Time for a different family and their ‘Adventurous Ancestors’!
Introduction
England to the Isle of Man is a short trip over the Irish Sea. Some families took the long way round!
Born in Liverpool, sailor, Silas Samuel Richards (1833-1897) moved to the Isle of Man during the 1850s.
Not too far for a seafarer like Silas, but his paternal ancestors had sailed from England to America and been in Connecticut for generations before his grandparents came to Liverpool.
Hope Beardsley and Silas Richards
In 1804, at St Peter’s Church in Liverpool, Silas’s grandmother, Hope Beardsley (1786-1869), daughter of a United Empire Loyalist banished to New Brunswick, married Cotton Broker, Silas Richards Esq (1762-1822), descendant of a Revolutionary War hero.
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William Beardsley
Hope Beardsley’s 3rd great grandfather was English Stone Mason, William Beardsley, (1605–1661) from Ilkeston in Derbyshire. He emigrated to “The Colonies” and was a founder of Stratford, a town in Fairfield County, Connecticut, North America.
English Puritan Protestants, like William Beardsley believed the Church of England remained too similar to the Catholic Church. To escape persecution, entire congregations left England to establish colonies in North America, with approximately thirty thousand emigrating before the English Civil War (The Great Migration).
In April 1635, William Beardsley, his wife Mary (nee Harvey) and three children, including baby Joseph (Hope Beardsley’s second great grandfather), joined this migration, boarding the small wooden sailing ship, “Planter” with 116 other Puritan passengers and sailed from London. After two months crossing the Atlantic Ocean, they arrived in Boston, Massachusetts on 7th June 1635.
William Beardsley took the oath of a freeman of Massachusetts Bay Colony in December 1636. This was a pledge of loyalty to the colony’s government.
In 1639, the Beardsley family left Boston to become one of the first settler families in the Pequonnocke Plantation, on Long Island Sound, at the mouth of the Housatonic River. Later becoming the Cupheag Plantation, then renamed Stratford, Connecticut.
William Beardsley was active in judicial matters in the colony, being deputy to the General Court at Hartford from 1645 to 1659. He was also a founder of the First Congregational Church of Stratford.
From 1636-1646, William and Mary Beardsley had six more children in America. William Beardsley died in Stratford in 1661 and is buried in Union Cemetery.
In 1939, (the 300th anniversary of the settlement of Stratford), a plaque was placed at the cemetery by William’s descendants.
“To honor the memory of William and Mary Beardsley and the other first settlers of STRATFORD who landed near this spot in 1639. Erected by the Beardsley Family Association 1939”
Joseph Beardsley
William’s son, Joseph Beardsley, (Hope Beardsley’s second great grandfather) was born in 1634 and only six months old on their Atlantic crossing aboard the “Planter” Immigrant Ship. He clearly retained his “sea legs” as later Joseph inherited half the estate of his father, on condition that he leave seafaring life and care for his mother.
Joseph Beardsley married Abigail/Phoebe Dayton (historians’ opinions vary) and their son John Curtiss Beardsley (Hope Beardsley’s great grandfather) was born in 1668 in Stratford. Joseph exchanged his own property in Stratford for a property of Andrew Gibb in Brookhaven, Long Island in 1684.
As well as Abigail/Phoebe Dayton’s disputed identity, it is still debated whether her mother Medlen ‘Wilhemina’ Harcre was an indigenous Montauk woman, native to Long Island.
Joseph Beardsley later returned to Stratford and died there in 1712. His inventory, dated 29th May 1712, amounted to £782.06. which now equates to hundreds of thousands of pounds.
John Curtiss Beardsley
Joesph’s son, John Curtiss Beardsley (Hope’s great grandfather), born in 1668 was a blacksmith and around 1690 he married Abigail Wakelee. He died in 1735 at Fairfield, Connecticut.
In his will, to his son, John (Hope’s grandfather), John Curtiss Beardsley left
“one iron pot, one plowshare, collar and chain”
Next time
The Long Way Round – Part Two (Connecticut to New Brunswick), will cover John Beardsley born 1702 (inheritor of the iron pot) and his son, the Loyalist Reverend John Beardsley 1732-1809 (father of Hope Beardsley).
Adventurous Ancestors 