^ :7^ Lp ^ \ K \ \ h. \ COLVER-CULVER GENEALOGY {- BY FREDERIC LATHROP COLVER, MEMBER OF THE SONS OF THE REVOLUTION IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK. THE HUGUENOT SOCIETY, THE NEW ENGLAND HISTORIC GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY, AND THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY, AND FOUNDER OF THE PERIODICAL PUB- LISHERS' ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA Allaben Genealogical Series 12 mo., Cloth ABBE GENEALOGY, By Cleveland Abbe and Josephine Genung Nichols. In preparation. Price to be announced. BEATTY-ASFORDBY, By Mrs. Rudolph Samuel Turk. Illustrated with 18 Coats of Arms. Price, $4,00; postage, 15 cents. COLVER^ULVER GENEALOGY, By Frederic Lathrop Colver. Price, $5.00; postage, 15 cents. Three-quarters Morocco, $650: postage, 15 cents. Full Morocco, $7.00: postage, 15 cents. GENEALOGIES. HOW TO COMPILE, NUMBER AND PUB- LISH THEM, By Frank Allaben. Price, $1.00; carriage, 10 cents. HARRIS GENEALOGY, By Emma Polk Harris Brainerd. Price, $4.00; postage, 10 cents. JESSE SMITH: HIS ANCESTORS AND DESCENDANTS. By L. Bertrand Smith. With frontispiece—an engraving of Coat of Arms. Price, $4.00; postage, 15 cents. (Large paper edition, octavo, on Alexandra Japan, with Smyth Arms stamped on cover, $6.00; postage, 20 cents.) MARY JANE'S QUARTERINGS, By One of Her Victims. Illus. trated. Price, $2.00; postage, 15 cents. STEPHENS-STEVENS GENEALOGY, By Plowdon Stevens. Il- lustrated, Price, $5.00; postage, 15 cents. Three-quarters Morocco, $6.50; postage, 15 cents. Full Morocco, $7.00: postage, 15 cents. TOWNSEND GENEALOGY, By Cleveland Abbe and Josephine Genung Nichols. Price, $2,00; postage, 10 cents. WHITEHEAD GENEALOGY, By Isaac Snedeker Waters. Price, $5.00; postage, 15 cents. FRANK ALLABEN GENEALOGICAL COMPANY THREE WEST FORTY-SECOND ST., NEW YORK kKI/ i>J [£yank ^tt^tknGfettealcgical C(o?npacn^ % 11 Copyright, 1910, by FREDERIC LATHROP COLVER • « I * • , PREFACE Fully conscious of my inability to write and compile an accurate genealogical history of the Colver-Culver family, I am, nevertheless, going to try in this little volume to record a few of the interesting facts about Edward Colver, the Puritan, and founder of the family in the United States, and some of his numerous de- scendants. Despite the extreme care exercised in the gathering of this material, and the painstaking effort to verify the statements contained in these pages, there will, I fear, be found many inaccuracies, and es- pecially noticeable will be the incompleteness of this family story. I am the more strongly influenced to print this bit of family history by the hope that its publication will invite contributions from the living representatives of the Colvers—one of the oldest Puritan families of New England. I, therefore, urge my readers who are interested to assist me in the gathering together of more genealogical material, as well as curios, family portraits, and pho- tographs, so as to make possible in the future a more complete printed and illustrated record of the family. In the present volume the descendants of Edward Colver are given in families, generation by generation, in the order of primogeniture. An Arabic figure before the name of a child indicates that this child is, in turn, the head of a family, the record of which, under this number, will be found in the next generation. 6 PREFACE Any one consulting the index should read the note which precedes it. Many sources of genealogical information have been most carefully searched to obtain and verify the facts contained in this little book. The author is indebted to numerous Colver-Culver descendants who have fur- nished valuable data from family archives, and to the libraries of the New England Historic Genealogical Society, Boston; the Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford; the Pennsylvania Historical Society, Phila- delphia; the Congressional Library, Washington; the Lenox Library, New York, and the Public Libraries of Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago and elsewhere. The Colver-Culver family history here published is believed to be authentic in all particulars, but, as already stated, must of necessity be incomplete and contain some inaccuracies. Frederic Lathrop Colver, Tenafly, New^ Jersey. CONTENTS Page Title page drawn by Georgia Cooper Washburn 3 Preface 5 The Colvers in England 11 The Colvers of Massachusetts and Connecticut 15 Colver-Culver : the correct spelling 18 Colver characteristics 20 The Colvers in Military Affairs 22 First Generation 37 Second Generation 45 Third Generation 57 Fourth Generation 71 Fifth Generation 89 Sixth Generation 109 Seventh Generation i39 Eighth Generation 1 79 Ninth Generation 213 Tenth Generation 221 Addenda 225 Index 247 COLVER-CULVER GENEALOGY : THE COLVERS IN ENGLAND Although at no time a very numerous family, the Colvers, or Culvers, are readily traced in many of the English Shires, or Counties. The name is found in various forms of spelling, such as "Colver," "Collver," "Coluer," "Culver," "Culliver," etc.; the variation arising principally from the poor orthography of the middle ages and the mood of the scribe who wrote the document, who would often spell the same word in two, or perhaps more, ways in the same record, as is well known to genealogists, often to their perplexity. Several excellent authorities state that the Colver family originated in Saxony, the spelling of the name there being "Kolver," and that the descendants in England and later in America were of Saxon ancestry. The history of the early Colvers in England gives evi- dence of their Saxon origin. (At this date, 1909,there are a few families in the United States using the spelling "Kolver" but are evidently not descendants of Edward Colver, the Puritan.) In America the various branches have invariably used one or the other of the two forms, "Colver" and "Culver," both of which are found in the old records applying to the same person. The etymology of the name seems to have been de- rived from the word "culver," meaning a pigeon or " dove. The name " Culverhouse is found in some parts of England and evidently means "dovecote;" prob- ably from the fact that the person with whom the name originated kept a number of pigeons or doves. The poet Thompson in his "Seasons" makes use of the word thus "Or lie reclined beneath yon spreading ash, Hung o'er the steep, whence bom on liquid wing. The sounding culver shoots." In the south of England there are several places 12 COLVER-CULVER GeNEALOGY with names embodying the word "culver," such as: Culverden and Culverstone in Kent, and CulvercHff in the Isle of Wight, all of which were doubtless places frequented by unusual numbers of wild pigeons or doves. Colver is an early variant. Colverhouse is found in the records of the reign of King Edward III, and colver is the form used by Chaucer in his "Legende of Goode Women." Spencer in the "Faerie Queene," II, 7, 34, 6 and in the "Teares of the Muses," 246, uses culver. There are 18 lines upon the nature of the culver and its signification, contained in a Bestiary in one of the Arundel MSS. (No. 292, fol. 4), printed in the first volume of Wright and Halliwell's Reliquiae Antiquae, and there is an article by Chancellor Fergu- son on the importance of this bird in the early cuisine published in the "Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmoreland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society," vol. ix, part 2, pp. 412-434, where there are also several sketches of old culver-houses. The trustworthiness of the tradition that the name Culver is an Anglicization of the Prussian Kaulver is sufficiently disapproved by the fact that William Culvere is in the Hundred Rolls, long before the period of immigration from Prussia. Families of the name Calver or Colver have been found in Derbyshire, Suffolk and Leicester; but the indications are that Edward Colver, the Puritan emi- grant, came from one of the southern counties in the vicinity of London. John W^inthrop the younger, in whose company Edward Colver came to America, re- cruited his band of colonists from the counties Middle- sex, Kent and Essex; and as the name Colver, or Culver, is found in the Middlesex records, especially in some parishes of London, it is more than probable Edward Colver was a native of those parts. For illustration: On the registers of Kensington parish church were found the following: : COLVER-CULVER GENEALOGY 13 Marriages 1549 Edward Colver and Alis Lincone." Baptisms 1552 Oct. 23 Richard son of Edward and Alis Colver." j> 1563 May 30 Wm. s. of Edward Colver," Burials 1556 July 2 Hughe Colver." n 1559 Oct. I Rich. s. of Edward Colver" !> 1559 Alis, wife of Edward Col- ver." The above record indicates that Edward Colver mar- ried a second time; his son William being the child of the second wife. The Kensington records cease here; the next being found in the adjoining parish of Clerk- enwell "Middlesex Sessions Rolls "Muniment Room, Sessions House, Clerkenwell. "4 April, 1596. 36 EHzabeth. Coroner's Inquisi- tion-post mortem, taken at Hardmondsworth, Mdx. on view of the body of Edward Culver, there lying dead: With the verdict that, on the 26 Dec. 36 Eliz. between the hours of eleven and twelve p. m., the said Edward Culver, George Hulett, labourer, and Robert Glynne, Yoman, all of Hardmondsworthe, aforesaid, quarrelled and fought together with their fists, in which affray George Hulett with his teeth bit the middle finger of Edward Culver's left hand, so that the same left hand and the arm became putrid and sick and that Edward Culver languished from the said 26th day of December to the 25th of March next following, on which day he died of the wound so given him. On his arraignment for thus killing Edward Culver, George Hurlett put himself "Not Guilty," and the jurors on their oath declared "quod Johannes Atstyle interfecit et occidit predictum Edwardum Culver." "Gool Delivery Roll—21 June 36 Eliz.