USA > Wisconsin > Rock County > Beloit > Past made present : the first fifty years of the First Presbyterian Church and congregation of Beloit, Wisconsin together with a history of Presbyterianism in our state up to the year 1900 > Part 25
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Rev. Alfred Eddy's Puritan Ancestry.
In 1630, Oct. 29, O. S. arrived at Plymouth, Mass., the *Handmaid, just eighty days from London, bringing among her sixty passengers Samuel Eddy, a son of Rev. Wm. Eddy of Cranbrook, Kent County, England. Samuel was the fifth of eleven children, all of whom bore Bible names, the sign of Puritanism.
+In 1651, at Plymouth, his wife, Elizabeth, was fined ten shillings (afterwards remitted) for wringing out clothes on the Lord's Day. May 1st, 1660, she was summoned to court and admonished for walking from Plymouth to Boston on Sunday to visit a sick friend.
Samuel died in 1685. His fourth son was Obediah, born 1645, died 1722, a constable, surveyor, selectman. This Obediah's third child, Samuel, born 1675, died 1752, lived in Middleboro, Mass., and was a man of large frame and remarkable physical strength. February 3, 1702, he married Melatiah Pratt (born 1674, died 1769). Their first son was a third Samuel (born 1710, died November 3, 1746), who in 1733 married Lydia Alden, the daughter of John and Hannah (White) Alden and great grand-daughter of John Alden, the Pilgrim. Their fifth child (a fourth Samuel, born January 23, 1742, died in 1821), an orderly sergeant in the Revolutionary army and a learned and religious man, was buried at Eddy Ridge, N. Y. (In a letter written from Williamson, N. Y., 1819, in his 77th year, to his cousin, Captain Joshua Eddy of Middleboro, Mass., he says : " I should be very glad of an interview with you and to recognize (recall) the dangers, the difficulties
*The Pilgrim Republic, by John A, Goodwin, p. 340. Boston, Ticknor & Co., 1888.
+Genealogy Eddy Family, J. S. Cushing, printer, Boston, Mass., ISSI.
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and the privations that we have endured together at Saratoga, at White Marsh, at Valley Forge and at Monmouth, which appear now like a dream.") This Samuel's first son, David (born at Middleboro, Mass., March 3d, 1774, died at Eddy Ridge, N. Y. June 9th, 1840), married May 25, 1806, Deborah Shaw (died 1847). Their fourth son was Alfred, the sub- ject of this sketch (born Williamson, N. Y., March 1st, 1815 ; died Niles, Mich. March 5, 1883). September 17, 1839, he married Catharine H. Wil- cox at Holley, N. Y. Their first children, Catharine J. and Jane Josephine, died during infancy. The names of the other children are given on page 133. Alice Augusta married William E. Potter, Esq. May 27th, 1869 : Alfred Delavan (now a lawyer of Chicago) was married October 7th, 1869, to Miss Caroline Hunter Silvey of Chicago; Catharine Louisa was married April 20th, 1871, to Lucius G. Fisher of Chicago, son of the L. G. Fisher, Esq., mentioned on page 34 as having suggested the name "Beloit." Ida Adelaide married Charles S. Cleaver May 3. 1870. Cora Virginia was mar- ried at Niles, Mich., to Edward L. Hamilton, Esq., October 19th, 1883.
NOTE. Lucius G. Fisher, elected a trustee of Beloit College June, 1900, is the president of the Union Bag and Paper Company of Chicago. Hon. E. L. Hamilton is a member of Congress, Fourth Michigan District.
The armorial shield of the ancestral Eddy family in England, had on it three old men's heads, couped at the shoulders ; the crest was a cross cross- let and dagger placed saltier wise, with the motto, " Crux mihi grata quies." Only those who were in the holy wars were entitled to have the cross in their armorial bearings. Evidently, therefore, some early ancestor, having fought the infidel heathen and devoted his sword to the cross, had found in the latter that "acceptable rest " which the motto records. ( See page 7. )
Che Puritan and Revolutionary Ancestry of Benjamin and Lucy A. Brown.
The Browns of England were nearly all Separatists, or Puritans, and endured much persecution. Many of them practically exemplified the motto of their ancient progenitor, Christopher of Tolethorpe, A. D. 1480, "Apprendre a mourir," which we may read, "Learn how to die."
The greatest exodus of Puritans from the Old World to the New occurred between 1620 and 1640, notably in 1634.
John Brown (son of a John Browne), baptized at Hawkedon, Suffolk County, England, October 11, 1601, arrived at Boston in the Lion, September 16, 1632, settled at Watertown (West Boston), and died in 1636. He was probably an uncle of the John Brown (1631-1697) who married Hester Make- peace, of Boston, April 24, 1655, lived at Cambridge, Falmouth and Water- town, and left eleven children. The ninth of these was Joseph Brown (1679- 1766), a cordwainer and a Selectman of Weston, Mass., who November 15, 1699, married Ruhamah Wellington (1680-1772), of Lexington, Mass., and their married life lasted sixty-seven years. In May 1713, both joined the Lexington church, of which he became a deacon. Of their nine chil- dren the eighth was William (1723-1793) (baptized April 28, 1723), the paternal grandfather of Benjamin.
March 5, 1746, William married Elizabeth Conant, of Concord, N. H. (1726-1810), and they had twelve children. During the French and Indian
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BENJAMIN BROWN, 1853.
Born at Framingham, Mass .. June 8, 1803. Died at Beloit, Wis., July 15, 1890.
war the troop of his brother, Capt. Josiah Brown, was ordered out on an alarm in the Connecticut valley September 23 to October 27, 1747, and this William was in it. In that same year he unconsciously provided for the first blood shed in the Revolutionary War by purchasing a slave, called Crispus Attucks, born of Indian father and negro mother. In the Boston Gazette of October 2, 1750, is this advertisement : "Ran away from his master, William Brown, of Framingham, on the 30th of September last, a mulatto fellow about twenty-seven years of age, named Crispus, six feet two inches high, etc. Ten pounds reward will be paid for his return." Crispus Attucks was not returned but worked about the wharves of Boston, and was known as a powerful, turbulent fellow. March 5, 1770, he headed the street mob which opposed eight British soldiers under Captain Preston. Attucks cried out, "They dare not fire," and seizing one of the soldiers threw him down. The man immediately jumped up and shot Attucks dead. Then at Preston's command the other soldiers fired and two more of the
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MRS. LUCY ANN BROWN. 1855.
Born at Framingham, Mass., Nov. 20, 1808. Died at Beloit, Wis., September 1, 1869.
people were killed. This was the "Boston Massacre," so called. A monu- ment, which bears a bas relief of Attucks, in dark granite (erected in recent years by the New England Anti-Slavery Society), now stands on Boston Common.
November 12, 1746, William Brown bought for two hundred pounds the outlet of Cochituate Lake in Framingham, Mass., together with a farm of fifty acres, and built there a grist mill and one of the earliest fulling mills. In 1752, representing the [Second Church of Framingham, he is called Deacon, which was henceforth his common title.
As chairman of the Framingham Committee of Correspondence in 1772 (and again in 1775) he helped to state the rights of the colonists, and his report to the similar Boston committee was: "It appears our absolute duty to defend our dear privileges, purchased with so much blood and treasure." He was one of the Selectmen of the town when, August 30, 1774, they voted "to purchase five barrels of powder and four or five hundred weight
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of bullets or lead, to be added to the town stock." He was a member of the First Provincial Congress, which at Concord, Mass., October 26, 1774, provided for enlisting companies of Minute Men, and a member, with Joseph Haven, of the Second Provincial Congress, meeting at Cambridge, Mass., in February, 1775, was also elected annually as Framingham's representative to the General Court of Massachusetts, from 1777 to 1785, and died at Framingham in 1793. (His second child, Roger, was the grandfather of Lucy Ann Brown. )
His tenth child, Ebenezer (1767-1818), married in 1788 Keziah Nixon (1768-1836), daughter of Capt. John Nixon, and their eighth child, born at Framingham, Mass., June 8, 1803, was Benjamin, who in 1840 came to Beloit. (Vol. I, p. 34.) His mother trained up her children to a strict keeping of the Sabbath from sundown of Saturday to the sunset of Sunday. Often on a hot Sunday afternoon in summer little Benjamin was given Watt's Hymns and Pilgrim's Progress and ordered to his chair with a strict injunction to not get off it until the sun went down. The average New England boy of those times was a reversed Joshua with reference to the sun on that day. The instant that luminary disappeared in the west the boys would all rush off to the town common and there enjoy a delightful Sunday evening of games and general hilarity.
It is worthy of note that Benjamin's maternal grandfather, John Nixon, (1725-1815), Captain of the Sudbury Minute Men, led his company and was wounded at the battle of Lexington, April 19, 1774, and as Colonel led the Middlesex Regiment at the battle of Bunker Hill, where he was wounded again. July 8, 1776, from a platform near the Walnut street front of the State House in Philadelphia, John Nixon read the declaration of Indepen- dence to a vast concourse of people, the first public reading. He was made a Brigadier, and also a salaried member of the first Continental Navy Board, November 6, 1776. At the battle of Saratoga, or Bemis' Heights, where he commanded a brigade, the near passage of a cannon bali impaired his hear- ing, but he continued in commission until 1780. One of his sisters who had married a farmer, named Warren, was the mother of that celebrated patriot, Dr. Joseph Warren, the General Warren who was killed at Bunker Hill.
Deacon William's oldest son, Roger (born September 12, 1749), a Revo- lutionary Captain, and a Colonel, by commission from Gov. John Hancock, dated July 12, 1790, married Mary Hartwell, of Lincoln, Mass. Their son, James, farmer, and Captain of Minute Men (1784-1875), was married No- vember 4, 1807, to Nancy Fiske (1789-1858), and lived his long life at Framingham, Mass., village of Saxonville. Their second child was Lucy Ann (November 20, 1809-September 1, 1869), who first married Augustine Leland, a graduate of Brown University, 1834, and then, as a widow with a daughter, Lucy, was married May 14, 1840, to Benjamin Brown.
NOTE .- On a pleasant afternoon in June, 1812, when Capt. James Brown and his man were ploughing on the home farm at Saxonville, twenty miles from Boston, a galloping horseman suddenly drew up in the road beside the field, shouting, "War declared with England ! Minute Men, turn out ! The Governor orders you to report to him on Boston Common by noon to- morrow !" and rushed on. The Captain took his horse from the plough, and with traces dangling rode him around to the different members of his company, directing them to gather at his house immediately after supper
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prepared for a march. They came as called, marched all night, and he reported to the Governor at Boston before breakfast next morning, the first company in. For his promptness he was at once made a Major with position on the Governor's staff, and later became a Colonel.
His wife, Nancy Fiske, was the daughter of Deacon John Fiske, a Puri- tan of the Puritans.
In the eighth year of King John of England, A. D. 1208, the name of Daniel Fisc, of Laxford, is appended to a document issued by that king, confirming a grant of land from the Duke of Loraine to the men of Lax- field, a town about eighty miles northeast of London.
In the time of Henry VI (1422-1461), Symond Fiske, probably a direct descendant of Daniel, held lands in Laxfield parish. He was Lord of the Manor of Stadhaugh. (A haugh was a cleared field, and Stad, or Stead, means an established home. Hence our word Homestead.) The Fiske armorial bore three gold stars with the significant motto, "Macte virtute sic itur ad astra" (Good doing leads upward), evidently derived from Virgil's Æneid, book IX, lines 640-641. Below the shield is the name, Ffiske. Above it is a helmet in profile, which signifies that he was simply an Esquire. In the parish register of Laxfield, which begins with the sixteenth century, one of the earliest names recorded in 1519 is Elizabeth Ffyske.
The fourth in direct descent from Symond, Robert (and Sibil Gold ) Fiske, lived at Broad Gates, Laxfield, eight miles from Framlingham, Suffolk County, England. (The termination, ing-ham, means "home of one clan.")
Their son, William Fiske, born 1614, came to America with his brother John in 1837 and settled at Watertown. Mass. (John, who heads a separate group, located at Wenham or Salem. )
The Fiskes were noted for their strong religious proclivities, inherited from English ancestors who had to flee from their native land to escape® being beheaded or burnt at the stake.
At Laxfield in the evil days of "Bloody Mary," Rev. John Noyes was burned at the stake, and Foxe's Book of Martyrs says that he was visited on the evening before execution by his brother-in-law, Nicholas Fiske, an act which required more than ordinary courage. Another ancestor, John Fiske, after being hunted for nearly a year, escaped to America in disguise. Being a Reverend graduate of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, England, he became here an eminent preacher, and, as Cotton Mather says, "did shine in the golden candlestick of Chelmsford."
The second William Fiske (1642-1728), was for forty years a Deacon in the Congregational Church, of which Rev. John Fiske became the first pastor in 1679. William's son, Ebenezer, was a Deacon, and his grandson, the third William Fiske, was a staunch Puritan, who moved to Amherst.
The eighth generation in direct descent from Symond was Nathan Fiske, of Watertown, Mass .; the ninth, Nathaniel; the tenth, John (1682- 1740); the eleventh, Isaac (1714-1800), a weaver of Framingham, Mass., who November 11, 1736, married Hannah Haven, of the same place. Their third child, John, 1741-1819, a Justice of the Peace and Representative, married Abigail Howe, and had ten children, of whom the eighth was Nancy, the mother of Lucy Ann.
NOTE .- The youngest sister of Lucy, Nancy or Anna Fiske (later Mrs. Charles Washburn, of Worcester, Mass. ), taught Greek and Latin and fitted
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young men for college. One of the boys whom she so taught in Worcester was Benjamin D. Allen, the very efficient Choirmaster and Professor of Music in Beloit College.
NOTE 2 .- Fiske is Scandinavian for Fish. This name was introduced into England at the time of the Danish invasion.
Miss Fidelia Fiske (a missionary at Ooroomiah, Persia), says that it explains our word Fiscal. Much of the Danish government dues was col- lected in dried fish, and in Denmark quintals of fish were once used as
WILLIAM BROWN, 1837. Mass., 1797-1846. Mexico.
currency. The revenue officer was therefore called "the Fiske," and the government revenue "Fiscal."
NOTE 3 .- The one exception to the Puritan record of this family was Benjamin's older brother, William (1797-1846), a sea captain, who had two ships plying between New York and Vera Cruz, Mexico. He was a Free Thinker, and became Roman Catholic when he married a Spanish lady, Donna Maria Guardero, of Tabasco, Mexico, in which city he lived and died.
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The accompanying picture of him in 1837 shows the fashion of that date in New York City. This medallion portrait on ivory and gold was made in the City of Mexico and sent by William in 1837 to his oldest sister, Mrs. Luther French, of Eaton, Canada East. It became the property of her daughter, Mrs. Adaline Jordan, who in 1878 sold it to another and younger daughter, Mrs. Abba S. Edgell, of Poplar Grove, Ill., who December 24, 1898, trans- ferred it to the writer.
NOTE 4 .- But from the Revolutionary record and loyalty of the family there has not been even one exception. The twelfth child of Benjamin's older brother, Joseph, of Saxonville (1793-1882), Capt. William Henry Brown, of Natick, Mass., (born 1834, who served through the Civil War and led his men in twenty-three battles), furnishes me the following autograph letter of Gen. John Nixon to Gen. Heath, written in September, 1776. Nixon was in command of Governor's Island, in New York Bay, but on the approach of the British fleet ( August 30) had withdrawn his little garrison. This letter was evidently written when he was at Harlem Heights and about September 10, 1776, and is inserted as a part of authentic but un- published American history :
MY DEAR SIR : You have no doubt observed that the enemy decamped last night from the Heights to the northward of Flushing Bay. About three or four regiments are now encamping on the hill to the westward of the bay, and opposite to the island which forms Hell Gate. Whether this body is that which decamped or one marched from Newton, we cannot deter- mine. Certain it is their movements indicate an intention to land near you . or at Harlem. Four boats were sounding the channel between Little Hell Gate and the opening to Harlem. Those appearances render it necessary that post should be taken on Morris Hill this night, for reasons too obvious to be mentioned. (Morris' Hill was near Harlem River at the present 169th street, New York City.) If you have not strength (of which advise us), we will post some regiments there to-night, although it will weaken the middle division if a landing should be made below this evening. Whatever may be your determination, pray advise us of it in time. I have the honor to be your humble servant, JNO. NIXON, Brig .- Gen.
To the Hon. Gen. Heath or Gen. Mifflin.
NOTE 5 .- Capt. Wm. H. Brown's younger brother, Rev. John Kittridge Brown, a graduate of Harvard (born 1843, ordained at Stearns Chapel, Cam- bridgeport, Mass., October 16, 1872), has been for the last twenty-six years, and still is, a successful missionary of the American Board to the Armenians at Harpoot, Turkey. During the terrible massacres there he and his family were providentially in this country, but they bravely went back to Harpoot the next year, and are there now.
AUTHORITIES .- History of Watertown, by Henry Bond, 1855, Vol. I, pp. 118, 145. Savage's Genealogical Dictionary of New England, 1860, Vol. I, p. 269-270, published by Ltttle, Brown & Co., Boston. Benj. Lossing's Field Book of the Revolution, Vol. I, pp. 51, 76, 490 and 491, 534. Vol. II, pp. 66 and 637. Also History of Framingham, Mass., by J. H. Temple, published by the Town, 1887. Also, Report of the Brown Asso- ciation, 1868, and the Fiske Genealogies, all in the Historical Society Library, Madison, Wis.
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The Clarks.
March 30, 1630, William Clark, a Puritan, sailed from Plymouth, Eng- land, in the ship Mary and John, which reached Boston, May 30th. He was among the earliest settlers of Dorchester, Mass., where Richard Mather was the first minister. In 1659, Eleazer Mather, son of Richard, was preaching at Northampton and that town voted to give a quantity of land to those whom Mr. Mather should get to locate there. Of that number was Wm. Clark. His wife rode on horseback with two panniers slung across the horse, carrying one boy in each basket and one in her lap, her husband go- ing on foot. During that same year, 1659, land was set off to them in Northampton and in 1660 Mr. Clark was chosen Selectman. In 1661 he was elected Lieutenant of the train-band and also with others formed the First Church of Northampton. Dying July 19, 1690, at the age of 81, he left four sons, William, John, Samuel and Nathaniel.
John married his second wife, Mary Strong, March 16, 1679, and their children were five girls and six boys. Each of these sons had more than fifty years of married life, all six lived to be over eighty, three of them over ninety, and one reached the age of ninety-nine. When the youngest of them died in 1789, aged 92, the known decendants of the six brothers num- bered 1158, of whom 925 were then living.
John's fith son, Simeon (born October 20, 1720; died October 28, 1801), was married to Rebecca Strong by the celebrated Rev. Jonathan Edwards, November 2, 1749, and moved to Amherst, Mass. ( Mrs. Rebecca Clark died January 13, 1811.) Of their six sons and six daughters the oldest son, a second Simeon (born June 25, 1752), married October 4, 1781, Lucy Hubbard (born September 16, 1758; died March 19, 1793).
Of the four children by this marriage, the oldest, Elijah (born May 20, 1783), married Sibel Green, May 8, 1805, and became the father of nine children, our Clarks. (Smith College, Northampton, Mass., occupies the ground which was owned and lived on by the Clark family for 150 years.) This Elijah Clark moved to the then far west, on a farm in Marion, Wayne County, N. Y., where he died October 13, 1833. Later (1845-1850), his widow with five of her seven sons and a daughter Mary came to Beloit, Wis., where Mrs. Clark died October 6, 1867. These six Beloit Clarks were, Dr. Asahel, who came in 1845 (born June 8, 1809; died October 13, 1888); Dr. Dexter, also in 1845 (born February 11, 1819; died October 5, 1861); Chester, a stone mason, came in 1847 (born April 12, 1815; died November 26, 1852); Dr. Elijah N., with his sister Mary Ann (Mrs. Helm), who both came in 1847, and are still living here; Rufus, a farmer, who came in 1850 (born June 17, 1811; died April 11, 1899).
(For their portraits see pages 53, 68, 69, 75, 88, 199.)
Puritan Ancestry of Robert P. Crane.
The Cranes, who came at an early date from England to New England, were all of the Puritan stamp .* Henry Crane, born about 1635, first a farmer at Wethersfield, Conn., helped later to form a settlement at Killing- worth, west of Saybrook. (His wife, Concurrence Meigs, had a sister named
*Genealogy of the Crane Family, by Ellery Bicknell Crane, 1895. Press of Charles Hamilton, 311 Main st., Worcester. Mass., Vol. I, pages 48, 54, 95, 156.
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Trial, who married Andrew Ward and became the maternal ancestor of Henry Ward Beecher.) By vote of the town Henry Crane was chosen school-master at eleven shillings per week. His teachings may have sown the seed that grew into the establishment there of the school which was conducted six years in Killingworth, was removed in 1716 to New Haven, and two years later received the name of Yale College.
November 26, 1669, the town of Killingworth bought lands of the Mohegan Sachem, Uncas, and the deed bears the signature of Henry Crane, a name which appears often on the town records, connected with various honorable public trusts, civil, military and religious. He was a Freeman, September 24, 1669 ; representative from Killingworth to the General Court of Connecticut twenty-seven years, 1675-1703, and also justice of the peace for New London County in 1698 and 1701-1703.
The Dutch of New Amsterdam (called later, New York ) had tried to control the Connecticut colonies and about 1675 the Indians started that effort at extermination known as King Philip's war. In Connecticut, there- fore military service was required of all males between 16 and 70 years of age. Every night a watch was to be kept in each plantation and one-quarter of the train band of each town must in turn stand guard by day. If work was to be done in the field half a mile or more from town, at least six well armed persons must go together to attend to it. During this period of danger Henry Crane was an active member of the Killingworth Train Band, and was chosen lieutenant in 1676. (As an illustration of their laws take this record. Mr. Crane's father-in-law, John Meigs, was complained of for Sabbath breaking because he came home from Hammonassett late on Sat- urday evening, but was forgiven on acknowledging his fault and promising to declare it on the next lecture or fast day.) From 1690 to 1698 Henry Crane was one of the commissioners for Killingworth and in 1704 was made captain of their train band. He died April 22, 1711, and was buried in the old cemetery at Killingworth.
The next four generations in this line were, Deacon Henry Crane, of Durham, Conn., (1677-1741) ; Sergeant Silas of the same town, (1705-1763); Robert Griswold, (1739-1820), of Durham and Bethlehem, and Eleazer, (1773. 1839) (of Bethlehem, Conn. and Colebrook, at the north end of New Hamp- shire), who married Anna or Nancy Prudden, December 9, 1798. Their first son was our pioneer. (His portrait is on p. 29. )
Robert Prudden Crane was born April 17, 1807, on the farm which his father had just cleared in the wilderness at Colebrook, N. H., which is about ten miles from the Canada line. In 1836 that farm was sold for $325 and the year following the father came with his son Robert to Beloit, Wis., and died here June 14, 1839.
R. P. Crane was one of the sixteen original and active members of the New England Emigrating Company, which located Beloit (see p. 30). In November, 1881, he removed for his health to Micanopy, Alachua county, Florida, where he purchased an orange grove, and died November 3, 1882. His only son, the Hon. Ellery Bicknell Crane, is a successful lumber dealer of Worcester, Mass., president of several literary and business societies and since 1894 a member of the Massachusetts Legislature from the 21st District and the author of two elaborate works, "The Rawson Family Memorial," and " The Crane Genealogy."
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