Captain Edward Richardson

In ;outh From an o: 1 painting Captain Edward Richardson A MEMORIAL With Genealogical Records of Some of His Ancestors and Descendants By ELIZABETH WILLS VERNON RADCLIFFE Privately Printed 1923 NEWCOMB & GAUSS Printers SALBM, MASS. CONTENTS Biographical Sketch of Capt. Edward Richardson 1 Genealogical Records . 41 Appendix . · . 69 CAPTAIN EDWARD RICHARDSON-A MEMORIAL. ,VITH GENEALOGICAL RECORDS OF SOME OF His ANCESTORS AND DESCENDANTS. BY ELIZABETH WILLS VERNON RADCLIFFE. One Sabbath morning, more than one hundred years ago, a sailing vessel dropped anchor in the harbor of a Massachusetts seaport town. A young sailor came ashore, walked along a peaceful road and into its Baptist l\ileeting House. Soon he heard a sweet voice singing. "Who is that?" he inquired of a friend. "That's Patty Smith, one of the belles of Hadley," was the reply. Edward Richardson looked up from where he was seated and discovered a beautiful girl. "I'll walk home with her after service," he whispered to his companion. "You can hardly do that," was confided, "s·omebody else claims the privilege." Nevertheless, at the church door he stood awaiting the descent from the choir; was introduced, and did walk home with her that morning, in the spring sunshine, and into her heart as well; this we may conclude, as their engagement and marriage soon followed. In her father's familv Bible is recorded: &I "July 28, 1813, My daughter ~Iartha aged 19 years and 8 months, was married to Edward Richardson, aged 24 years, of Danvers, Mass." Edward was the son of Seth, who fought in the Revo lutionary War, and ,vho was with Washington when he [I] C.1\.PTAIN ED,VARD RIC_HARDSON crossed the Delaware and at Valley Forge, and of Hannah Waters, whose ancestors go back to the earliest settlers of Salem; to John Tomkins and through Trasks, Gardners and Porters to l\iajor ,villiam Hathorne, head of ~Iilitia of Colonial Wars; and through Richard Waters, of Danvers, 'Over the seas to James, of the parish of St. Buttolph without Algate, London, citizen, May 17, 1617, who married Phebe Manning; and through her, through the many generations and years to the 14th century to Simon Manning, who married _Catherine Chaucer, sister of the famous English poet, Goeffrey Chaucer; while three more generations back, we find that "Symon de Manning, of the city of Bettred, took part in many different military expeditions under King Richard I, 1189-1199. He was among the first of the English Barons to take up the Cross and go with King Richard to the Holy Wars in the Third _Crusade, for which he was knighted. He died in the time of Henry III." (H.F. Waters' Genealogical Gleanings.) The old vVaters homestead was built about 1630. It was in the possession of the family over two hundred years, and was burned down September 24, 1845, ·on the site of the Hussey house of today. One beautiful old _Colonial desk, belonging to Captain Seth, originally stood in this house, and remains in the family, with its claw legs, fan ornaments and secret columns intact, and upon which much of this record is being compiled. Seth and Hannah were among those tortured souls who suffered on land at the wreck of the ill-fated ship Margaret of Salem on May 21, 1810, while their boy as 2d. mate was miraculously rescued with fifteen others, after four days in a long boat, four hundred miles from the nearest land. He was then in his twenty-first year. On the 10th of April this ship sailed from Naples under command of _Captain Fairfield. To quote from [2] A l\IEMORIAL a contemporary account: "During a fierce gale she was hove on her beam end and totallv., disabled. Lat. 40° N., long. 39° 30 W .... With an axe we cut away the weather lanyards, masts, shrouds and long boat, which being done, the ship righted with her hatches off, chests, water casks, etc., drifting amongst the wreck. The guns, anchors, camboose and all other articles on deck were thrown overboard to lighten the ship .... During this time the long boat lay beating among the wreck of spars, etc., b·ottom up. "With the utmost difficulty she was hauled along side the ship, turned over and found to be badly stove; her gunwales and stem broken entirely off, her wood ends and garboard strake open and large holes in the bottom, so that we found it impossible to bail her out. We were under the necessity of upsetting her again in the sea with the hope of being able to stop some of the holes in her bottom which we, in part, effected by driving the butts together and by putting canvass, etc., into the largest holes. After that we turned her over again and by continued bailing with every bucket, which we could procure ,ve were enabled to keep her from sinking·. By this time it was about 7 P. M. When the boat, being hauled near the ship, for the purpose of getting canvas and oakum to stop the leaks, as many men as could reach the long boat jumped into her and finding the boat would again be sunk if we remained so near the ship, we were obliged to veer to the leeward, at the dis tance of 15 or 20 fathoms, being 12 in number in the boat. We had been in this situation but a short time before one man jumped from the ship into the sea and made for the boat. We took him in but, finding that all on board were determined to pursue the same plan we were obliged to veer the boat further off. At that time we were 13 men and 2 men in the stern boat ".,hich augmented our number to more than could, with any [3] CAPTAIN EDWARD RICHARDSON degree of safety, attempt to leave the ship. We were continually bailing to keep her from sinking·. It was a wretched situation for we had no compass, quadrant or any instrument whatever ·by which we could direct our course, and not a single drop of fresh water in the boat. About this time casks of brandy and sundry other arti cles of the cargo were drifting from the wreck, amongst which we picked up the mizzen top gallant sail, 2 spars, 5 oars, I cask ·of olive oil, I drowned pig and I drowned goat, I bag of bread, and they hove us a gallon keg of brandy from the ship, which was secured. We then fixed a sail for the boat from the mizzen top gallant sail. We made our course as nearly east as possible , for the island of Corvo or Flores, and the last we saw 'Of the ship she was lying in the same situation as when we left her. "We continued our course to the eastward having winds variable from S. S. E. to N. W. and two men constantly bailing, steering in the night by the stars when to be seen and in dark cloudy weather by the heaving of the sea, and in the day time by judging from the bearing of the sun-when to be seen, and when not, by the best of our judgment. "Fpr 4 days we continued sailing eastward without seeing any vessel; but on Saturday, 26 May, at IP. M. to our great joy we espied a sail which proved to be the brig Poacher of Boston, Capt. James Dunn, who took us on board and treated us with every attention, kind ness and civility. _Capt. Richard Pedrick after wards very generously took six of us on board his vessel and brought us into Marblehead." Martha (Patty) Smith, his wife, was a daughter of Thomas Smith-descendant of Sergeant Joseph Smith, born 1657, and removed to Hadley, Mass., about 1680-and _Catherine l\iatthews of Hadley, and grand- [4] THE OLD RICHARDSON HOMESTEAD, DANVERS, MASSACHUSETTS. (Photographed in recent years.) A MEMORIAL daughter of Thomas Smith and Rhoda Worthington. In the Worthington records is stated: "Rhoda and Sibil (sisters) had great strength and sweetness of character." We may say she inherited these qualities from this grandmother Rhoda, as she certainly pos sessed them in large measure. Her immigrant ancestors, Nicholas Worthington and Nathaniel Alexander, were in service in the Turner Falls fight, 1676. John Loomis, in N aragansett Wars, was also Representative of Windsor, .Conn., 1666-1667 and 1675-1677 and among the first settlers there. And there were Thomas Bunce of Pequot War fame, John .Crow, one of first settlers of Hartford, Conn., and Hadley, Mass., in 1666. Edward Richardson purchased a house and land from John Fowler, June 12, 1815. It was near the banks of the Waters River, named for this Waters family. A picture is given as it appears today-a .Colonial homestead with a summer and winter kitchen and a Samuel McIntire door. Two stately elms guarded the entrance on each side of the garden gate, and here the family lived between the long voyages at sea. He became a member nf the Alarm _Co., called the New ~,!ills Minute Men, at New Mills (Danvers) formed to defend the town during the War of 1812, with "Always Ready" for its motto. An earthen fort was built at the river's edge near the Richardson house, mounted with two iron guns. This point where two rivers converged was a logical position for a f ortifica tion and well might the Richardson families have felt secure with such protection. At one of the signals at midnight when it was supposed that the British were landing at Salem, these ~Iinute ~fen marched until intercepted by a man on horseback with the news that it was a false alarm.

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