The Story of My Life

Now on ACX, narrated by Bill Anderen
The Story of My Life - Autobiography of Lorenzo Reynolds, the Treasurer of Hillsdale College, 1862-1877 #hillsdale #michigan #pioneer #biography

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The Story of My Life
On ACX

James Walker Leverett

I'm knee-deep into the biography of James Walker Leverett (1830), an ancestor of many people I know - fifth, sixth cousins and the like. He lived an interesting life. He settled in Nebraska before it was a state, back when many people back east were "Anti-Nebraska." He ran a farm in Wisconsin for ten years, and then went into the lumber business in South Dakota, before it was a state.

Right at the moment I'm about at the Civil War, but there are some things before it that have me a llttle confused. One is a steam-powered sawmill. He apparently took this sawmill out to Nebraska, but I'm not sure if it ran by steam engine before he took it or if they developed that out there. The thing was a conversation starter, for sure. I'm not sure if I'd know one of those if I saw it. I definitely wouldn't know how to use one, let alone make one.

Keep your eyes out - it's on its way. It'll be called Prairie Leveretts>.

Must read

Another good review:

Sears building, Sears Tower

In about 1870, Sears built this building in downtown Boston; it was on the site of the old Leverett estate where what is today Congress Street comes right downtown into Washington Street. That Sears building eventually became the Sears Tower as Sears owned prime real estate right downtown and had to use it to its full advantage.

In the earliest days of Boston, Thomas and Anne and their son John lived at this estate, which went all the way out to the harbor. The harbor kept being filled in to make more land, and John, after Thomas and Anne died, would make trades or deals with the city to allow it. The land originally had a tenement house at the back of it, near the harbor, but eventually came to have a ropewalk and be a prime place for boats to land and unload. A friend of the Leveretts, John Gray, was very prominent in those days and this became Gray's Wharf. It became famous in the Boston Massacre and again when the Boston Tea Party happened right off its shores.

The road from the house to the wharf was called Leverett Lane at first, because it went right through their estate, but later Quaker Lane, when a Quaker meeting house was on that street. Today it is Congress Street. The Tea Party Museum is right where it crosses the channel.

The Leveretts lost the house and the land when Harvard bled John Leverett, its President, dry in a bitter academic fight. He died in debt so badly that his daughters had to sell of the land. Leveretts survived, but it's hard to see their legacy, unless you look carefully within the Sears buildings, and even then you'd be lucky to get a glimpse of what it was like back in the 1600s.

Read all about it in my book (below), though that takes place mostly in Cambridge.

Harvardinates (Har-VAR-di-NAH-tays): The Life and Times of John Leverett, first secular President of Harvard (1708-1724)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CNC4X71R

murky times in the 1700s

I didn't quite give you the entire story (in the Ipswich Mary posts below). I have been searching for signs of the Williams - and there may be even more than we know about - but the one who is most interesting appeared in Chelsea marrying Rachel Watts, daughter of a deacon there. Now I've been researching old Chelsea but haven't found much. She is easy to find, where her family came from, etc., but how he got there, is another story. There are mixed accounts.

But what I think happened was this. I will have to get the timing right because I admit this story sounds a little full of holes and not filled in accurately with time details. But I think a William was born in about 1727, and could have been born in Roxbury (Boston) which he would come to identify as Boston later. His son and grandson (William and then Joseph), as well as William's sister (Aunt Caroline) and younger brothers (uncles Warren and Washington) all believed that he was descended from Knight and two Johns, Colonel John (son of knight) and John Esq., Col. John's son. But John Esq. was born basically after he found Rachel Watts in Chelsea. He couldn't have descended from John Esq..

He could, however, have latched onto that family in hard times (which were plentiful and very hard), such that legends of who they are and where they came from came out of him when he was talking about where he'd come from.

He lived most of his adult life on a farm in Needham, a little southwest of Boston. It was rural at the time and not an easy life. He had his wife Rachel, daughter of Deacon Watts of Chelsea, and eleven children including William, Aunt Caroline, Daniel and some older girls who seemed to grow up, marry, and live in Cambridgeport. He had apparently started out with Rachel and stayed in the city for a while, living in Cambridgeport and various places. I found it interesting that when he died they came and got his body and buried it in Medford. Is it possible that he'd latched onto Thomas's family (Col. John's brother)? In that family they reported an older step-brother, half brother, not accounted for in any other way. Their accounts of this half brother, John W., don't quite match in the time area; he's just a legend and I couldn't get the times to work.

But let's go back to young William (1727) whose family has fallen apart, perhaps because his parents, William (~1697) and Mary Whiteridge, have died. He finds the Leveretts perhaps when they are still together: Knight and two sons, Col. John and Thomas, still living in the house downtown. John will eventually get that house, stay there, have a son John Esq., and a family, until moving off to Connecticut and dying right during the war. Thomas however will go into printing, make big money, and get an estate out in Medford. Would this William go with him? When he meets Rachel Watts, has twin girls and is struggling to make it (in Cambridgeport, where the girls ended up coming back to?) - are John and his family somehow involved in this?

Once again timing is crucial, and I still have to solve the problems, but it seems to me that the true line of descent goes down through the Williams, while the belief was that it went down through the Johns. They were obviously wrong about John Esquire, who went to Harvard in 1776, and was a kind of celebrity for doing that. But they claimed Col. John and Knight because they believed that. Whoever William (1727)'s parents were, William (1697) and Mary, they were long gone when he was small. He'd been taken in and brought up by the Leveretts who were around.

Ipswich Mary (cont'd)

Here is my present opinion about Ipswich Mary. It is gleaned from my recent research that I am about to let go of, so I want to put everything I know here now, so that I can work on it one step at a time.

First, I believe Mary, John the Younger's full sister, is the mother of William and of our line which descends basically from William (~1727) and William (~1778). From those two there is a clear path to Joseph, Warren, Washington, etc. and to most of the people who might be reading this. The Northern Leveretts.

So this Mary was born in 1674 or earlier to Sarah Payton and Hudson Leverett, and when Sarah died she was raised as a stepdaughter out in Roxbury with Hudson and Elizabeth Gannett. Out there she disappeared, except that there's a Mary who surfaced marrying a Johnathan Moulton in Wenham in 1713, and dying in Wenham 1728. Meanwhile in here is the William (~1698) who married Mary Whiteridge in Boston (1715) and had a daughter Phebee (1716), then dropped out of sight. I believe William (~1698) is Mary's child.

Now my first job is to figure out how this Mary had an out-of-wedlock child, and hid him for fifteen years, when he was a Leverett male and she was the sister of the President of Harvard. How exactly does that work? I have two theories: 1) she brought him up in Roxbury, and 2) she brought him up in Wenham or perhaps Ipswich.

Under theory #1, it makes some sense because the family had a lot of land out there, they could stay under the radar, and family in town could help her. When she did move to Wenham (1713) it would only be for a few years; he would be ~15; he would be unhappy or unwilling to settle up there; he could meet his bride up there (all Whiteridges seemed to be from the Wenham/Salem/Ipswich area); but he would bring her back to town where he could live in the old family plot. Or perhaps straight to Cambridgeport/Chelsea.

He did seem to move to Chelsea at some point. They had Phebee (1716) but possibly a Mary who has been documented as growing up, marrying, moving to New Haven, having a baby, and dying. The interesting thing here is that I have actually seen a record of a Mary being born in Chelsea, in an old Chelsea birth record, but have been unable to find it again; it dropped from sight. Presumably William (~1727) would be his last child as there are no other records of Leveretts in Chelsea.

One advantage of connecting these is that it fits a familiar pattern. Young William grows up in Chelsea and meets the Deacon's daughter, Rachel Watts, and they marry in 17 something I'm not sure. There could be an extra generation in here if you believe strictly in the 16 rule, which is that because of lack of birth control and natural forces the vast majority of families started when kids were sixteen and not later, like say give the guy ten years before he picks a bride. No, William and Rachel are starting at 16 probably, having twins, having a few more, experiencing rough times, ending up out in Needham. During the Revolution.

There's a guy, Spencer Phips, adopted son of William Phips, governor of the colony, who died near 1698. This guy bought land in Cambridgeport, which I believe counts as Chelsea, or at least close. He bought it in 1706 or thereabouts, and, because he was from near Wenham, he traveled a lot and because he had money, he could be responsible for helping William resettle or getting Mary up out of Boston and into Wenham in the first place. I am not clear about ages but I found that there was a connection between the Leveretts and the Phips family that may have been important here. Why else would he move to Chelsea? Someone had to make it possible and even desirable. I might read his biography.

I need to find more information about the Mary who ended up in New Haven.
I need to find that birth notice from ancient Chelsea birth records.
I need to read up on Spencer Phips and Cambridgeport.
I need to figure out why one would move to Wenham or Ipswich in 1698 or later, in 1713. How would one encounter a Johnathan Moulton, landowner and widower with a few too many orphaned kids on his hands?
I need to track down the dates more accurately so I know how old William was, when he married, etc.\

Note: After writing this I made a simple map search, and found that Cambridgeport is not to be confused with Chelsea. They are not near each other and in fact would be a long walk. Much of what I said above still needs to be looked into. He ended up in Chelsea, that's for sure. Lots of family connections and possible land in Cambridgeport, that's true also. But even Malden is a different part of town. People didn't move freely between them those days. If he found that Deacon's daughter he had to be in Chelsea for some reason and I hope to find the reason. It wasn't Spencer Phips.