My Ancestors (16 and 17)- Shubael Folger and Jerusha Clark – 1700 – 1778

(1) Shubael Folger; (2) Phoebe (Floger) Marshall; (3) Major Elihu Marshall, (4) Elizabeth (Marshall) Guion, (5) Elijah Guion, (6) Elijah Guion II, (7) Alfred Beck Guion, (8) Alfred Duryee Guion, (9) Alfred Peabody Guion, (10) Judith Anne Guion

Shubael Folger, born in 1700, married Jerusha Clark on December 10, 1721. Jerusha was born in Nantucket on May 2, 1702, hence she was 19 at the time. I know that they put in a cool 55 years of wedded life together — longer than any other of our long-live ancestors—for Shubael died on Nantucket August 22, 1776, and Jerusha not until August 20, 1778. And I know that Jerusha must have been a rather precocious girl, for she had a first husband, Jonathan Ramsdell, who died, and she married Shubael, her second husband, when she was only 19.

I know that Jerusha’s parents were Nantucket people, probably of the later crop who came to the island fairly young; they were married on Nantucket on December 13, 1700, and Jerusha was born 17 months later. But I can’t find out who Jerusha’s parents’ parents were or when they came across to America.

Jerusha’s father was Thomas Clark. He might have come to Nantucket any time before 1700, when he was married there. The legend is that his father was a John Clark “of Plymouth”. I ransacked the Plymouth records and found four Thomas Clark’s born there in the latter 1600s, but none of them had a father named John. So that line of inquiry was a dead-end. There is no particularly early-arrived Clark recorded in the Plymouth records, so it makes little difference.

Jerusha’s mother was Mary Church, and the only date I have for her is that of her marriage to Thomas Clark in 1700. Tradition says that Mary’s father was a John Church, otherwise completely unidentified, and that her mother was called “Abigail of Cocheco”. Now, if you can find a John church and identify him from all the John churches in the many Massachusetts towns, and if you can discover who on earth “Abigail of Cocheco” was and when she came over, you will have solved this mystery; but I surrender. Thomas Clark and Mary Church first emerge to view on Nantucket in 1700 as far as I am concerned; they married then, and Jerusha Clark was their daughter. And Shubael Folger married Jerusha Clark in 1721.

Shubael and Jerusha became the parents of Phoebe Folger, Major Marshal’s mother. Phoebe, as previously stated, was born on Nantucket November 2, 1724; Phoebe married the second Joseph Marshall in 1740 and bore Elihu Marshall in 1750.

And Elihu Marshall fought seven years in the Revolution, married Susanna Brown of New York, and (I assume) gave his daughter Elizabeth away when she became the bride of Elijah Guion at her New Rochelle wedding on May 10, 1798. So far, we have traced Elizabeth Marshall’s ancestors, the Hussy-Bachiler-Bunker-Marshall (paternal) ancestors and that of Elizabeth’s Folger-Barnard-Clark-Church (maternal) ancestors.

Source: COLONIAL ORIGINS of the CALIFORNIA GUIONS, An Informal Genealogical Study by Ernest Jerome Hopkins, finished in 1952.

Next Sunday, we shall begin to trace Elijah Guion’s Guion ancestors beginning with Louis Guion, born in a La Rochelle, France in 1654.

This coming week I’ll be posting letters written in 1943. Lad and Marian (my parents) have met and seem to be getting along quite well. Dan is in England, Ced is in Alaska, Dick is in Brazil Dave is still in high school in Trumbull.

Judy Guion

 

My Ancestors (14 and 15)- Robert and Thomas Barnard

 (1) Robert and Thomas Barnard; (2) Nathaniel Barnard and Mary Barnard; (3) Shubael Folger; (4) Phoebe (Floger) Marshall; (5) Major Elihu Marshall, (6) Elizabeth (Marshall) Guion, (7) Elijah Guion, (8) Elijah Guion II, (9) Alfred Beck Guion, (10) Alfred Duryee Guion, (11) Alfred Peabody Guion, (12) Judith Anne Guion

Robert and Thomas Barnard were brothers; I don’t know which was the older, but I think it was Robert; Thomas, we know, was born in 1612. As usual they were Dissenters.

Robert crossed the Atlantic first, in 1642; he hadn’t married at that time. He settled at Salisbury, where, you may remember, Thomas Macy and Robert Pike, Christopher Hussey’s friends who had Puritan trouble, lived. Robert stayed at Salisbury only two years, then in 1644 moved to Andover. The records call him simply a “husbandman”, meaning that he had a farm.

At Andover, Robert married Joanna Harvey. She was a widow with two children, and one account says she came from Plymouth, where her parents lived.

Robert and Joanna Barnard had a daughter, Mary. born at Andover on April 8, 1648. Mary was two, when, in 1650, Robert’s brother Thomas arrived from England; Thomas is described as a “husbandman” and a “trader”. Thomas’s wife seems to have died in England, for he was accompanied only by his seven-year-old son, Nathaniel. Thomas settled at Salisbury, where he soon became a close friend and business associate of Thomas Macy.

There is no record of any trouble had by either Barnard brother with the Puritan tyranny. But when Macy, Peasley and Pike had their last difficulty, and the group at Salisbury got the idea of buying Nantucket and moving there, both Barnards took a financial share in the venture. Thomas never did live on Nantucket, remaining at Salisbury, where he handled the Macy interests for many years. Robert waited until the new settlement was established, then in 1663 moved to Nantucket, accompanied by his wife and their five-year-old daughter. Mary Barnard grew up on Nantucket, but it appears she never forgot her cousin Nathaniel, for, in 1666, when she was 18 and Nathaniel 24, these first cousins married. Nathaniel, who previously had lived at Salisbury with his father Thomas, now became a Nantucketer under patronage of  his uncle and father-in-law, Robert Barnard.

The records of Robert Barnard’s life on Nantucket are routine in type: he held office, the proprietors met at his house, etc. He was, however, one of the more well-to-do settlers. Thomas Barnard, at Salisbury, died first; one record says he was killed by the Indians in 1677. Robert died on Nantucket in 1683; his wife Joanna outlived him, dying in 1705.

As to the married cousins, Nathaniel and Mary, they put in almost 50 years of wedded life during Nantucket’s first half-century; they had 8 children, Barnards on both sides who married into the Macy, Coffin, Floger, Chase and other Nantucket families. They were considerably younger than Peter Folger, and younger than Stephen Hussey though about the same age and Stephen’s wife Martha Bunker, and they both died in the same year as the aged Stephen. That year was 1718; Mary Barnard died on January 17, Stephen Hussey on February 2 and Nathaniel Barnard on April 3. Perhaps there was a bad winter or an epidemic; still, these people were sufficiently old, 70, 88 and 76 respectfully.

How do the Barnard’s tie in with our story? Well, the first child of Nathaniel and Mary Barnard was a girl, named after her mother, Mary; born on Nantucket the year after her parent’s marriage, on February 23, 1667.

Peter Folger’s son, John, born on the Vineyard in 1659, grew up on Nantucket and, from the island girls, selected this younger Mary Barnard as his wife. They were married about the time of Peter’s death in 1690, but I haven’t the precise date.

The records show that this pair had good, long lives, John Folger living until August 23, 1732, and Mary until August of 1737. Their children, as usual, married into other island families.

One of those children (actually their 5^th son) was Shubael (or Shubach) Folger, born August 25, 1700.  His death occurred on August 22, 1776. He was still living when his grandson, Elihu Marshall, left home and went off to war.

But I’m getting ahead of myself and that is a story for another day. Next Sunday, more about Shubael Folger and his wife, Jerusha Clark.

Source: COLONIAL ORIGINS of the CALIFORNIA GUIONS, An Informal Genealogical Study by Ernest Jerome Hopkins, finished in 1952.

Tomorrow, I’ll begin posting a week of letters written in the summer of 1946. Lad and Marian have just added twins to the family. Dan, Paulette and baby Arla are still in France, waiting for the time when they will be able to travel to Trumbull. Ced is still in Alaska, Dick and Jean are living in the Trumbull house and Dave is finally home from Manila and making plans for the future.

Judy Guion

My Ancestors (13) – Peter Folger – 1617 – 1690

(1) Peter Folger, (2) Phoebe (Floger) Marshall (3) Major Elihu Marshall, (4) Elizabeth (Marshall) Guion, (5) Elijah Guion, (6) Elijah Guion II, (7) Alfred Beck Guion, (8) Alfred Duryee Guion, (9) Alfred Peabody Guion, (10) Judith Anne Guion

Peter Folger had a useful, versatile, practical cast of mind, combined with staunch idealism, that reminds one of his grandson, Benjamin Franklin, later on, and may in fact have been Franklin’s model. Franklin, you’ll remember, never could see anything that needed doing, from inventing a new stove or streetlamp to launching newspapers and founding libraries and philosophical societies, without getting in and doing it. Peter Folger, who knew surveying, first laid out Edgartown and its surrounding farms, then became the town’s first school-master, town clerk and record-keeper, and finally it’s only magistrate. He learned the Indian tongue, served as the settlers’ translator and diplomat in their dealings with the tribe, and the school that he taught had Indian children in it as well as white. In addition, he served as the Rev. Mayhew’s assistant preacher; he wasn’t ordained, but that made no difference; he preached sermons and conducted services, and Peter Folger’s christenings and marriages were as good as anyone’s in the settler’s opinion.

A prime challenge to Peter Folger’s scholarship lay just ahead. In the work of Christianizing the Indians, the Rev. Mayhew decided to translate the Bible into the Narragansett language. He is mentioned in our schoolbooks as the first man to put the Bible into an Indian tongue; what isn’t mentioned, though it is embedded in Nantucket tradition and is obviously true, is that Peter Folger helped him do it. It certainly was never a one-man work, and there isn’t the slightest reason to doubt the tradition. Here was one of the outstanding intellectual feats in the annals of the colonies, and it was a religious labor-of-love as well. The translation was made, and used to good purpose, while on the mainland the best minds were locked in bitter doctrinal disputes.

Such was Peter Folger’s life from 1642 until after 1660. There was one important interlude, however, in 1644. Peter, at that time, went by boat around the tip of Cape Cod and up to Salem, to get Mary Morrell for his wife. Her indenture wasn’t fully worked out, and he paid the Rev. Hugh Peter 20 pounds of English money for her — he said ever afterward that it was the “best bargain he ever made in his life”. It was at this time that Rev. Hugh Peter was returning to England, probably explaining why he was willing to make the sale.

Our ancestor, Mary Morrell, had an interesting “owner” during her nine years of servitude. And she had an interesting husband after her freedom was bought.

Peter Folger and Mary Morrell had a dozen children, all but one of them born on Martha’s Vineyard. (That last one was Abiah, who married Josiah Franklin of Boston as Josiah’s second wife and became the mother of Benjamin Franklin. Abiah was born on Nantucket after Peter and his family moved there.) There are still plenty of Folgers on Nantucket and elsewhere, and all are Peter Folger’s descendants.

When the Macy-Coffin-Pike-Hussey group from Salisbury and Hampton visited Martha’s Vineyard in 1659, to discuss the purchase of Nantucket with Mayhew, they naturally contacted Peter, Mayhew’s chief assistant. It was Peter Folger who sailed over to Nantucket with their party to guide them around and serve as their translator to the Nantucket Indians. Peter had been there before — some work had been done towards Christianizing those Indians too — but the smaller island hadn’t been settled by whites. The purchase was accomplished; and the next year, 1660, when the first settlers including Stephen Hussey arrived, they hired Peter as surveyor to lay out the new town – called Sherburne; it is Nantucket today — and to establish the lines of the various farms.

They liked him and he liked them. Overtures for him to come over and manage the new colony were made during the next couple of years, but Peter didn’t accept until his mother, and also the Rev. Mayhew, died. Then in 1663 he took the offer and became a Nantucketer for the remaining 27 years of his life, always being referred to in the old records as Nantucket’s “most useful man.”

He was at this time about 46. As before, he became Nantucket’s town clerk, keeper of records, schoolmaster, chief magistrate and Sessler of disputes. In 1666 a gristmill was needed to grind the grain; Peter designed and built it and became the Miller. The settlers needed cloth; Peter built the town a little, learned weaving himself, then taught two women to Wii. He served as Nantucket’s blacksmith and worked iron for the early ships. He continued to preach, and I find no record of any other preacher on Nantucket. He had a literary streak, and produced occasional poems. He practiced immersion, and is on record as having it baptized one Nantucket girl in a pond. He was named on several special committees, the phrase “Peter Folger consenting” being used to indicate that no action could be taken unless he agreed.

But Peter had a very independent streak, which emerged as he grew older. To begin with, while the rest of the island was turning toward Quakerism, Peter became an Anabaptist — this being the other persecuted religious sect, and a completely anarchistic one as far as authority was concerned, each member communing directly with his God. (Peter’s descendants, however, became Quakers like the rest.”

And up flair of rebellion against the full-share owners, in which Peter adopted cause of the “little man” and led the fray, occurred in 1673. The control of Nantucket’s public affairs rested with the share-owners, as in a corporation; Tristam Kaufman, a full share owner, was the island’s chief boss, with Thomas Macy and Robert Bernard seconding him. Other shares had been subdivided, so that there were half-share and quarter-share man, who had correspondingly smaller votes. The full-share owners appear to have shoved the “little man” around, and in 1673 they especially offended Peter Folger by electing Peter Coffin as assistant magistrate.

This set off the only real dispute that ever occurred on the island. Peter was record-keeper of the island’s court, and he refused to surrender the “court booke” to Peter Coffin. Result: a session of the General Court was held, older was summoned before it, and, still refusing to turn over the “booke”, was thrown into jail for contempt of court. The jail, as he later described it in a letter written in 1677, was a place “where the Neighbors Hogges had layed but the Night before, and in a bitter cold Frost and deep Snow. They had only thrown out most of the Durt, Hogges Dung and Snow; the rest the Constable told me I might Ly upon if I would.” Folger was released after a day or so, and he never did surrender that “court booke” which continues missing from Nantucket’s records to this day.

Peter Folger died on Nantucket in 1690. He was, in his way and earlier Franklin, and this is recognized by modern encyclopedias of American biography, which quite commonly include brief write-ups of Peter Folger, as well as of the Rev. Stephen Bachiler and, in some cases, of Christopher Hussey. Major Elihu Marshall was Peter’s direct descendant through Phoebe Folger, his mother; and since Major Marshall was our ancestor, Peter Folger was too. We are descended from Peter and Mary Morrell through their son John, born on Martha’s Vineyard in 1659. John was some eight years older than his younger sister, Abiah, the mother of Benjamin Franklin.

I will go into more depth about our relationship to Benjamin Franklin in a future post.

Source: COLONIAL ORIGINS of the CALIFORNIA GUIONS, An Informal Genealogical Study by Ernest Jerome Hopkins, finished in 1952.

For more information, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Folger_(Nantucket_settler)

Next Sunday we will meet the Barnards, ancestors of Mary Barnard, who married John Folger.

Tomorrow, I’ll begin posting letters written in 1944. By this time, all five of Grandpa’s sons are serving Uncle Sam in a variety of circumstances. Only Grandpa hold’s down the fort with Dick’s wife, Jean (Mortensen) Guion.

Judy Guion

My Ancestors (12) – John Folger – 1617 – 1669

 (1) John Folger (2) Peter Folger, (3) Phoebe (Floger) Marshall (4) Major Elihu Marshall, (5) Elizabeth (Marshall) Guion, (6) Elijah Guion, (7) Elijah Guion II, (8) Alfred Beck Guion, (9) Alfred Duryee Guion, (10) Alfred Peabody Guion, (11) Judith Anne Guion

Benjamin Franklin in the famous “Autobiography”, first chapter, says that the Folger family was originally Flemish and came to England in the time of Queen Elizabeth. The Folgers settled in Norwich, England, where John Folger was born about 1590.

John Folger married an English girl, Meribah or Merrible Gibbs. The date of that marriage isn’t known, but was probably 1616, for in 1617, still at Norwich, their only son, Peter Folger, was born.

The Folgers were Dissenters. It was in 1635 that they joined the “westward movement” and sailed to America, aboard the good ship “Abigaile”. That was five years after Christopher Hussey and Theodate Bachiler had crossed, three years after Stephen Bachiler had joined them, and a year after George Bunker had arrived. Peter, the son, was 17 or 18 at the time.

The Folgers were “freemen” and paid their passages. But aboard the “Abigaile” was a girl named Mary Morrell, from I don’t know where, but evidently traveling alone; Mary came under indenture, meaning that she would have to work out her passage-money by several years of servitude after reaching New England. And aboard the same ship was a fiery and a brilliant young Puritan preacher, Rev. Hugh Peter, the same who was considered for a time as successor to old Stephen Bachiler at Lynn, but who went to Salem instead. Hugh Peter and John Folger became close friends aboard the ship and remained so.

The main incident of the trip was that young Peter Folger, during the eight-weeks passage, fell dead in love with Mary Morrell. But he was too young to marry and she had her indenture to work out, so nothing came of it at the time. The Rev. Hugh Peter liked the girl and, upon arriving in Boston, bought her indenture. She was a friendly “slave” in Hugh Peter’s clerical household for the next nine years.

The Folgers stayed three years in Boston, then, when a group was formed in 1638 to settle Dedham, inland from Boston at the head of the Suffolk marshes, they joined it; John Folger was among Dedham’s original proprietors. They lived six years at Dedham, then moved to Watertown, where they owned 6 acres. They had just come to Watertown, in 1642, when their whole life changed.

They became associated with a very remarkable man, the Rev. Thomas Mayhew, who can only be described as a primitive Christian. Neither Folger nor Mayhew had had any overt trouble with the Puritans — unlike Bachiler, they were non-resistants — but they disliked the banishment of Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson, and in 1642, Mayhew decided quietly to banish himself. On his mind was the thought that the Indians, instead of being slaughtered, should be converted and educated in the Christian faith. Out of this thought came the purchase of the two islands, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, which were thickly settled by the Gayhead branch of Narragansetts at the time, and, being under New York jurisdiction, were out of Puritan reach.

Mayhew bought both islands. He and a small body of followers, including the three Folgers, sailed out to Martha’s Vineyard, the larger island, and founded Edgartown in 1642. It was a dangerous venture — the Pequot War was at its height, Puritan trainbands (including that led by Christopher Hussey) were killing all the Indians they could find at the time, and this Mayhew party went un-armed. They built a rude village of stones, mud and brush, made friends with the islands sachems, and proceeded to make Martha’s Vineyard an island of peace in the midst of the Indian war.

John Folger, the father, cleared land and farmed it, doubtless with Indian aid. Young Peter, now in his mid-20s, and unusually well-educated for that time, soon became the Rev. Mayhew’s right-hand man and chief assistant.

Source: COLONIAL ORIGINS of the CALIFORNIA GUIONS, An Informal Genealogical Study by Ernest Jerome Hopkins, finished in 1952.

Next Sunday we will follow the life of Peter Folger.

Tomorrow, I’ll begin posting letters written in 1943. Lad is in California, Dan is in  Pennsylvania getting further training for overseas, Ced is in Alaska working at an airfield as a mechanic, Dick is in Florida and Dave is still home with Grandpa.

Judy Hardy

My Ancestors (11) – Abigaill Hussey – 1679 – 1763

 (1) Abigaill Hussey, (2) Major Elihu Marshall, (3) Elizabeth (Marshall) Guion, (4) Elijah Guion, (5) Elijah Guion II, (6) Alfred Beck Guion, (7) Alfred Duryee Guion, (8) Alfred Peabody Guion, (9) Judith Anne Guion

Abigaill Hussey was the second child and oldest daughter of Stephen Hussey and Martha Bunker. One of Nantucket’s grimmest traditions is told about Abigail, and it explains why, after having first been married to another man named Thomas Howes, Abigaill was free at 21 to become Joseph Marshall’s wife.

Background of the tale is the ocean around Nantucket, which is extremely treacherous. To reach the island even today is a four-hour adventure in calm weather — in rough weather, or fog, the boats don’t run. You take the steamer at New Bedford, which is at the root of Cape Cod. The steamer threads the rocky islands of Buzzards Bay, gropes through some ghastly reefs that would rip the bottom off the boat if the passage were missed by fifty feet on either side, puts in at a cruel crevice called Wood’s Hole, then turns due south, away from land, into Nantucket Sound. This is really the seaward entrance to Long Island Sound, but ships avoid that entrance even though the channel is buoyed — it wasn’t buoyed in the days of which we write. The ocean driving westward into Long Island Sound makes this outer body of water a mass of tide-rips.

You steam southward over these currents until virtually out of sight of land, then pick up a jutting island, maybe 20 miles long, Cliff-edged, and steep, the island of Martha’s Vineyard. Edgartown is on its seaward corner, and you stop there, then turn due eastward into nothing, as if you were headed out to sea. The steamer is running parallel to Cape Cod, and if the day is clear you can see the low-lying line of the Cape along the horizon on your left, but otherwise you are in the Atlantic. A couple of hours of this and a rock looms ahead; here is Nantucket, smaller than Martha’s Vineyard, a 10-mile Crescent of barren-looking dunes with the horns of the crescent pointing north.

In between these horns you go; the steamer skids and backs and snorts around the edges of rocks, finally making one last awful turn around a buoy and edging into the Nantucket wharf. Behind the wharf is the quietest town imaginable; the place is still back in the whaling days of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Abigaill Hussey and Thomas Howes were married on Nantucket on April 5, 1700. She was just 20 at the time. They had been married only a month or two when this occurred – let me tell it in the concise language of the old Barnard Manuscript, doubly effective because it is so brief:

“They were crossing Long Island Sound in a boat, he being at the steering oar, unhappily missed a stroke and fell overboard. The wind was blowing fresh and the boat being under sail was immediately out of reach. His wife urged an Indian who was with them to steer the boat back; but the Indian was so overcome with excitement that she could not prevail upon him to do it; when she took the oar and steered the boat to land, leaving her husband to parish, a scene not easily described.”

How the broken-hearted Abigaill later met Joseph Marshall, whose wife, Mercy Short, had died in Boston at just about the same time, I do not know. At all events, the two got married and were living on Nantucket in about 1702.

Her story with Joseph Marshall was recounted last Sunday.

Source: COLONIAL ORIGINS of the CALIFORNIA GUIONS, An Informal Genealogical Study by Ernest Jerome Hopkins, finished in 1952.

Starting tomorrow, I will post a week of letters written in 1946. Lad and Marian are the proud parents of twins, a boy and a girl, Dan, Paulette and baby Arla are overseas awaiting the time when both mother and child can travel to Trumbull, Dick and his wife Jean are also living in the Trumbull House, Dave has returned from Manila, Philippines, and Ced remains in Alaska.

Judy Guion

My Ancestors (10) – Joseph Marshall – 1672 – 1748

 (1) Joseph Marshall, (2) Major Elihu Marshall, (3) Elizabeth (Marshall) Guion, (4) Elijah Guion, (5) Elijah Guion II, (6) Alfred Beck Guion, (7) Alfred Duryee Guion, (8) Alfred Peabody Guion, (9) Judith Anne Guion

Mercy Short, Joseph Marshall’s first wife, wasn’t our ancestor. She bore Joseph six children, then died in Boston in 1700. It’s rather interesting that our progenitor, Joseph Marshall, was married by the Rev. Cotton Mather, most famous of which-burning Puritans, even though we aren’t descended from that marriage.

A year or two after Mercy’s death, Joseph Marshall, a man of 30 with a half-dozen children, somehow met and promptly married Abigaill Hussey, Stephen Hussey’s daughter, of Nantucket. They had but a single child, a second Joseph Marshall

So, while we know nothing of detail about the lives of Joseph Marshall or of his son Joseph Junior, we can infer much. As stated, the older Joseph married Abigaill Hussey and went to Nantucket about 1702 and died there in 1748.

How Abigaill met Joseph Marshall, whose wife, Mercy Short, had died in Boston at just about the same time, I do not know. If I knew where Joseph and Abigaill were married, I might infer how they met, but it wasn’t on Nantucket; it might have been in any of a dozen towns. One guesses that Abigaill left the island for a time, staying with Hussey or Bunker relatives while recovering from the shock (This story will be told next Sunday) and so met the recently-widowed Joseph.

At all events, the two got married and were living on Nantucket Island in about 1702; and this must have meant a completely new life for Joseph Marshall, who had lived in Boston all his days. Abigaill’s father, Stephen Hussey, owned both land and ships, and it is easy to infer that he provided his new son-in-law with all the work he was capable of doing. Nantucketers were web-footed if not actually amphibious, it’s safe to say that Joseph, and his son Joseph after him, followed the sea.

Joseph Marshall and Abigaill Hussey evidently lived down there early bereavements, for they put in 46 years of married life. Joseph died on Nantucket in 1748 at the age of 76; Abigaill outlived him by 15 years and died in 1763 at the age of 84. They became Quakers when the rest of the Islanders did, in the early 1700s. Their one son, Joseph, was born on Nantucket in 1722, and he lived 80 years, on up into Jefferson’s administration. Lacking any details about their lives – for the Marshall’s left no individual records except their vital dates – we still can infer a good deal from the general background of Nantucket existence, of which much has been written.

It was a place like no other in the colonies. Whaling dominated the little island’s entire economy the greatest industry in all the colonies centered here and New Bedford, across the sound.

Whaling, combined with Quakerism, gave the island a finer type of democracy than could have been found, I think, anywhere else in the colonies. We have noted that these Nantucketers were liberal and cooperative individualists to begin with; and you may have observed that nothing was amiss when Abigaill Hussey, daughter of one of the island’s foremost ship-captains and land-owners, with the blood of Stephen Bachiler and Christopher Hussey in her veins, married the plain-going son of an unknown Bostonian who didn’t own an inch of land. Caste distinctions just weren’t in Nantucket thought.

Source: COLONIAL ORIGINS of the CALIFORNIA GUIONS, An Informal Genealogical Study by Ernest Jerome Hopkins, finished in 1952.

We will follow the story of Joseph Marshall’s wife, Abigaill Hussey, next Sunday.