The Adams - Perry Connection: The Hubbell Sisters

Over a year ago I was researching Georgiana Adams Mills and Mason Tyler Adams, brother and sister. I discovered that Mason's wife Juliette later married a Lewis Perry who has a principal at Exeter Academy - an interesting note that I would want to research further. It caught my eye because Phillips Exeter has the highest of reputations among schools, and here it was, a woman connected to our family had married the principal, a man who held the position for over three decades, and, I would read yesterday, who was responsible for bringing in the Harkness investment that resulted in the Harkness method and seminar tables. (My most brilliant teacher in high school at the Forum School of Rome, and probably college and graduate school too, was an Exeter graduate, Edward Steinberg. He put the school on the map for me.) I didn't know if Mason and Juliette had divorced, or what the circumstances were, but I was very intrigued to see a connection with Exeter.

On a side note, until yesterday, I had not discovered a picture I could identify as Mason. I have photos of his sister Georgiana, including a young one of her in a Persian Lamb duster and muffs from perhaps the 1890s. Yesterday I noticed I had a photo connected with Mason's wife's sister, Margaret Lawrie Hubbell. Turns out she Dr. Lewis Perry's first wife. The photo was taken on their wedding day, 11 Nov 1911. I studied the photo, and triple checked the family tree that was taking shape on MyHeritage.com, then I found it.

I discovered that it was a number of years after Mason's death in 1933 that Juliette married Dr. Perry. Then that Mason had died first, so Juliette was a widow. I wondered how she met Dr. Perry.

Then I saw the photo, this photo. (I don't recall its provenance, but in the interest of family history, if it is not one in my possession, I trust I shall be forgiven.)

Left to right:

Mason Tyler Adams and his wife Juliette Emily Hubbell (b. 1880), and one of their daughters. Ruth Rositer Hubbell (b. 1886), Margaret Lawrie Hubbell (b. 1881) with her husband Dr. Lewis Perry.

First I identified Dr. Perry on the far right, on his wedding day, his bride I knew to be Margaret Lawrie, who I discovered was Juliette's sister. Since there are three young women standing side-by-side in a wedding photo, they might be sisters. The woman holding a baby, would likely be the older sister Juliette, who had two daughters about the age of 1 (tho only one in the photo). The girl in the middle might be the youngest sister, and the man next to Juliette, Mason, her first husband.

Does that sound about right? Reasonable? Perhaps it only became clear after studying dates and histories and the family tree.

A little more research online and I found that a Bishop Perry both married the Perry couple, and baptized Juliette Emily Adams, daughter of Mason and Juliette on the same day, November 11, 1911. (The bishop might have been James De Wolf Perry III. Though he shares Lewis' last name I could not find a ready connection.)

Finding the same day baptism and wedding with Bishop Perry would seem to fully confirm the photo's subjects are as identified.

Dr. Perry and Margaret would have two children together. Mason Adams and Juliette had two girls. So in 1938, when widow ed Juliette marries her sister's widower, the family became a family of six.

Looking for Descendants of Nathaniel Dickinson Adams (1813-1856)

I'm looking for descendants of Nathaniel Dickinson Adams of Shutesbury, Massachusetts, and in particular descendants of Charles Dickinson Adams' son Mason Tyler Adams with an interest in family history.

Family papers travel down strange routes. Families have multiple children so the papers may be split up. Children may have no children, so the papers may end up in the fire, the trash, with a distant or near relative, or at a university or historical society.

Nathaniel Dickinson Adams was one of 14 children of Asa Adams II and Clarissa Eastman Adams.

 1. Nathaniel Dickinson Adams b. 1813, d. 1856 had three sons.

1. Charles Dickinson Adams
2. Henry Martyn Adams
3. Herbert Baxter Adams

(Note. I'm looking for photos or portraits of Nathaniel and Charles Dickinson Adams.)

1.2. Henry Martyn Adams was my great great grandfather, as he is to my three siblings, four Lukens' cousins, and two Sutherland cousins, through his son Herbert Henry and Ida Kingsbury's daughter Margaret "Peggy" Suzanne Adams. I have contact with or have recently been in contact with all of Peggy's descendants in 2018.

1. Anora Sutherland McGaha (1 of 4)
2. Peter Adams Sutherland (1 of 4)
3. Margaret "Peggy" Suzanne Adams (1 of 2)
4. Herbert Henry Adams (1 of 3)
5. Henry Martyn Adams (1 of 3)
6. Nathaniel Dickinson Adams

1.3. Nathaniel's third son, Herbert Baxter Adams was a professor of history at Johns Hopkins University. His great love was teaching. He did not marry and he left most of his papers with the university. Yet some of his papers came to Arthur E. Sutherland and his wife "Peggy" Sutherland and then to my father Peter, and then his wife Carol after his death in 1994. How they came to be in our home is a question. Perhaps they came to Peggy during her life, before 1958, and lived in one of a dozen trunks in the basement of 12 Berkeley Street. Or, they may have come down through Charles Dickinson Adams' descendants, perhaps through Mary Mills, who did not marry, when she died in NYC in 1963, when Arthur's second wife, Mary Kirk Sutherland, went to her apartment to handle her belongings, after another person whose name we don't know, went there first. Among the things that Mary brought back was jewelry and silver, and trunks of photographs, and I presume papers. However it came to us, we have papers. In time they will end up with Johns Hopkins, if they have interest, to join the collection of Herbert Baxter's papers there.

1.1. It is the descendants of Charles Dickinson Adams that I have particular interest in discovering, the descendants of his son Mason Tyler Adams (named after Charles' best friend).

Charles and Harriet Clark had two children.

1. Georgiana who married Franklin Hubbell Mills
2. Mason who married Juliett Emily Hubbell

(Note. I'm still researching the connection if any between Georgianna's Hubbell husband and Mason's Hubbell wife.)

1.1. Georgiana and Franklin had one daughter Mary Mills, and the line ends here.

1.2. Mason and his wife had two daughters, perhaps twins, if the birth dates we have are correct, 21 Sept 1910.

1. Juliette Emily Adams (named after her mother it seems)
2. Margaret Ruth Adams (named after her mother's two sisters perhaps, Margaret and Ruth)

 1.2.1. Juliette Emily Adams married Howard Buddy and had a number of children with whom I would like to connect to see if any of them have an interest in correspondence of their grandfather, Mason Tyler Adams who had a very close relationship with his sister Georgiana, whose only descendant Mary Mills passed away in 1963.

1. Boy
2. Boy
3. Boy
4. Girl
5. Girl

1.2.2 Margaret Ruth Adams married William Learned Peltz. They also had a number of children, and perhaps one of them might share an interest in their mother's father's family history.

1. Mason Peltz
2. William Hun Peltz m. Neville Johanna Farquharson Bryan
3. Thomas Peltz

Tracing Family on Find-A-Grave

Through a team of independent volunteers, you may be able to trace your heritage through links on Find-A-Grave pages. Here is an example, from our family.

Starting from my father Peter Adams Sutherland, going up the patrilineal line, we can go straight to John William Sutherland (1735-1817) before we lose the trail on Find-A-Grave. We go father back on MyHeritage.com.

Starting from my father's mother, Susan Adams Sutherland, going up her patrilineal line, we go back to Asa Adams (Sr.) (1729-1826).

Both these ancestors are 7 generations back from my generation.

On my mother's mother's patrilineal line, starting from Dennis Frank Reeder, we only go back to his father, William Manderson Reeder.

But if we follow, William Reeder's wife, Diana Elivra Park Reeder up her patrilineal line, let's see how far we get. Not far, just to her father, Spruce McCoy Park. But in MyHeritage.com we find that Diana's mother is Martha Reed. And though not connected, Find-A-Grave has Martha Reed, and from her we get to her mother Catherine Reed (1781-1841), where the trail goes dark again. 

(Martha's brother John, and her parent's Catherine and David are buried in the Rowan County, Reed Graveyard along the Yadkin river, which I visited last month.) 

Most of the lines I tried to follow on my mother's mother's father's lines didn't go far on Find-A-Grave, not that they aren't there, just that the search function is difficult to get direct hits on, so it takes finding them through alternate routes.

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Posts are published for informational purposes. Writing edits will need to follow.

Irish Immigrant Honora Egan and her Husband Frederick Reed

The night before last, with serendipity as the only plausible explanation, I discovered the burial site of one of my (and my siblings' and cousins' too) great great grand parents on the Sutherland side of the family. I have searched repeatedly off and on for several years without success until now.

Lineage:

Arthur E Sutherland Jr. & Susan Adams Sutherland  (Grandparents)

Nellie Reed Sutherland & Arthur E. Sutherland (Sr.) (Great Grandparents)

Honora Egan Reed & Frederick Reed (Great Great Grandparents)

My namesake, Honora Egan, her husband Frederick Reed, a farmer in Nunda, New York, and one of their two offspring, their son, Fred B Reed, are buried in Oakwood Cemetery in Nunda where they lived (too obvious not to have been found sooner, wouldn't you think?). Fred B.'s sister Nellie Reed, who married our great grandfather, Arthur E Sutherland (Sr.), is buried in Rochester, New York.  (NB I have put in the request to add links to the next of kin on the FindAGrave site.)

The red pin sits on the town of Nunda, west of the Finger Lakes region in upstate New York

Oakwood Cemetery in Nunda New York, Section D, Lot 77 & 78 owned by Fred B. Reed

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All posts will require editing, but are posted for their informational value sooner than they might otherwise be.

Coming up for Air

I felt changed when I discovered that some of my forefathers are buried in the "Reed Graveyard" along a river in Rowan County, the Old Yadkin river, just a couple hours drive from Wake County.

Just the discovery changed me, changed the temperature of the water, the feel of the wind, my sense of what's real. Like when a strange compelling light filters through clouds and is so stunning you have to stop and take a breath.

I am walking a short stone wall, balancing between falling and falling, teetering: Is it significant that some of my hundreds of known predecessors are buried in North Carolina where I now live? Or is it not significant because at 6 generations back there are at least 64 parents / grands and greats? What kind of significance is there?

I did the math, forefathers double each generation. See for yourself. At the 4th generation there are 16 foreparents, at the 6th generation there are 64 foreparents. That's a lot, how important could any one couple among them be?

1G - 2      Parents
2G - 4     Grandparents
3G - 8     Great Grandparents
4G - 16   2x Great Grandparents
5G - 32   3x Great Grandparents
6G - 64   4x Great Grandparents
7G - 128 5x Great Grandparents
8G - 256 6x Great Grandparents
9G - 512 7x Great Grandparents
10G - 1024 8x Great Grandparents
11G - 2048 9x
12G - 4096 10x
13G - 8192 11x

The math would seem to lean towards a lack of signficance. After all finding two of my many dozens of foreparents in NC is just two in a collection of hundreds, thousands.

Maybe it's finding out that some of this Northerner's roots are in the South, though their story is that they left New Jersey due to a real estate swindle. The story is fascinating, if disturbing.

Or maybe it's the experience of driving through the centuries to a place where family and friends would have gathered to bid their farewell. If loved, everyone would feel so very sad. Hopefully they were loved.

Finding the graveyard down a riverside road, and a small road off that, almost a driveway, to the river's edge where, protected by a chain link fence, a crooked entrance, and not a sign with a name and statement, lay a motley collection of stones in all kids of repair and disrepair. A couple or so have had new granite gravestones placed near the collapsed grave.

One car parked next to the river, perhaps someone went fishing; another parked in the large lot next to the graveyard, so I wasn't alone in this otherwise somewhat remote site. Still I was wary, as I always need to be as a woman. I stepped through the whole small cemetery. Maybe a quarter of an acre in size. Under a dozen or more old trees. Camera in hand looking for the names that had arisen in my myheritage.com family tree, I sought every stone, and took photos of every one that had any sign of lettering, poured water over the stones whose carved letters were all but eroded, hoping that the letters might be clearer.

I saw some names I recognized, the gravestones that showed the generation whose name was spelled REID instead of REED.

I felt sobered stepping on land my mother's mother's forefathers had gathered on time and again as they returned their loved ones to the ground.

That was the graveyard visit.

The Registrar of Deeds visit in nearby city of Salisbury was also stunning, surreal. I opened these huge books, books the size of ten text books, and saw signatures written centuries ago, to registrar land purchases. Grants were listed, too. From that book we are given numbers that make it possible to look up the details on a computer database, to see copies of the actual documents, their handwriting, from as far back as the 1700s, maybe even earlier.

It is stunning for me. I feel a shock in making even this bare minimum contact with times and lives gone by; as if reaching through the veil of time by touching the paper and stones that my forefathers touched.

That's what I have for now.

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Edits are ongoing.

Projects

Publish Prudy's Work

Get Prudy's writings (2 inches of paper) digitized, edited (for digitizing errors)

Order and Load into a word document / pdf

Find a suitable cover image and title

Publish on CreateSpace and Kindle

Publish Alexander's Gold Rush Story

Done - Typed up

Load into word document

Choose suitable cover

Publish on CreateSpace

Republish A Grandfather Remembers

Digitize

Load to Word add TOC

Cover Creation

Publish on CreateSpace and Kindle

Peter Sutherland Family Photographs

Set 1

Done - Digitize

Done - Load to Dropbox for Family

Sort out Landscapes from Family / Friends

Set 2

Done - Digitize

Load to Dropbox for 

Sort out Landscapes from Family / Friends

Losing her Mother's Maiden Name

While taking her husband's last name in marriage, the woman's maiden name (her father's last name) becomes her middle name. That's a good thing, as I think Peter Sutherland used to say, and probably Grandfather Arthur Sutherland too.  Makes family research easier.

But we don't carry the mother's maiden name down.

Reeders and Reeds Come Together

Diana Elvira Park was the of a Mr. Park and Martha A. Reed.

Diana Elvira Park. Effectively Diana is both a "Park" and a "Reed," if we counted the mother's last name as much as the father's. So part of the Park lineage, and the Reed lineage.

When Diana marries a Reeder, grandmother "Mami" Kathleen's maiden name, Kathleen .... Reeder, her name becomes Diana Park Reeder.

She keeps her father's last name Park, and her new husband's last name Reeder.

What she loses, and what people won't know, as I've seen and will tell you about, is her mother's family name. You lose sight of the fact that Diana's mother was a Reed, Martha A. Reed.

Then there's the Dickinson example with Charles Dickinson Adams a great great uncle of mine.

The Amherst Dickinsons Connection

Charles Dickinson Adams. My great great uncle on the Adams side of the family.

Charles Dickinson Adams of Amherst and New York, is invited to speak at a Dickinson Family Reunion as an "honorary Dickinson."

He tells the story in a speech saved in the reunion record that his Dickinson name was chosen after a prominent lawyer in the state {check detail}.

Charles continues the story that we were almost Dickinsons but his grandfather's marriage to a Dickinson did not bear children.

Sara Ann Dickinson was Asa Adams I's first wife.  But as far as I'm able to tell on the tree, there isn't a connection between Sara Ann Dickinson's lineage and Mary Dickinson's lineage.

• Asa Adams I marries Sara Ann Dickinson, but no children. He marries again.
• His son Asa Adams II marries a Clarissa Eastman, whose mother was Mary Dickinson. She was part of the Eastman AND the Dickinson families.
• Asa II's son Nathaniel Dickinson Adams marries Harriet Hastings
• Nathaniel's first son, Charles Dickinson Adams, marries Mary Clark Wood

Mary Dickinson was Emily Dickinson's great grandfather's sister, a great aunt. Nathan Dickinson Jr. and Mary Dickinson were siblings.

In this instance especially, merely two generations later, the family has lost track of the fact that the Dickinson in their names: Nathaniel Dickinson Adams and his son's Charles Dickinson Adams came from Mary Dickinson Eastman's, Clarissa Eastman's mother.

Author Note:

It's very hard to write about this material clearly. This is the third time I've rewritten this, and I know it's still not perfectly clear, and it needs to be if people are to read and remember it. 14 Aug 2017