Stukely Westcott in England and His Emigration to America

 History and Genealogy - Stukely Westcott (1932)  No Responses »
Oct 222006
 

This is a transcription of Stukely Westcott in England and His Emigration to America from History and Genealogy of the Ancestors and Some Descendants of Stukely Westcott by Roscoe L. Whitman, 1932, page 9.

Stukely Westcott in England and His Emigration to America

Beyond the year of his birth, 1592, nothing has been positively revealed of the youth of Stukely Westcott. That he was born in the shire or county of Somerset in England of the posterity of Thomas de Wescote and Elizabeth Littleton, his wife, of Wescote in the parish of Marwood in Devonshire, whose descendants settled in Somerset in the late 15th century, there is every belief.

Based upon the age of his children, he was married about the year 1617-8 when about twenty-six years of age. His wife, according to Laura LaMance, author of “The Greene Tree,” was probably Rosanna Hill of Somerset. They are definitely located in the Spring of 1622 in the Southern part of Somerset in the parish of Yeovil, from which place they started for New England thirteen years later.

Rosanna Hill “descended from an ancient family long seated at Houndstone, near Taunton, Somersetshire.” Her father, William, as already stated, was of Poundeford, some twenty miles West of Yeovil. Her mother was Jane, daughter of John and Joan (Cottington) Young of Axminster in Devonshire, and her paternal grandfather was Walter Young, a younger son of the house of Bassildon in Berkshire, who was “fined by the first Queen Mary for not taking the order of Knighthood.” Her maternal grandmother was Rosanna (Wardwell) Waite, for whom she was named. The Wardwell family was Welsh and is traced through the LaSalles to France. They emigrated to Wales in 1565.

The earliest of the Hill family traced in this research is Richard, probably born in the year 1350 at Helegan in Cornwall. In 1399, he was the king’s sergeant, lived at Shilstone in Devon and was ancestor of Abigail Hill, Lady Mashem. He was married twice; both Cornish heiresses. His son, Robert, was sheriff of Devon in 1428-9 and resided at the family seat of Hawkstone Park, Hodnot, in the parish of Shobrooke where Raddon is located and where Thomas and Alice (Walker) Wescott later settled on the Raddon estates. Sir Robert Hill, probably grandson and namesake of the preceding Robert, was born in 1492 and became the first Protestant mayor of London. His father was Thomas Hill. Sir Robert died 1561, unmarried.

“Before 1900,” says Fred A. Arnold in his “Account of the English Homes of Three Early ‘Proprietors’ of Providence—William [page 10] Arnold, Stukely Westcott and William Carpenter” (1921), “every county in England had been combed to find the name Stukely Westcott, without success, until 1902, Mr. Edson S. Jones found the name at Yeovil, as the father of Samuel, baptised Mar. 31, 1622. This, without support of record, does not prove that he was the Stukely Westcott who came in 1635 to New England, but circumstantial evidence very strongly favors that conclusion. The name of Stukely and of Westcott is common in Devon and Somerset, but the combination of these names has so far been found nowhere before 1622 at Yeovil and so far as we know is unique, and the name of his daughter Demaris is very unusual.” In Thomas Wescote’s Devon, the name Demaris appears only twice.

This son, Samuel, whose birth is recorded at Yeovil in 1622, checks as to age with the third child of the children of Stukely Westcott who made the crossing in 1635. That this Stukely Westcott was he who came to America thirteen years after the birth of Samuel, seems to be fully substantiated by memoranda made in April, 1656, by Benedict Arnold and found among his old family papers. He wrote:

“June 24, 1635, arrived in Massachusetts Bay. Sailed from Dartmouth of Devon May 1, 1635, all but one of the Party (William Carpenter) coming from Ilchester in southern Somerset or within five miles of that place.”

“My father (Willliam Arnold) and his family Sett Sayle ffrom Dartmouth in Old England, the first of May, friday & Arrived in New England (Thursday) June 24, 1635. On board was Stukely Westcott, 43, of Yeovil, and his wife with children Robert, Damaris, Samuel 13, Amos 4, Mercy and Jeremiah.”

That Benedict, then twenty years of age, should have singled out the Westcotts to mention in his memoranda, may be safely explained by his promising friendship with Damaris Westcott, then about fifteen years old, and who later became his wife.

William Carpenter, born 1603, appears to have been the lone bachelor of the party, but he did not remain a bachelor for long, for soon after reaching America his attention to Elizabeth Arnold, daughter of William, ripened into marriage. Their descendant in the fifth generation, Mary Carpenter, of Silas, of Silas, of Benjamin Westcott, of Samuel, of Jeremiah, of Stukely.

St. Leger Wescote

 History and Genealogy - Stukely Westcott (1932)  No Responses »
Oct 222006
 

This is a transcription of the St. Leger Wescote section from History and Genealogy of the Ancestors and Some Descendants of Stukely Westcott by Roscoe L. Whitman, 1932, page 4.

St. Leger Wescote

St. Leger Wescote was born in the field or enclosure of Wescote, in the parish of Marwood near Barnstaple in Devonshire, about the year 1275. Of his paternal ancestry, it can only be surmised, as related by Judge Bullock in his history, that they “are to be found of that old nobility who ruled England prior to the Conquest.”

His maternal ancestry is believed to have reverted to that ancient and distinguished family of St. Leger, or Leodegar, the earliest mention of whom is in the year 670. In this year, the Burgundian nobles rose up under Leger, Bishop of Autun-the old town in France now so enticing to tourists because of its ancient Roman walls and gates, remains of an amphitheatre, and the cathedral and chapelle of St. Lazare—and defeated Ebroin, the Frankish “mayor of the palace,” who wished to impose the authority of Neustria over Burgundy. Soon, Legder was himself defeated, Oct. 12, 678; after his eyes had been put out and he had endured prolonged torture, he was put to death. The church honeurs him as a saint, and thus the name Saint Leger.

The family early established itself at court in England and was honeured down to the 16th century, when, in 1537, Henry VIII appointed Sir Anthony St. Leger president of a commission of inquiry into the condition of Ireland. Following the marriage in the 13th century, of a daughter of the Wescote line, Sir Thomas St. Leger in the 15th century, married the Duchess of Exeter, sister of Edward IV, and their grandson, Sir George, in 1531, was sheriff of Devon, the ancestral shire of the Wescotes. Two of his daughters married sons of the allied Wescote lines, Mary becoming the wife of Sir Richard Grenville of Bedford, and Frances the wife of Sir John Stucley of Affeton.

St. Leger Wescote, the earliest of the paternal family of whom there is positive record available, in the year 1300, married a daughter of the line descending through the titled families of Wadham and Canielupe.

The Wadham family originally came and took its name from Wadham, or Wadeham, in the parish of Knowstone in northern Devon, where it settled during the reign of the Elder King, Edward I, of the West Saxons (901-925). Thence it migrated to Egge, or Edge, near Saton, same shire. A descendant, Sir John Wadham, married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Hugh Stucley of Affeton. Their son, Nicholas Wadham (1532-1609), founded Wadham College at Oxford. His wife, Joan, was the daughter of Robert and Ann (Young) Hill of Taunton in Somerset. Ann Young and a sister, Jane, who married William Hill of Poundsford in Somerset and became the parents of Rosanna Hill, believed to have been the wife of Stukely Westcott, the Founder of this family in America, were the daughters of John and Joan (Cottingdon) Young of Axminster in Devon, and granddaughters of Walter Young, a younger son of the house of Bassildon in Berkshire, who was fined by the first Queen Mary for not taking the order of knighthood.

The Cantelupe family had risen by devoted service to the crown. William de Cantelupe, who died in 1251, was the second Baron, one of King John’s ministers. His son, Thomas de Cantelupe, 1218-1282, English saint and prelate, with his father, is named by Roger of Wanndover, as being “among the ‘evil Counsellors’ of John, apparently for no other reason than they were consistently loyal to an unpopular [page 5] master.” Walter de Cantelupe, nephew of Thomas, who died in 1265, was Bishop of Worcestershire.

Mention of the Stucleys, or Stukelys, first appears in the Huntingtonshire records before 1199—in the reign of Richard I. Richard Stucley, a descendant, appears in Somersetshire in 1414. His son, Sir Hugh Stucley, married Katherine, only daughter and sole heir of Sir John Affeton of Affeton Castle in northern Devon, whose wife was a daughter of Thomas Bratton. Sir Hugh and his wife settled on the Affeton estate, to which she was the sole heiress, and he became knight and sheriff of Devonshire.

“Affeton, the seat of the worshipful family of Stucley ,” according to Thomas Westcott’s “View of Devonshire” (1630), “came to a grandson of St. Leger Wescote who also owned Wescote wherein lived a tribe of the name.” Thus, it is learned that this grandson of St. Leger Wescote was Sir Hugh Stucley, whose mother, wife of Richard, was a daughter of St. Leger.

The second Sir Hugh Stucley, son of the preceding Hugh, lived in Affeton Castle in 1545 (died 1560), owned Wescote, and had a daughter Damaris, the name given by the Founder to his eldest daughter. The wife of this second Hugh was Jane, second daughter of Sir Lewis Pollard. It was their son, John, who married, as has been stated, Frances St. Leger, “through whom he was related to all the leading families of the West of England.”

A little American color may be added here, in passing, by stating that Sir Lewis Stucley, son of John and Frances, was knighted by James I in 1603; in 1617 was appointed guardian of Thomas Rolfe, infant son of John Rolfe and his American Indian wife, Pochantas. In June, 1618, he was ordered by the king to arrest his cousin, Sir Walter Raleigh, the first Governor of Virginia. Sir Lewis died in 1620. Pocahontas through the Rolfes, Randolphs, Fowler and James Morris families, is a direct ancestor of the writer’s two grandsons.

White Creek, NY

 Gazetteer of the State of New York (1860)  No Responses »
Aug 202006
 

This is a transcription of the White Creek, NY section from Gazetteer of the State of New York: Embracing a Comphrehensive View of the Geography, Geoloy and General History of the State and a Complete History and Description of Every County, City, Town, Village and Locality, with Full Tables of Statistics by J. H. French, Syracuse, N.Y: R. Pearsall Smith, 1860.

WHITE CREEK3–was formed from Cambridge, April 17, 1815. It is the S. E. corner town of the co. The surface of the s. portion is gently rolling, and the central and N. portions are occupied by the Taghkanick Mts. The summits of these mountains are rocky and broken and covered with forests, and their sides are bounded by abrupt declivities and perpendicular ledges. The principal streams are Hoosick River, Owl Kil, Pumpkin Hook,4Center, White, and Little White Creeks. The upper course of Owl Kil is through a deep and narrow valley abounding with picturesque views. A small vein of lead has been discovered three-fourths of a mi. E. of Posts Corners. The soil is a fine quality of gravelly loam. More sheep are raised in this town than in any other in the co. Garden seeds and flax are largely cultivated. North White Creek (p.v.) adjoins Cambridge. White Creek, (p. o.,) Posts Corners, Center White Creek, (p. o.,) Ash Grove, Dorrs Corners, Pumpkin Hook, and Martindale Corners are hamlets. The Walloomsac Patent, lying partly in this town, on the s., was settled by the Dutch. Among the other grants were the Bain, Embury, Grant and Campbell, and Lake and Van Cuyler, Patents. A colony of Irish Methodists settled near Ash Grove about 1770; and here was organized the second M. E. church in America,5by Thos. Ashton (from whom the locality was named) and Rev. Philip Embury. James and Thos. Morrison made the first settlement, near White Creek.6


Footnotes

 

3 The creek from which the town was named received its name from the white quartz pebbles that form its bed.

4 Said to be a corruption of the Indian Pom-pa-nuck, the name of a tribe of Indians, who removed hither from Conn.

5 Embury preached the first Meth. sermon in N. Y, 3 or 4 years before. The census reports 8 churches in town; 2 Bap, 2 M. E., Friends, Presb, R. C, and Asso. Ref. Presb.

6 Among the other early settlers were Buel Beebe, Maj. John Porter, Ephraim, James, and Robt. Cowan, David Slarrow, Sam’l Clark, John McClung, Geo. Duncan, Robt. and George Gilmore, Wm. Eager, Wm. Selfrage, Sam’l Ball, and John Scott. The early settlers in the E. part of the town were Thomas Ashton, Edmund Wells, John and Ebenezer Allen, David Sprague, Seth Chase, John Harroun, Thos. McCool, John Woods, Simeon Fowler, John Young, Josiah Dewey and John Corey. John Rhodes built the first clothing works, at Pumpkin Hook.