[4697] referred to as Sir Knight
The author of a Belden genealogy ("Concerning Some of the Ancstors and Descendants of Royal Denison and Olive Cadwell Belden," by JessiePerry Van Zile Belden (Mrs. James M. Belden) Printed for Private Circulation by J.B. Lippincott & Co., Phil, 1898. ) traces the English history of this family for over 800 years from before the battle of Hastings, 1066, and gives the arms.. The arms in posession of the descendants of Richard of Wethersfield have an added motto, "God my Leader." The name was first spelled Baylden until 1641; then on the Wethersfield records Beldon from 1641-1643: Belding from 1643-1736; Beldon from1736-1753; Belding from 1753-1825; Belden from 1825 to the present time. Hinman (NEHGR, vol 15, p 297) says that the spelling of the name was changed and restored to the orig. orthography through the exertions of Rev. Joshua Belden, minister at Newington CT abt 1772 by Col Elisha Williams, at that time Town Clerk of Wethersfield, who showed to him, on the early records, three several and distinct autographs of the elder John Belden.... A tradition in some branches of the family that the family is of Welch origin, that the name was orig. Bellenden, and that there was some connection with the British earldom of that name, need not be seriously credited.
Richard, the Wethersfield settler, is supposed to have been (above ref.) a son of Sir Frances Baylden, of Kippax, Co. Yorkshire, England, and to have been bp 26 May 1591. If he is the same Richard Baylden whose bold well written signature was affixed to a document (26 March 1613) stating that he was aged 19 years of age, born at Kippax, ... it is probable that our Richard of Wethersfield had seen some military service in the Low Countries before emigrating hither. The identification of the Wethersfield Richard with the Kippax Richard seems to have hinged largely in the mind of a member of the English family on his belief that the later "was the only Richard, so far as I know, who would have had money to spend in the purchase of land, as Richard of Wethersfield did."
It is true that the lands belonging to Richard Baylden in Wethersfield comprising 8 pieces in all, are located and described in.... as those given him by the Towne and those he bought of Jonas Woode,but it does not follow that he paid out much hard cash for them. We need not infer that he was a man of much superior means to his neighbors in the new settlement, more especially as the inventory of his etate, taken at his death in 1655 by John Talcott and John Nott, foots up only to 111pounds.
He must have been 48 or 50 years of age when he came to Wethersfieldin 1641, and he died 1655; but during his brief American life he accumulated considerable real estate, which he left to his children; and the family which he founded has certainly exhibited a marked financial ability, as well as a high degree of moral and intellectual force. His home lot was on the corner of Broad Street and the way leading into the Great Plain and was sold in 1742.
Richard Belden was appointed in 1646 one of the Town's cow-keepers or "herders" to look after the settler's cattle, during their daily pasturing in the meadows belonging to the Town - an office which in no wise affects our estimate of his character or social standing - since in those old days, men seem to have been willing to serve the community in any duty which was assigned to them.
_Adam DEMOUTH _______+
| (1735 - 1797) m 1755
_Jacob DEMOUTH ______|
| (1763 - 1835) |
| |_Charlotte HUSK _____
| (1734 - ....) m 1755
|
|--Deborah DEMOUTH
| (1809 - 1884)
| _____________________
| |
|_Deborah ____________|
(1767 - 1833) |
|_____________________
[4496]
Also listed with the family on the 1850 Census is William Heard (sp?) a laborer from England
Deborah is not mentioned by either May Sommers or Mrs. Weber. She is included in the genealogy from Lonnie Demouth McManus. She is also listed in Marsha Bybee's genealogy. She is in the right place, Morris County, marrying a man from the neighborhood, Lewis Tucker of Pequannac. She is at the right time to be Jacob's child. Born in 1809, she would be the youngest, and would come as her mother reached the end of her childbearing years, her early 40's. She also bears her mother's name. Deborah married Lewis Tucker in 1829. Children of theirs that I found are Mary Ann, John Henry, Harriet, Alice, and George W. John Henry died in the Civil War.
[4499] Also listed with the family on the 1850 Census is William Heard (sp?) a laborer from England
[4495] received 13 Jan 2006
[11312] 1st Presbyterian Church of Rockaway.
_Adam DEMOUTH _______+
| (1735 - 1797) m 1755
_Jacob DEMOUTH ______|
| (1763 - 1835) |
| |_Charlotte HUSK _____
| (1734 - ....) m 1755
|
|--John DEMOUTH
| (1794 - 1861)
| _____________________
| |
|_Deborah ____________|
(1767 - 1833) |
|_____________________
[245]
February 22, 2006
Dear Children,
Tonight I want to tell you about the first Demouth who migrated to Wisconsin.
John Demouth
(1794 - 1861)
Most of what we know about John has come down through his granddaughter, May Sommers. It is written as what I call The Demouth History. Aunt Musa had a copy of it which she misplaced in her Bible. She hunted and hunted for it and felt terrible that she had lost it. When she died my dad and brother went to Seattle to clear out her apartment. They called me and asked what I wanted. I said, "No, I don't want anything." And then as an afterthought I said, "I would like to have her old Bible." When I opened the package out fell the May Sommers' Demouth history going back to Jacob (b. 1763). Here's what May had to say about John Demouth.
"It was in the great mansion Jacob and his wife's children were born nine of them who were: Frederick, Adam, James, John, Thomas, Jacob, Mary, Betsy, and Charlotte. . . . At the age of twenty-four (John) became acquainted with Mariah Levi. She had come from Connecticut to New Jersey to keep house for her brother. At the age of twenty-three she and John Demouth were married (my grandparents). The wedding was in the year 1818. The first two years of their married life were spent in Connecticut, after which they returned to New Jersey. John was a farmer. To this union six children were born: Samuel, Chalon, James, Jacob, Frances and Semantha, my mother the youngest of the family. John and Mariah raised their family in New Jersey then migrated to Wisconsin in 1848. Semantha was twelve years old when her parents moved to Wisconsin. It was in Wisconsin John Demouth was killed by a tree falling on him that he had just chopped down. "
Isn't it interesting that they came to Wisconsin in the year we gained statehood.
In 1848 Calumet County was a dense wilderness. At that time railroads and steamboats were hardly heard of and roads through the wilderness were nothing better that Indian trails. The first non-Indian person arrived in the county in 1845, only three years before our John and his family. The following description of Calumet County as first experienced by white settlers comes from the Wisconsin State Historical Society Website (http://www.wisconsinhistory.org). It is quoted from "Chilton's History a Frontier Epic" by Col. Jerome Anthony Watrous as published in the Milwaukee Sentinel on 11 April 1910.
"(Calumet County) was miles and miles of beautiful woodland, hundreds of thousands of stately maples, enough of them cut down and burned in log heaps to bring millions of dollars if they were there to market today: oak, birch, beech, baswood, elm, cedar, hemlock, some pine - not much - and ironwood. . . . The greatest concert company ever organized could not provide music that could compare . . . (with) daily concerts the birds of those old forests gave us without price or praise.
"In those days the county was one great deer park. There were tens of thousands of them. No one wanted for fresh meat or dried venison. . . They came to cabin doors at night as did bears, panthers, wildcats, and other game. Between the clearings of Hayton and Gravesville, (That's precisely where John's homestead was.) two miles apart, I have seen droves of deer in which there were hundreds. . . . There is one thing of those days I would not ask to be repeated, and that is the unearthly howling of wolves. Then there were the dancing waters of rivers and brooks so shaded that only now and then a bit of sunshine touched them."
Here are excerpts from another article from the same site. This one's from The Chilton Times 8 Feb 1930, an article entitled, "A Pioneer Settler." It was written about a woman whose family pioneered in the same county as John and Mariah and their kids. Her family came 16 years later than our John's did, but I'm sure their experiences were very similar.
"They bought an 80 acre tract upon which their humble, one room, log cabin was erected, the bare ground serving as a floor, the cracks in the logs, plastered with clay and leaves, the roof was covered with shakes, a sort of shingle split from a straight grained, 4 foot log and laid on like our shingles. The first soil of the pioneers was broken with grub hoes, corn, peas, and a few potatoes constituting the first crop. The corn was ground in a hand mill, the peas were roasted, ground, and used as a coffee, and it had a bitter taste. The cornmeal was made into mush. After more land was cleared a bit of wheat was seeded, the first large crop they had consisting of six bushels of wheat which required two days for threshing. . . .The six bushels of wheat were taken to a grist mill and exchanged for a barrel of flour. . . .(The) father walked to (the closest grist mill in) Green Bay over the winding Indian trail and carried back a sack of flour on his shoulders. . . .Several Indian tribes had their camps along the Lake and the River. They were very friendly to the old settlers and their families, usually came in groups of 5 or 6 and asked for pork and flour. In exchange they would bring the settlers venison and game and sometimes tanned hides and buckskins. . . . (She) picked berries (and sold them in the closest town) for 6 cents a quart. She also carried butter and eggs to (closest town) the price received being 6 cents per pound for the butter and 8 cents per doz. for the eggs and in those days butter and eggs were considered a luxury. . . . Pigs and cows roamed the woods as there were no fences and often when cows failed to come home they were obliged to search for them finding them after hours, many miles from home. . . .
"Snakes were very numerous as were squirrels and other animals, the squirrels became a regular pest. They would go into the wheat fields and eat off the heads of the wheat. Deer also molested them by feeding upon the grain and the vegetables. One of the children's chores was to shoo away the deer when they came into the grain fields. After more clearing was done, rail fences were built and sheep kept chiefly for the wool to supply their needs for woolen cloths and mittens, caps, shawls, and stockings. Flax seed was planted for the family linens and homespuns. "
In 1850, after John and his family had been there for two years, there were still only 381 families in the whole of Calumet County.
All of John and Mariah's children came out to Wisconsin. After John died from the falling tree in 1861, Mariah and her children continued to farm in Calumet County. Here's what we know about the rest of the family:
Samuel, the eldest, was born in 1820 in Connecticut before John and Mariah returned to New Jersey. Samuel wasn't around for the 1850 census, but in 1860 he was living with his parents and siblings in Charlestown, Calumet County. He was a shoemaker. By the time of the 1870 Census, it looks like he had married and lost his wife because two young girls, Anna A., and Almanza are living with him as well as his mother, Mariah. His daughter Almanza married her cousin, Albert Barber, son of John Demouth's sister Frances.
Chalon was born about 1826 in New Jersey. He was listed with his parents family in Calumet County, Wisconsin on the 1850 census as "Chilion." I have found no trace of him after that.
James was born about 1830 in New Jersey. He married a girl named Elsey Jane. She appears on the 1860 census living with the John Demouth family, as does their first child, Jenny L. Their other children were Helena, Sherman, Mary, and Nathan. James served in the Union Army in the Civil War, with the 16th Wisconsin Infantry and also with the 42nd. It is interesting that he named his boy born in 1864 Sherman. His brother, Jacob spent time with Sherman's army down in Georgia. Perhaps James did also.
Frances Elizabeth was born in New Jersey on August 31, 1830. She didn't show up with her parents on the 1850 Census but made up for it in 1860. That year she was on the census with her birth family with the occupation seamstress, and also with her husband, Joseph L. Barber, who also had moved to Calumet County, Wisconsin from New Jersey. Frances and Joseph had seven children. They were Hannah, Semantha, Theodore, Albert A., Joseph L., Frank W., and Lillian. In addition Samuel's daughter Almanza came to live with them sometime between 1870 and 1880. Two of their children married Demouth cousins. Albert married Almanza Demouth, and Lillie married John C. Demouth, son of Frances's brother Jacob. After 1880 Frances and Joseph moved to Clark County, Wisconsin. They are both buried there in the Christie Cemetery.
Jacob was our ancestor. We'll hear more of him later.
Semantha was born 23 December 1836 in New Jersey. She was in Calumet County with her parents in 1850. In November of 1852 she married Bradley Webster. Together they had eight children as follows: Freeman, Ann, May, Bertha, Weltha, Almeron, Frances, and Charles. Semantha is the person whose tales inspired her daughter May to write down the family history and we are very glad of that.
Besides these six children several other interesting Demouths appear on the 1860 Census living with John and Mariah. There is Martha Demouth, age 24, a service worker. Then there is Jonas Demouth, age 33, a farmer born in Connecticut. And finally, Maria Demouth, born in Wisconsin, age 10. It's possible Martha could be Samuel's wife. I don't have a clue about Jonas and Maria.
Our ancestor John Demouth raised his family in the comfortable surroundings of his ancestral home. When the yougest was twelve he transplanted them all to Wisconsin in the same year as statehood was granted. He was a pioneer in Calumet County when it was still covered by virgin forest. With the help of four strong young sons he cleared the land and built a farm. He provided two sons for the Union Army in the Civil War but he did not live to see that, dying tragically as a tree being cut fell on him. Perhaps the forest was having its revenge. We are very proud of our Wisconsin Pioneer ancestor, John Demouth.
Here's how we are related to John Demouth. John Demouth married Mariah Levi and they had a son Jacob Demouth. Jacob married Cordelia Martindale and they had a son Samuel Demouth. Samuel married Elzora Pierce and they had a daughter Thelma DeMouth. Thelma married Forrest Zimmerman and they had Dianne Zimmerman. Dianne married Paul Stevens and they had Dawne Stevens. Dawne married Jason Pamplin and they had . . .Sarah, Hannah, Timmy, and Becky. So Hooray for John Demouth!
Love, Granny
John age 65
Maria age 64
Saml 40 shoemaker b. Conn.
James 30 farm laborer NJ
Frances 29 seamstress NJ
Jacob 26 farm NJ
Martha 24 service NJ
Jonas 33 farmer Conn
Jane 18 NY
Jenny 5/12 WI
Maria 10 WI
1830 Census lists John as having 2 male children under 5 yrs (Chalon ?) and
one male between 5 & 10 Probably Samuel.
1 male 30 - 40
1 female 30 - 40
1840 Census:
1 male under 5 years ?
2 males 5 - 10 (jacob and James)
1 " 10 - 15 (Chalon)
1 " 40 - 50
1 female under 5 (Semantha)
1 " 5 - 10 (Frances)
1 " 40 - 50
1850 census John appears on Wisc. census as John Demoth with wife Maria and 4 children Chilion, James, Jacob, and Samantha
_Paul Ames GREELEY ____+
| (1832 - 1924) m 1854
_David LeForest GREELY _|
| (1858 - 1913) m 1885 |
| |_Martha Moore STINSON _
| (1837 - 1892) m 1854
|
|--Florence Pearl GREELEY
| (1886 - ....)
| _______________________
| |
|_Florance M. SHEPHERD __|
(1867 - 1929) m 1885 |
|_______________________
[11530] Methodist Church, Rev. Harry Philpott presiding.
__
|
_Johann Jakob MUELLER _|
| (1743 - 1782) |
| |__
|
|
|--Salome MUELLER
| (1772 - ....)
| __
| |
|_Anna Rosina HOERNER __|
(1746 - 1778) |
|__
__
|
_Henry SKELTON ______|
| (1450 - ....) |
| |__
|
|
|--Elizabeth SKELTON
| (1472 - ....)
| __
| |
|_____________________|
|
|__