Tracing my mother’s paternal Ackley genealogy began years ago and has now reached its conclusion.
The information gathered has been made available on this website as draft chapters,* with the idea that these would be combined into a series of books (see graphic). All three books now are available in print from Lulu.com or from Amazon and other online booksellers; two also are available as eBooks. The diagram below shows how the generations are grouped.
The Discovering Nicholas Ackley book is available only in print, as of now, from Lulu.com and other online booksellers.
The Discovering James Ackley, Nicholas Ackley, and Abel Ackleybook is available both in print andas an eBook. The print book is available from Lulu.com and online booksellers. The eBook is available from Lulu.com. The purpose of the eBook is to make the information available at a far lower price than is possible with print versions. It contains the same information as the print book.
TheDiscovering Lot Ackley and Descendants book is available in three versions. A print version on higher quality paper allows the photographs included to be reproduced with much more detail. For those who wish to have a print book at a lower price, the same book is available printed on standard quality paper. It is not nearly as pretty, but it contains the same information. Both books are available on Lulu.com and from online booksellers. An eBook is available from Lulu.com, again to make the same information available at a lower price than print versions allow.
Links for purchasing are posted on the Books Available page on this website or easily can be found through an online search. Links to pdfs that contain the table of contents for each book also are posted on the Books Available page to provide a glimpse of what each contains.
Even though the project is “done,” my interest in it is not. Anyone with questions, or information I may have missed, please contact me using the form on this website.
* The draft chapters were removed from the website primarily because the final versions are written in a way that makes it difficult to re-post them as separate chapters.
Discovering Nicholas Ackley was just the beginning of my journey through the Ackley family history in my ancestry. I had intended to spend less time on the others in the distant past, but curiosity has a way of taking over.
James Ackley’s signature and seal on his will
As it became obvious that it will take several months to complete the next book, I decided to release each draft chapter as it is completed, at least through the 1700s. This allows those who are interested early access and may have the added benefit of encouraging readers to contact me with any information I may not have found.
Generation 2 is Nicholas’s son James and his wife Elizabeth. Discovering James Ackleyis available by clicking here.
James Ackley was the youngest of Nicholas Ackley’s children. As with James’s mother Hannah (post to come or see Discovering Nicholas Ackley), the parentage and year of birth of James’s wife Elizabeth remains a mystery.
Various Ackley family histories claim to provide the answer about Elizabeth’s parentage, but none provides any clear proof and most, perhaps unwittingly, present false information. As is explained below, even Elizabeth’s age at death may not be what is recorded on her gravestone.
Elizabeth Ackley’s gravestone, Old Cove Burying Ground, East Haddam, CT
About her parentage: The extensive online Ackley family genealogy has her born in 1689 in East Haddam to Nathaniel Comedy and his wife Mary Bachelder.[1] This includes numerous errors. Mary Bachelder was married to Nathaniel Cowdrey and they did not have a daughter named Elizabeth. It was their son Nathaniel Cowdrey, Jr. and his wife Elizabeth Parker who had a daughter named Elizabeth Cowdrey, born in Reading, MA on 6 Oct 1689[2]. This Elizabeth married Timothy Goodwin in Reading, MA in 1708.[3] So this cannot be our Elizabeth, who gave birth to James’s first child in 1707. These errors, however, appear again and again in online Ackley family genealogies.
Other considerations would suggest this is not our Elizabeth. NoNathaniel Cowdrey family lived in East Haddam at the time. The Nathaniel Cowdrey, Jr. above could not have moved to East Haddam because he died shortly after his daughter’s birth. According to his probate papers,[4] Nathaniel Cowdrey, Jr. died in 1690 in the “Expedition to Canada” in King William’s War and was a resident of Reading at that time. His widow married Jeremiah Swayne/Swain of Reading shortly thereafter; they both died in 1696.[5] IN 1697, Hannaniah Parker was granted guardianship for his “Grand Daughter Elizabeth Cowdrey Daughter of Nathaniel and Elizabeth [Parker] Cowdrey late of Redding in sd County of Middx Deced Intestate. She being a minor of about 8 years of age.”[6] That Elizabeth, then, most likely continued to live with her great grandfather after her parents’ deaths until her marriage to Goodwin and never lived in East Haddam, CT.
Our Elizabeth Ackley is not this Elizabeth Cowdrey, beyond the shadow of a doubt.
Elizabeth had become a common name. Could she have been another Elizabeth Cowdrey? The answer is “no.” I suspect the original choice of Cowdrey was because someone discovered a birth year for an Elizabeth that coincided with the age listed on Elizabeth Ackley’s gravestone. No Cowdrey family, however, appears in East Haddam vital records before 1733 when a daughter, Huldah, was born to Nathaniel and Mehittabell. This couple would have been the age of James and Elizabeth’s children; they could not have been the parents of James’s wife Elizabeth.[7],[8]
Probate records for early Connecticut capture about 80-85% of actual deaths, according to Main, but much closer to all of those for men with families.[9] A search through the three volumes of Manwaring’s probate abstracts showed no probates for any Cowdreys at all during the period 1635–1750 and included no names that might easily be mistaken for Cowdrey.[10],[11] It is extremely unlikely that a Cowdrey family settled in Connecticut would not have had at least one probate recorded for a family member during that time. It is almost impossible for Elizabeth to have been the daughter of Connecticut Cowdreys.
So was she a Comedy? I suspect that was a misreading of some spidery scribble of Cowdrey. A look through the vital records reveals absolutely no Comedys living in or near New England at that time—using any spelling imaginable (e.g. Comety, Camady, Comede, etc.). The probate records also do not contain a Comedy, by any spelling.
Elizabeth Ackley’s parentage, then, remains a mystery.
About her year of birth: To be in the 66th year of her life at her death on 19 September 1755, Elizabeth would have had to be born after 19 September 1689. This fits with the 6 October 1689 date often cited in Ackley family histories, but we have established above that this birth date belongs to a different Elizabeth. Note also that gravestones can be wrong, and too often are. It is possible Elizabeth Ackley was not the age claimed on the stone, but a few years older.
The first child of James and Elizabeth (James Jr.) was born in July 1707. At the latest, then, the couple married in 1706. If Elizabeth was born in 1689, she would have been 16 or 17 at the time (depending on the actual month/day of her birth and marriage). Although women were marrying earlier than in Nicholas’s day, this is very young and 22 was the average age for women to marry.[12]
The cadence of the birth of Elizabeth’s children also seems unusual. She would have been 32 at the birth of her sixth child and 39 with the seventh and last (see table). An apparent seven-year gap during peak childbearing years would be unusual as would having a final child at a relatively young 39.[13]
I suspect Elizabeth may have been as much as five years older than the gravestone claims. Why the discrepancy? It is possible she claimed to be younger than she was, or perhaps the person ordering the stone was uncertain about her actual age. Again, it is not unusual for gravestones to be incorrect.
Elizabeth’s birth year matters because an incorrect year would make finding her maiden name even more challenging by, say, looking for all Elizabeths born in the area in a particular year. This may well be the genesis of the Elizabeth Cowdrey mistake.
Even knowing her birth year might not solve the question of her parentage. Old records very often are incomplete: the record of her birth may have been recorded in a ledger not yet discovered or lost entirely. The record of her marriage to James also has not been found.
We do not know, then, who Elizabeth’s parents were; and we cannot be certain about her year of birth or marriage. Although this may frustrate some, it is just the nature of genealogy. Not knowing these facts does not change who she was. But giving her a maiden name and parentage that is not hers does her an injustice, particularly when verifiable facts are readily available to rule out obvious errors.
[5] Ancestry, 2018: Reading Deaths, p. 596. As noted in Discovering Nicholas Ackley, this was one of the worse years of the Little Ice Age and starvation or illness because of poor diet and extreme weather caused many deaths.
[8] A Cowdrey does marry an Ackley: Loren Cowdrey marries Sarah Ackley in East Hampton, CT two hundred years later, in 1819. Ancestry.com, 2013: East Hampton church records.
[13] Of course, later pregnancies could have been unsuccessful.
References
Ancestry.com (2011). Massachusetts, U.S., Town and Vital Records, 1620-1988: Reading Births.
Ancestry.com (2018). Massachusetts, U.S., Compiled Birth, Marriage, and Death Records, 1700-1850: Reading Deaths.
Main, JTM. (1985) Society and Economy in Colonial Connecticut. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Manwaring, CW. (1904a). A digest of the early Connecticut probate records: Hartford district, 1687-1695. Hartford, CT, R.S. Peck & Co. Printers.
Manwaring, CW. (1904b). A digest of the early Connecticut probate records: Hartford District, 1700-1729. Harford, CT, R.S. Peck & Co.
Manwaring, CW. (1904c). A digest of the early Connecticut probate records: Hartford District, 1729-1750. Harford, CT, R.S. Peck & Co.
Mehling, MBA. (1911). Cowdrey-Cowdery-Cowdary genealogy: William Cowdery of Lynn, Massachusetts, 1603 and his descendants. New York, NY, Frank Allaben Genealogical Company.
White, LC, Ed. (1997). The Barbour Collection of Connecticut town vital records: East Haddam, 1743-1857. Baltimore, MD, Genealogical Publishing Co.
An earlier post included information about allegations of witchery made against Sarah Spencer by her brother James Ackley and his wife Elizabeth. The story is not quite as presented there, or as told by most of those who have written about this incident in Ackley family history. This post is an excerpt from a draft of a chapter on James and tells the story based on the court records which I now have read in the original longhand.
James’s sister Sarah, older by about 17 years, married William Spencer in 1687.[1] He died in East Haddam in February 1713,[2] leaving Sarah with four children at home, ages about 6 to 18.[3] The oldest child, Mary, then 26, had married Jonathan Dunham about 1708.[4] For reasons lost to history, Dunham attempted to have a will he claimed was written by William Spencer accepted as the true will; the court denied the motion and appointed Sarah administratrix.[5] She and Dunham jointly posted the £200 bond.[6] It is not clear why the issue of the will arose, but it certainly was unusual.[7]
The inventory of the estate was compiled and signed by three men, one of whom was Sarah’s brother James Ackley, also of East Haddam. As was typical of those days, however, William Spencer’s estate was not fully probated and distributed until two years later, in February 1715.[8] (Avoiding the delay could have been the plan behind the purported will noted above.) The final probate is somewhat unclear, but it appears that the homestead already had been sold. The probate officially allotted the proceeds to Sarah and the oldest son, Alexander, for whom Sarah served as legal guardian.[9] Eldest sons always were granted a double share and Alexander and Sarah’s shares together amounted to about two-thirds of the £112 estate.[10]
Sarah did not remarry and was working to support herself and the children still at home. Alexander would have been able to work, but probably not enough to support the family alone. Sarah, then, likely struggled. She may have done laundry, sewed, cooked and performed similar domestic services to make a living. It may be that she asked her prosperous brother James for assistance, which would have been very proper and, indeed, expected.
Family histories sometimes misrepresent what happened next, and I misunderstood it until I read the actual court documents.[11] Sarah was never tried as a witch, but she was accused by Elizabeth of being one and the charge was discussed at court.
As background, note that by 1723 the witch hysteria that had waxed and waned in New England since the 1630s had subsided to almost nothing. Laws had been put in place to ensure that the mistakes of the past would not be repeated. It thus was very unlikely that any serious harm to Sarah would result even if a court case for witchery was brought; but the legally the penalty still was death.
The story is as follows.
In 1723, Elizabeth Ackley reportedly publicly accused Sarah Spencer of being a witch and harassing and tormenting her. She evidently described Sarah’s alleged attacks on her in vivid detail at a public gathering at the home of Captain Thomas Gates.
By 1724, Sarah had moved from East Haddam to Colchester. But her reputation as a witch, she claimed, followed her. Early that year, she sued Elizabeth and James for slander, requesting substantial damages to support an “aging widow”[12] whose reputation and ability to earn a living, receive credit, and live “comfortably” among her neighbors had been seriously damaged by the allegations. She even had her pastor write a note attesting her to be a person of “good religion and virtue,” which she claimed she kept with her and had to use. It undoubtedly was true that a charge of witchcraft, complete with a dramatic telling of its effects in public, could have a deleterious effect and may have discouraged Sarah’s customers. One telling would set off rumors that would reverberate around a small town, probably embellished a little more with each telling.
In the court proceedings, testimony by Captain Gates corroborated Sarah’s allegations about Elizabeth’s public charges. Testimony also verified that James had threatened Sarah, saying, in effect, that she had no reason to fear him but that he would give her a reason to fear him if she came near him again. For her part, Elizabeth claimed temporary insanity, alleging that she had not realized what she was saying. That is probably the only part of this story that is wholly false, and the court agreed.
Initially Sarah won the case with a huge award of £500. On appeal, the award was reduced more than once until it was just a few pennies and court costs.
The whole incident, then, was nothing more than a nasty family feud. Unfortunately, it was one played out on the stage of history where it will forever be remembered as the last witchcraft accusation to be part of a court case in Connecticut.[13] But it was a slander accusation, not a “witch trial.”
What happened to Sarah later is not clear, but she may have moved again. In 1726, which would have been just after the close of the slander proceedings, a Sarah Spencer appears as a communicant in the Congregational Church in Windham, CT.[14] In 1733, a Sarah Spencer dies in Windham at age “abt 73 y.”, which would have made her birth year about 1660 or 1661.[15] Windham is about 25 miles from Colchester, far enough to be away from the James Ackleys, but close enough to be a manageable move for an aging woman. The age at death fits with the likely birth year of Nicholas’s daughter Sarah, and 1726 is shortly after the conclusion of the slander trial. This may have been our Sarah.
Sarah’s family’s involvement with James’s family, however, does not end here. The next interaction is a happier one. It takes place in the newly founded town of Sharon, CT and involves Jonathan and Mary Dunham, Alexander Spencer, and the son and daughter of James’s son Nicholas. The son’s name is Abel and his sister’s is—Sarah.
Footnotes are as they will appear in the publication. If you wish to have a full reference for any or all of them, please contact meor download the draft chapter here.
[6] This was required for all wills by the early 1700s and was intended to prevent the administrators from disposing of the estate before it was legally distributed and so denying the heirs of their just inheritance.
[7] I have not found a copy of the purported will so who it most benefited remains a mystery.
[9] The probate granted legal guardianship of Alexander to Sarah at his request, a common practice. He was 18 at the time of his father’s death but only 5 months short of 21 on the date of the granting of guardianship in the final probate.
[10] The youngest son William received land; daughters Mary, Sarah and Hannah received about £15 each.
[11] These are available via microfiche from the archives at the Connecticut State Library. The handwriting makes it impossible to decipher every word, but it is clear enough to develop an accurate understanding. See CLS, 1913.
As I wait for the final proofs of the Discovering Nicholas Ackley book, I have started work on the next in my line, his youngest son James.
Who was James Ackley? The simple answer is that he was the youngest son of Nicholas and Hannah Ackley, born in 1677 in Haddam, Connecticut. He married Elizabeth in 1706, lived in East Haddam, raised 7 children and died at 69 in 1746.
Here lies the body of Mr James Acly who died Sep the 19 1746 in 69 Year of his Age
As you are so were we, As we are you must be
It was somewhat easier to glean information about James’s father Nicholas (1630-1695) — one of the first settlers of Hartford, then a founder of Haddam — than about James. As Connecticut grew and the population dispersed, records were less well kept and more widely scattered. Although some time spent in the East Haddam and Connecticut history libraries likely would turn up more about James, what is readily available is, well, both not enough and too much.
Who was James the man, beyond the dates and list of family members? Below is what the clues I now have suggest.
The first set of clues is in the probate of his will.
James was well off. His total estate was £974, not including any land, livestock and other possessions he had already given to his children. The inventory shows he was well dressed and his house was well furnished. He and Elizabeth had gravestones fancy for the time—no simple granite stone with roughly chiseled initials for them!
It is unlikely James was a farmer in the same vein as his father. The inventory in the probate does not list enough such equipment and he is too wealthy. He could well have raised livestock, which was a major occupation at the time, or he might have been a trader or merchant. Living in East Haddam, he was on the Connecticut River, a major commercial route.
James had two slaves, a “Negro woman” and “a Negro girl” (probably mother and daughter) valued at £50 each. For a man of his means in Connecticut at this time, owning slaves would have been common. They most likely were house slaves, but would have helped with outside chores as needed. That the slaves listed were two females supports the idea that his main occupation was not farming. Had he been a farmer, he would have been more likely to own men who could do heavier work. Sadly, the probate does not indicate the fate of the slaves, or provide their names or any details at all. Probates of that period often did so, but not this one. Since Elizabeth received at least a third of his “movable estate,” it is likely they continued to serve her
Many men of the period learned to sign their names without being literate, but there is no question James could read. His inventory lists six “sermon books,” some probably just pamphlets but some likely bound books. They offer some insight into him—more on this below.
The second set of cluesabout James the man: Connecticut records and several books have made James and Elizabeth famous as the last to accuse someone of witchcraft in Connecticut. In 1723, Elizabeth charged Sarah Spencer with witchcraft for harassing and tormenting James. And James threatened Sarah with adverse consequences if she continued to bother them. The shocker: Sarah Spencer was James’s sister, an aging and impecunious widow in her early 60s. Another post will examine this more closely but, yes, I am quite certain that it was his sister Sarah Spencer who was accused, not another woman of the same name.
Sarah was acquitted and in return sued James and Elizabeth for slander, a serious crime in the early colonies. She sued for a huge award of £500; the jury awarded £5 and appeals reduced that to 1 shilling, the equivalent of perhaps $5 today. More on this in another post, but I suspect Sarah had in fact been harassing a wealthy James to help support her and a teenage son still at home, or perhaps she was mentally ill, or both. The incident, however, appears to be no more, or less, than a family feud played out in a way history would remember. And it sure does remember (see references).
Back to the pamphlets and books. Remember that James would have been a Puritan and religion would have been central in how he conducted his life. Books were precious and pricey, so he would have chosen tracts with which he likely agreed, or that revealed his concerns in life.
“Mr Bulkley’s sermon book on the necessity of religion.” This sermon was preached in Hartford in 1713. Bulkely was pastor of the Colchester church, a town very near East Haddam. (In fact, he was the pastor of Sarah Spencer’s church and wrote in defense of her for her witchcraft hearing.) See https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/evans/n01345.0001.001
“Mr Hosmer’s ordination sermon book,” most likely a pamphlet. Hosmer was the pastor in East Haddam and this sermon was given at the ordination of Timothy Symmes in 1736. See https://library.villanova.edu/Find/Record/826067
The last two of James’s books hold the most interest for me.
“Mr Mather’s lectures and sermons,” by the famous Boston-based pastor Cotton Mather (1663-1728). A staunch Puritan, Mather jumped through several Biblical hoops to justify enslaving “Negros.” But he also was very outspoken about treating them as equals in every other respect. Convoluted and objectionable? Yes. But perhaps the saving grace was his insistence on kindness, both in his writings and sermons, and in his actions as a pastor and judge. The inventory does not indicate which of Mather’s compilations James owned. See https://www.matherproject.org/node/22
“Mr Sewall’s sermon book” is perhaps the most interesting of the six. Sewall (1652-1730) also was based in the Boston area. He was one of the judges who presided over the Salem Witch Trials (1692-1693), as was Cotton Mather. But Sewall soon after deeply regretted his role; he spent the rest of his life apologizing and attempting to make amends. Sewall was also an early abolitionist who spoke out loudly and often against slavery. In 1705, he wrote the first Puritan anti-slaveholding tract, The Selling of Joseph, which used the Bible to refute apologists such as Mather. See http://blog.umd.edu/slaverylawandpower/samuel-sewall-the-selling-of-joseph-1705/ For a personal look at the man, written by his 6th great granddaughter, see Eve LaPlante, Salem Witch Judge: The Life and Repentance of Samuel Sewall.
What does this tell us about James? If only we could see which of these tracts James most read, and perhaps bookmarked or dog-eared, we might know more. Taken together, though, these books suggest a man grappling with basic issues, including issues of belief (including witches?), and probably the question of slave ownership.
It surprises me that he did not release his slaves in his will or make any provision for them, which had become common by the mid-1740s in Connecticut. It may well have been Elizabeth who insisted on the house slaves and so would have continued to keep them until her death at 65 in 1755. But often such arrangements were specified in the will.
I suspect James may have disagreed when Elizabeth accused Sarah of being a witch, but he clearly had had enough of Sarah’s harassment. Unfortunately, because women were virtually invisible in these times, learning much more about Elizabeth is unlikely no matter how much time anyone spends looking. She did attempt to claim insanity in the legal action Sarah brought against her, although I doubt she was that.
If anyone has information to add, or points to refute, please contact me or use the comment form.
On the accusations against Sarah and her slander suit in reply, see:
Taylor, J.M. (1908) The Witchcraft Delusion in Colonial Connecticut, 1647-1697. New York: Grafton Press, p. 155. Tomlinson, R.G. (1978) Witchcraft Trials of Connecticut. Hartford: Bond Press, pp. 65-66. Karlsen, Carol F. (1998.) The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, p. 45. Morgan, F. (1906) Witchcraft in Connecticut. American Historical Magazine. 1:3, p. 237. Available at https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=qWUKAQAAMAAJ&pg=GBS.PA200-IA2&hl=en.
The original records are available on microfilm through the Connecticut State Library. Look for Crimes and Misdemeanors, Vol. 2. Note that they are in the original handwriting and devilishly difficult to decipher.
Discovering Nicholas Ackley 