hampshire."
"1675. King Philip's war began. Robert Bartlett..[and others]... were
killed by the Indians. Hadley was attacked, but the people
under Gen. Goffe repulsed the enemy."
"1676, May 19. In the 'Fall fight' so called, near Deerfield, of
the 38, who were killed, were Capt. Wm. Turner, and 14 others
from Northampton; among whom were John Miller..."
"1677. The number of church members was 76."
"1712. A Grammar school ordered to be supported for 20 years;
it has never been discontinued. To this time there was only a
bridle path to 'the Bay,' or to Boston."
"1720. Elder Preserved Clap died."
"1753, Dec. 5. Rev. John Hooker was ordained; he died of the
small pox Feb. 6, 1777. Southampton was incorporated as a sep-
arate district..."
" 1755, August 17. Capt. Hawley, Lt. Pomeroy and Thomas
Wait killed at Lake George."
" 1756, August 26. Died Abigail Alvord, aged 102; her name
before marriage was Phelps."
LARGER SOURCE: page labelled as "vii" inside larger source kept online here :
Files.USGWarchives.net/ma/hampshire/cemeteries/hampshirecemeteries.txt
TOWN NEWS AFTER HER DEATH:
"1770 ...As we have to do at present with the
grave yard, we will say, it would be strange, if any worth man
in Northampton, out of economy, should rob the grave yard of his
Father's Monument to make it a stepping stone to the door of his
house."
"1778, June 6. Rev. Solomon Williams was ordained: he was
in the ministry 56 years. Westhampton was incorporated as a
town, including a tract 4 miles wide from the west part of Northampton:
Rev. Enoch Hale, was ordained the minister the next year.
" 1785. Easthampton was incorporated as a district; and as a
town in 1809. ...
" 1790. The population was 1628; in 1800, it was 2100; in 1810,
it was 2631; in 1850 it was 5309.
"1801. March, a great flood.
[1803-1806, post-flood, too much lost, there was a migration to northern Ohio]
"1822. The Court House Burnt. It was built in 1813."
FAMILY OUT-MIGRATION.
The Alvord book has no death date or other outcome for the nephew Joseph, a weaver, b. Dec 1665, in whose house she lived at her death. The eldest surviving son in Ebenezer's large family, presumably Joseph and/or his children left Northampton, as no heirs held the old lands of record when the 1908 book had been researched.
the tendencey was to move, not as individuals, but as interrelated families providing a support system in a time of no EMS or daycare. Beriah Alvord's Frenches arrived pre-War of 1812 in northeastern Ohio, on Lake Erie, west of a baby version of Cleveland. Beriah was b. Northampton, 1743, so in Abigail's lifetime. She was three generations down from the first Alexander,via that two of Alexander's sons and grandsons both called Jonathan Alvord Buried with Beriah's daughter Rebecca French Clap McMillen, but arriving in Ohio decades later, are a father and son named French, said to descend of an Ebenezer French, from the part of Northampton spun off as Southampton.
Kezia/Keziah Phelps, born as a French, would be one of those to migrate along Lake Erie, but going further west into Ohio, passing through or by NY and Penn. on the way. (She was also said to be a daughter of an Ebenezer French left behind in Hampshire County. Was he the one for which old histories say his church-town became the spin-off called Southampton?)
Was Keziah already a widow of Timothy Alvord (d. 1821) when coming to Ohio? Did she migrate with her own adult children, including a married daughter, not with Timothy?
In general, many descendants of the intermarried Phelps, Alvord, Clapp, and Bartlett families would leave Hampshire County, pre-War of 1812. They would end in one of the two mega-townships recently carved out of northeastern Ohio, to be split into daughter and granddaughter places as time went on. The mega-townships forbade slavery, thir land having been purchased by the US from the French who had kearned lessons in controlling Louisiana, who insisted on no slavery as a condition of sale of the Northwest territory. Many incoming settlers liked these conditions, knowing of indentures too close to slavery required of children of those parents who died before all debts were paid, so the children had to "work off" the debt.
Mother Painesville township is now in Lake County, Ohio. At the time, it was in a larger version of Geauga County than exists today, with Geuuga holding the migrating families through their 1820 US Census, addresses changing in county by the 1840. Their portion in 1820 had split off from mother Painesville as Leroy Township. They at first wanted a different name, honoring the town in Hampshire County from which Spencer Phelps had come (Chesterfield), but were told a similar name was already used elsewhere in Ohio. So, they named their emerging township instead for Le Roy, NY, a place in the Genesee Valley of western NY, where some had spent time before coming to Ohio. The land there included the so-called Phelps-Gorham lands, with a NY City-based Phelps family prime investors. The New Yorkers' relationship to Ohio-settler Spencer Phelps? It is still murky, unknown, as of 2017.
The War of 1812 slowed new settlers going to the Painesille-Cleveland region in the Lake Erie region of Ohio and to the so-called Phelps Gorham land in upstate NY, death by war being added to the other kinds of deaths settlers faced. The owners of Phelps Gorham had sold some acreage, but could not make payments on the rest. Thus, most of the NY land in the east Genessee passed into other hands, said to be Dutch. The changes, the renamings of the tracts, caused some to think the new Ohio settlers came from NY, when their original home base had been Hampshire County, Mass..
The 1820 US Census found them concentrated in one place, as if LeRoy was still inside Painesville, presumably as maps were not good enough to split people accurately among the emerging townships (again, especially LeRoy vs Painesville). The migrants did spread out into still other townships, according ot their historian, Spencer Phelps. Some went further west into the Newburgh region of what was mother Cleveland Twp.. some into Mentor, which lay on the ridge top between Painesville/Leroy and Cleveland/Newburg Newburg was still rural, with mills alongside teep water ways, uphill of Cleveland proper. Baby Cleveland, pre-Canal, seemed the inferior section then, as its river bottoms were still too swampy and mosquito-laden to be healthy. To change all that, the Chio Canal came through in 1825, its ditches to drain swampy land and stop the mosquito problem. Cleveland boomed. Newburgh languished and was annexed into a bustling Cleveland.
Only one set of migrant descendants would clearly stay in the original Leroy, past the nearby canal construction in 1825. They were the children of Rebeccah, whose Leroy gravestone names her as the daughter of people we know to have been called Beriah Alvord French and Abiathar French Jr., when growig up back in Hampshire County, Mass. However, their names were mis-remembered and thus distorted when added to her stone as cenotaph, presumably done by grandchildren after their original stones were among the many disappearing 1850 and later. Rebeccah had been a young widow, had married Elah Clapp, good friend of Spencer Phelps and a son of Col. Amasa Clapp. She had several children by Elah before he died "too early". The young widow then married William McMillen, who had probably arrived from Pennsylvania as a teen. He may have gone first with his father to a Clapp-sponsored location in the Ohio Firelands (tobe researched, Milan, Ohio? Medina County, Ohio?). Once married to Rebeccah, Mr. McMillen tried his best to stop a takeover of her Clap children's inherited lands in the 1830s. A creditor and his lawyer son had come from Massachusetts, representing people named Mattoon (a name known in Hamsphire County, but late, not early). Mattoon and his lawyer held the long-deceased Col Amasa Clapp responsible for another party's unpaid debts back in Massachusetts.
The debt source? A Massachusetts sheriff was expected to collect taxes. He either could not gather all the owed taxes, so was expected to pay the difference, or he stole the money for himself. Either way, the accused absconded. Col. Amasa Clap/Clapp had signed a bond much earlier promising the sheriff would perform well. Amasa's estate was left owing the owed amount, even though decades had passed since the Col's death.
The creditor wishing to claim Clap's Ohio land succeeded in getting a friendly Ohio congressman to push through remarkable, history-making, controversial legislation. If Col. Clapp had bought and sold land inside Massachusetts, no claim could be made at a "too late" date as the statute of limitations stopped debts from bing permanenrt, protecting third-parties who unwittingly had bought the land suffficiently later that no one would remember the old upaid debt. The new precedent-setting law sponsored by the Mattoon's congressional friend in Geuaga County said soemthing new-- The statute of limitiations did not apply to any land was bought outside the original jurisdication. If people closeby in Masssachusetts had forgotten the debt, those in faraway Ohio were expected to know of it
Anyone owning land in Geauga County that was in Leroy Twp and bought or inherited from the Clapp/Clapps would now lose it. They would lose it after work had been done and moneys spent, for decades, to make the land habitable and productive, by planting fruit trees, by building fences to keep livestock from roaming, by trapping wolves and bears preying on the livestock. There had been well-digging, road and school and church building, not just house- and barn-building.
The loss of all this caused several unrelated neighbors who had also been innocent buyers, along with Rebecca's brother-in-law (Elah's brother, Paul Clap/Clapp, a school teacher) to give up theri work and leave for upstate New York. rebeccah and her children stayed, perhaps as relative Jacob French mamanged to recover some of the land at its auction. The loss iwas widespread, s presumed to have caused others to migrate through Ohio to southern Michigan, where territorial land near to Indiana and to Lake Michigan could be claimed. This was an early version of homesteading, malaria once again a problem, as it had been if too close to Lake Erie in Ohio.
The Phelps fmaily must have had other land, not just the land from Col. Clapp, as Spencer Phelps stayed in Ohio, in the Mentor area. He would write a history of Leroy for the Painesville Telegraph. Some Frenches of Rebeccah' brother David had moved on to Newburg, to be in parts later to become annexed as east Cleveland. They kept their land as well. Their father had been that David French murdered in 1835 by three rogue canal workers. David was an brother to Rebeccah and son of Beriah and Abiathar, not proven by legal paperwork, but inferred. (He was named with the other children of Abiathar and Beriah in Spencer's writings, when few other Frenches were around. Verys trong evidence would be family visits between decending cousins caught in censuses, beginning with the 1850. For example, one of David's grandsons named French went to work for Rebeccah's son named Clap. The descendant of David, Elah French, staying longest in what became east Cleveland, was visited by Jehial Alvord. Jehial was a nephew or grandnephew of Beriah Alvord through her brother, Jehiel the Sr. That older Jehial had married Abiathar Jr's sister, Dorothy French, their family one that stayed behind in Hampshire County when the rest moved out to northeast Ohio, presumably as they bought some of the family land.
Rebeccah's known older brother was Jacob French, his relationship as son of Abiathar French and Beriah Alvord clear in an old biography written for Jacob's grandson-in-law, a state legislator, attorney, and anti-slavery campaigner known as A.J. Williams. Jacob had married Abigail Bartlett before leaving Mass., about 1801. A considerable land owner once in Ohio, he seems to have purchased varied corner lots once the Clapp land (at the time still in Geauga County, now in Lake County) was auctioned off in a sheriff's sale (advertisements in the Painesville Telegraph), presumably as a result of the Mattoons' actions. Corner lots could be optimal locations for stores, taverns, and post offices, but also places for displaced relatives to live.
The Leroy land incident is why title insurance exists today. (No one today questions any longer why a move out-of -state would cancel any statute of limitations. We just shell out the money for the title insurance an dlet the insurer worry if the title is clear or contaminated.)
Little is said as to why Lake County split apart from Geauga County in 1840. The timing caused the Mattooon-favoring congressman to be left with the less prosperous, uphill remnant of Geauga that lay farther from the most prime lakeshore. Someone else was allowe to represent the new Lake County, in the Ohio Congress.
Painesville, Leroy, Mentor, Kirtland and other places would all be in Lake County. Newburg was later moved in to Cuyahoga County, maybe part of the same land exchange that moved future Willoughby into Lake County. Jacob Frenches' one wealthy grandson, by his son Edwin, would keep an estate in Willoughby. That grandson's sister married the state legislator Other relatives (their uncles, cousins) would go off to Michigan, 1830-1840. Two sons of Ransom French, an Ebenezer French and Eben's younger brother, Alford O. French, would join the Civil War from Berrien County. This writer's spouse descends from their younger sister, Michigan-born Mary Eliza French Williams, last known as Mrs. Overacker, last residence in Priest River, Idaho. Deforestation in the interior pushed lumber camps offering work to her sons out of Michigan, further west.
Copyright, JBrown, Austin, TX, last revised Oct. 2019. Relatives may copy parts for private use only, in-family only, not for public consumption.
Thanks to member "Love My Ancestors" (47233390) for locating the graves of Abigail Phelps Alvord''s parents and of Milan,Ohio-buried relatives, Kezia/Keziah French Alvord (d. 1830) and Keziah Alvord Gouch (d.1849), seen mis-pelled as Olvord. We are researching the volunteer transcriptions of the Painesville Telegraph that include Spencer Phelps' memoirs and the ads for sheriff-sold land in the 1830s.
Her church made a list of its first members when she was a girl of about age 8, after having formed when she was a baby. Only one Phelps and only one Alvord were among the members named on the church's 8-year anniversary. It's thus virtually assured that she was the daughter of Nathaniel, the sole Phelps listed. (Her spouse was most likely a son of the sole Alvord named, Alexander. If not the, then an early-born grandson.)
She is barely mentioned in a history of the Phelps descendants. printed in 1899. It listed her as third child of six, birth year 1655. (Sibling list is on page 91, with page 90 noting that Nathaniel was a church Deacon, that he continued to pay "slip rent" in Windsor a few years after going to Northampton, did so through Jan., 1659. Perhaps they moved in stages, not "all at once"? He was not recorded a freeman in Boston court records until 1681. This was relatively late in the Puritan era, given others were declared 1635-1640. This book was by Judge Oliver Phelps of Portland, Oregon, and Andrew Servin of Lennox, Mass.)
Much more is said about her in a history of the Alvord descendants (especially on page 35). That second book, by Samuel Morgan Alvord, was published in 1909, so over a century after her death (both books have the degree of error thats come with that time lapse. That second book said she married John Alvord (b. 1649 in Windsor, d. 1727 in Northampton). He was a presumed or known son of the first Alexander. (The first Alexander was the one joining the Northampton church in 1672, after trying to form a praying group or church society in Northfield in 1671. He was not declared a freeman until 1681, even though "a man of means",
illustrated by his donating flax to a recently created Harvard. It's purpose , back then, was to be a seminary, to line up educated ministers for the towns forming the seminary.)
Her spouse John Phelps was of written record in Northampton in Nov.1668, so at about age 20. He'd been granted six acres at a town meeting there in 1675. He would name her in his will, taken to probate in Dec. of 1727. They had no children, causing her to leave their property to nephew Joseph Alvord, b. 1697, whose family cared for her at the end. (Joseph's father was Ebenezer, 1655-1738, tenth child of the first Alexander.)
She had friends who did not always kowtow to the church-influenced laws, as she was taken to court "with twenty-two others" for the sin and crime of "wearing silk in a flaunting manner", but released due to the possibility that the witnesses might be wrong. The old Alvord book cited town records saying she had been born in the year that Northampton was formed and was one hundred and two at death on Aug. 26, 1756, but then noted there had been a change in how calendars tracked time. An writer named Savage had previously calculated her age at death on the old calendar as "101 years, four months and 11 days", so she would have died in 1755 if the old calendar used at her birth on April 5, 1654 had been kept up. one reult of the calanedar change is that count-backs show two different birth years for her, 1654 and 1655.
Her father was said in a family history by Brian McCullough (put at wikitree in 2017) to have been born in 1624, in Crewkerne, England (Somerset region). He was then said to have died in Northampton in 1702. This information eems to have come from a history
We use Brian's birthplace for Abigail (Windsor, Connecticut. That place was settled by people who originally immigrated to the Bay area of the Massachusetts colony. A sizeable group then moved down the Atlantic coast to the mouth of the Connecticut River, to take advantage of better farmland found around Windsor, than seen nearer a still tiny Boston. Some in the Windsor colony next traveled up the Connecticut River, to the western part of old Mass. Any place named "Hampton" was their way of signalling a river town, with the mother town of Northampton slowly spinning off daughter and grandaughter towns out of pieces of itself, the last river town spin-offf to be named Easthampton. As an expansioon outward stimulated teh new churches justifing the new town spin-offs, her in-laws and old neighbors and everyone's descendents might thus be found in varied spin-off towns, not just the original mother town.
Very early, Northampton settlers were taken by surprise, in a brutal fashion, when those natives they had NOT negotiated with reacted negatively to their farthest-flung settlers moving too far north up the river, into Deerfield. The natives were supported by their allies, French troops supervising territory along Canada's edge. The warring did not end until the mid-1750s,, with an out-march of the French troops by British troops negotiated at about the time of her death. With the warring done, the population began growing at a faster rate.
She died in the third year in which Rev. John Hooker would have led the Northampton congregation, after fifty years of Rev. Stoddard running things, the church originally staffed by Mather-trained Puritan ministers. What happened to her stone? A local history said there was a problem with the taking of gravestones to use as doorsteps.
The courthouse burned at a different time, with land and tax records inside. This also hid lots of history, though her rmother's will would be preserved in an old history book. An excerpt naming Abigail's father and her mother's survivors (Abigail and two brothers) can be viewed in a biography at her parents' gravepages.
SOURCES:
Excerpts from a local history:
"1662. The follow are the names of the inhabitants, eight
years after the settlement... Alex. Alvord, ... Robert Bartlett,
..John Miller...Nathaniel Phelps..."
" May 7. This town, Springfield, and Hadley constituted the
county of Hampshire."
"1675. King Philip's war began. Robert Bartlett..[and others]... were
killed by the Indians. Hadley was attacked, but the people
under Gen. Goffe repulsed the enemy."
"1676, May 19. In the 'Fall fight' so called, near Deerfield, of
the 38, who were killed, were Capt. Wm. Turner, and 14 others
from Northampton; among whom were John Miller..."
"1677. The number of church members was 76."
"1712. A Grammar school ordered to be supported for 20 years;
it has never been discontinued. To this time there was only a
bridle path to 'the Bay,' or to Boston."
"1720. Elder Preserved Clap died."
"1753, Dec. 5. Rev. John Hooker was ordained; he died of the
small pox Feb. 6, 1777. Southampton was incorporated as a sep-
arate district..."
" 1755, August 17. Capt. Hawley, Lt. Pomeroy and Thomas
Wait killed at Lake George."
" 1756, August 26. Died Abigail Alvord, aged 102; her name
before marriage was Phelps."
LARGER SOURCE: page labelled as "vii" inside larger source kept online here :
Files.USGWarchives.net/ma/hampshire/cemeteries/hampshirecemeteries.txt
TOWN NEWS AFTER HER DEATH:
"1770 ...As we have to do at present with the
grave yard, we will say, it would be strange, if any worth man
in Northampton, out of economy, should rob the grave yard of his
Father's Monument to make it a stepping stone to the door of his
house."
"1778, June 6. Rev. Solomon Williams was ordained: he was
in the ministry 56 years. Westhampton was incorporated as a
town, including a tract 4 miles wide from the west part of Northampton:
Rev. Enoch Hale, was ordained the minister the next year.
" 1785. Easthampton was incorporated as a district; and as a
town in 1809. ...
" 1790. The population was 1628; in 1800, it was 2100; in 1810,
it was 2631; in 1850 it was 5309.
"1801. March, a great flood.
[1803-1806, post-flood, too much lost, there was a migration to northern Ohio]
"1822. The Court House Burnt. It was built in 1813."
FAMILY OUT-MIGRATION.
The Alvord book has no death date or other outcome for the nephew Joseph, a weaver, b. Dec 1665, in whose house she lived at her death. The eldest surviving son in Ebenezer's large family, presumably Joseph and/or his children left Northampton, as no heirs held the old lands of record when the 1908 book had been researched.
the tendencey was to move, not as individuals, but as interrelated families providing a support system in a time of no EMS or daycare. Beriah Alvord's Frenches arrived pre-War of 1812 in northeastern Ohio, on Lake Erie, west of a baby version of Cleveland. Beriah was b. Northampton, 1743, so in Abigail's lifetime. She was three generations down from the first Alexander,via that two of Alexander's sons and grandsons both called Jonathan Alvord Buried with Beriah's daughter Rebecca French Clap McMillen, but arriving in Ohio decades later, are a father and son named French, said to descend of an Ebenezer French, from the part of Northampton spun off as Southampton.
Kezia/Keziah Phelps, born as a French, would be one of those to migrate along Lake Erie, but going further west into Ohio, passing through or by NY and Penn. on the way. (She was also said to be a daughter of an Ebenezer French left behind in Hampshire County. Was he the one for which old histories say his church-town became the spin-off called Southampton?)
Was Keziah already a widow of Timothy Alvord (d. 1821) when coming to Ohio? Did she migrate with her own adult children, including a married daughter, not with Timothy?
In general, many descendants of the intermarried Phelps, Alvord, Clapp, and Bartlett families would leave Hampshire County, pre-War of 1812. They would end in one of the two mega-townships recently carved out of northeastern Ohio, to be split into daughter and granddaughter places as time went on. The mega-townships forbade slavery, thir land having been purchased by the US from the French who had kearned lessons in controlling Louisiana, who insisted on no slavery as a condition of sale of the Northwest territory. Many incoming settlers liked these conditions, knowing of indentures too close to slavery required of children of those parents who died before all debts were paid, so the children had to "work off" the debt.
Mother Painesville township is now in Lake County, Ohio. At the time, it was in a larger version of Geauga County than exists today, with Geuuga holding the migrating families through their 1820 US Census, addresses changing in county by the 1840. Their portion in 1820 had split off from mother Painesville as Leroy Township. They at first wanted a different name, honoring the town in Hampshire County from which Spencer Phelps had come (Chesterfield), but were told a similar name was already used elsewhere in Ohio. So, they named their emerging township instead for Le Roy, NY, a place in the Genesee Valley of western NY, where some had spent time before coming to Ohio. The land there included the so-called Phelps-Gorham lands, with a NY City-based Phelps family prime investors. The New Yorkers' relationship to Ohio-settler Spencer Phelps? It is still murky, unknown, as of 2017.
The War of 1812 slowed new settlers going to the Painesille-Cleveland region in the Lake Erie region of Ohio and to the so-called Phelps Gorham land in upstate NY, death by war being added to the other kinds of deaths settlers faced. The owners of Phelps Gorham had sold some acreage, but could not make payments on the rest. Thus, most of the NY land in the east Genessee passed into other hands, said to be Dutch. The changes, the renamings of the tracts, caused some to think the new Ohio settlers came from NY, when their original home base had been Hampshire County, Mass..
The 1820 US Census found them concentrated in one place, as if LeRoy was still inside Painesville, presumably as maps were not good enough to split people accurately among the emerging townships (again, especially LeRoy vs Painesville). The migrants did spread out into still other townships, according ot their historian, Spencer Phelps. Some went further west into the Newburgh region of what was mother Cleveland Twp.. some into Mentor, which lay on the ridge top between Painesville/Leroy and Cleveland/Newburg Newburg was still rural, with mills alongside teep water ways, uphill of Cleveland proper. Baby Cleveland, pre-Canal, seemed the inferior section then, as its river bottoms were still too swampy and mosquito-laden to be healthy. To change all that, the Chio Canal came through in 1825, its ditches to drain swampy land and stop the mosquito problem. Cleveland boomed. Newburgh languished and was annexed into a bustling Cleveland.
Only one set of migrant descendants would clearly stay in the original Leroy, past the nearby canal construction in 1825. They were the children of Rebeccah, whose Leroy gravestone names her as the daughter of people we know to have been called Beriah Alvord French and Abiathar French Jr., when growig up back in Hampshire County, Mass. However, their names were mis-remembered and thus distorted when added to her stone as cenotaph, presumably done by grandchildren after their original stones were among the many disappearing 1850 and later. Rebeccah had been a young widow, had married Elah Clapp, good friend of Spencer Phelps and a son of Col. Amasa Clapp. She had several children by Elah before he died "too early". The young widow then married William McMillen, who had probably arrived from Pennsylvania as a teen. He may have gone first with his father to a Clapp-sponsored location in the Ohio Firelands (tobe researched, Milan, Ohio? Medina County, Ohio?). Once married to Rebeccah, Mr. McMillen tried his best to stop a takeover of her Clap children's inherited lands in the 1830s. A creditor and his lawyer son had come from Massachusetts, representing people named Mattoon (a name known in Hamsphire County, but late, not early). Mattoon and his lawyer held the long-deceased Col Amasa Clapp responsible for another party's unpaid debts back in Massachusetts.
The debt source? A Massachusetts sheriff was expected to collect taxes. He either could not gather all the owed taxes, so was expected to pay the difference, or he stole the money for himself. Either way, the accused absconded. Col. Amasa Clap/Clapp had signed a bond much earlier promising the sheriff would perform well. Amasa's estate was left owing the owed amount, even though decades had passed since the Col's death.
The creditor wishing to claim Clap's Ohio land succeeded in getting a friendly Ohio congressman to push through remarkable, history-making, controversial legislation. If Col. Clapp had bought and sold land inside Massachusetts, no claim could be made at a "too late" date as the statute of limitations stopped debts from bing permanenrt, protecting third-parties who unwittingly had bought the land suffficiently later that no one would remember the old upaid debt. The new precedent-setting law sponsored by the Mattoon's congressional friend in Geuaga County said soemthing new-- The statute of limitiations did not apply to any land was bought outside the original jurisdication. If people closeby in Masssachusetts had forgotten the debt, those in faraway Ohio were expected to know of it
Anyone owning land in Geauga County that was in Leroy Twp and bought or inherited from the Clapp/Clapps would now lose it. They would lose it after work had been done and moneys spent, for decades, to make the land habitable and productive, by planting fruit trees, by building fences to keep livestock from roaming, by trapping wolves and bears preying on the livestock. There had been well-digging, road and school and church building, not just house- and barn-building.
The loss of all this caused several unrelated neighbors who had also been innocent buyers, along with Rebecca's brother-in-law (Elah's brother, Paul Clap/Clapp, a school teacher) to give up theri work and leave for upstate New York. rebeccah and her children stayed, perhaps as relative Jacob French mamanged to recover some of the land at its auction. The loss iwas widespread, s presumed to have caused others to migrate through Ohio to southern Michigan, where territorial land near to Indiana and to Lake Michigan could be claimed. This was an early version of homesteading, malaria once again a problem, as it had been if too close to Lake Erie in Ohio.
The Phelps fmaily must have had other land, not just the land from Col. Clapp, as Spencer Phelps stayed in Ohio, in the Mentor area. He would write a history of Leroy for the Painesville Telegraph. Some Frenches of Rebeccah' brother David had moved on to Newburg, to be in parts later to become annexed as east Cleveland. They kept their land as well. Their father had been that David French murdered in 1835 by three rogue canal workers. David was an brother to Rebeccah and son of Beriah and Abiathar, not proven by legal paperwork, but inferred. (He was named with the other children of Abiathar and Beriah in Spencer's writings, when few other Frenches were around. Verys trong evidence would be family visits between decending cousins caught in censuses, beginning with the 1850. For example, one of David's grandsons named French went to work for Rebeccah's son named Clap. The descendant of David, Elah French, staying longest in what became east Cleveland, was visited by Jehial Alvord. Jehial was a nephew or grandnephew of Beriah Alvord through her brother, Jehiel the Sr. That older Jehial had married Abiathar Jr's sister, Dorothy French, their family one that stayed behind in Hampshire County when the rest moved out to northeast Ohio, presumably as they bought some of the family land.
Rebeccah's known older brother was Jacob French, his relationship as son of Abiathar French and Beriah Alvord clear in an old biography written for Jacob's grandson-in-law, a state legislator, attorney, and anti-slavery campaigner known as A.J. Williams. Jacob had married Abigail Bartlett before leaving Mass., about 1801. A considerable land owner once in Ohio, he seems to have purchased varied corner lots once the Clapp land (at the time still in Geauga County, now in Lake County) was auctioned off in a sheriff's sale (advertisements in the Painesville Telegraph), presumably as a result of the Mattoons' actions. Corner lots could be optimal locations for stores, taverns, and post offices, but also places for displaced relatives to live.
The Leroy land incident is why title insurance exists today. (No one today questions any longer why a move out-of -state would cancel any statute of limitations. We just shell out the money for the title insurance an dlet the insurer worry if the title is clear or contaminated.)
Little is said as to why Lake County split apart from Geauga County in 1840. The timing caused the Mattooon-favoring congressman to be left with the less prosperous, uphill remnant of Geauga that lay farther from the most prime lakeshore. Someone else was allowe to represent the new Lake County, in the Ohio Congress.
Painesville, Leroy, Mentor, Kirtland and other places would all be in Lake County. Newburg was later moved in to Cuyahoga County, maybe part of the same land exchange that moved future Willoughby into Lake County. Jacob Frenches' one wealthy grandson, by his son Edwin, would keep an estate in Willoughby. That grandson's sister married the state legislator Other relatives (their uncles, cousins) would go off to Michigan, 1830-1840. Two sons of Ransom French, an Ebenezer French and Eben's younger brother, Alford O. French, would join the Civil War from Berrien County. This writer's spouse descends from their younger sister, Michigan-born Mary Eliza French Williams, last known as Mrs. Overacker, last residence in Priest River, Idaho. Deforestation in the interior pushed lumber camps offering work to her sons out of Michigan, further west.
Copyright, JBrown, Austin, TX, last revised Oct. 2019. Relatives may copy parts for private use only, in-family only, not for public consumption.
Thanks to member "Love My Ancestors" (47233390) for locating the graves of Abigail Phelps Alvord''s parents and of Milan,Ohio-buried relatives, Kezia/Keziah French Alvord (d. 1830) and Keziah Alvord Gouch (d.1849), seen mis-pelled as Olvord. We are researching the volunteer transcriptions of the Painesville Telegraph that include Spencer Phelps' memoirs and the ads for sheriff-sold land in the 1830s.
Inscription
"1756, August 26.
Died Abigail Alvord, aged 102"
Gravesite Details
Many gravestones missing or illegible, according to walks done early. Her inscription is in an old history of the church-town supervising the cemetery, with a lament about people using gravestones for stepping stones in house yards.
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