“Rocking Cradle” — An update on my Mayflower Society membership “quest”

L0057479 Savoyard baby’s rocking cradle, 18th century, viewpoint show
Credit: Science Museum, London. Wellcome Images
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Savoyard baby’s rocking cradle, 18th century, viewpoint showing the inside of cradle, graduated grey background.
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Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

I had an email the other day from someone representing the local chapter of the Mayflower Society, asking me how things were going with my attempts to link my third-great-grandmother Wealthy Ann (Cushman) Jaques with Mayflower passenger Mary Allerton.

I had not worked on this since before my mother fractured her leg two years ago, and I recalled that there had been some formidable-looking brick walls to hurdle. I advised her of such and then spent a day refreshing my memory and retracing my steps to see if I had missed anything or anything new had surfaced online.

Pretty much everything was as before with the remarkable exception of the appearance of Eleazar Cushman’s 1795 will on Ancestry.com. As you may recall, my theory has been that this Eleazar Cushman was the son of Seth Cushman and Abiah Allen, baptised on 17 July 1768 in Dartmouth, Massachusetts, and that he and his wife Mercy (Marcia) Toocker are Wealthy’s parents. (See my previous posts on this topic by typing “Mayflower” into the search box.)

Eleazar (Eleasur) died on 9 August 1795 at age 27 and is buried in the Center Church Ancient Burying Ground in present-day downtown Hartford, CT. Per the Mortuary Notice, Connecticut Courant, Mon., 10 Aug 1795, he was a ship carpenter and died suddenly of “…drinking too freely of cold water.” For an interesting post “Drinking Cold Water and Other 19th Century Causes of Death,” which cites a famous doctor’s observations from 1805—not long after Eleazar died, click here.

Eleazar’s estate’s executors were James Hillyer and Joseph Toocker. This Joseph Toocker was either Mercy’s father or brother, both named Joseph, probably her father.

The materials include a statement submitted by Mercy:
“Hartford April 2nd, 1796 / This Certifies that it is at my request and desire that James Hillyer of Hartford should undertake as Administrator of the Estate of My husband Eleazar Cushman Late of Hartford (illegible word) witness my hand. Mercy Cushman”

The Administrator’s account of the estate, dated April 9, 1796, is not entirely legible to me. It includes an inventory page and an expenses page.

The inventory, which contains 26 items valued at £8.46, includes “one feather bed. under bed and pillows,” sheets and pillowcases, “one old jacket,” “one pair old shoes,” “one old cotton jacket,” “one cravat,” “eight earthen plates”, “stone jugg,” “frying pan,” “shovel & tongs,” “looking glass,” “one set of silver teaspoons,” “chest of drawers,” “9 knives & forks very old,” “iron teakittle” and a few other things.

The expenses page includes items totaling £8.46: burial and grave digging (90 p.), coffin (£1.90), 60p for one doctor and 36p for another, and what appears to be monies (£4.06) for “household furnishings allowed the widow” and “provisions for the family.”

One other thing in the inventory, which really caught my eye, was “rocking cradle” valued at 30p. Could this be the cradle in which my third-great-grandmother spent her earliest of days???

The “quest” continues… It’s not something that keeps me up at night by any means, but I do hope to connect the dots someday for the sake of the young ones in the family and those in my family tree who back in the 1930s tried, but failed to link their great-grandmother Wealthy Ann Cushman to the famed Mayflower passenger.

Regarding the possible Mayflower connection & “Marcia Toocker Cushman Keney”

Anyone with an ongoing interest in things discussed in my last post (Wealthy Ann Cushman Jaques and the possible Mayflower Connection) should check out page 102 of The Ancestry of Jane Maria Greenleaf: Wife of William Francis Joseph Boardman, Hartford, Connecticut by William F. J. Boardman, a book that was privately printed in Hartford, in 1906. Scroll down to see my red arrow below indicating a Marcia Toocker (daughter of Joseph and Hannah Toocker) who was married to 1) Cushman and 2) Timothy Keney.

I believe this ‘Marcia Toocker’ is the ‘Mary?  Zooker/s?’ (married to ‘Eleazer Cushman’ and then ‘? Keeney’) mentioned in the last post and that this ‘Marcia’ and ‘Cushman’ are the same people mentioned on page 206 of Families of Early Hartford: “Eleasur Cushman died Aug 9, 1795 ae 27 bur Center Church. Widow Mercy Cushman.”

The Cushman family website links this Eleasur/Eleazer buried in the Center Church Ancient Burying Ground to Seth Cushman (1734-1771) whose ancestry is documented back to Mayflower passenger Mary Allerton. The entry for Eleasur/Eleazer contains a bit of possibly conflicting info (e.g. place of death MA, not CT—states close together so the body could have been transported for burial in Hartford; and a wife named Sarah—she would have to have preceded Marcia/’Mercy’, spouse at time of death).

Referring back to the Toocker ancestry, we can see that Marcia was born between 1770 (birth of older sister Rhoda) and 1779 (birth of younger brother Joseph). Sibling Mary (aka Polly) preceded Marcia (‘Mercy’).  Marcia’s year of birth probably lies between  1775-1777/8, perhaps closer to the latter if this is the ‘Mercy Keeney’ found in “Connecticut Deaths and Burials, 1772-1934” on FamilySearch:
Name:     Mercy Keeney
Birth Date:     abt 1779
Age at Death:     70
Death Date:     7 Jul 1849
Death Place:     Hartford, Hartford, Connecticut
Gender:     Female
FHL Film Number:     1313828

So it appears highly possible that timeline-wise, my third great-grandmother Wealthy Ann Cushman (m. Isaac Jaques), born 11 November 1793, in Hartford, CT, is the daughter of Eleasur (Eleazer) and Marcia (Mercy). Now to prove it!  Anyone with thoughts, ideas, please feel free to share. And if/when I make any headway on this, I will let you know.

Jane Greenleaf Boardman, niece of ‘Marcia Toocker Cushman Keney’ and subject of this genealogical book

Electa Toocker, Marcia’s younger sister and the mother of the subject of this genealogical book

Wealthy Ann Cushman Jaques and the possible Mayflower connection

View of Plymouth Harbor fall or spring of 1973

Happy Thanksgiving to all this blog’s readers! Thank you for your support and encouragement this past year, and thanks to all of you who have shared information, supplied material for guest posts, or written guest posts yourself.  I have seen this blog continue to help people connect with family members near and far, and for that I am also very grateful.

Today’s post may be of interest to descendants of Isaac Jaques and Wealthy Ann Cushman and it concerns the possible familial link between Wealthy and the youngest of the Mayflower’s 102 passengers—Mary Allerton. (Anyone out there with information on that link, please do get in touch via the comment box below or my email address which appears on the ‘About’ page.)

I had absolutely no idea when I visited Plimoth Plantation at age 12 that I may be related Mary Allerton. I recall wandering that open-air museum on a very cold and raw day, thinking about what it must have been like to get through just one day of life in the 1620s, let alone entire months and years. Brrr—just thinking about it makes me cold. (Ever see the episode of Colonial House where Oprah and her friend Gayle “go back in time” 400 years to experience life in a Maine settlement? See https://vimeo.com/2811969. Again, all I can say is Brrrrrrrrrrr….) Our foreparents were made of extremely tough stuff! (Four hundred years from now, they may be saying that about us, which is hard to imagine given how comfortable life is today, compared to 400 years ago.)

Elizabeth Daily Journal obit for Job Winans Angus Jr.

Forward to 2016. You may recall that I was somewhat flabbergasted this past summer to come across an obit for Job Winans Angus Jr. in which it was stated that Job had an ancestor who came over on the Mayflower. A little hand-written note I found from Job’s nephew Thomas Russum seemed to confirm that this was indeed something worth exploring even if it was, perhaps, wishful thinking on their part. The ancestor on whom all this hinged was Wealthy Ann Cushman: wife of Isaac Jaques, mother of Wealthy (Jaques) Angus, and my third-great-grandmother. Thomas’s note mentioned a father Eleazer and a mother Mary Zooker/s with a question mark next to her first and last names. The year of death for Eleazer was given as 1792, again with a question mark. The mother “Mary? Zooker/s?” was noted as having remarried someone named Keeney and having had two children with him: Aaron and Jane. I did find a death record for a Mercy Keeney who was presumably born around 1779. If the circa 1779 birth date is accurate, she would have given birth at age 14/15, so this may be a red herring; if the date is off and she was older when Wealthy was born, this could be the correct Mercy.

I subsequently found, on page 206 of Families of Early Hartford, an Eleasur Cushman listed as having been buried in the Center Church Ancient Burying Ground in Hartford, Connecticut: “Eleasur Cushman died Aug 9, 1795 ae 27 bur Center Church. Widow Mercy Cushman.”  I believe this Eleasur may very well be the father of Wealthy Ann Cushman, who was born in Hartford, CT, on November 11, 1793, and that “Mary? Zooker/s?” was Mercy Cushman, but proving that is an entirely different thing. (Wealthy Ann Cushman married Isaac Jaques on Feb 4, 1812, and they named their second son Eleazer (b. 1820), which may be more than coincidence).

Another thing to prove is the link back from Eleasur Cushman of Hartford to his parents—possibly Seth Cushman (1734-1771) and Abiah Allen. They had a son named Eleazer, born July 17, 1768 in Dartmouth, Massachusetts. If you add 27 years to 1768, you come up with 1795, the year of death of Hartford’s Eleasur Cushman.

Life Magazine 1904

The links between Seth Cushman and Mary Allerton (1616-1699; wife of Thomas Cushman, 1608-1691) have all been proven and are all documented.

So the challenge is to definitively connect Wealthy Ann Cushman with Eleasur Cushman and Eleasur Cushman to Seth Cushman. If those connections don’t exist, it will be back to square one. I contacted the Connecticut State Archives hoping for some clues about the Cushman family of Hartford, but they had nothing new to tell me. I also contacted the Mayflower Society (MS), but they had no information on anyone using Seth and Abiah Cushman’s son Eleazer to prove Mayflower ancestry. It is up to us descendants to do it. The MS was very helpful and supportive, so as time goes on, maybe they will help steer me in some fruitful directions.

I know from reading some letters that Wealthy’s daughter Wealthy (Jaques) Angus of Elizabeth, NJ, stayed in contact with Hartford relatives and visited them periodically, but I have found no new clues that would better ID them. Perhaps, someone out there has a box of old letters that contains some answers?

Anyway, we are standing before a brick wall of sorts and hopefully, we’ll figure it all out. Perhaps, in time for next Thanksgiving – 2017? It would be fun to be able to pass this info on to the little ones in the family. We shall see!

Again, best wishes to you all for a very blessed Thanksgiving 2016.

Job W. Angus obit reveals Mayflower connection

Elizabeth Daily Journal clipping from my family’s archives

Some of you may recall my Job Angus “Letters from Texas” posts. There were four of them altogether. Well, my grandmother saved Job’s Elizabeth Daily Journal obituary, offering me a bit of biography—and a photo to boot. The obit was published on 3 April 1936. This Job Angus was my grandmother’s uncle. He was the cousin of Nettie Angus Moulden from my last post, and was named after Nettie’s dad, Job Angus—the one with the connection to Lincoln’s White House and Washington, DC, building projects.

I suppose the biggest surprise in the obit was the reference to the Mayflower. I’d NEVER heard that before. Needless to say I was excited but skeptical. However, it seems like the connection may well be valid as I found some handwritten notes left behind by other relatives who were also interested in establishing the exact links. So, I just need (in my spare time, ha ha) to find them. [If anyone out there has made this connection already, by all means please let me—and this blog’s readers—know.]

The connection is purported to be with Mary Allerton, one of the 106 Mayflower passengers. She was four at the time and traveling with her parents Isaac and Mary Allerton. Little Mary grew up to marry Thomas Cushman whose father Robert Cushman was one of the organizers of the Mayflower expedition.

I need to connect Mary and Thomas Cushman with the known Cushman in my family tree: Wealthy Cushman of Hartford, Connecticut, who married Isaac Jaques. Apparently Wealthy’s father’s name was Eleazer Cushman and her mother’s name was Mary. After Eleazer died (circa 1795), Mary remarried and had two more children.

I’m afraid that is all I know at this point, but thought I would pass it along.

Update (5/20): Please use Archive Index at top of page to search for additional Mayflower-related posts.

Links:
Job Winans Angus on Find a Grave
Jeanette “Nettie” Tillou Angus on Find a Grave
Son – Samuel Kendall Angus