Hallett Family Of Dorsetshire, England New England New Netherland Hallet’s Cove, New York New Brunswick Aroostook County, Maine, USA Hallett Family History Introduction pages 1-4 Chapter Contents 1. England pages 5-19 2. New World pages 20-34 3. Hallet’s Cove pages 35-50 4. Mount Olivet pages 51-60 5. Patriots & Loyalists pages 61-68 6. New Brunswick pages 69-82 7. Aroostook pages 83-100 8. Grandmothers pages 101-116 9. Coat of Arms pages 117-128 10. Plimoth pages 129-140 Notes and References pages 141-150 1 Introduction: When I began research into my branch of the Hallett Family Tree we could go back no further than my Great-Grandparents, George and Amelia (Gray) Hallett. George and Amelia are pretty easy to find. They are buried in Kings Grove Cemetery in Mars Hill, Maine, where they brought our family from Upper Brighton in Carleton County, New Brunswick, Canada sometime between 1875 and 1880. My Grandfather, John Henry Hallett, was less than 10 years old at the time. John Henry and Emma Pearl (DeLong) Hallett are also buried at Kings Grove along with many relatives and descendants. If Grandfather John Henry knew who his Grandfather was or any family history beyond that, he apparently did not pass this information on to his wife or children in the next generation. Grandmother Hallett did not seem to know anyone beyond George and Amelia. She lived with my family quite a lot during my childhood and gave me the names of my Great-Grandparents and the fact they came from Canada, as did she. As far back as I can remember, we would take a trip up to Aroostook County during potato picking season and my father would help Uncle Burrill harvest potatoes on his farm in Presque Isle. The Canadian border is nearby, but I do not remember ever going over to see our Hallett ancestral land at Upper Brighton. It would have been easy enough to find, as the Hallett Loyalist Cemetery is just above Hartland, New Brunswick close to the Trans-Canada Highway on Hallett ancestral land. Most of the hired potato pickers in those days were French Canadian and I wondered if our ancestors were also French Canadian and spoke this romantic unintelligible language. My first visit to the Hallett Loyalist Cemetery came in 1992 after retirement from the Army, but I still didn’t know which, if any, of the people interred there might be related to us. After my retirement to Titusville, Florida at the end of 2002 I needed a hobby to fill my spare time, when I wasn’t on the golf course or driving a ferryboat at the Magic Kingdom. Armed with family history information provided by my grandmother and parents, I set out to discover what I could find about our ancestors. Florida is a good place to live if one is interested in family history and genealogy. Since there are lots of retired people here with time to research, the libraries have excellent genealogy sections. I started spending time at my local Titusville Library, the Brevard County Library in Cocoa and the LDS Family History Center in Rockledge. All are well organized, have computer terminals and provide helpful assistance. I came across some evidence the surname Hallett could be of French origin, but not of French Canadian ancestry. After the Norman French Conquest of England in 1066, most Knights took on names of villages they came from in France. Most people did not have surnames until the middle ages. William the Conqueror did not have one in 1066. He was alternatively called the Duke of Normandy or William the bastard (not in his presence). By the end of the 14th century, even common folk had surnames and most began using anglicized Norman French names. 2 In his 1901 “Origin of English Surnames”, C.W. Bardsley lists Hallett as literally, little Hal (Henry, Harry), the diminutive termination ett being added. This comes from King Henry (I- VIII), (Norman French pronunciation Onree) called Harry by the English and sometimes shortened to Hal. Most English surnames come from bynames used in the middle-ages based on parent’s names, town names, occupations, etc. English spelling was not standardized, i.e. Hollit, Hellet, Hallat, Hallatt, Halet, Hallet, Hallett, etc. Some Halletts in America used Hallet, but most later standardized to Hallett, as they currently do in England. An alternative root of the Hallett surname is listed in a “Dictionary of English Surnames”, published by Routledge in 1991, by P.H Reaney and R.M. Wilson. It states that the root is the same for: Adlard, Allard, Allarde, Allart, Allars, Aylard, Ellard, Ellert, Hallard and Hallett. The root is Ailardus in Latin, AElard in Old English, c. 1066 and the name Halardus de Weres is noted, c. 1150. John de la Hale, Knight, donated to the building of St. Michaels’s Chapel in Bridport in 1362. Halleyate and Halleatte are listed in deBanco Plea Rolls in Somerset in 1372. All genealogy references put the various spellings of Hallett together as one surname originating at the same place and time. Dr. Henry Brougham Guppy conducted a surname study in 1890 and concluded that Hallett was a Dorset County name originating in the Bridport and Beaminster area and subsequently diffusing into the south and east of Devon and along the Somerset boundaries. Given available evidence, I would have to agree with Dr. Guppy. Bridport and Beaminster are ancient market towns that have many Hallett names in their earliest records. We can be reasonably sure the Hallett surname came from a town or village within a circle around these West Dorset County Towns. So we know our name is Hallett and that George and Amelia Hallett came to Aroostook County, Maine from New Brunswick, Canada. We can do the surname research and determine the origins are likely to be Dorset County, England. Who are the ancestors of George and Amelia Hallett and when and how did they arrive in New Brunswick, Canada? This is where we must thank George H. Hayward of Fredericton, New Brunswick for his extensively researched book titled “William and Elizabeth (Fones) Hallett and Some of Their Descendants 1616-1994”. I was fortunate enough to stumble across his self-published book early in my research. George traces the Hallett Family of New Brunswick back to our first ancestors in America, William Hallett, of Dorset County, England and Elizabeth (Fones, Winthrop, Feake) Hallett of Suffolk County, England. George’s paternal grandmother was a great granddaughter of Robert Hallett and Mary Lomax, who brought our branch of the Hallett Family to New Brunswick from Long Island, New York after the War for American Independence in 1783. I have used his book as a guide to fill in much of the early generation genealogy information contained here, while adding additional background and detail. George 3 used primary sources and took advantage of work accomplished earlier, such as James Riker, Jr.’s “The Annals of Newtown in Queens County, New York”. George did not research our ancestors in England, so that gave me an opportunity to see what I could find in the Old Country. Here is a preview of my branch of the Hallett Family, beginning with the earliest generation we can positively trace in England through the generations that brought us back into the USA in Aroostook County, Maine. We will go into some background on this branch and touch on many others in the broader Hallett Family as we go through the following chapters. England William Hallett and Elizabeth Phippen married at Whitchurch Cononicorum on 4 June 1578 Richard Hallett and Agnes Alford married at South Perrott on 10 April 1610 Massachusetts Bay Colony and New Netherland William Hallett and Elizabeth (Fones, Winthrop) Feake married in New Netherland in 1647 New York Colony William Hallett, Jr. and Sarah Woolsey married at Hallett’s Cove on 1 December 1669 Joseph Hallett and Lydia Blackwell married at Hallett’s Cove on 23 December 1702 Thomas Hallett and Ann Moore married at Newtown before 1738 United States of America and British North America Robert Hallett and Mary Lomax married at Savannah, Georgia on 28 February 1782 British North America Marsden Hallett and Charity Watson married at Woodstock, NB on 16 February 1820 British North America and the United States of America George Hallett and Harriet Amelia Gray married at Simonds, NB in 1867 John Henry Hallett and Emma Pearl DeLong married at Tracey Mills, NB on 1 January 1902 United States of America The last two generations brought us back to the USA in Mars Hill, Aroostook County, Maine. The story continues down to the current generations in Maine, the USA and around the World. 4 There are three terms routinely used to refer to our mother country: England, Great Britain and the United Kingdom. England refers to the historical lands settled by the Angles, Saxons and Jutes by the end of the 9th century, not including Wales, Scotland or Ireland. Great Britain refers to England, Wales and Scotland after 1707. The United Kingdom refers to Great Britain and Ireland from 1801 to 1927, when it became Great Britain and Northern Ireland after independence of the Republic of Ireland. I want to acknowledge the research accomplished by Anya Seton in preparation for her book titled “The Winthrop Woman”, published in 1958. Although the book is a historical novel, most of her research has proven to be quite accurate. She travelled to England and did her research before the days of jet travel and the vast genealogy industry we have today.