Preface and Introduction The Eaton Family: New England Colonists and Nova Scotia Pioneers: 1590-2020 by Cathy Eaton
INTRODUCTION I am offering you a glimpse into the lives of our ancestors and the places from which they hailed. It is my hope that family members or descendants will find interest in pursuing this family history, check its accuracy, make corrections, and add additional information. Our immediate family in 2020 live scattered across the United States: Elizabeth, Sarah, Kayden, Lumen, and Shantin in Oregon; Cyrus, Toni, Nathaniel, Lucas, John, Beth, Charley, Isaiah, Glory, Tiger Lily, Django, Colin and Nicole in California; Chris, Leila, Ian, and Sasha in Washington State; Matt and Kristine in Louisiana, Devon on the road, Stephen and Carolyn in Massachusetts, and Michael and me in New Hampshire. Our immediate family have worked as teachers, glassblowers, industrial designers, clock smiths, advocates for healing the environment, college professors, construction workers, landscapers, sales folk, artists, weavers, chief financial officers, computer software gurus, and international trade brokers. The ancestors of my parents traveled from Germany, England, Ireland, Wales, and Scotland to reach the American colonies, the Midwest, and Canada. Some fled war or unrest or poverty. Most traveled by crowded ships and some by covered wagons. They came to America or Canada for the opportunity to own and cultivate land, to pursue trades that allowed them to raise a family, to be safe, to flee persecution from people that they had fought against or who had oppressed them. They often raised large families and bore the heartache of losing children, yet many lived to advanced ages. Among them were farmers, tailors, merchants, physicians, industrialists, wheelwrights, shipbuilders, sailors, factory workers, blacksmiths, ministers, congressmen, postmasters, storekeepers, telephone company executives, ranchers, realtors, insurance salesmen, carpenters, peace activists, house keepers, painters, laborers, peddlers, weavers, teamsters, bakers, mill workers, wagon makers, and teachers. Some of our ancestors were Loyalists while others were Colonialists. Some fought in the Indian wars or in the Revolutionary War; some allied themselves with the Red Coats while others supported the colonists; some fought in the Union army while others helped supply the Confederate army; some had their land seized while others were awarded lands that had been cultivated by farmers whose farms and homes had been confiscated. Some were peace activists and struggled to heal the rifts between nations and ideologies and eliminate the use of weapons. In this book, I will introduce you to some of our ancestors, where they came from, where they traveled to, and how their lives unfolded. Our ancestors traveled first to the Colonies of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Hampshire, and Ohio from England, Scotland, Ireland, Prussia, Portugal, and Germany. Then some of their descendants traveled to Nova Scotia. EUROPE TO THE COLONIES John Eaton: Warwickshire England to Haverhill & Salisbury, MA John White: Essex, England to Cambridge, MA Walter Woodworth: Kent, England to Scituate, MA Thomas Fox: London, England to MA John Harris: Suffolk, England to Essex, MA Balthazar De Wolf: Prussia to Lyme, CT James Parker: Essex, England to Groton, MA Robert Spurr: Gloucestershire, England to Dorchester, MA John Maynard: Norfolk, England to Sudbury, MA Anthony Demings: Oporto, Portugal to MA Charles Morris: Wales to Bristol, England to Boston, MA Margaret House Eaton: Devon, England to Cleveland, OH Johann Schneider: Neiderkirche, Germany to Troy, Ohio Mary Ireland: Devon, England to Cleveland, Ohio
THE COLONIES TO NOVA SCOTIA David Eaton: Tolland, CT to Cornwallis, NS Elizabeth Woodworth: Newport, RI to Cornwallis, NS Zerviah Fox: Newport, RI to Cornwallis, NS Lebbeus Harris: Salem, MA to Horton, NS Isaac Akerley: West Chester, NY to Wallace, NS Donald MacPherson: Glasgow, Scotland to Shelburne, NS Amos Eaton: Cornwallis, NS to Pugwash, NS James Doherty; West Chester, NY to Wallace, NS Anthony Demings: Essex, MA to Shelburne, NS Sarah Harris: Cornwallis, NS to Pugwash, NS Margaret DeWolf: Saybrook, CT to Wolfville, NS Stephen Eaton: Cornwallis, NS to Pugwash, NS David Eaton (b. 1 April 1729; d. 17 July 1803) and his wife Deborah White (b. 19 May 1732; d. 20 May 1790) were both descended from pioneering families who helped establish towns in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York, after journeying to the colonies from England. David and Deborah traveled from Tolland, Connecticut to Cornwallis in Kings County, Nova Scotia, after embarking from New London, Connecticut in 1751. They had seven children. This genealogical history gives us glimpses into the lives of them, their ancestors, and their descendants. Such new worlds they encountered and tried to tame. So many skills they brought with them or learned. Such hardships they endured. Such challenges they faced. Such majestic landscapes they encountered. Arthur Eaton imagined this “migration of New Englanders to Nova Scotia, especially those who sailed up the Bay of Fundy into Minas Basin and anchored either near the Isthmus of Chignecto, or rounding the bold cliff of Blomindon, and came on shore at the mouth of the Avon River, where Windsor now is, or at Starr’s Point, in Cornwallis. One cannot help letting one’s imagination play on the scene of beautiful upland landscape, and wide sweep of alluvial meadow, over which the red Fundy tide swept daily, leaving its wealth of rich silty deposit over all the marvelous expanses of what the French called and we call the Grand Pré. One cannot help entering into the enthusiasm of the planters as they saw the changing cloud-lights on the Basin and the filmy white mists that at sunrise enveloped the North and South mountains, sister ranges of hills facing each other smilingly all through the Annapolis Valley, and giving protection from blasting winds to the fertile farms that the Acadians had tilled.”[1] At the close of the American Revolution between 1782 and 1783, many Royalists or Tories migrated from the suburbs of New York to Shelburne, Nova Scotia. Providing assistance to the British during the Revolution meant they could no longer remain in New York after the British withdrawal. Influential New Yorkers planned the town of Shelburne before they arrived. The highland families of Campbell, McKay, and MacPherson were some of the Scottish families who joined the Royalist migration to Shelburne, Nova Scotia, and some of them married into the Eaton family. Other Loyalists families like the Ackerleys and Doherty’s, also from New York, came directly to Cumberland to settle. Perhaps we can be inspired by our ancestors, who in all their frailties, strengths, courage, despair, and hope, traveled immense distances and overcame daunting obstacles to create homes for their families. I look forward to sharing your own past and future journeys. Cathy Eaton January 22, 2020
PREFACE
TIMELINE AND OVERVIEW ARRIVAL: NEW ENGLAND COLONIES MIGRATION: NEW ENGLAND TO NOVA SCOTIA
NEW ENGLAND PLANTERS The original New England Planters left their homes “in the midlands and south of England” during the mid-sixteen hundreds “to plant a new England on the Atlantic coast of North America.”[2] They were called Pilgrims or Puritans. Their religious, political, and economic motivations led them to risk the hazardous crossing of the Atlantic Ocean to build a new life in the wilderness of “England’s colonies on the eastern coast of America.”[3] “The name Planters was an Elizabethan term for colonists. They were not people who planted crops, they were people who planted colonies.”[4] Some of those loyal to the crown headed to Nova Scotia. Those who emigrated before American Revolution were called Planters; those who came after the Revolution were called Loyalists. Our first confirmed Eaton ancestors John Eaton (b. 26 December 1590, Hatton, Warwickshire, England; d. 20 October 1668, Salisbury, MA) and Anne (b. 1599 in England, d. 5 February 1660, Haverhill, MA) arrived with six children in Salisbury, Massachusetts Bay Colony, in the winter of 1639 or 1640. This Eaton family carved out a life, built homes, farmed the land, and helped established towns in the English colony of Massachusetts. After four generations and 120 years passed, their descendent David Eaton migrated with his family to the western coast of Nova Scotia, home to the Mi’kmaq for 10,000 years and home to the French Acadians for 150 years. Our ancestors who married into the Eaton family arrived primarily from England but also Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Prussia, and Portugal, by the names of White, Singletery, Cooke, Sanders, Kimball, Atwood, Woodworth, Fox, Harris, DeWolf, Parker, Spurr, Maynard, McPherson, Akerley, Doherty, and Demings. They settled first in the colonies of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island before some family members immigrated to Nova Scotia.
NATIVE AMERICANS For a century before Europeans arrived, Native Americans, who initially survived through hunting and gathering, had roamed New England. “Migrating here after the retreat of the last ice age, by 1500 they had a population likely in excess of 100,000…They had become more agricultural – with extensive fields of corn (maize), beans, and squash. By this time the tribes were fundamentally stationary, but shifted dwellings several times year based on weather – winter, autumn hunting, and summer. The New England tribes had a common heritage and belonged to the Algonquian family. Their language was fairly common, and although each tribe had nuances, there was the ability to be understood from Cape Cod to Canada.”[5] In three brief years between 1616 and 1619, disease that escalated to a plague, called the ‘Great Dying,’ decimated “¾ of the New England Native American population, with the devastation worse in the coastal areas where mortality was as high as 95%.” The white colonists carried the diseases across the ocean, and the Native Americans had no resistance. “Over the centuries theories of the mass extinction “have included yellow fever, smallpox, and plague. Chickenpox and trichinosis are among more recent proposals.”[6]Most recently another explanation has emerged: an infectious disease, called leptospirosis, carried by rodents travelling on ships of the European migrants. Consequently, the white settlers arriving around 1620, “encountered very little of the indigenous population.”[7]
ENGLISH SETTLERS In 1600 no permanent settlements had been established in the Americas. However, in the next 100 years, the English stimulated significant emigration as compared to the French or Spanish. They sent large numbers of immigrants to a dozen colonies. The dramatic increase in population in England propelled thousands to abandon the overcrowding and relentless poverty at home. Thousands headed to the Chesapeake Bay colonies to work in the tobacco fields. Another group of pious Puritan families settled the Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, New Haven, Connecticut, and Rhode Island colonies of New England. [8][9] European Settlements in America Native American Lands “The Abnaki, also known as the Tarrantine to other tribes, inhabited western ME…The Penacook inhabited southern and central MA, northeastern MA and southeastern ME, with the principle subdivision around Concord, NH. [They included the Penacook and the Winnipesaukee.] The Massachusetts (in Algonquian, “people of the great hills”), from whom the state of Massachusetts got its name, inhabited the eastern area of state, around Boston. The Wampanoag inhabited the areas of the Piscataqua, of southeastern Massachusetts near where the Pilgrims landed in current Plymouth.” The Nipmucs and the Pocumtucks also lived in Massachusetts. The Narragansetts lived in present-day Rhode Island. “The Niantics extended as far west as the Pequot tribe in Connecticut. The Pequots, of eastern Connecticut were originally part of the Mahican (known as Mohegan, a corruption of the Mahigan name) a tribe of the of upper Hudson River valley in New York.” South of the Pocumtucks along the Connecticut River Valley lived the “River Indians”, another loose association of tribes.”[10]
THE ACADIANS Before any of our ancestors reached the American Colonies, the Acadians began arriving from France to what is now called Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island when Samuel Champlain established a settlement in 1605 around the time the English founded Virginia in 1607. The Acadians reclaimed tidal flats around the Bay of Fundy to establish their farms and orchards, an effort that required strong community cooperation. They traded with the indigenous people, colonists in New England, and French settlers in Quebec and Cape Breton.[11] Family connections and the Catholic church created strong bonds within the Acadian community; simultaneously, the Acadians formed positive relationships and intermarried with the Indigenous groups, including the Mi’kmaq, the Malecite, and Abenaki peoples. This land called Acadia flipped back and forth between the French and the English between 1610 and 1755 when the Acadians were ripped from their homes and cruelly deported.
THE MI’KMAQ For centuries before the settling of the Acadians, the Mi’kmaq in the Maritime Provinces had sustained their way of life primarily through hunting and fishing in the winter with small family groups and in the spring and summer with larger camps of numerous families. Their portable birchbark-covered wigwams accommodated a dozen to two dozen people. While each of seven districts had its own chief, their grand chief dwelled on Cape Breton Island. Contact and trade with Europeans brought them iron items such as knives and a variety of foods not healthy for their diet as well as killing diseases like small pox. The Mi’kmaq assisted the Acadians by sharing hunting and fishing techniques and teaching them methods to make clothes and canoes as well as how to insulate their homes. “Traditionally, the Mi’kmaq geographic boundaries included Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, large areas of New Brunswick, and the Gaspe Bay in Quebec. The seven districts known as Kespe’k (New Brunswick and Gaspe Bay in Quebec), Epekwitk aq Piktuk (P.E.I.), Sipekne’katik (Shubenacadie), Kespukwitk(southwestern Nova Scotia/Yarmouth), Umama’kak (Cape Breton). Siknikt (Miramichi/Bay of Fundy), Eskikewa’kik (Sheet Harbour to Canso) were the traditional territories of the Mi’kmaq Peoples.”[12] [13][14] The Mi’kmaq tribes & lands Acadian Settlements in Maritime Provinces “The Mi’kmaq worldview is relational, where everything existed within a network of relationships and could not exist as a separate entity outside of those relationships. On all levels of reality, visible and invisible, everything is related. As everyone and everything is related, proper decorum was expected because it was thought that if you harmed someone or something, you ultimately harmed yourself in the process. One cannot take these relationships for granted, rather each person must express honor and respect in their relationships with others. This worldview extends to all human relationships, the environment, the animals, and to other beings. Mi’kmaq ancestors understood that everything is in a continuous state of flux, ever changing and non-static. The constant motion signifies that everything is in the process of becoming. It is also understood that these relationships require renewal ceremonies in order to sustain and maintain balance and harmony through the life cycles.”[15] Timeline[16] in Annapolis Royal of Arrival & Deportation of Acadians, Arrival of Planters, & Arrival of Loyalists 1605 – Champlain established first settlement. 1713 – Nova Scotia became. British colony 1745 – British captured French held Fort Louisburg in Cape Breton: 1755 – Capture of Fort Beausejour; 1758- Surrender of Louisburg 1755 - The Acadian Deportation commenced. The Acadians men, women, and children were rounded up, deprived of most of their possessions, and deported to colonies on the eastern coast of America where they were not welcomed and where they had no livestock or cargo to help them build new homesteads. 12 October 1758 - The first proclamation was sent out by Lieutenant General Lawrence calling for New England immigrants to send settlement inquiries for the available Acadian lands of Nova Scotia. 11 January 1759 - The second proclamation was issued by Lieutenant General Lawrence addressing the initial concerns Planters had about immigrating to Nova Scotia. Townships of over 100,000 acres began to be established. Our ancestor Hannah Almira Morris’s grandfather, Surveyor-General Charles Morris accompanied agents to investigate potential land grants to the Planters. “The agents set out on a Government ship with the Survey-General in command…The vessel sailed around Yarmouth into the Bay of Fundy which enabled the visitors to view the lands along the Annapolis River before proceeding to Minas Basin. They landed on the shore of the Basin and spent many busy days studying the topography and soil of the large area between Cape Blomindon and Piziquid, now Windsor. They were delighted with all they saw. Seven rivers emptied their waters into the Basin, and on the banks of each was an abundance of fertile soil. The hills were covered with forests and the apple trees planted by the Acadians were almost ready to bud, the grass on the dykes was green, and the uplands seemed to be waiting for the plow…The now enthusiastic agents were quite ready to settle two townships, Horton and Cornwallis, each of 100,000 acres, with 200 and 150 families respectively. These were to be brought to Nova Scotia at Government expense, and each passenger might bring stock, tools, building materials, and household goods up to a weight of two tons.”[17] November 1759 - A terrible storm hit Nova Scotia affecting the flow of immigrants into Annapolis, Minas, and Chignecto. Here the advanced dyke systems were destroyed, causing immense tracts of land to be flooded with salt waters and consequently unable to bear grain crops for the next three years. A decision was made to check the effects of the damage before the migration of the New Englanders, delaying their migration to 1760.
1759-1760 – Planters from Connecticut and Massachusetts as well as Rhode Island hold a series of meetings in their towns where they were recruited to move to the Annapolis Valley.[18] SOLDIER ANCESTORS FROM THE COLONIES WHO FOUGHT IN CANADA BEFORE MIGRATING THERE It is likely that David Eaton, the founder of our Nova Scotia Eaton family, ventured into Canada between June 1759 and November 1759 and for several months in 1760 with the English militia. Although his brothers Timothy and Nathaniel, who fought for the colonists, chose to remain in New England, David and his wife Deborah White abandoned their home in Tolland, Connecticut, to seek their future in Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia. By 1764, David was granted 666 acres to begin their new life. Another ancestor, Nathaniel Parker accompanied General Wolfe to the Siege of Quebec during his years in the British army between 1759-1763. David Eaton’s wife’s family, the Whites, also split their loyalty between the British and the Colonists before and during the American Revolution. Charles Morris, who helped established Halifax and Lunenburg between 1748 and 1749 as well as exploring Annapolis Valley, settled in Halifax before moving to Wallace near Pugwash. 1760-1768 - The largest influx of Planter immigration brought nearly 8,000 New England Planters to Nova Scotia and present-day New Brunswick. By the mid-1760s migration slowed and many Planters either returned to New England, or sought other lands and opportunities in the West. May 1760 - Charles Morris, Chief Surveyor, traveled to the township of Annapolis, Nova Scotia and was greeted by the first wave of settlers who sailed on the ship Charming Molly. The forty-five settlers on the “Charming Molly” landed upriver from Fort Anne near Annapolis Basin. Shippy Spurr and John Whitman were among our ancestors traveling on the “Charming Molly.”
1759 & 1760 – Former Acadian settlement on north bank of the Avon river, opposite Fort Piziquid with its fertile uplands and half-destroyed Acadian buildings, was granted to 100 families from Rhode Island, fifty each year. The town of Falmouth was created.
Our ancestors Thomas Woodworth and his wife Zerviah Fox sailed from Newport, Rhode Island and settled in Falmouth, Nova Scotia.
Deported Acadians were resettled on Eastern shore of the Colonies, Central & South America, and France
The Planters came from Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island[19] Over fifteen of our ancestors arrived in Nova Scotia between 1760 and 1763. They left their homes in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. Among these planters were David Eaton, his wife Deborah White, and their children who settled in Cornwallis. The future wife of Stephen Eaton, Elizabeth Woodworth arrived from Rhode Island with her parents Thomas Woodworth and his wife Zerviah Fox and her siblings on the “Sally” or “Lydia” sloops and also settled in Falmouth or Cornwallis. The cost to each of the fifty-eight passengers was 25 shillings each. In Falmouth, “the town meeting was used as the means of dividing the land and of regulating almost every activity of the community, even to the distribution of the Acadian ruins, the cutting of firewood, the earmarks for the cattle, and the use of the commons for grazing.”[20] The DeWolf family traveled from Saybrook, Connecticut, and settled in Wolfville in 1761. Lebbeus Harris, who married Margaret Lucilla DeWolf, arrived from Essex, Massachusetts in 1761 to settle in Cornwallis. Shippy Spurr arrived with his parents Michael Spurr and Jane Shippe on the sloop “Charming Molly” in 1760 sailing from Boston to Annapolis Royal. Nathaniel Parker, a British soldier, married Salome Whitman who also arrived with her parents Deacon John Whitmanand Mary Foster on the sloop Charming Molly; Nathaniel and Salome settled in Nictaux in Annapolis County. . “On her first voyage the ‘Charming Molly’ carried thirty-one men, two women, and twelve children, as well as stock and equipment. Most of the men left their wives and families in Massachusetts until they had prepared living quarters for them…The grantees met to appoint lot layers and other necessary officials, and so introduced the New England Town Meeting to Nova Scotia…Each head of a family received the normal share of 500 acres, and some of the low land which had been cultivated by the Acadians. Defense was provided by the garrison at Annapolis and the organization of the male settlers as militia. The building of homes went forward rapidly. Within a few years the Annapolis township had a population of 500…[More Planters arrived and] the Granville grants extended from the river to the Bay of Fundy. . . . The chief occupation was farming, although some of the Planters became fishermen, millers, and sawyers.[21] . . . The passengers arrived weary and half sick, and fodder for the stock had been exhausted. But once on land, the settlers regained their optimism, and they were soon off to their new homes, in true pioneer fashion, driving their cattle before them.” [Initially, they lived in tents.] “An outstanding characteristic of the Planter settlements in Horton and Cornwallis was the central community or Town Plot . . . used here also for purposes of defense, trade and social life.”[22] The towns in Annpolis “Valley were grouped in three pairs: Cornwallis and Horton, Falmouth and Newport, Annapolis and Granville.”[23] Our MacPherson ancestors traveled from Edinburgh and Glasgow, Scotland to Shelburne NS. Another ancestor, Anthony Demings, reported to have been kidnapped from his homeland in Oporto, Portugal or from a ship, settled in Massachusetts before coming to Shelburne, NS before the Planters arrived. 1768 – Population of Annapolis was 99 families, 8 or 10 being Acadians, for a total of 513 people. In Nova Scotia, “the Planters and Pioneers were of many types and from many places. There were nearly 3100 names listed as heads of families…The largest contingent came from Massachusetts, about 1111. The next largest group directly from England, 511 plus…404 from German principalities, 134 from Connecticut, and 98 from Rhode Island…The population by 1783, not counting the Acadians, was at least 21,000” perhaps as high as 24,000.[24] 1770- “German, Scottish, and Irish families had arrived.”[25] 1775-1783 - The American Revolution broke out between Great Britain and its Thirteen Colonies in North America. 1783 - Many who had remained loyal to the British Crown began to seek refuge in Canada when the Revolution ended. Roughly 35,600 Loyalists migrated to Nova Scotia. Other of our ancestors were British soldiers who suffered grievous losses in the American Revolution and headed to Wallace, Nova Scotia. This included Isaac Akerley in 1780 and James Doherty around the same time.
[1] Eaton, Arthur Wentworth Hamilton, The Eatons of Nova Scotia privately printed 1929, 21-22
[2] Longley, R. S., “The Coming of the New England Planters to the Annapolis Valley,” 1960 (Department of History, Acadia University).
[3] In “The Coming of the New England Planters to the Annapolis Valley” Qtd in The Coming of the Planters (14) based on H. L. Osgood, American Colonies in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, 7 Vol. (New York, 1904-25) passim. Simeon Perkins, Diary, ed. H. Innis (Champlain society, 1948), 88.
[4] Ibid. [5] Steves, Rick, New England Before Europeans – the Native Americans, Steve’s Travel Guide, 2014[6] Marr, John S., & Cathey, John T. “New Hypothesis for Cause of Epidemic among Native Americans, New England, 1616–1619,” Emerging Infectious Diseases, 2010 [7] Steves, Rick, “New England Before Europeans – the Native Americans,” Steve’s Travel Guide, 2014
[15]A Tribute to Mi’kmaq History Month: The Truth and Reconciliation process is breathing Mi’kmaq Humanities into academia, Nancy MacDonald
[16] Western University’s MA Public History Program Students, The Forgotten Immigrants: The Journey of the New England Planters to Nova Scotia, 1759-1756
[17] Longley, R. S., “The Coming of the New England Planters to the Annapolis Valley,” April 1960, 21 (Read before the Nova Scotia Historical Society), information from the Public Archives of Nova Scotia, Minutes of Council, 18 May, 1759)
[18] Longley, R. S., “The Coming of the New England Planters to the Annapolis Valley,” April 1960, 24-25 (Read before the Nova Scotia Historical Society), information from the Public Archives of Nova Scotia, Minutes of Council, 18 May, 1759)
[20] “The Coming of the New England Planters to the Annapolis Valley,” R. S. Longley, April 1960, 21 (Read before the Nova Scotia Historical Society), information from the Public Archives of Nova Scotia, Minutes of Council, 18 May, 1759, 28
[21] “The Coming of the New England Planters to the Annapolis Valley,” R. S. Longley, April 1960, 21 (Read before the Nova Scotia Historical Society), information from the Public Archives of Nova Scotia, Minutes of Council, 18 May, 1759), 26