• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

THE NEW ENGLAND ANCESTRY of DANA CONVERSE BACKUS Colllpilecl and Edited by MARY E. N. BACKUS Printed for private distri1ution NEWCOMB & GAUSS CQ., PRINTERS SALEM, MASSACHUSETTS 1949 FOREWORD This chronicle was begun rather casually, years ago, merely to straighten out family connections. Tracing the Backus line down from William Backus 0£ Saybrook was comparatively easy, since much is in print about the early generations. Various cousins con­ tributed notes concerning the later scattered descendants, so there was no doubt as to where one must go to find original records. Leisure :for the search for these documents came later. Interest in the ancestry of Backus wives and in the history 0£ New England settlements was aroused, and the game of research became a fascinat­ ing one. A s11mrner in Vermont, and the :following one in New Hampshire, started the backward trail, and thereafter there was an excuse for spending happy weeks each Spring and Fall in Connecti­ cut .and Massachusetts, visiting the various towns, poring over old wills and deeds, town and county records, and haunting old burying grounds. On the distaff _side, no attempt has been made to give more than a mere sketch of the first New England settler and his descendants beyond what was needed to establish the direct line in each case. Genealogies of many of these sixty-six families have already been published, .and someone, somewhere, may have clues to the few dead ends encountered. And always, in the busiest of Town clerks' offices, in County offices, in State offices·, in Historical Societies and Institutes, in the State Library at Hartford, and in the New York Public Library at home, I met with nothing but courtesy, kindness and helpfulness. M. E. N. B. February 23, 1949. CONTENTS FAMILms PAGE PAGE PAGE Backus 1 Ivory 93 Reed 146 Alden 52 James 94 Richardson 149 B.arnard 54 Jewell 96 Sawyer 152 Barrett 55 Kendall 98 Shaw 154 Bourne 57 Leffingwell 9·9 Shepard 157 Brackett 58 Long 101 Simmons 164 Bushnell 61 Mansfield 103 Skinner 165 Carter 63 Marshall 109 Smedley 167 ·Carter 6,5 Marvin 110 South 168 Chadwell 67 Moulton 112 .Spalding 16·9 Clark 68 Mullens 114 Stocker 1'73 Cole 71 Needham 116 Tidd 175 Collins 73 Nutt 117 Tracy 176 Converse 75 Page 118 Turner 178 Dunham 79 Palmer 120 Vining 181 Fletcher 8,1 Parkhurst 128 Vinron 183 French 82 Phillips 131 Whitmarsh 185 Harding 84 Pierce 13-3 Williams 187 Haynes 85 Pratt 136 Winslow 18-9 Heald 89 Prescott 138 Woods 191 Huntington 90 Ramsdell 141 Wright 192 Ingersoll 92 Read 143 Wyman 194 Reade 145 References • • . 197 Index • • • • • • 223 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE EARLY HoMELOTs OF NORWICH, CoNN. • • • • • 8 PLYMOUTH PLANTATION, 1620-1630 • • • • . 128 PrscAT.A.QUA-PEMAQUID REGION, 1625-1642 . • • • 128 MAssAcHUSETTS BAY, 1630-1642 . • . • • • 128 CONNECTICUT AN:D NEW HAVEN COLONIES, 1635-1660 • . 128 The New England Ancestry of Dana Converse Backus BACKUS (1) William Backus married First wife (unknown) (2) William Backus I Jr. " Elizabeth Pratt (3) Joseph Backus " Elizabeth Huntington (4) Samuel Backus " Elizabeth Tracy (5) Andrew Backus " Lois Pierce (6) Stephen Backus " Polly Shepard (7) Charles Backus " Mary Palmer Mansfield (8) Dana Converse Backus " Abbie Converse Mansfield (9) Henry Meredith Backus " Mary Elizabeth Neilson (10) Dana Converse Backus " Louise Burton Laidlaw BACKUS FmsT GENERATION WILLIAM BAcKus first appears on record in 1637 at Saybrook in Connecticut. It is reckoned that perhaps not more than 20% of the passenger lists o_f the early emigration to New England have been saved and a first date on record does not necessarily mean exact date of arrival in the New World. The first transatlantic voyage directly to a harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound was made in 1639 by the group, under the Rev. Henry Whitfield, which founded Guilford. William Backus therefore landed at a Massa­ chusetts or Plymouth Colony port. By 1636 the movement of settlers from the seaboard colonies to the region of the Great River was well under way and many new­ comers to New England no longer attempted to establish themselves in the older sections but pushed on, whether by land or water, to the new plantations, which, settled by various groups and under various influences, became in time consolidated under one government as the Colony of Connecticut-"America's first West," James Truslow Adams has called it. There, from the beginning, government was less arbitrary than in Massachusetts, somewhat more responsible to the people, and with a franchise which, though still strictly limited, was not dependent on actual church membership. (1) 2 The New England Ancestry of Dana Converse Backus Saybrook (the name came into use in 1639) began as a military post. Here at the mouth o~ the Connecticut River, John Winthrop, Jr., with the aid of Lion Gardiner, the skilled engineer whom he had engaged in England, built in 1635-36 a fort, commissioned by a group of Puritan leaders in England, patentees of the region, who were planning a refuge in the New World. The fort was useful in preventing the occupation of the site by the Dutch and as a pro­ tection for the river mouth in the Pequot war of 1637, but the expected emigration from England did not materialize and as a trad­ ing post it was a failure, gradually losing its military character, growing into a typical river settlement, and finally coming com­ pletely under the jurisdiction of the Connecticut Colony. Though Mr. George Fenwick ( the only one of the patentees who ever appeared) had with him his chaplain on his second trip in 1639 for a stay of a few years, there was no church organization at Saybrook until in 1646 one was gathered under the Rev. James Fitch; but there are no church records now in existence of the fourteen vears cl of his ministry there. In 1659 a group of Saybrook inhabitants, led by Major J" ohn Mason and lvir. Fitch, bought of the sachem Uncas and his sons, for the sum of £70, a tract of wild land "nine-miles-square" in the heart of the liohegan country at the junction of the Y antic and Shetucket rivers and about fourteen miles up the River Pequot (Thames) from New London, and with the consent of the General Court (later called the General Assembly) proceeded to survey and lay out a plantation. The town was first known as Mohegan. Why the name Norwich was given to it is not known. It has been said that to William Backus, as the oldest of the first proprietors, was given the honor of naming it and that he called it Norwich after his English birthplace-a legend for which there is no proven founda­ tion. It is interesting, though ·not very enlightening, that the name Backus appears in Leyden records. (See England and Holland of the Pilgrims by Henry Martyn Dexter.) The first wife of the John Goodman who came over on the 1\1:ayflower in 1620 was l\{ary Backus. He ,vas betrothed to his second wife, Sarah Hooper, 16 Sept. 1619, and married to her 10 Oct. 1619, in Leyden. This might indicate that the name Backus could be found in Nottinghamshire, Lincoln­ shire or Yorkshire, that part of England which was the home of the "Separatists" before they left to find religious freedom in Holland. The name of the first wife of William Backus, the mother of his children, is not known, nor the date of her death, but when the move The Neiv England Ancestry of Dana Converse Backus 3 to Norwich was made in 1660 he took with him, besides his younger son Stephen, a second wife, Mrs. Ann (Stetson) Bingham, and her son Thomas Bingham, who had been baptized in England in 1642, and whose father had died (Bingham family tradition says) on the voyage to New England. Two others of the Backus family also went to Norwich but not as members of their father's family. Sarah, his daughter, went as the wife of John Reynolds, and William Jr. (also married) shared as a proprietor in the first allotment of land. Though their :father was one of the founders of Norwich he died at so early a period after the settlement, bequeathing his allotment to his son Stephen, and the formal land recording not having been made before his death, his share is registered in the name of Stephen Backus as first proprietor. Therefore the name of William Backus, Senior, does not appear in the town records as a land owner and his name is not on the Founders' monument. He died in Norwich be­ tween 12 June, 1661 (the date of his will) and 28 August the same year, the date under which the following "Memorand" appears in the Town records (Book 2A., p. 422)-"The footway which goes through the home Iott of Mr. Fitch, John Holmstead and Stephen Backus was laid out by Town order and agreement six foot wide for the Town's use." Stephen had no home lot other than that in­ herited from his father. Traditionally, William Backus, Senior, was buried in the old Post and Gager burial-ground. The wife of Thomas Post died in March 1661 and hers is believed to have been the first death in the new settlement. She was buried in a part of her husband's home lot .and, soon after, the Town authorities bought from him about a quarter­ acre of the land where her grave lay, to be a burying place for the community-a highway six feet broad leading to it-and later from the adjoining lot of John Gager more ground was added.

Load more

  256

Copy Link