For several years, a search for the parents of Sophronia Abbott Jacobs has not proven successful so I assembled all the information Writemapper, a mind-mapping tool and then a simple memo format with sources listed to create a conclusion. It is uploaded to Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org and has invited additional sources to be recommended to me.
It doesn't really matter for long term genealogy because the men believed to me her father are brothers. One or the other, the Abbott line is an interesting one and I look forward to concrete sources if there are any.
It does matter if anyone is ever interested in Daughters of the American Revolution application because only Ebenezer Abbott is documented to have served in the revolution.
At this time, I am confident in my research and opinion but will update if there are any comments or suggestions. There are, of course, many generations between Sophronia and Ebenezer and Rufus and still more to their ancestors. With great interest and appreciation of their lives and struggles, this is the story.
Who Is the Father of
Sophronia Abbott Jacobs?
Sophronia Abbott Jacobs’
daughter Mary Jane Jacobs Rider emigrated with her husband Azariah Rider from a
farm community near Ridgefield, McHenry County, Illinois to Sioux City (1) Iowa
before 1874 (2). She is my maternal
3x great-grandmother. The family history
passed along to my generation centered around Sioux City and Omaha, Nebraska,
my hometown. None of it included Sophronia or Illinois much
less Massachusetts so there is no word-of-mouth or family tradition information.
This is the direct line from
me to Sophronia:
Mary Sharon Wilmes
Mary Virginia Ryder Wilmes,
my mother
Thomas Francis (Frank Thomas)
Ryder, her father
Fred Rider, his father
Mary J Jacobs Ryder, his
wife
Sophronia Abbott Jacobs, her
mother
She also may have used the
spelling Safrona or Sopronia but the probate documents use Sophronia (3). Her
children listed in the probate include my great-great-grandmother Mary J or Mary
Jo Jacobs then residing in Sioux City, Iowa, the wife of Azariah’s son Fred
Rider.
Over several years, a
considerable amount of research about Sophronia has presented me with this
question: who were her parents?
Unsourced claims of her
parents and place of birth
Many in Ancestry.com, Family
Search.org and MyHeritage.com name her father as Rufus Abbot who was born in
1784 in Murrayfield, Hampshire County (originally Hampden), Massachusetts which
became Chester, Massachusetts in 1775. I have used the
AmericanAncestors.org databases, including the Chester Births to 1850 compilation
(5) but found only the birth of Ebenezer’s daughter Tryphena in 1812 in Chester
Births to 1850 about their children. It
is my belief that it is possible that few of the children of either brother
were born in Chester.
Is her father Rufus Abbott?
Some online family
historians are quite firm about their claim of Rufus as Sophronia’s father but
not even one of many who claim him have even one source citation for that
claim. In fact, there are no birth records for any of the children for
either man. At least one, Ebenezer’s son George Abbott, in federal census
lists, repeatedly states New York as his place of birth. Some of the children of Rufus may have been
born in Norfolk, Lichfield County, Connecticut.
Although the names Rufus and Ebenezer are unused in the modern era,
there were so many of each in the records that it seems impossible to identify
these two specific Abbotts in New York State.
Several years ago, when Family
Search staff included Sophronia in a list of the Rufus Abbott family in Jackson
County, Missouri, I offered the sources to select Ebenezer as her father, and they
agreed that Sophronia is not mentioned anywhere in Missouri. In fact, she
was married (1835) (7) by the time one Family Search source suggested she was
in Missouri. Rufus was probably in a
different county, Caldwell County, Missouri by the early 1830’s. This was a county created by the state of
Missouri to isolate Mormon immigrants. There
is an unsourced listing on an ancestry.com tree of persons who forfeited land
for tax defaults in the mid- 1860’s which includes Rufus. Because it is not sourced and I could not
locate it, it is not included here.
The result is an endless
loop of cross-referenced family trees with the 1850 federal census for McHenry
County, Illinois as the earliest and only source of Sophronia’s birth occurring
in Massachusetts.
Neither Sophronia nor her siblings
– or cousins, whichever man is her father – are shown in Chester Records to
1850 or (just confirmed with the help of the staff of the Pittsfield,
Massachusetts Berkshire Athenaeum) in the index of Chester Baptist Church
Records (6). Those Baptist Church names are not included in the Chester Births
to 1850.
In addition, the tax records
for Chester do not show either brother owning real property there, only their
father. It does appear that their
grandfather Joseph, as well as uncles Joseph Jr., Abiel and John Abbott owned
real property in Chester. The father Joseph’s land and tax responsibilities
fell to his widow Lois by 1798. (8)
There may be reasons there
are so few records in Western Massachusetts which is discussed below.
The Abbotts’ Conversion by
Mormons
I include this section
because the demographic material might have provided documentation of her birth
and birthplace. There are brief records
that show both brothers converted to Mormonism after they both moved to central
New York, but not where or precisely how long they remained there. The index card records I obtained indicated
that Rufus was converted by “Thomas” in New York and that Ebenezer “denied the
faith” at an undated point. There is a
Thomas Abbott included in lists of persons who lived in Jackson County,
Missouri during the period of Mormon settlement there. That is the same list that does not include
Rufus. It is possible to trace Rufus’ later
move across the country, all in Mormon communities. I
have not found records
for the births that occurred in early Mormon communities in upstate New York.
Of course, the Ohio area to
which they moved was part of the new Northwest Territory. I
think it is reasonable to say that following removal of native Americans from
those lands, the federal government opened them to further settlement on
legally documented purchases or land bounties from Revolutionary War Service. There were federal requirements and mortgages
were available to assist settlers with land purchases. Ebenezer the father of Rufus and Ebenezer, a documented
Revolutionary War veteran, may have used a land bounty in the Northwest
Territory/Ohio or Illinois but I have not found it. It does not appear from searches through
documents about the area that there were birth records kept at that early time.
It is not yet clear when both
eventually moved on to the Cuyahoga County, Ohio area but it was somewhere during
the same time as the large Mormon migration from the region where it was
founded in central New York. As suggested earlier, Rufus moved on again in
the early 1830’s with his some of his family to Missouri, where, after his
departure, his son Hiram died from injuries suffered in an October 1838, anti-Mormon
pogrom at Haun’s Mill (9a). Rufus and
his wife moved back to the Nauvoo, Illinois area (Hancock, Illinois), on to the
Council Bluffs, Iowa/Omaha, Nebraska area and then by a pioneer wagon or cart train
led by Daniel Snyder to Salt Lake City (9b) in 1848. I spoke with a representative of the Mormon
Trail Center at Historic Winter Quarters in Omaha and Rufus and Anna were not
located in the records of the Council Bluffs or Omaha Mormon Winter Quarters so
they may have been with a daughter’s family settled in that area of Iowa until
the westward migration. Rufus remarried twice after the death of his first wife
Anna Owen and is buried in Payson, Utah County, Utah. I did
not locate a probate for Rufus.
It appears that several of
the children of Rufus and Anna relocated to or remained in Iowa. A full family history of all children of
Rufus Abbott has not been completed because there are still no birth records
but a number have been traced. Using the
genealogical term “FAN” (Friends, Associates, Neighbors), some research has
been done but without birth records, it has not been possible to prove anything
about birth locations-or the precise family size.
Rufus was the older and it
appears that he left Massachusetts by 1811.
Ancestry.com family trees show two or three of his daughters whose birth
dates fit that report: Minerva 1811 born
in Litchfield Connecticut (no source cited), Malona with the same birth date in
one tree and Parintha or Perentha born 1816 or 1817 (cemetery records show
birth 1817) in Hartford County, Connecticut.
The 1820 federal census report for Rufus in Mayfield, Cuyahoga, Ohio (7Aug
1820) shows two females under 10 when there might have been three or four if
Sophronia was part of the family. Two of those women appear in Mormon records,
one California and the other Iowa. The
other three all lived into the late 1870’s and 1880’s.
Sophronia’s obituary,
probate records and headstone show 23 February 1816 as her birthdate. All the unsourced entries for Sophronia show
her birthplace as Chester, Massachusetts.
That would mean theoretically that if Rufus is her father, he stayed in
Connecticut for a time and moved back to Massachusetts before moving back to
Connecticut or on to either New York or Ohio.
The next two daughters of Rufus and Anna are apparently Dora 1819 and
Ruby Ann 1821, possibly in Ohio. It is
certainly possible that both brothers left for these new areas without their
families for a time and returned but the distances are considerable and meant
difficult journeys.
Is her father
Ebenezer Abbott?
I have found several ways
Sophronia is possibly the daughter of Ebenezer Abbott. Sophronia’s possible sister and
brother-in-law connected her to Ebenezer Abbott. Sophronia married Norman
James Jacobs in Cuyahoga County, Ohio in 1835 and it appears that Ebenezer’s
daughter Juliette Abbott a year earlier married Norman’s brother Riley. A
1906 historical encyclopedia of McHenry County, Illinois citizens does refer to
another daughter, Betsey A. Abbott, who married a local McHenry County farmer
and businessman Mark Hickox (10). The entry states that Betsey arrived
with her sister Sophronia before her parents Ebenezer and (Berniece) Nicy
Pomeroy moved there a short time later. Ebenezer
and Nicy died and are buried in McHenry County (11). Rufus and Anna Abbott never lived in McHenry
County, Illinois.
As discussed above, entries
in Family Search, Ancestry and My Heritage use the document compilation Chester
Births to 1850 (5) to list the birthplaces of children of both brothers in
Chester, Massachusetts. There should be church records of that. There is
no entry for Sophronia’s birth or any other children of Rufus or Ebenezer
except Tryphena Abbott in the Chester Births to 1850 data for either church.
Searches in towns around Chester and Hampden and Hampshire Counties in
Massachusetts and Connecticut do not find records of her there. Some of the children of Rufus and Anna
include Norfolk, Litchfield, Connecticut as the birthplace. I did eliminate
from consideration one Sophronia born in eastern Massachusetts because it
appeared that woman married and died in eastern Massachusetts.
Sophronia died in Ridgefield,
McHenry County, according to an obituary in a local paper and her birthdate is
listed as 23 February 1816. A search for births in the central New York
area is difficult and has located nothing about Sophronia. It is not clear to me that any central New
York church would have the birth record of a child born to a Mormon convert
there. One of Ebenezer’s sons, George,
repeatedly states in federal census records and his Civil War draft
registration that he was born in New York.
It is possible that Rufus,
the older of the two, was living in upstate New York by the 1810’s. Tax roll
entries are available for both brothers in both New York (only possibly because
there may have been multiple Ebenezers and Rufuses) and Ohio (definitely, Rufus
in Mayfield in 1820 and Ebenezer in Mayfield in 1833 and 1837) but do not
really pinpoint their exact departure or arrival dates. There is no
record of Sophronia’s birth in Ohio.
Perhaps their rapid
relocations meant they did not have local church relationships which would have
recorded her birth. I have not yet fully
researched deeds in New York to establish specific addresses for land purchases
and occupancies but have begun “browsing” FamilySearch unindexed deeds.
Reasons the records were poor
Working to provide any other
explanation for the missing birth records, I also noted that 1816 was a very
unusual weather year because high level atmospheric pollution caused by a
massive volcanic eruption in Indonesia led to massive crop failures across New
England (12). The authors of Upstate Cauldron (13) note that it was the
reason that Mormon founder Joseph Smith’s family moved to New York from
Massachusetts. Further,
it might have been economic disruption from the Panic of 1819 that led to
church record omissions.
There was a political and
doctrinal split between factions of the Chester Congregational Church leading ultimately
to establishment of a new Chester Baptist Church but those records do not
include birth records of any Abbotts, either Rufus or Ebenezer (14). One of the Elders of the Baptist Church was Sam
Abbott but the index contains no reference to either Rufus or Ebenezer. Perhaps there was a time between the division
of the Congregational Church of Chester and formation of the new Chester Baptist
Church during which some births may have gone unrecorded.
It is possible that Sophronia
was adopted but I found nothing in court records available on Ancestry and
Family Search that recorded an adoption. I have been told that
adoption was a rather informal matter at that time.
I list only some of the
sources and material located in this research.
If helpful, I will email or mail copies of any of the other sources. Also,
my full name is Mary Wilmes and that is my Member Name in ancestry.com.
I believe Ebenezer is the father of Sophronia Abbott
Jacobs.
What other values or weights of proof should I put on this
information? What other records or sources should I search?
Sources
(1) Illinois Statewide Marriage Index, Illinois State Archives,
www.CyberdriveIllinois.com, Vol A.,Lic. No. 2316, Accessed 9/4/2014.
(2) Original data: Microfilm of Iowa State Censuses, Ancestry.com. Iowa, U.S., State Census
Collection, 1836-1925 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com
Operations, Inc., 2007.
(3) Probate
packets, 1840-1957; Author: Illinois. County Court (McHenry County);
Probate Place: McHenry, Illinois
(4) [https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/Massachusetts_County_Creation_Dates_and_Parent_Counties
(5) New
England Historic Genealogical Society; Boston, Massachusetts; Vital
Records of Chester, Massachusetts to the Year 1850 and Ancestry.com.
Massachusetts, U.S., Compiled Birth, Marriage, and Death Records, 1700-1850
[database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2018.
(6) Chester
Baptist Church Records. Held by
Pittsfield Berkshire Athenaeum, Call Number LH BERKCOL 974.49 C42.15v.3. Accessed by email March 2021 from Donald
Warfield, Local History and Genealogy Department, Berkshire Athenaeum, 1
Wendell Ave., Pittsfield, MA 01201 (413) 499-9480.
(7) Cuyahoga
County Archive; Cleveland, Ohio; Cuyahoga
County, Ohio, Marriage Records, 1810-1973; Volume: Vol 3-4; Page: 92; Year
Range: 1832 Oct - 1849 Sep
Title Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Marriage Records and Indexes,
1810-1973
Author. Ancestry.com.
Publisher Ancestry.com Operations, Inc.Publisher Date 2010 Publisher Location Provo, UT, USA
(8) Massachusetts
and Maine: Direct Tax, 1798, (Online
database. /AmericanAncestors.org, New
England Historic Genealogical Society, 2003) Original Manuscript: Direct tax list of 1798 for Massachusetts and
Maine, 17998. Accessed March 20,
2021.
(9a) Ancestry.com. Membership
of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1830-1848 [database
on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2013. Original data:
Black, Susan Easton, compiler. Membership of The Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints, 1830–1848. 50 vols. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young
University Religious Studies Center, 1989. Private Donor. Description: A “Who’s Who” of early LDS church members
with a genealogical goldmine of details.
(9b) Rufus was a
Pioneer of 1847 arriving in Salt Lake Valley with Capt. Daniel Spencer's 100,
Capt. Ira Eldredge's 50 and Capt. Samuel Ensign's 10 Source: Publication: Pioneers of 1847: a Sesquicentennial
Remembrance. Ancestry.com. LDS
Pioneer and Handcart Companies, 1847-1856 [database on-line]. Provo, UT,
USA: Ancestry.com, 2013. Original data: Black, Susan Easton. Pioneers of
1847: A Sesquicentennial Remembrance. Provo, Utah: © 1980. Private donor.
(10) Historical
Encyclopedia of Illinois, edited by Newton Bateman and D. Paul Selby, vol.
2, Chicago: Munsell Publishing Co., 1903.
Arrived with her sister and brother-in-law, Sophronia and Norman J.
Jacobs.
|
(11) Ebenezer
Abbott
Death1 Nov 1852 (aged 61)
McHenry County, Illinois, USA
|
|
|
Burial
|
Ostend Cemetery
McCullom Lake, McHenry County, Illinois, USA
|
|
Plot
|
B8
|
|
FindAGrave Memorial ID
|
14587511 ·
|
(12) The
Year Without Summer: 1816 and the
Volcano That Darkened the World and Changed History by William Klingaman. Kindle Edition, 351 pages. Published February 26, 2013 by St.
(13) Upstate
Cauldron: Eccentric Spiritual Movements in Early New York State by Jocelyn
Godwin. Paperback, 386 pages. Published June 1, 2015, by Excelsior
Editions/State University of New York Press ISBN: 1438455941
(14) From Our
Country and It’s People
Accessed through Google Play Books 2/20/21 page 368 original
Regarding the Baptist Church:
“It arose from a personal difference between the pastor Rev.
Mr. Bascom and Dr. Martin Phelps, one of the prominent members of the
church. Out of this feud is said to have
grown the Baptist church enterprise, organized in 1811. Dr. Phelps, either voluntarily or by
compulsion, withdrew from the Congregational church, and with others joined in
the formation of a Baptist church, which was incorporated by an act of the
legislature dated February 26, 1811.
(Long list of incorporators). The people above named were from all the
different parts of Chester. Elder Grant
became the first minister. Elder(Samuel?) Abbott…
From chestermass.com, Vol. 3, Issue 1 March 2004
Accessed 2/20/21 through google.com
The Baptist and Independent Society of Chester
“The story of political and religious divisions in Chester
that led to the creation of the Chester Baptist Church as covered in a previous
edition of our newsletter (Volume 1, Issue 2, May 2002). In summary, Dr. Martin Phelps arrived in
Chester late in the 1790’s at the invitation of the Reverend Aaron Bascom,
pastor of the church here, after Phelps was involved in a dispute with his
pastor in Belchertown. Though his early
years in the Chester church were harmonious, Dr. Phelps was eventually
excommunicated partly due to some doctrinal differences with the church, but
also because he was a Jeffersonian Democrat and the Rev. Aaron Bascom and his deacons were Adams’
Federalists. Upon his excommunication
from the Congregational Church in 1808 he sought to join the Baptist faith and
practices. They asked him to explain his
past criticisms and he wrote “Scripture Reasons for Renouncing the Principles
of Pedobaptism and Uniting with the Baptists”.
He read the pamphlet publicly in the Hinsdale church, which accepted his
conversion and baptized him on July 29, 1809.”
Other Sources:
St. Martins Press Accessed
through google Play Books H
History of the town of Goshen, Hampshire County, Massachusetts, Chapter
III, 1782. “1816. This year was
remarkable for its cold summer. Severe
frosts occurred in every month. June 7
and 8 snow fell, and it was too cold for comfort even in winter clothing, and frosts cut this corn
down to the roots, but it was replanted.
September 25, corn was still in the milk and so thoroughly frozen by
three wintry nights, that it never ripened and was scarcely worth gathering. Breadstuffs were scarce and prices high, and
the poorer class of people were often in straits for want of food.”
Gutman, Robert. “Birth and Death Registration in
Massachusetts. I. The Colonial Background,
1639-1800.” The Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly Vol. 36, No. 1 (Jan 1958):
58-74 (Accessed through JSTOR, which
requires registration)
