This is Your Family
The Cooks
(including
the Howell and Halsey families)
Clella Allaire Cook – Carl Richard Miller
(See Miller
Family)
|
Merle Warden Cook – Vera Myrtle Parmater
(See Parmater
Family)
|
Jonathan Llewellyn Cook – Cora Inez Blair
(See Blair
Family)
|
Dr. James Burnett Cook – Catherine Beadle
(See Beadle
Family)
|
Amos Halsey Cook – Sarah Baldwin
(See Baldwin Family)
|
Stephen Cook – Phebe Mitchell
|
Abraham Cook – Sybil Burnett
(See Burnett
Family)
|
Elias Cook – Mehitabel Howell
(See addendum
at end of this report for Howell Family)
|
John Cook – Elizabeth Rogers
|
Ellis Cook – Martha Cooper
Ellis Cook was born in 1617 in Leicester, Oxford
or possibly Hertfordshire, England. There was an Ellis Cooke in Oxford who may have been a close relative, but
I have not been able to confirm this connection. Nothing definite is known about Ellis’s
family prior to coming to America,
but we know that he sailed from Southampton, England in 1640 and lived a short time in Lynn, Massachusetts. While he bought some property in Lynn, he soon moved to Southampton,
New York at the eastern end of Long Island. The
fact that he had the financial ability to purchase property in Lynn would indicate that he was already a man
of means.
Southampton was first settled by 102 Lynn residents (forty families)
in about 1640. It became the first
English settlement in what would become the state of New York.
The Dutch had already begun to settle New Amsterdam (New York City), which was a major concern for
the English. The English had settlements
north and south of New Amsterdam. The Dutch could easily cut their colonies off
from each other.
Ellis Cook was not one the original
settlers of Southampton, but he did arrive prior to 1644 and by
1659 had settled and built a house along the south side of Mecox Road, west of
Sagg Pond,
where it joins Bay Lane. Before moving to the Mecox Road property, he owned a lot on
the east side of Main Street,
the second lot south of the settlement’s Meeting House.
While Ellis wasn’t a founder, our family did
descend from at least five of the original forty founding families of Southampton. Elias
Cook’s wife was Mehitabel Howell whose grandfather was Edward Howell, often called
the father of Southampton. He emigrated from Marsh Gibbon, Buckinghamshire, England. (See information about the Howell Family in
the Addendum to this article.)
A second founder was Thomas Halsey,
Mehitable’s other grandfather. A third
founder was Thomas Burnett, the great grandfather of Abraham Cook’s wife, Sybil
Burnett Cook. Thomas Burnett’s wife was
Mary Pierson, daughter of Henry and Mary Pierson. Henry was another founder and his brother,
Abraham Pierson, was the town’s first minister. Richard Barrett was also a founder in the town
and the father-in-law of Thomas Halsey. So our family was extensively involved in the
founding of New York’s
first English settlement.
Southampton became a whaling village, because whales
would drift up onto the nearby beaches. The
Native Americans in the area had been whaling for years and may have taught the
English settlers. The industry became
organized in 1644 and most of the community became involved. The men were divided up into four wards and
the chore of scouting out the beach for whales rotated among the four
wards. In 1644, Ellis Cook was listed as
a whale scout in the third ward. By 1650, the first private whaling company was
formed. It is not certain whether Ellis was part of that company, because by
that time, the economic base of the colony was becoming diversified. The whaling industry in Southampton
continued to grow in importance that by 1687, they produced 2,148 barrels of
whale oil. Later, the whaling industry became centered
in New Bedford, Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard
in nearby Massachusetts.
Whaling was important to the early
colonists, who used the whale fat, known as blubber, to light lamps, lubricate
machinery and maintain leather. Whale
bones were used in such things as hoop skirts, umbrella rims and furniture
springs. It quickly became an item that
could be traded in European markets. The
whaling industry created other industries, such as ship building. This may make the modern people squirm but
there was a substance known as ambergris that formed within the sperm whale’s intestinal
track. If the whale did not belch it
out, then the whale would die. This rare
substance was used in perfume essences to help them adhere to the user and was
so effective that there is nothing that equals it today. For this reason, people would scour the beach
hoping to find it.
Ellis Cook married Martha Cooper in
1649. She was the daughter of John and
Wilbroe (Griggs) Cooper, who were among the early settlers of Southampton.
The
Coopers were from the town of Olney in Buckinghamshire, England,
a small town, southeast of Northampton. It was known as a hotbed of Puritan activism and as a result, suffered severe
persecution in the early 1600s. The
local vicar, William Worcester,
was suspended from his position for refusing to read the Book of Sports to his congregation. The book allowed activities such as dancing and sports on Sunday, which the
Puritans believed violated the Sabbath. As a result, many Worcester
people, including the Cooper, Griggs and Pierson
families, immigrated to America.
John
Cooper became a prominent businessman in Southampton
and was involved in many
aspects of community life. In 1647, he was listed one of among the sixteen “perfect freemen” within the
community. Only the freemen could vote for magistrates and
deputies. All men could vote for the
minor officers.
Later
in life, he and his son, Thomas, raised and sold horses, which they even exported to the island of Barbados
in the Caribbean.He was a very energetic man and remained
in Southampton for the rest of his life. He was known
for his honesty, irritable disposition
and quick tongue. He did not back off from a fight but was not prone to
pettiness.
Ellis and Martha Cook had
six children, John, Ellis, Martha, Elizabeth, Mary and Abiel. Our side of the Cooks lived in the Southampton
area for the next 100 years before moving to New Jersey.
While the eastern end
of Long Island was English and after 1664 became known as New
York, the
western end of the island along with Manhattan
Island was Dutch and became known as New Amsterdam. In 1673,
the Dutch retook New Amsterdam, after a brief
occupation by the English. They then
attempted to expand their dominion to include the English settlements of eastern
Long Island, including Southampton. The town appealed to the colony of Connecticut for aid. Ellis was probably part of that appeal. On November 20, 1673, Connecticut declared war on the Dutch. The only battle was in Southold, where the
English settlers, including forty men from Southampton,
defeated the Dutch. A year later, the
Dutch relinquished their claim to New Amsterdam
and all lands within the thirteen colonies and were no longer a threat to the English
townspeople.
Ellis
Cook was very involved in the community’s affairs and in 1654, served as the
town constable. His will, dated September 5, 1663 and proved
on February 26, 1678/9, indicates that he owned a house and a twenty-acre farm
valued at 230 pounds, along “with other lands and the usual assortment of
household and farm furniture and utensils and many yards of various kinds of
cloth and 55 pounds of pewter.” His wife
was appointed the executor of the will and her brother, Thomas Cooper and
friend, Job Sayre, were overseers.
John Cook, son of
Ellis and Martha, was born in about 1656 in Southampton, New York.
He lived his entire life in Southampton
and nearby Bridgehampton. He married
Elizabeth Rogers in about 1684. John and
Elizabeth had five children. He figured
prominently in the settling of disputes in the early days of that area. He is listed in the local Census of 1698
along with sons, John Jr., Elias, and Obadiah.
He passed away in 1719 in Bridgehampton.
We don’t know who the
parents of Elizabeth Rogers were, but she was most likely a descendant of
Reverend John Rogers who was a martyr during the Anglican Reformation in the
1500s. We will discuss his life further
in another more direct line but suffice it to say, he was burned at the stake
for being a heretic under the reign of Queen Mary, when he preached against the
Catholic dogmas. Among his
accomplishments, he translated the Bible into English. His translation was commonly known as the
Matthew Bible because he had to use the pseudonym, Thomas Matthew. There are three copies of the Matthew Bible
in the British Museum.
Elias Cook, son of
John and Elizabeth, was born in about 1690 in Southampton, New York.
Like his father, he lived his entire life in the
Southampton-Bridgehampton area. As
mentioned earlier, he married Mehitabel Howell and they had six children. Along with brothers, Obadiah and Jonathan,
Elias served in the local militia known as the Bridgehampton Company along with
74 other men under Captain Josiah Tapping.
Elias passed away in 1734. Mehitabel
Howell was the daughter of Nathaniel and Hannah (Halsey)
Howell. She was born in 1695. (See the Addendum for the Howell and Halsey Families.)
Abraham Cook, son of
the Elias and Mehitabel, was born in about 1720 in Southampton, New York. He married Sybil Burnett, daughter of Ephraim
and Bethiah Burnett. Until 1775, life
was quiet for Abraham and the rest of the folk in Southampton. Occasionally there would be a pirate raid,
but there was an absence of turbulence for fifty years. However, Lexington
and Concord
changed all that. Sympathies ran very
high for those who were opposed to the edicts being handed down by the British.
In May 1775, the Articles
of Association were circulated among the townsfolk and they were asked to sign it. This document stated their support of the
rights and liberties of America
and opposition to the oppressive acts of the British Parliament. One of the men who signed the document was
Abraham Cook. (While it is possible that he may have signed
it twice, it also as likely that he had a son or nephew with the same
name.) All but two of the 87 men in Southampton had signed the document by August 1, 1775. The two holdouts eventually joined with the
rest of their neighbors.
This action resulted
in a heavy price for the people of eastern Long Island. Many of their young men joined the
Continental Army and were sent to fight battles in other states. George Washington suffered a serious loss in
the Battle of Long Island
and withdrew from the area for the duration of the war. As a result, for six years, the area was
totally cut off from the rest of the colonies.
Southampton was left vulnerable to the British, who established a strong
force in nearby Gardiner’s Bay.
To supply their
troops, the British raided local farms, robbing them of their crops and
livestock. As many as 40% of the area’s inhabitants
fled to Connecticut
to escape the oppressive acts of the British soldiers. While the colonists in Connecticut tried to provide for them, these
refugees suffered greatly without jobs, houses and the barest provisions.
Those that remained in
Southampton did not fare much better. If the farmers were not able to take their
livestock with them, many slaughtered their cattle rather than let them fall
into the hands of the British. As they
left, their properties were then confiscated and housed British troops. Captain Cochrane, who was in charge of the
local British forces, was considered to be one of the most ruthless officers in
the campaign. He forced those who
remained in the area to swear an oath of allegiance in the name of their God to
the King of England. This was an extreme violation of conscience.
Records show that
Abraham and his son, Stephen, were not among the refugees to the Connecticut. We do not know if any of them were soldiers
in the army. At some point, Stephen
moved to New Jersey,
perhaps due to the devastation that he suffered during this time. It is not known whether Abraham and Sybil
went with him. We also do not have a
date or location for either of their deaths.
Stephen Cook, son of
Abraham and Sybil, was born in 1751 in Southampton. As indicated above, there was a Stephen Cook
in Southampton during the Revolution and he was
probably ours. He joined his father in
signing the Articles of Association in 1775.
At some point probably
at the conclusion of the war, Stephen moved to Parsippany in Hanover Township
in New Jersey. The town is located about 20 miles west of Jersey City on Interstate
80. He was an active member of
Parsippany Presbyterian Church. There
are records that he bought a pew in the church, a custom in those days to
support the Presbyterian Church functions.
He was married twice. His first wife was Sarah Havens. They had a son, Abraham Cook, Esq., born in
1775 in Southampton, who later became a justice of the peace and merchant in Hanover, New
Jersey.
In the 1778-1780 New Jersey Readables, we found that Stephen Cook was
living in Hanover
Township. He had one cow and one hog. Two years later, he had two cows and two
hogs.
Stephen’s second wife
was Phebe Mitchell Halsey, widow of Amos Halsey. Phebe’s son, Sylvester Halsey, conveyed two
tracts of land to Stephen Cook on April 1, 1797. One was the Amos Halsey
homestead, which Sylvester had inherited from his father. The property was on the east side of the road
leading to Whippany from Parsippany. The Halseys were from Southampton
and it was evident that several of the Halseys moved to the Parsippany.
According to the Hanover Ratables in
1798, Stephen lived in a one-story house that was 21 feet by 24 feet. Since taxes on property was based on the
number of doors and windows in the house, the record shows that the house had
three windows. The value of the house
was 220 pounds.
It appears that he and
some of his sons may have moved to Seneca
County, New York
prior to 1820. He passed away in 1855 at
the age of 93.
Amos Halsey Cook, son
of Stephen and Phebe, was born in 1791 in Parsippany. He was named after the late husband of Phebe,
whose surname was Halsey. He married
Sarah Baldwin, who was the daughter of a prominent elder in the Parsippany
Presbyterian Church. (See the Baldwin Family History.)
After they got married, they moved to upstate New
York in the Finger Lakes area of Seneca County
sometime prior to 1820. There they
raised their family. According to
stories passed down by their son, John, Amos became a well-to-do farmer in the Tyre, New York
area.
He passed away on
January 8, 1855. The will mentions two
children, John Burnett Cook and Mary E. Clark.
Dr. John Burnett Cook,
son of Amos and Sarah, was born in Seneca County, New York in 1813. His middle name was the maiden name of his
paternal great grandmother. As a child,
he went to Parsippany
Academy where his
grandparents lived. This was a very good
education for that day. The Parsippany
Academy may have been
owned by Silas Condit, a Revolutionary War veteran and was in existence until
1928. The Tivoli
Garden Apartments, located behind the Morris Hills
Shopping Center on Route
46, is on the original site of the Academy.
When he was 16, he ran
away from home. He walked from New York City to Buffalo,
worked in a grist mill and earned enough money to take a boat from Buffalo to Detroit. During that trip, he helped take six corpses
off the ship, victims of cholera.
At some time, he
returned home to Seneca County,
New York where he met or
reconnected with Catherine Beadle, his future wife, who lived in the area. At the age of 24, he married her. John and Catherine had seven children but one
child passed away in 1854 at the age of a year and half. His only daughter passed away in 1856 at two
months old. All were born in Michigan,
except for Asa Owen, who was born while Catherine was staying with her parents
in New York.
After they married, John
and Catherine moved to Ionia County, Michigan where he enrolled in the University of Michigan
to become of doctor of medicine. We have not been able to substantiate that he
obtained a degree from the university. In
the 1850 Census, he listed himself as student.
He paid for his
education by skidding lumber. He also
had an opportunity to live with a doctor and assisted him with his practice. During
this time, their marriage was in trouble.
In a letter written by his wife on November 5, 1855, she indicated that
her husband was working day and night and not home more than one night a week. After
twenty years of marriage, he left his wife and five children on November 19,
1858, and the next year, married Mary Finch.
He had an additional four children with Mary.
Dr. Cook continued to
practice medicine for many years in Ionia and Evart, Osceola County, Michigan. After the divorce, Mary and he moved to Saugatuck, Michigan
located on Lake Michigan, south of Holland.
In 1862 in Saugatuck,
Dr. Cook began practicing with Dr. Stimson, who had just started up there. It is possible that he knew Dr. Stimson while
in medical school. As a doctor, Dr. Cook
would ride horseback with his medicine in his saddle bags, busy calling on his patients. He and his second wife lived on Culver Street in
what was later known as the J.H. Pear house.
Two of his sons fought
and died in the Civil War. Amos, James
and Catherine’s oldest child, died on his way home from disease on November 17,
1862. His second child, Asa Owen Cook, was killed
in action at the battle of Cold Harbor, Virginia,
while carrying the colors on June 3, 1864.
He was a corporal in Company D, Eighth Michigan Infantry.
To aid in the war
effort, President Lincoln approved the Revenue Act of 1862 and the Internal
Revenue Service was formed. On October
31, 1862, James Cook paid $10 in income taxes for being a physician and
surgeon. For some reason, he paid a $1 penalty in
1864, along with most of the area residents. He
paid another $10 in 1865.
At some point, it
appeared that Dr. Cook turned to religion to salve his conscience for leaving
his wife for another woman and perhaps for his two sons dying the war. After his death on November 26, 1892, he was
remembered as one who could quote Scripture from cover to cover. He was buried in the Riverside Cemetery
in Saugatuck.
Jonathan “Jay” Llewellyn Cook, son of James and
Catherine Beadle, was born on December 7, 1846 in Michigan.
After his parents’ divorce, the responsibility for his mother might have
landed on his shoulders. His mother
returned to New York with the youngest
children but later settled on farm along the Kalamazoo
River west of New Richmond near Jay. Evidently her former husband bought the farm
for her to have some income. Jay would
have helped her with it until his brother, James, was able to do so. Jay’s property was located between James and
Civilian Cook, his younger brother.
Jay’s first wife was Adelaide Hutchinson. She died in 1868, when Jay was only 21. It would be many years before Jay would
remarry. However, on July 4, 1884 in Holland, Michigan,
at the age of 37, he married Cora Inez Blair and together they had six
children. Cora was twenty years his
junior. (Note: I had thought that Jay lived with Warren Cook
but this was a different Jay, since he was ten years older than ours. The 1880 Census shows the two Jays living in
different towns.)
Jay had many jobs
during his career. He taught school in Wayne County,
Michigan for
a while. He also was a warehouse keeper
shortly after Adelaide’s
death. In 1873, a local atlas listed him
as owning 23 acres of Section 17 in the Douglas
lakeshore area. He was a farmer living
near Manlius with his brother, James Constant Cook, in 1880. Later, he was remembered as a traveling
salesman with the Watkins Company. That
can be the reason why he was not listed as living in the house with Cora during
the 1900 Census. He is still a traveling salesman in 1910 and
living at home with his family.
He and his wife had
four sons and two daughters. Toward the
end of his life, he and his wife lived in Holt.
He passed away on October 3, 1924 in Lansing, Michigan. His wife lived another twenty years and in
her later life, moved to St. Petersburg,
Florida.
Merle Warden Cook, son
of Jonathan and Cora Cook, was born on May 18, 1892 in Van Buren County, Michigan. He married Vera Myrtle Parmater on September
28, 1912 at Main Street
Methodist Church
located at Main Street
and Washington Avenue
in Lansing, Michigan.
Together they had nine children.
They must have moved around often with their children being born in
Lansing, Berkeley, Holt, Pontiac, and finally Eaton Rapids. They remained in Eaton Rapids for a number of
years before moving to Gibraltar,
Michigan.
During World War I,
Merle and Vera moved to Watervliet,
New York to work in a munitions
plant. In 1919 after the war was over,
they moved back to Michigan. After a couple months in Detroit,
they settled in Berkeley
for four years. At the end of the summer of 1923, they moved to Pontiac where they lived
on Pike Street.
In Pontiac,
he drove a bus to Detroit
and back.
In 1924, his father
passed away and Merle moved to the family’s three-acre farm on Mt. Hope Road north
of North Holt. He also inherited his
father’s Ford panel truck. At this point, he worked as a machinist for
Reo Motor Car Company and
the family was able to use the Reo Club.
They enjoyed seeing movies and having Christmas parties there.
In ____, they moved to
Gibraltar where he began working on the
assembly line at Cadillac Automobile Factory.
He stayed with Cadillac until he retired. Merle had a wonderful singing voice and would
often sing solos at different churches to earn extra money for his large family. On February 21, 1964, he passed away in Trenton, Michigan.
Clella Allaire Cook, the
oldest child of Merle and Vera Cook, was born on August 10, 1913, at 1020 Isaac Street
in Lansing, Michigan.
The house has since been demolished.
One of Clella’s earliest
recollections was a ceiling fire started in the stove pipe, when she was three. She remembered that she had to leave her corn
bread and warm milk and go next door to Johnny Parmater’s house. Johnny was Vera Cook’s cousin. Clella also remembered the celebrations when
World War I ended and was in a couple plays while in first and second grades. She moved with her family to Pontiac at the beginning of third grade,
where she had her favorite teachers, Miss Ewell and Miss Rutkowsky. She was taken under their wings and was
teacher’s pet. She also had her first
“date” with a boy that year. But it was
also the worst time in her life. She
caught scarlet fever and had to stay in the hospital for four weeks. She was in isolation the entire time without being
able to see her family except from the window on the second floor.
The Miller family
shared a duplex with a family who belonged to the Ku Klux Klan when they lived
on Chamberlain Street. Despite it being Prohibition time, Clella saw
her first drunk. She and her brother,
Maurice, were so scared as they went out of their way to avoid him, then
watched the cops take him to jail.
She loved to read and
began reading Zane Grey’s book at 10.
She loved to play cards and board games all her life, even though her
mother believed that it was evil. She
did not approve because card playing and gambling were synonymous. But her dad taught her how to play when she
was recovering from chicken pox.
While third and fourth
grade were her best, fifth grade was a disaster. Her teacher took a disliking to her and
threatened to flunk her. Fortunately they
moved to the Holt farm before the end of the year. She remembered having a garden, raising
chickens, picking apples in an old orchard and looking for blackberries and
raspberries.
A highlight as a child
was going to East Lansing
to see the Sells Voto Circus. There she
saw the cowboy movie star, Tom Mix.
On February 19, 1934,
she married Carl Richard Miller at the assistant pastor’s house in Lansing/Eaton Rapids, Michigan.
Together they had eight children.
She and her husband lived in various locations in Michigan
until they had to move to Hinkley in the California
desert in the spring 1956. She was
widowed in March 1958. After moving to Burbank for a couple years, she moved to Simi Valley.
In 1965, she moved back to Gibraltar,
Michigan to take care of her
mother, because she was the only sibling without a spouse. For the next thirty years, she lived in the Gibraltar house.
In her later years, her son, Phil and his wife, Carol, took care of
her. On October 7, 1995, she passed away
at the age of 82.
Addendum
Howell & Halsey Families
(Ancestors of Mehitabel Howell)
Mehitable Howell –
Elias Cook
|
Nathaniel Howell –
Hannah Halsey
| |
John Howell – Susannah
Mitchell Thomas Halsey – Mary Barrett
| |
Edward Howell –
Francis Paxton Thomas Halsey –
Phebe or Elizabeth
| |
Henry Howell – Anne
Eyre Unknown .
| |
William Howell – Ann
Hampton Unknown .
The Howells were the descendents of Howel,
Prince of Caerleon-Upon-Uske in Monmouthshire, Wales. Caerleon is located on the right bank of
River Uske, about three miles north of Newport, Monmouthshire, Wales. Nothing remains of the town.
Wiliam Howell I was the oldest ancestor of
record of the Howell family. He was the gentleman
of the Manor of Westbury, Buckinghamshire,
England. Westbury is part of the Marsh Gibbon parish. He acquired the manor in 1536 during the
reign of King Henry VIII. He married at
least twice, first to Maude and secondly to Anne Hampton. He had a total of nine children through the
two marriages. He died on November 30, 1557 and his will
provided legacies to the poor of Aylesbury, Whitechurch and Marsh Gibbon, local
towns in the area.
Marsh Gibbon is a village four miles east
of Bicester just north of the A41
Highway. It is located between the cities of Oxford and Northampton in
central England.
It was originally known as Mersh or Merse Gibwyne. During the English Civil War, the area
suffered much damage due to its proximity to Oxford and Aylesbury with a major battle
taking place in Marsh Gibbon in 1645. The
Howells had left for America
just a few years prior to this devastation.
It is interesting to note that the hamlet
of Westbury on the Oxfordshire border of the Marsh Gibbon parish was given by
King Edward IV (1442-1483) to the Worshipful Company of Cooks in London. The Company received its Royal Charter in
1482 which was only one year before King Edward IV passed away. So the hamlet was probably granted along with
the Royal Charter. The Company
eventually sold off the town, but I don’t have a record of when that happened.
In the Middle Ages, various crafts formed
guilds. The cooks’ guild was first
mentioned in 1170. There were separate
cooking guilds for cooks, pasties (called pastlers) and pie bakers. These guilds were consolidated into the
Company of Cooks before the charter was granted. They had various regulations governing their
trades. We would not have enjoyed their
dishes since without refrigeration, their salted or over kept meat often needed
to be disguised. The motto of the
Worshipful Company of Cooks was Vulnerati Non Victi (Wounded Not
Conquered). One can only imagine that
not all of their creations met to the satisfaction of their guests. I bring this up because it is interesting
that our Cook family is supposed to have come from nearby Oxford.
We know that our ancestors in the Cook line were cooks by trade. Could the Cooks have been part of the Company
of Cooks?
Henry Howell was the son of Wiliam Howell
and his second wife, Anne. He was baptized in the Wingrave parish church
on December 13, 1552. He became the gentleman of the manor when
Wiliam’s oldest son died without a child. He successfully defended his title to the
manor first against his brother, John, in 1576, then against the Company of
Cooks in London
in 1577. He married possibly Anne Eyre and they had
only one child, Edward. He died in July
1625.
Edward Howell was baptized on July 20, 1584
in Marsh Gibbon. Being the only child of Henry Howell, he
inherited the Manor House of Westbury in Marsh Gibbon. Portions of that house were still standing in
1886. Edward disposed of his share in
the property in 1639, when he moved to Boston.
He married at least twice. His first wife was Francis, possibly
Paxton. The Paston/Paxton family was
prominent in Marsh Gibbon. Together they
had six children. She died in Marsh
Gibbon in about 1630. He and his second
wife had two sons.
Edward became a freeman in 1639-1640. He lived briefly in Lynn where he had received a grant of 500
acres. In that same year, he headed up a
group of Lynn residents who were authorized to
establish a new colony on Long Island. He served as Southampton’s magistrate and a
member of the Council of the Governor of Connecticut
from 1647 through 1653. He built a house
in 1648 and so sturdy that it lasted until 1861. In 1644, Edward entered into an agreement
with the town to build a mill at Mecox upon the condition that he be granted
forty acres of land. The town was
responsible for providing a dam and a millstone to make the mill operational.
John Howell was baptized on November 23,
1624 in Marsh Gibbon, Buckinghamshire, England. He was from the same town as Ellis Cook. At the age of 14, he came to America with
his father and his family. In 1644, he
participated in the watch for stranded whales.
He married Susannah Mitchell in 1647 and settled on his own homestead,
which included a three-acre home lot. He
became a freeman on March 8, 1649 and a corporal in the town militia in
1650. By 1652, he was becoming involved
in local town affairs and served in a number of capacities such as juror,
townsman, assessor, deputy to the general court and magistrate. In 1664, the eastern end of Long Island
became part of the New York instead of Connecticut. As a result, he was chosen as one of the deputies
to meet with the New York colonial governor on
behalf of Southampton, According to a census taken in 1686, he was
the second wealthiest person in Southampton. He was a major in the local militia.
John and Susannah had seven sons and four
daughters. John passed away in Southampton
on November 3, 1696 at the age of 71.
Nathaniel Howell was born on Aug 29, 1664
in Southampton. He was the son of John and Susannah
Howell. He married Hannah Halsey,
daughter of Thomas and Mary Halsey.
Together they had three sons and at least two daughters. He passed away in 1726.
Thomas Halsey was born in about 1627 in England. He was the oldest son of Thomas and Elizabeth
or Phebe Halsey. The first record of him
was as a sixteen year old when he was included in a whaling ward in Southampton. At
the age of thirty, he was living in Mecox.
He married Mary, possibly the daughter of Richard and Mary Barrett. They had six sons and six daughters.
Thomas Halsey was born in January 2, 1592
in England. In London,
he was a mercer, one who dealer in cloth, usually high end fabrics, such as
silks and velvets. I did not find when
he came to America but he
was in Lynn, Massachusetts in 1637, where he owned 200
acres. He was one of the founders of
Southampton, Long Island in 1640. He was a delegate to the General Court in Hartford in 1664. His property was probably on Horse Mill Road
about 500 feet from Main Street
going toward the town pond. He married
twice. He had three sons and one
daughter with his first wife (Phebe or Elizabeth). She was murdered by two Pequot Indians in
1649.
Dean and Dawn Huseby
10969 Langdon Avenue
Mission Hills, CA 91345
huseby (at) earthlink.net