Ulysses S. Grant and Me

I was happy to find that WikiTree’s suggested connection to President Grant takes me back into my early Pease family ancestors in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.  This was the first line that I was track back into the 17^th century in Massachusetts, and I have become very fond of them.  They provided me with my first clue about how deep my family roots ran in the United States, and I enjoy touching base with them every so often.

My birth name, Arnold, doesn’t take me very far back into my family history.  The immigrant ancestor on this line was Eli Arnold, who showed up in Maine in the 1790s.  I haven’t been able to make much sense of his life before that.  However, Eli’s son, Spencer, married Martha Pease in 1817 in Maine, and Martha connects me to six generations of Pease family members in Massachusetts.

The WikiTree connection is spot-on through #8, John Pease, and his sister Abiah (#9).  This family provides me with an embarrassment of riches, which sometimes makes it hard to track.  John and Abiah had the same father (Benjamin Pease) but different mothers. John’s mother, Jean Arey, died in 1726, three years after giving birth to her 12^th child in 15 years.  Benjamin married Abiah Vincent shortly after Jean’s death in 1726, and Abiah Pease was their first child, born in 1728.  Four more children were added to this family by 1736, for a total of 17 children.  The oldest child was 38 years old when the youngest child was born in 1736.  Randy old goat.

Benjamin was not the only prolific member of the Pease family.  Although he was apparently the only child of his father David, his grandfather (also named John) had 11 children with two wives, and various uncles and cousins also had a lot of children.  Factor in that every generation in every branch of the family was apparently required to include a Robert, John, and Mary, and you can see my dilemma.  My tree includes eight men named Robert Pease, 19 men named John Pease, and eight women named Mary Pease.  It’s easy to become confused.

The family of Abiah Pease (sister of John Pease) was new to me, but I was soon able to confirm the connections.  Abiah married Benjamin Sandford (#10) on Martha’s Vineyard in 1748, and they had a daughter named Abigail (#11).  Abigail married Benjamin Newcomb (#12) in 1759 – but in Nova Scotia rather than the expected Martha’s Vineyard.  I wondered how this had come about, and here’s what I learned.

First, we need to look at a map to see the distance between Martha’s Vineyard and the town of Cornwallis, Nova Scotia, where Abigail and Benjamin married. 

The town of Cornwallis is on the Bay of Fundy, across the Gulf of Maine from Massachusetts.  The trip would probably have taken several days over the 300 miles of open ocean, depending on the winds and the tides.  But these were seafaring fisher-folk; the trip would not have been daunting. 

What little research I was able to do revealed that the Sandford and Newcomb families were part of a migration of New England planters to Nova Scotia between 1759 and 1768.  Here’s what I learned about this from one source. https://pier21.ca/research/immigration-history/journey-of-new-england-planters-to-nova-scotia

In the wake of the deportation of the Acadians in 1755, newly cultivated lands opened up in Nova Scotia, which needed to be populated. Roughly eight thousand men and women from New England came to settle in the Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia, and in the Upper St. John River Valley of present-day New Brunswick, between 1759 and 1768.

The first move towards settling the newly vacated lands after the Acadian Deportation was made via the Proclamation by General Charles Lawrence to the Boston Gazette on 12 October 1758, inviting settlers in New England to immigrate to Nova Scotia. The agriculturally fertile land in Nova Scotia would be a driving force in enticing the emigrants, but the New England colonists were wary. Lawrence sent a second Proclamation on 11 January, 1759 stating that in addition to land, Protestants would be given religious freedom, and a system of government similar to that in New England would be in place in the Nova Scotia settlements.

In the mid-eighteenth century, most New Englanders were desperately poor. For many generations, fathers had split up their lands to give to their sons, which meant they had very little land to farm themselves. The promise of over a hundred acres of land in Nova Scotia was enticing. Others were excited about the prospect of being close to the Grand Banks, which had a seemingly unlimited supply of fish. Unfortunately the promises and expectations of the settlers were initially not fully realized. The devastation of Acadian farms arising from the war between the British and the French made much of the offered land initially unusable. Regardless of these issues, the “Planters” emigrated and adjusted to the new circumstances that presented themselves in Nova Scotia, implementing a societal structure similar to that in New England. Although they were physically separated from family members left behind in New England, many maintained close ties through letters and occasional visits.

Land was the most influential reason for this emigration from New England, and the primary incentive for the move to Nova Scotia. Under the terms of Lawrence’s Proclamations, every head of family was entitled to one hundred acres of wild land and another fifty acres for each member of his household, up to one thousand acres. The land would be free of charge for ten years, after which a small rent would be charged. Grantees would have to improve one-third of their land every ten years, until all was cultivated. Lawrence’s offer made available a vast amount of quality farmland at a time when there was virtually no free land left in New England, due to a massive population increase to the area.

I found this interesting for another reason.  One set of my Martha’s Vineyard ancestors went to Maine sometime after the American Revolution.  I think it’s clear that people were comfortable moving around on the coast as circumstances drove them.

With this diversion out of the way, let’s look at how the rest of this connection holds up. David Newcomb had a son named Asaph, and Asaph had a daughter named Minnie.  Minnie’s husband, Jesse Cramer, was the son of Mary Grant – the sister of Hiram Ulysses (Ulysses Simpson) Grant.  Easy-peasy.

Geni provides me with two possible connection to President Grant, both of them through my mother’s family line.

The first connection (above) takes me through familiar territory through John Doyle Lee (in the middle of the second line on the chart).  He featured in my (ultimately disproven) link to George Washington and to my link to James Madison.  Here’s what I wrote about him in those posts.

Lee was born on September 6, 1812, in Kaskaskia, Illinois Territory, and joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in 1838. He was a friend of Joseph Smith, founder of the church, and was the adopted son of Brigham Young under the early Latter Day Saint law of adoption doctrine. In 1839, Lee served as a missionary with his boyhood friend, Levi Stewart. Together they preached in Illinois, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. During this period Lee converted and baptized “Wild Bill” Hickman. Lee practiced plural marriage and had 19 wives (at least eleven of whom eventually left him) along with 56 children.

Wikipedia adds a bit more about John Doyle Lee:  Lee was later convicted as a mass murderer for his complicity in the Mountain Meadows massacre, sentenced to death and was executed in 1877.  You can read more about the Mountain Meadows massacre in its Wikipedia entry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Meadows_Massacre 

Geni has much more information about John Doyle Lee.  You can look at his profile here. https://www.geni.com/people/John-Lee/6000000000836147633. 

May (Polly) Workman’s father, John A. Workman, was among the people who converted to the Mormon faith in Overton County, Tennessee, in 1840.  He and his wife, Lydia Bilyeu, soon moved to Nauvoo, Illinois, to join the Mormons who were moving there to join up with Brigham Young and Joseph Smith.

Mary Ann soon divorced John and married a man named Bennett, which explains why she is listed as “Mary Bennett” in Geni. 

The rest of the connection is a little iffy.  Mary Ann was John’s seventh wife; Terresa Chamberlain, on the other side of John in the chart above, was his oh, I don’t know, 17^th wife or thereabouts.  There is no record of their divorce, but she went on to marry several more times (only one husband at a time so far as I can tell), which is why she carries the surname Chamberlain, from one of her other husbands.

If I can get past the polygamist in this line, the rest of it seems pretty good.  It was interesting to see that President Grant’s grandmother was Sarah Delano, part of the well-known Delano family that also produced Franklin D. Roosevelt; President Roosevelt’s mother was a Delano.  President Roosevelt was President Grant’s 4^th cousin 1x removed.

This connection gets a grade of “B.”  Parts of it are rock-solid, but my mid-19th-century polygamists raise questions.

Geni provides me a second connection, as you see here.  It takes me through my mother’s family line back to my Dutch ancestors.  I recognize these names back through Abraham Workman and his mother Elizabeth (Wyckoff) Workman.  Her mother is correctly identified on this chart; her maiden name was Wyckoff and she married her 5^th cousin, also a Wyckoff.  Her father was John Wyckoff, as the chart suggests.  But the tree falls apart at that point; I can’t find anything that suggests John had a brother named Richard, and I can’t find anything that suggests Rebecca Simpson’s mother was ever married to a man named Addis.  Some of the comments on WikiTree and Geni say in fact that this connection has been disproven, as records show that Mary would have been only 10 years old when Rebecca was born, making it highly likely that the people who proposed this connection got the wrong Mary.