Murder on the High Seas, and all that good stuff

In my previous post on the Cape Cod Calvinist Kerfuffle of 1717-1738, I mentioned Kinney ancestor Joseph Doane, famous for capturing nine pirates fleeing the wreck of the Whydah.  

While researching the Doane line, I came across the dramatic story of the schooner Abigail, which illustrates how dangerous shipping could be in the Cape Cod area in the 18th century (1). It's also a reminder that we're descendants from, essentially, the entire county of Barnstable, Massachusetts, which covers the outer hook of Cape Cod. Or, at least, it's 17th and 18th century inhabitants.

The Abigail was owned by Captain Thomas Nickerson of Chatham, in Barnstable county. [He was my first cousin, 8x removed. His father, Thomas, was the brother of Desire Nickerson, which is both her maiden and married name, my 7xgreat-grandmother.] By the late 1700s, the economy in Barnstable county was focused on fishing and shipping. Captain Nickerson used his schooner to transport cargo between Boston and the outer Cape Cod. 

On November 15, 1772, the Abigail was found by Captain Joseph Doane Jr., himself piloting a schooner from Boston to Chatham, with her distress signal flying. [Joseph Doane Jr. was the son of pirate-hunter Joseph Doane, and therefore my 3rd cousin, 7x removed.] When Captain Doane boarded the vessel, he found the deck awash in blood and the cargo smashed open. Three men were dead, clearly murdered: Captain Nickerson himself, his cousin Sparrow Nickerson [also a relative of ours], and his brother-in-law Elisha Newcomb. [As far as I know, Elisha Newcomb was not related to our family, but I can't find his genealogy.]

There was one survivor, Ansel Nickerson. [Presumably, Ansel was also a cousin of mine, since he was a cousin of the captain, but I haven't found his place in the genealogy (2).] Ansel claimed that at 2am that morning, the crew had seen a topsail schooner heading toward them. Fearing he would be impressed into the British Navy, Ansel tied a rope around himself and let himself hang off the stern of the ship. While hanging, he heard four boats of armed men attack the ship, murder his captain, mate, and a crew-member, and carry off the youngest crew member, a boy of 13 named William Kent Jr. The pirates stole what they could, smashed open a barrel of rum and drank it, then argued about whether to burn the Abigail or just leave her to wreck herself. Luckily for Ansel, they decided to leave her.

Captain Doane carried the distraught Ansel Nickerson back to Chatham, but that was not the end of the story. For reasons that are not clear, the local official, Edward Bacon, Esq., was suspicious of Ansel's story. [I don't know if we're related to Edward Bacon. I can't find information about his family, but I don't know of any connections to a Bacon.] It seems unlikely that Ansel could have murdered four men -- for no known motivation -- without sustaining any injuries himself, but he was sent to Boston where he was tried for murder on the high seas and found not guilty when the jury deadlocked. 

The public and the courts were not satisfied, so Ansel was tried again, this time by a special Court of the Vice-Admiralty which charged him with piracy and robbery. He was represented by two Boston lawyers, John Adams and Josiah Quincy Jr., who had, two years earlier, successfully defended the British soldiers accused in the Boston Massacre. (And one of whom, of course, later became the president of the United States.) The trial lasted two weeks. Although Ansel was acquitted, something about his story, character, or evidence must have been extremely suspicious, for John Adams himself wrote in his diary, years later, that he was uncertain of his client's guilt or innocence. Ansel eventually moved to the Caribbean. Many of his neighbors remained convinced of his guilt.

Joseph Doane Jr., who had found the Abigail, went on to serve in the Revolution under Captain (later Colonel) Benjamin Godfrey of the Massachusetts militia [my 1st cousin, 9x removed. His father's brother, Moses Godfrey, was my 8xgreat-grandfather].

References:

1. Nickerson, Joseph A., Jr., and Geraldine D. Nickerson. 2008. Chatham Sea Captains in the Age of Sail. The History Press, p. 25-26. Available on-line here: https://books.google.com/books?id=FXgVBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA91&dq=boston+ship+captains&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi7orXDq8TMAhVkIcAKHXLKBuYQ6AEIRjAH#v=onepage&q=Nickerson&f=false

2. http://capecodhistory.us/genealogy/Nauset/i2819.htm

Overview of the Bakers

This is part of a series from the family history book I wrote for my mother's birthday. To see all the posts, click on the "Mom Book" tag at the bottom of this post.

Baker

Casper and Anna Maria Baker (or Becker, depending on how the name is transliterated) were the first of our Baker line to move to the United States. They were from Saxony, according to their census information. Place names in Germany are difficult to interpret. The same town and region names can be used for a variety of different locations, and, of course, the boundaries of those regions could change over time. Saxony, in the period 1820-1860, most likely referred either to the Kingdom of Saxony (an independent member of the German Confederation that included the major cities of Dresden and Leipzig) or the Province of Saxony (a somewhat less coherent region annexed by Prussia and including areas that had previously been part of the Kingdom of Saxony, such as Wittenberg, but also Magdeburg, Halberstadt, and parts of the former territories of Brandenberg and Erfurt.) 

Casper was born on March 18, 1822, and Anna Maria on February 2, 1826. They probably married in Saxony and emigrated together to the United States. They arrived in Dayton, Ohio before 1849, the birth year of their eldest child. Casper was a stonecutter by trade. Casper and Anna Maria had nine children. Their third child, and second daughter, was Appolonia Baker, who, at the age of 18, married John T. Stoecklein. 

Appolonia died at the age of 41, after a long battle with illness. Although the cause of her illness is not known for certain, her descendants have a strong history of biliary cancer. She had three surviving daughters, the youngest of whom, Irene (the future wife of Louis Leyes), was only four when her mother died. 

References:

http://thedeanbeaverblog.blogspot.com/2016/01/appolonia-baker-stoecklein.html

Overview of the Stoeckleins

This is part of a series from the family history book I wrote for my mother's birthday. To see all the posts, click on the "Mom Book" tag at the bottom of this post.

Stoecklein

The Stoeckleins were a Baravian family. The first to immigrate to the United States was Joseph C. Stoecklein, born in 1827 in the village of Stadt Prozelten, in the municipality of Faulbach, Bavaria. Bavaria was in turmoil during the 1830s and 40s. Eventually, political unrest led to the Revolutions of 1848, during which intellectual leaders called for greater freedom and rights for common people. The movement was defeated by the aristocracy, but Bavaria's king, Ludwig I, was forced to abdicate and was replaced by his son, Maximilian II.

The unrest in the German states led to a wave of emigration to the United States. As was common at the time, the citizens of Stadt Prozelten stuck together, even in the New World. Joseph was the first to reach Dayton, Ohio, sometime before 1849. He got a job at a meat-packing plant, wrote back home about his success, and was soon joined by his brothers, his father (his mother had died), and many other inhabitants of the village, including the Zwisler family: Joseph and Maria Dorothy Zwisler, and their daughters Carolina and Magdalena.

Joseph Stoecklein and Carolina Zwisler married on February 18, 1851. Joseph was 24, and Carolina
was 18. Whether or not they had been sweethearts in Bavaria, they no doubt were drawn to each other as familiar faces in a strange land. Joseph and Carolina raised three sons in Dayton. Their eldest, John T., was born in December 10, 1851.

John T. Stoecklein began working as a butcher, following in his father's footsteps. On November 12, 1872, he married Appolonia Baker. They had at least four children, only three of whom survived to adulthood: Cora, Betty, and Irene. John T. and his brother eventually took over their father's butcher shop. His uncles, however, were working in the brewing and saloon businesses, and in 1896, after Appolonia's early death, he opened his own saloon, The Mint.

In March of 1913, the Stoeckleins survived the one of the worst natural disasters in Ohio history. The Great Dayton Flood broke through the levees and sent water up to 20 feet deep through the downtown. Houses were swept away, killing their occupants. Families were stranded on their roofs, some dying during rescue attempts. Gas lines exploded, causing fires that could not be contained because the fire department was unable to navigate the streets. People walked the telegraph and electrical wires to safety, balancing high above the flood waters. 360 people died and 65,000 were driven from their homes. The Mint was in the middle of the flood. Family history says that John T. lost a number of barrels of expensive whiskey to the waters. Undoubtedly there was a great deal of property damage, as well. The business survived, only to close six years later when prohibition banned the sale of alcohol. 

John T. and Appolonia's youngest daughter, Irene, married Louis Leyes on June 2, 1914.

References:

http://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Stoecklein-17

http://www.daytonhistorybooks.com/page/page/1566099.htm

(Historical) Representation Matters

While looking through information about the Founding Fathers for the 4th of July, I came across this story of a descendant of Aaron Burr's cousin who reenacted his ancestor's famous duel with Alexander Hamilton for a PBS special. Antonio Burr had previously reenacted the duel with a descendant of Alexander Hamilton. 

Alexander Hamilton had eight children, most of whom survived and had children of their own, so it's no surprise that his direct descendants are numerous. But why is Burr's family represented by a more distant relative? If you look at most documents about his life, they will say he and his wife had one daughter who died as a young adult, and that her only child died before having children of his own. 

But there is substantial evidence that Burr had more than one illegitimate child. He adopted a French boy named Aaron Burr Colombe who is believed to have been his natural child. There is also reasonable documentation that he was the father of John Pierre Burr and Louisa Charlotte Burr Webb, the children of his Indian (as in from India) maid. It is an interesting reflection of the development of racial categories in Colonial America that Burr's (presumed) children considered themselves African-American, although their mother is believed to have been born in Calcutta. They became active in abolitionist causes, and Louisa's son was one of the first African-American novelists. 

As far as I can find, there has been no DNA testing to confirm Burr's patrimony of these three children. Regardless, if there are likely direct descendants of Aaron Burr, it's interesting that none of them were chosen for this reenactment. There are undoubtedly a number of reasons (Antonio Burr is an experienced reenactor, there were no descendants of John or Louisa willing to participate, etc.), but race may have played a part as well. Would PBS have faced a backlash if Aaron Burr was played by a Black man, even if that man was a direct descendant? Historical representations are often fraught with questions that reflect our own social ills more than those of the past. Personally, I think there was a missed opportunity to highlight the messy reality of race and history in the U.S.

4th of July, Genealogy Style

The Declaration of Independence
See the bottom there? Some of our distant relatives signed that.

Fifty-six white men from the Continental Congress signed the Declaration of Independence. Did you ever wonder: who were they, and are we related to any of them? Well, wonder no more. We are not direct descendants of any of the signers, but we have a more distant relationships to at least two:*

Lyman Hall, representative of Georgia. Born in Connecticut, he moved south and lived in South Carolina and Georgia after studying medicine at Yale. His property was burned by the British during the war, and he was accused of high treason. He escaped back to Connecticut, returning to Georgia after the war to serve as governor. He is a third cousin (multiple times removed) from the Kinney line, through our mutual descent from John Walker, one of the early colonizers of Connecticut. Lyman was the great-grandson of John's daughter, Hannah Walker Hall. The Kinneys descended from her sister, Mary Walker Brown Clark.

Robert Treat Paine, representative of Massachusetts. Lawyer, prosecutor (among other jobs, he was assistant prosecutor in the trial of British soldiers for the Boston Massacre), founder of the Academy of Arts and Sciences, Massachusetts attorney general and supreme court judge. He is a third cousin (many times removed) through our common descent from Nicholas Snow and his wife Constance Hopkins, both Mayflower passengers. Robert was the great-grandson of Nicholas's daughter, Mary Snow Paine. Our Kinney line is descended from Nicholas's son, Stephen, named for his mother's father, Stephen Hopkins, another Mayflower passenger.

The 4th of July is also a good day to remind you of the many Revolutionary War soldiers in our family.

______
*Note, as with many people of English ancestry, we have certain "gateway ancestors" who connect us back to medieval times. I am not counting relationships through those gateway ancestors here, only closer connections. Also, I'm relying on wikitree.com relationship finder, which is only as good as the family trees that have been entered into its system. There may be relationships that it is not finding because the trees are not complete. I wouldn't be surprised, for example, if we are relatives of Josiah Bartlett, since we are descendants from one Bartlett family in Massachusetts, but wikitree finds no connection.

We are not related to Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin. To whom we are not related.

As the 4th of July draws near, the Founding Fathers are on our minds. We are related, distantly, to some of them, but alas we are not related to my favorite: Benjamin Franklin. We do, however, have a non-family connection (of a sort).

In my post on the Cape Cod Calvinist Kerfuffle of 1717-1738, I mentioned my eight great-grandmother, Jedidah Smith Osborn. Her grandfather and great-grandfather were both named Thomas Mayhew. They were founders and leaders of the European colony on Martha's Vineyard, and they ran a mission school on the island. They were both fluent in the Wapanoag language and their strong relationships with the Wapanoag community (among other things, they required Europeans to pay an honest price for the land they colonized) kept the island from being pulled into King Phillip's War. By the (admittedly quite low) standards of the day, they were respectful and considerate of the indigenous people.

The two Thomases were assisted by Peter Folger (or Foulger). Peter had come to New England in 1635 with his parents, but he was a Baptist and therefore was harder to employ or to integrate into the Puritan society. The Mayhews were more tolerant in this respect, also, than their brethren on the mainland. When Thomas Jr. left for a return trip to England (from which he never returned) he left the mission and school in Peter's hands. Peter later surveyed and then led a European settlement on Nantucket. He married Mary Morrill, with whom he had a number of children, including their second-youngest daughter, Abiah, who married Josiah Franklin and was mother of Benjamin Franklin.

So, although we have no blood relationship with Benjamin Franklin, our families are intertwined, and young Ben no doubt grew up hearing stories about our Mayhew great-grandfathers from his own grandfather.