Brainerd Family

THE OF THE BRAINERD FAMILY, IN THE UNITED STATES, WITH NillIEROUS SKETCHES OF INDIVIDUALS. BY REV. DAVID D. ]fIELD, D.D., HEMBE:& OF THE HISTORICAL SOCIETIES OF CONNECTICUT, M.A.SSACIIUSETTS, A...'"ID PE..'l'fflSYLVANIA. NEW YORK: JOHN F. TROW, PRINTER, 377 & 379 BROADWAY, CORNER OF WHITE STREET. 1857. ENTERED according to Act of Congress, in the year 1857, by JOHN F. TROW, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. PREFACE . ... VARrous circumstances have combined to induce me to write the Brainerd Genealogy. The town of ~Iadi son, Conn., where I was born and spent my childhood and youth, ( formerly a part of the large town of Guilford,) was not far from Haddam, and there was much intercourse between the two places. The Rev. Israel Brainerd, from Haddam, a classmate of my only brother in Yale College, was for some years pastor of the first church in Guilford. One of the promi nent members of my o,vn class was William Fowler Brainerd, who was for many years an able and elo quent la'\\ryer in Connecticut. He was a son of the Hon. Jeremiah Gates Brainerd, long a Judge of the Superior Court of that State, and !Iayor of the city • lV PREF.ACE. of New London. Soon after I began to preach, -I was settled as pastor of the church in Haddam, ,vhere Daniel Brainerd lived, the ancestor of all the Brain erds in the United States; where he was the first deacon in the church, and the first Justice in the town; and where his descendants, bearing his family name, were more numerous in the congregation and in the schools than those of any ·other early settler. In my walks I often passed the spot where his youngest son, the Hon. Hezekiah Brainerd, lived and reared a large and very remarkable family of children. Among these were the missionaries, David and John Brainerd, of whom the reader will find more said in the follo,ving pages, than concerning any other two persons. In passing the spot, I could hardly refrain from pausing and meditating on the piety which had existed there a hundred years before, and especially on t~e extraordinary lives and characters of the two . m1ss1onar1es. The difficulty of preparing a genealogy like this can only be appreciated by those ,vho have under taken a similar task. It is easy to trace the record of a single family through two or three generations ; but to follow a genealogy v1hich extends through two centuries~ ancl divides into a hundred different branches, is a work of immense labor. The eye at a glance can PREF.A.CE. V take in the trunk of a tree and mark its heavy boughs, but to trace every slender branch which has started from the parent stem, is almost endless. It is like counting every leaf. The preparation of this work has cost me the labor of several years, much of the time since I last had the charge of a parish in 1851. I have travelled hundreds of miles, searched town and church records, written in numerable letters, requiring, in all, a degree of labor at which I am astonished myself, as I look back upon it. It has been truly a labor of love, prompted by my early interest in this family, and affectionate venera tion for its honored names. To avoid perplexity in finding particular families, I have give~ first the name of the original settler and his family, and then have taken each of his children in the order of age, and traced them down through children's children to the present day. Where I have not found the materials to complete the tables, I shall be greatly obliged to any reader \\~ho will furnish more full and exact details of his own particular branch 0f the family, which can be directed to me at my home in Stockbridge, 11assachusetts. D:·~~-icl Brainerd, as the reader will learn, died and was buried at Northampton, 1Iassachusetts; and John Brainerd, at Deerfield, New Jersey. The Rev. J. W. • VI PREFACE. Cattell, now pastor of the church at Deerfield, says: "I have felt very anxious to see some monument erected to the memory of Mr. Brainerd; it ought to have been done long ago." This is but just both to the dead and to the living, and it is to be hoped that means will soon be devised by_ which a memorial stone will be reared over or near the grave of this eminent DllSSIOnary.• • But the plea is still stronger for a monument to David and John Brainerd both, on the bank of Con necticut River, on the very spot where these men and their brothers and sisters were born. A marble tablet, or- a granite column, or obelisk, could be placed so near the highway that its inscription c9uld be read by all passing on the public road, and be visible for miles up and down the Connecticut River. When shall the :first steps be taken for such a monument i I would make a suggestion. Let there be a great family meeting of the Brainerds, such as other large families have held. Let it be at a season of the year when there may be easy access by land and water from different parts of the country. Let it be held at Haddam, the home of their ancestors, where they can visit the spots where their fathers lived and . the yards where their bodies now lie buried; and •• PREFACE. vu where they will :see also the living faces of many of their name. Then let there be a public meeting, re calling family associations, and speaking worthily of the illustrious dead, and let there be a generous con tribution to erect a monument of stone to the memory of these sainted brothers. Should the circulation of the Brainerd Genealogy lead to the erection of such a monument, and espe cially should it lea4 this large family, now scattered over every part of the United States, and numbering thousands of names, to honor these holy men, and to imitate their exa1nple, the author will not have labored in vain. DAVID D. FIELD. New York, .April, 18~7. For the assistance of readers in finding their own names, and the names of those in whom they are specially interested, they wi11 bear in mind that the name of the common ancestor is at the beginning of the book, together with those of his family ; and that then the fami lies of the children are given in succession in the order of their bit-th as far as the writer has been able to trace and connect them ; and that, toward the close, separate families are gi"·en which he had not the re quisite information for introducing in their place. The commencement of the sketches alluded to in the title-page, the reader will readily find by attending to the following directions: For the sketch of Daniel Brainerd, the common ancestor, see page 9 ; for Daniel B. jun., 12; Daniel B., son of Daniel, jun., 13; Dr. Daniel Brainerd; 15; Hon. J. G. Brainerd, 17; William F. Brainerd, 18; the poet Brainerd, 20; Captain Bezaliel, 40; Dea. Eliakim, '73; Rev. Thomas, '76; Dr. Austin, 82 ; Othniel Brainerd, jun., 93; Captain Shubael, 105; Silas, 108; Erastus and Silas, 110; Leonard W., 110; Dea. Ezra, 137; Ezra B:, jun., 145; Lawrence R., 148; Lawrence, 150; Lyman, 152; Norman, 153; Otis, 154; Sebastian, 155; Rev. Israel, 157; Joseph H., 163; Rev. Timothy G., 164; George B. second, 166; Rev. Israel, 171 ; Dr. Daniel B., 188 ; Rev. Elijah, 19.5 ; :Mrs. Lavinia Brainerd Goff, 197; Timothy B., 215; Captain John, 228; John Brainerd, 231; Hon. Hezekiah, 235; Dr. :Minor, 237; Dr. Hezekiah B., 240; Rev. Nehemiah, 24 7; Dea.Nehemiah, 248; Gen. John, 249; Rev. David Brainerd, 252; Rev. John, 283; Israel, 296. , In the table, page 151, second, fourth, and twelfth lines of it, for Alc'.ice, read Aldis; also in the fourth line from the botto1n of the page. Page 168, on the ninth and tenth lines from bottom, after Caiista, read Adeline, Nancy, and Cynthia; and on the eighth line, for Lam missa, read Laumissa. THE BRAINERD GENEALOGY. DANIEL BRAINERD, the ancestor of the Brainerds in this country, was brought from England when eight years old, to Hartford, Connecticut, where he lived in the Wyllys family until he was of age. He bec~me a proprietor and settler of Haddam about 1662, and was a prosperous, influential, and very respectable man; a justice of the peace in the town, and a deacon in the church. After his settlement here he received a letter from his mother, in which she spelt her name Brainwood, which renders it probable that such was the original name. I have also seen the name thus written in a few instances in old records in this country. He, however, had called his name Brainerd, and this name prevailed. It is most generally spelled Brainerd, both in the re cords of Haddam and East Haddam; though, like other names, it is spelled sometimes with a difference of one 2 10 THE BRAINERD GENEALOGY. or two letters, as Brainard, Braynard. The pronunci.;. ation is more generally uniform than the spelling, Brain erd. The ancestor was twice married ; first to Hannah Spencer, daughter of Gerrard Spencer of Lynn, Mass., afterward of Haddam, and after her decease, to the widow Hannah Saxton ; and it is tradition that the entire maiden name of this wife was the same as that of the first.

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