THE FALES FAMILY OF BRISTOL, RHODE ISLAND ANCESTRY OF HALIBURTON FALES OF NEW YORK BY DE COURSEY FALES, A. B.t LL. B. PRIVATELY PRINTED 1919 To My NEPHEW AND GODSON SAMUEL FALES OF THE TENTH GENERA·r10N I LOVINGLY DEDICATE THIS BOOK ACKNOWLEDGMENT I have great pleasure in acknowledging here the able and untiring assistance in my authorship of this book of my friend Doctor Arthur Wentworth Hamilton Eaton, author of many volumes of prose and verse, eminent successor in the field of Nova Scotia history of my distinguished relative Honorable Judge Thomas Chandler Haliburton. DE COURSEY FALES. NEW YORK CITY, SEPTEMBER, 1919. TABLE OF CONTENTS THE FALES FAMILY 9-158 FIRST GENERATION 9 SECOND GENERATION . 23 THIRD GENERATION 31 FOURTH GENERATION 49 FIFTH GENERATION 55 SIXTH GENERATION 81 SEVENTH GENERATION . 123 EIGHTH GENERATION 151 ADDITIONAL NOTES 1 53 THE HALIBURTON FAMILY . 159-217 NOTES ON THE OTIS FAMILY 199 SOME HALIBURTON LETTERS . 205 THE MAYFLOWER ANCESTORS OF HALIBURTON FALES . 219-222 VARIO US ANCESTRIES OF HALIBURTON FALES . 223-247 WILLS AND INVENTORIES . 249-305 INDEX • . 307-332 ILLUSTRATIONS SAMUEL FALES, 1775-1848 . Facing Title Portrait by Gilbert Stuart, Painted in 1806 HOUSE OF NEHEMIAH AND DAVID FALES • . • 48 COLONNADE Row, BosToN . go MRS. SAMUEL FALES, 1773-1839 • 94 Portrait by Alvan Clark STEPHEN SMITH FALES, 1783-1839 • 119 Portrait, Painted in Holland in 1804 Lucy ANN CHARLOTTE AuGus-rA FALES (MRs. ANDREW DUNLAP), 1802-1887 123 Portrait by G. P. A. Healy SAMUEL FALES DUNLAP, 1825-r905 127 Portrait by G. P. A. Healy SAMUEL BRADFORD FALES, 1804-1880 HALmURTON FALES, 1815-1869 . Portrait by G. P. A. Healy HALmuRTON FALES, 2n r51 Portrait by Herman G. Herkomer, Painted in 1910 HALIBURTON FALES, 3D • Portrait by Underwood and Underwood DE COURSEY FALES 158 Portrait by Lydia Field Emmett, Painted in 1919 JUDGE THOMAS CHANDLER HALIBURTON, 1796-1865 r88 THE FALES FAMILY FIRST GENERATION THE New England Fales family is one of the large interesting group of English Puritan families that settled and were long conspicuous in the now ancient town of Dedham, Massachusetts, a town among the rich­ est in historical traditions of all the early settled eastern Massachusetts towns. I }AMES 1 FALES was settled in Dedham at least as --- ........ ~ - .. ·- - -~ early as 1651, for the Selectmen's records of that year give his name as one of the inhabitants to be called to the general Town Meeting. What his native place in England was we do not certainly know, although a state­ ment came many years ago into print that he was di­ rectly from Chester, either from the city or somewhere else in the county, we do not know which. After care­ fully examining Omerod's notable "History of Chester" and other \vorks on the county and the town we are convinced that wherever the chief location of the Fales family in England may have been, it was not the county 10 THE BRISTOL FALES FAMILY of Cheshire, though of course the founder of the Ne,v England family himself may have lived there and from there have come dire~tly to Massachusetts as the state­ ment we have referred to says. In Guppy's " Homes of Family Names", we find the name "Failes" given as more or less common in the county of Norfolk, but in Suckling's " Antiquities of the county of Suffolk", we find a John "Fale" mentioned as Rector of the parish of Flixton in that county in the year 1 5 1 1.* In a list of clergymen ejected from their livings in Suffolk by the " Presbyterian Anabaptist, and other religious sects and parties, " between 1643 and 1646, appears the name of a Rev. J. "Fale" of Fressingfield,t and in a list of names in the parish of Dennington, Suffolk, of men who prom­ ised in 1651 to be loyal to the Commonwealth, is the familiar name "Thomas Fales"·+ . In our search for some traces of the Fales family in Chester, we have examined, for instance, "A List of the Freeholders in Cheshire _in 1578 ", and·" A List of the Wills, Inventories, etc., now preserve~ at the Diocesan Registry, Chester, from the year 1621 to the year 1700, inclusive" (printed for the Record Society for the publi­ cation of original documents relating to Lancashire and Cheshire in 1902), and in these important works we do not find the name Fales once mentioned. A certain member of some branch of the Dedham Fales family, * Suckling's " Antiquities of the County of Suffolk," page 352. t Hollingsworth's "History of Stowmarket," Suffolk, page 17 5. + See the " New Eng1and Historical and Genealogical Register," vol­ ume 44, page 366. FIRST GENERATION 11 not the Bristol branch, once wrote in a private letter : " The family comes from Chester, England, and takes its name from or gives its name to the river Fales, a rivulet about fifteen feet wide. It took me a year to find it." If such a stream as the ''river Fales" exists in Cheshire, it is too insignificant for Omerod, who dis­ cusses the rivers of Cheshire at some length, to mention, and we have found no evidence whatever to make us believe that any Fales family ever existed in the county at all. The origin of the name Fales, as of many other Eng­ lish surnames, is very doubtful. Barber's " British Family Names, their Origin and Meaning", makes it possibly originate, like "Falls" and "Fallows", in the Norman name "Falaise ", which is kindred to the Flem­ ish "Fallais ", "Falise ", or "Falloise "; or else in the Anglo-Saxon "Felce". In Baring-Gould's entertaining "Family Names and their History", we find the conjec­ ture that it is identical with the ancient Norman word "Fail" or "Fayle ", which this author says is the Nor­ man name of our familiar Beech tree. On the 11th of January, 1654-5, a little more than three years from the date of the meeting at which the name of Jam._es..Fale.s was presented as one of the inhab­ itants of Dedham, he, John Houghton, and Jonathan Fair­ banks, Jr., were formally admitted "townsmen", and no doubt, immediately thereafter appended their names to the Covenant of the Town. It has frequently been stated in print that Fales sl_g~~d the Covenant at the 12 THE BRISTOL FALES FAMILY incorporation of the town in 1636, but while the Cove­ nant was drawn up at the time of the incorporation, and signed by all the men who were then candidates for permanent residence in Dedham, it is evident that many of the signatures we find appended to it as it appears in the Dedham Archives were added much later, James Fales's, with John Houghton's and Jonathan Fairbanks's, being appended only when these men were formally ad­ mitted townsmen.* Precisely how soon after his settlement in Dedham, James Fales received his first allotment of land there, we have found no record to show, but it was probably very soon. In any case, on his marriage in 1655 he would have been entitled to a grant, for the first settlers of Dedham agreed, says the historian of the town, "that each married man should have a house lot of twelve acres, part upland and part meadow." At a town meet­ ing held on the 23d of January, 1656, he was given also a share of thirty-eight and a half acres in· the town's com­ mon lands, and on the 10th of March, 1657, he was granted three acres of land more. At the time of his grant of common land, his previous estate was declared to be worth forty-two pounds, sixteen shillings. Where he received his first land and built his earliest house does not seen1 doubtful, his house was built in the * The Covenant of the town was not the Covenant of the church, it was, however, an agreement which men signed at their formal admission to residence, that they would live righteously and in Christian charity with their fellow townsmen. See the printed Dedham records. FIRST GENERATION 13 south-eastern part of Dedham, in what is now known as the Ashcroft section, on the present Cedar Street, and it is likely that it stood on the site of a well remem­ bered Fales house on Cedar Street that was taken down in 1874. As early as 1663, however, Mr. Fales removed to what is now the centre of the town of Wal­ pole, a location from six to eight miles distant, in a south-westerly direction, from the place where he had first lived. The only near neighbors he had in this new home ,vere Thomas Clap, Samuel Parker, and Quinton Stockwell, all like him with families constantly increasing in size. In the Dedham records in 1663, we find the following entry which shows us how and when he received part of his Walpole lands: "Granted unto James Vales a perceil of Lande att ye easte end of ye Lands hee have at att ye Sawe Mille in sattisfaction for his purchis Lande that was due to ye halfe Lott he live uppon, as it shall be layd out by Joshua Fisher and Edwarde Richardes." In a history of. the town of Wal­ pole, recently published, we find mention of the building of a saw-mill in this part of Dedham, and the History then goes on to say: "The first human habitation built by the early settlers in what is now Walpole territory, in all probability was at or near this old mill, followed by that of James Fales, on Spice or Spring Brook, to whom, according to first records, the Indians became a constant menace and source of danger." In 1670, the History further tells us, "our first settler, James Fales", was chosen surveyor of a tract of land in the town called 14 THE BRISTOL FALES FAMILY Woollomonpuck, the records calling him in this relation, "surveyor for ye Familyes att ye Sawe Mille and Wollo- 1nonuppoage."* In 1677, James Fales, senior's, dwelling house was valued at five pounds, James Fales, junior's at two pounds, and their neighbors, Thomas Clap's and Samuel Parker's, each, at two pounds.