Day 51

Hello to all! We had a good day at the Maine Historical Society. I finished the Nathan and William Goold papers. They pushed several lines back to the late 1500s. Now I just need to verify them.

Barbara joined me about 11 and tackled digging for Richardsons. She uncovered a file of letters from Lovicy Robbins Richardson (GGGG grandmother on the Coats-Davenport side). Lovicy and her husband were born in Maine and moved to Michigan. I had tried to find them in Moscow, Michigan with no luck although I did find their graves in Jamestown, MI. The letters were written by Lovicy to her parents and siblings between 1808 and 1849. We finally have names for her parents - Asa and Abigail Robbins and know that, like the Richardsons, they were originally from Mass. Here is a bit from her May 20, 1840 letter about their trip from Maine to Michigan.

" I wrote you of he particular occurances of our pleasant journey excepting that one of our horses was lame and we had to take a canal boat. At ___, the horse got better, we rode in the waggon aggain from Side Canal near Lake Nide? to Buffalo whence we came in a steamboat to Detroit in two days and two nights. .... We road in our waggon the rest of the way. In two days more we arrived at Raisin where we found our children [Note: several adult children had already moved to Michigan.]. ...George and all the boys has been smart all the spring. They have got a good fence all round his Lot acres. They put up a good barn frame. Got four acres of wheat up 5 or 6 inches." [she also mentions digging a well, raising corn, potatoes, beans, parsnips and turnips].

Interesting news and daily life - all were a great find. You could also see when, over the course of 40 years, writing changed from quills to metal nibs as the writing becomes much more even.

The second great find was locating a copy of John Tukey's first land purchase. Here is some of that deed:

"for and in consideration of the Sum of Six pounds of Lawful money ... [for] a certain Lot or Parcel of Land lying and being in the said Town of Falmouth in that part thereof commonly called the Neck containing One Eighth Part of an Acre Bounded as followeth beginning at a Stake standing on the North Westerly Side of Back Street at the Southern most Corner of William Weeks's Land thence adjoining said Street South Westerly three Rods to Stake from the Two aforesaid Stakes to extend the same Width of three rods North Westerly adjoining the South Western most Line of the said William Weeks and title this said Eighth part of an Acre be made up ..."

I'm not sure the convoluted legalese has changed much since May 16, 1753 - just the spellings and the use of Rods. However, we know that John had arrived and was working in Falmouth Neck and had saved enough money to buy land on which to build his home for his family. The other benefit to this deed is that it names his wife Abigail, providing another concrete lineage link. Tomorrow I will look for other deeds.