Tag Archives: George Soule

George Soule, Saturday Night Genealogy Fun

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun – Best Find of 2016 & 2017 Research Challenges

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Randy Seaver has posted the Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge for this week, which is Best Find of 2016 and Research Challenge for 2017.

Even if you didn’t read my blog posts last summer, you should be able to guess who I discovered – a Mayflower ancestor! This discovery was one I never expected because it is through my maternal grandmother, part of whose family were pre-Loyalists, migrating from Rhode Island to New Brunswick, Canada in the 1760s. Grandmother would be so pleased to know that she was a Mayflower descendant and her granddaughter was pretty excited about this, too. 🙂

I wrote several posts about piecing together the clues:

  1. My First Mayflower Link – Maybe – and It Only Took 36 Years!

 2. Mary Fones, Who Are Your Parents?

3. I Think It Works – George Soule Family

For 2017, I have several research challenges and I would be happy to break through any brick walls. I don’t want to be too greedy for 2017 – I’ve already done the genealogy happy dance twice in the last week with one brick wall I broke through and the success of one of my past blog posts being found by a descendant of a long time Williams brick wall – a daughter born in the 1700s. Those are upcoming stories and weren’t even on my priority list, but that didn’t make me any less happy!

I would really like to:

  1. Find proof of the date and place of death of my 5X great grandfather Anders Molin. He was last living over 200 miles from the area in which he spent his life and the last mention of him was in Marstrand, Sweden when he was 47 years old. It will take slogging through probate records located in over 200 Swedish courts to try to find him. I’m hoping ArkivDigital offers a great teaser rate at RootsTech and I have a distant cousin living in Sweden who also takes advantage of free access offers. Maybe between us, we will find him.
  2. I hope to be able to sort out the various Thompsons in Washington County, Kentucky, piece them together and maybe even find where their home was before they landed in Kentucky in the 1790s.
  3. I also hope to be able to sort out the various Love families in western Virginia and eastern Kentucky in the same 1790s time period. The tie into my husband’s Williams family, which I’ve researched off and on for about 25 years.
  4. Other “new” brick walls are found in my post Change of Pace – New Brick Walls for 2017.

As you can see, I have plenty to keep me busy.

Fones, George Soule

I Think It Works – George Soule Family

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A possible Mayflower line has been the BSO that has most recently caught my attention. In two recent posts, I have outlined the proposed – and accepted – Mayflower line to George Soule through Mary Fones who married Captain Ebenezer Hill, a sea captain from Rhode Island. I’ve also outlined my concerns about the accuracy of the line.

Well, recent correspondence with a state Historian of the Mayflower Society has helped bridge the gap to where I feel comfortable about previous research.

There are two pieces of information I received which greatly increase my confidence rate, mainly because I now have enough information to check primary evidence for myself.

First:

WillCrop

The page was scanned at an angle, but the beginning sentence is the important one: The will of Mary’s brother Samuel Fones, dated 19 Nov. 1739, names sister Mary Hill.

This is the mention that I found once online on someone’s page, but could never find again. Samuel died in North Kingstown, Rhode Island and those probate records are on microfilm in Salt Lake City.

Second:

WillCrop2

The next sentence provides yet a second proof document: The settlement of the estate of Capt. Jeremiah Fones includes a 1756 deposition that mentions Mary Hill, sister of the half blood to Capt. Jeremiah Fones and her children alive: Jonathan, Samuel, Mary, Ruth, Rebecca (burned). This record is badly burned and only an oval remains.

Again, checking the microfilmed probate records might be fruitful.

Samuel, son of Jeremiah and Martha (West) Fones was born in 1714, so only about 25 years old when he wrote his will. He may never have married and, thus, named siblings as heirs.

I now have enough information to verify these statements myself, but I have to admit that my Mayflower line is looking like it’s the real thing. 🙂

Fones, George Soule, Hill, Mayflower

My First Mayflower Link – Maybe – and – It Only Took 36 Years!

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You never know. You just never know what you are going to find in the family tree.

My Rhode Island lines have been a bit of a challenge because some of the colonial records are rather sparse and my families mostly either moved to Canada in the 1760s when they were convinced to move north for better land opportunities or else they left in 1783 because they were Loyalists.

One of my ancestors, Ruth Hill, married William Boone and removed to Burtt’s Corner, New Brunswick, Canada on the Loyalist ships. I have been delving into Ruth’s ancestry, but, until now, haven’t gotten much beyond her parents because of conflicting information.

Ebenezer Hill of Prudence Island married Mary Fones  of North Kingstown on 1 January 1729/30 at North Kingstown, RI.

Even though I attended the University of Rhode Island for my undergraduate degree, I have to admit that I don’t remember ever hearing of Prudence Island, but here it is:

PrudenceIslandMapCrop
Prudence Island to North Kingstown, RI
Bing Maps

Ebenezer Hill was a mariner who had achieved the status of captain by the time he died in St. Eustatius in the Caribbean on 31 October 1753.

David W. Dumas published an article in The American Genealogist (57:45-49) titled “New Englanders in St. Eustatius” with a description and short family history of each person buried in the churchyard there. Ebenezer Hill is one of those treated in the article. Mr. Dumas also mentioned that Captain Hill’s probate is to be found in St. Eustatius.

SintEustatiusCrop
Sint Eustatius
Bing Maps

By the time Ebenezer died, he and Mary were the parents of eight children, although oddly I mostly found others’ family trees with only six (son Jonathan and daughter Mary being among the missing).

Children:

  1. Jonathan, born 30 October ____, North Kingstown, RI
  2. Joseph, born 10 April 1734, Providence, RI
  3. Samuel, born 11 April 1739, Providence, RI
  4. Mary, born 5 August 1741, Providence, RI; said to have married Walter Rhodes
  5. Ruth, born 25 February 1744, Providence, RI; married William Boone, 21 May 1761
  6. Rebecca, born 14 July 1747, Providence, RI
  7. Martha, born 13 December 1749, Providence, RI
  8. Ebenezer, born 19 July 1752, Providence, RI

Normally, I would look at the time gaps and wonder if Mary had lost several children. She might have, but with Ebenezer’s life as a mariner, it is also very possible that he was away for long stretches of time. These births were recorded in the Rhode Island vital records compiled by James Arnold.

Additionally, Providence records show that coffin expenses were recorded on 25 April 1754 for the 27 February 1754 burial of “ye widdo” Hill. She was buried in the North Burial Ground in Providence. Find A Grave shows no photo of the gravestone, but says she died on 27 April 1754, aged 42 years, 5 mos., spouse of Capt. Ebenezer Hill. Therefore, she survived her husband by only four months.

Ebenezer Hill’s ancestry is a separate project, but when I saw the surname “Fones,” I figured with it being somewhat rare (I had never seen that surname in New England records) that someone must have put together a family history at some time.

Surprisingly, the family hasn’t been particularly easy to piece together, but thanks to another article in The American Genealogist (59:182) by Robert S. Wakefield, F.A.S.G., which takes a further look at Mary Fones Hill, wife of Captain Ebenezer, I think I have my first Mayflower descent!

The crucial piece of evidence is found in the will of Samuel Fones, son of Jeremiah and Martha Fones. His will was sworn on 19 November 1739 and in it he names his siblings, including Mary Hill of Providence. Martha’s mother was Susannah Soule and her grandfather was Mayflower Compact signer George Soule!

It turns out that this line has been recognized by the Mayflower Society, too. After 36 years of researching and coming to the conclusion that, although I have many colonial ancestors here well before 1640, I was convinced that I just didn’t have a Mayflower line. The bigger surprise is that my tie isn’t through a Massachusetts family, but through a Rhode Island Loyalist!

My newly discovered line:

George Soule = Mary Bucket/Becket
Francis West = Susannah Soule
Jeremiah Fones = Martha West
Ebenezer Hill = Mary Fones
William Boone = Ruth Hill
Richard Jones = Mary Boone
Peter Crouse = Rebecca Jones
William Coleman = Sarah Moriah Crouse
Hartwell Thomas Coleman = Anna Elisabeth Jensen
Vernon Tarbox Adams = Hazel Ethel Coleman
George Michael Sabo = Doris Priscilla Adams
Me – Linda Anne Sabo

The neatest part of this is that it is through my grandmother’s line. It took just as long to discover her likely ancestor Joseph Coleman who married Eunice Coffin in Nantucket as it did to find that she has a Mayflower descent. She would have loved to have known all this.

Now, if you read the title carefully, there is a MAYBE in it. Why? There are a couple of troubling pieces of data that I’ve found, in spite of the fact that the Mayflower Society has accepted this lineage.

Tomorrow’s post will take a look at the clues.