In researching Discovering Nicholas Ackley, a number of myths and legends surfaced. In fact, the book was inspired by my determination to discover what most likely was true about Nicholas, and what was not.
Haddam Lower Plantation at its founding
Below is a baker’s dozen of the most common misunderstandings about Nicholas. Explanations for each are in Discovering Nicholas Ackley and also in some earlier posts on this blog (see links).
1. Nicholas most likely was born in County Essex in England, not County Shropshire. Many of the Hartford immigrants were from Essex and Nicholas was likely to have chosen Hartford for that reason. The Shropshire (Hopton Castle) connection is based on a genealogy that now is known to be fraudulent (see Nicholas Ackley and Gustav Anjou, Master Forger of Genealogies). It also is possible Nicholas was born in Holland to Puritan parents who were living in exile, as were many Puritans from the area of eastern England. He still would have been considered English, not Dutch, but it might explain his first name, which was unusual in England.
3. Nicholas’s year of birth is about 1630. This fits best with events in his life and the laws and customs of the times.
4. Nicholas likely arrived in Hartford about 1650. He signed a document in early spring 1653 (the Nonotuck Petition) so the latest he could have arrived was late autumn 1652. Few ships made the trip across the Atlantic in winter because it was too treacherous. In addition, ports often were iced in all winter since this was at the height of the Little Ice Age in Europe and North America.
5. Nicholas probably did not leave England to escape the English Civil War unless he was a Royalist and a member of the Church of England. But if he had been a member of the Church of England, he would have been unwelcome in Hartford and likely banned from living there. Only Puritans were welcome and those deemed “undesirable” were forced to leave.
6. Nicholas was probably not an indentured servant; it would have been rare in Hartford. He most likely was middle class—he could sign his name–and migrated for new opportunities and adventure.
7. Nicholas and Hannah probably married in 1655. Laws at the time required a man to be married in order to become a “householder,” and the first known listing of him as a householder is 1655.
8. Hannah’s maiden name is not known. Research on Ford and Mitchell as possibilities make it clear she likely was neither. (See Discovering Our Female Ancestors: Hannah and Miriam Ackley). In fact, it is not certain that her first name was Hannah but it does seem likely.
10. Nicholas probably did have a son named Nicholas. It would have been rare for a family to not have a son named after the father. Nicholas and Hannah likely married in 1655 and the first known child was born about 1657. Hannah had at least 10 children, evenly spaced except for two gaps: the first between about 1662 and 1666 and the second between about 1666 and 1670, just after the move to Haddam. I suspect Nicholas Jr. was born after 1666 and before 1670. Childhood deaths were more common than they are today, from both accidents and disease.
11. Nicholas’s delay in moving to Haddam from Hartford was not unusual nor was he the only man who delayed. Men seem to have frequently changed their minds about being part of a new town; most of those who signed the petition to found Nonotuck backed out. But Nicholas did live up to his obligation in Haddam, just later than most others.
12. Nicholas is sometimes misidentified as being a “private,” but that designation was not used in the colonies until the Revolutionary War, eight decades after Nicholas’s death. He would have been part of the local militia, as were all men, but he did not have a military title and was not part of any “war.” His great grandson Nicholas #3 was a private in the Continental Line (the army, not a militia) during the Revolutionary War.
13. All of Nicholas and Hannah’s children were born either in Hartford or Haddam—none was born in East Haddam and Nicholas never lived in East Haddam. That town had not been settled by the time the last child, James, was born about 1677. Nicholas died in 1695 on the homestead in Haddam, which was sold three years later.
Considering that Nicholas lived nearly half a millennium ago, a remarkable amount of information is available about him. Although official records can be important, just as crucial to separating fact from fiction is an understanding of the laws and the customs of the time. Life was much different in Puritan Connecticut than it is in the US today and different from the simplistic Thanksgiving Day myth about the Puritans/Pilgrims that is so familiar.
Below is a brief overview of the first eight generations of my direct line family of Ackleys in America (and only that line). Note that the table and the summary below do not include references because these are available in the chapters that explore the earlier generations. Please see those for both references and detailed explanations about the research and findings. (This post may be downloaded as a pdf file by clicking here.)
The adventure gene
Nicholas arrived in Hartford, CT in about 1650, less than two decades after its founding. The town was some distance from Boston, which then was the largest city in the northeastern English colonies, and two or three days’ journey from the towns in the south on Long Island Sound. By the time Nicholas married about 1655, life in Hartford was settled—laws were in place, commerce thrived, and the sense of community was strong. But Nicholas left that behind in 1667 to help found what would become Haddam, CT, more than a day’s hard trip away, with about two dozen other families. It was wilderness but offered the prospect of more land and potentially more wealth.
Nicholas’s son and grandson, James and Nicholas-2, did not have the wandering spirit. James moved across the Connecticut River to East Haddam and Nicholas-2 to the adjoining town of Colchester. But Abel, next in line, certainly got the adventure gene. In about 1764, at the age of about 17, he and his younger sister, both recently orphaned, left Colchester for the new town of Sharon, CT. That town was then on the frontier, about 80 miles west. Abel had relatives and friends there, and probably no other good option for himself or his sister. They married siblings and settled across the border in Amenia, Dutchess County, but Abel did not stay. In about 1774, he moved his wife and children about 90 miles north up the Hudson River to what is now White Creek, Washington County, NY.
Two of Abel’s sons led settled lives in Washington County, NY, becoming prosperous farmers, but the youngest son inherited that adventure gene. With his young wife and infant daughter, Lot West Ackley headed west in about 1813, settling 170 miles away in Sand Bank (now Altmar), Oswego County, NY. At the time, it was complete wilderness and he was among the first arrivals. The next three generations stayed in the area.
The migrations were gutsy, for sure, but all were to areas with family or friends. Nicholas likely chose Hartford in part because a group of men also from County Essex, England already was there. Similarly, many of the early settlers of Sharon, CT were from the area of Colchester, CT and Abel had relatives there. Abel also was not alone on the next move: Washington County attracted many from Dutchess County, NY including two Ackley cousins. Forty years later, Lot headed west to Sand Bank at the same time as several other families from Washington County.
Modest lives, comfortable enough
For the most part, the Ackleys were moderately successful farmers, except James, who was in the top two percent of the wealthiest men in CT in the early 1700s. Nicholas-2, his son, probably was not a farmer, but plied a trade such as carpenter or stonemason. He seems to have struggled in life and was the only man in the line to appear to be destitute at his death.
Several Ackley men were involved in local politics and government over the generations; none was particularly prominent. They were the type of family essential to the building of the country—the essential, honest, reliable middle class.
None of the Ackleys appears to have been charged with a crime, although James and his wife were sued for slander by his sister. This family feud is now famous, sadly, as the last time supposed witchcraft was part of a court case in CT (see post here).
Patriotic, but not attracted to war
Some generations in this line participated in wars, some did not. Two of Nicholas’s sons probably fought in the first French and Indian War at the end of the 1600s. Nicholas’s grandson Nicholas-2 and at least two of his sons were in the militia in the last French and Indian War in the mid-1700s. One of those was Abel, who also fought in the Revolutionary War, albeit briefly. His son Lot is rumored to have served in the War of 1812, but likely did not. Two of Lot’s sons (but not my direct line) enlisted at the outset of the Civil War, surviving that horrible conflict but with lifelong injuries. Two Ackley brothers in the eighth generation, including my grandfather, enlisted in World War I—just days before the fighting ended. By the second World War, these men were in their 40s and 50s, and not called up.
Marriage, family and the lives of women
The Ackley men throughout the years married fairly late, some in their mid-to-late 30s. This was not unusual for their times. Men in four of the seven generations of Ackleys married a second time, after the death of a first wife. In most of the generations, the family was created with the first wife and the second was a mid-life marriage. Nicholas-2 did have two sons (not direct line) with a second wife and Frank’s first wife died childless at age 20. Second marriages were common through the generations. Women had few options for supporting themselves; those who were widowed remarried and as soon as possible.
Two Ackley first wives in the earlier generations did outlive their husbands: the wife of wealthy James, who had no need to remarry, and the wife of fifth-generation Lot, whose eldest son supported her. By the 20th century, women remaining unmarried widows was more common: the second wife of Frank outlived her husband as did Arthur-2’s wife and neither remarried.
Until the mid-1800s, most women appeared in records after they married only with their given names, making them virtually impossible to research. Records for both women and men are sparse for the first five generations. The US censuses began in 1790, but it was not until 1850 that the given names of wives and children were recorded. Until then, only the name of the head of household was recorded and the rest were counted by age range and gender.
Good information is available only on one woman in this line before the 1800s: Hannah Shevalier who married Abel in the mid-1700s. A descendant of her father published a well-researched history of that French Huguenot family. After Hannah, the next woman with traceable ancestry is Sophia, who appears by name in the 1850 census. Her family, the Mattesons, arrived in Rhode Island in the mid-1660s (her cousins were my paternal ancestors). Mary, in the seventh generation, was the daughter of Irish immigrants who married into a family whose ancestors had arrived from Holland in the mid-1600s. Her ancestry is explored in the chapter on Frank and Mary. Not being able to trace the other women leaves many questions maddeningly unanswered.
Whatever their ancestry, these were tough and brave women who ran households that required substantial amounts of hard labor just for daily living. Yet they still produced a baby every two to three years for 20–25 years. Until the late 1800s, large families were essential not only to completing the chores of daily life but also to creating and maintaining the overall wealth of the family.
Lengthy but precarious lives
Most of the Ackley men in this line lived long lives for their times. Nicholas died at about 65, which was average for men in his generation in that area of CT; James lived to be about 69; Nicholas‑2 died comparatively young at 54; Abel lived to an amazing 89; Lot to 66; Arthur to 69; Frank to 79 and Arthur-2 to only 55.
Of course, age at death tells us nothing about the quality of life in later years. Medicine for much of this time was rudimentary, and these men would have suffered, perhaps greatly, from ailments and conditions we routinely treat today. This would have been true for the entire family through all generations, and for much of their lives.
Women did die in childbirth, an event often not recorded as such. The only known such death in this direct line was Sophia, my second-great grandmother who died after giving birth to Frank on 31 December 1854. The other wives were past child-bearing age at their deaths, except perhaps Nicholas-2’s first wife, who remains unidentified.
Almost every Ackley generation lost at least one child in childhood. Knowing exactly how many in each generation is impossible before the late 1800s because records for births and deaths were simply not well kept. Children who had died before their fathers died usually did not appear in the father’s probates or wills, of course; official records contained births and deaths only if the parents reported them, which they often just did not do; and many records have been lost over the years. Relying on family lore for such information may mean that children who died young often are simply forgotten by later generations.
The two earliest Ackley generations lost fewer children and experienced fewer deaths from disease than later generations. This was primarily because those early generations were more isolated. As the population, travel, commerce, wars and immigration increased, so did the spread of disease. It is too easy for us in the 21st century to forget that it was after World War II—in the eighth generation and into the ninth—when antibiotics became widely available, effective treatments for heart disease were developed, vaccines for killer childhood diseases appeared, and death from complications of childbirth became uncommon. The complex medical care we take for granted today would have seemed like the wildest of fiction to the first eight Ackley generations in America.
The story of this Ackley line, then, is part of the story of the settlement and development of America and the USA. The chapters on each generation tell that story in greater detail, placing these ancestors in the context of their times. Although we never will know exactly what their lives were like, this approach makes the people in each generation more than just names and dates. That has been a major purpose of the chapters that trace the eight generations.
This post debunks the mistaken Hackley heritage that often appears in Ackley family histories and demonstrates how knowledge of the times and use of verified facts can separate fact from fiction. It is based on an appendix in Discovering Nicholas Ackley.
Gustav Ludvig Jungberg alias Gustave Anjou (1863-1942)
Note: After I researched and wrote this appendix, it became clear that the Hackley genealogy[1] was prepared by an infamous master forger of genealogies, Gustav Anjou, who also designed the fake Hackley crest. The forgery has all his earmarks. For a summary discussion about Anjou and a list of the dozens of fake genealogies he produced, see Wingate.[2]
The attribution of Nicholas’s birth to the village of Hopton Castle, Shropshire, appears to be based primarily on a book published in 1948 to honor Charles Henry Hackley, a wealthy Muskegon, Michigan businessman. It was prepared by his long-time friend and admirer Louis P. Haight and was printed by a local commercial printer nearly half a century later. To add to his friend’s accolades, Haight included a genealogy that was part fact and part fiction. The early sections of it are based on research on English peerage; some of that probably is accurate, but some serious gaps and leaps of faith are troubling.[3]
After that early period, the oddities begin to multiply. The names of towns are confused with what probably are the names of parishes, and those are misspelled; marriages and interactions take place between people distant geographically, which would have been unlikely among all but the upper nobility in England at the time; references are cryptic, at best.
Nicholas appears in several places in the Hackley book, as follows.
FIRST: On page 113: “13. Nicholas, bt. Febr. 21, 1642, in St Ansel, emigrated to Hartford, Conn., living afterwards in East Haddam where he died, Apr. 29, 1695. His name was written Ackley. J.J. Howard Coll. Hartford Ptob. Rec., v,213 iv,4,viii,94,Hist. Sharon, Conn. Hist. Mdx Co. 198.”
We know for certain that Nicholas signed the Nonotuck petition in Hartford in 1653; he could not have been born in 1642.[4]
The references cited in this entry make little sense; the history of Sharon, Connecticut that is cited makes no mention of Nicholas. Some of Nicholas’s grandchildren and their children did settle in Sharon in the 1730s, as is noted in that history (Sarah’s children Alexander Spencer and Mary [Jonathan] Dunham).
The “Hartford Ptob. Rec.” is Nicholas’s probated will, which lists only his date of death, correct here, and does not give his age at death or his birth date. The probate, however, does note that Nicholas lived and died in Haddam—not East Haddam. A Nicholas Ackley did live and die in East Haddam, but he was Nicholas’s grandson by his son James. (Nicholas-2’s son Abel lived for a time in Sharon in the 1760s.)
The “St. Ansel” in this listing would most likely be a church parish, but the name would be spelled St. Anselm. As far as I could determine, a St. Anselm parish did not exist near Hopton Castle although it is not impossible. St. Anselm parishes were sprinkled throughout England. No St. Anslem town existed, as far as I could determine, and English towns rarely disappear over time.
Nicholas’s purported father, John Hackley, is said to have been “churchwarden 1604–1658” of “Hampton Castle,” which ones assumes means Hopton Castle. (p. 113).[5] He is unlikely to have baptized his last child in a different parish and recorded that baptism there.
This entry then, is a mishmash of information, with the only correct facts being that Nicholas Ackley emigrated to Hartford and died on the date given
SECOND: The paragraph above is part of a longer purported lineage that seeks to show that Nicholas’s parents were John Hackley/Hagley and Eleanor Wyman and that he had nearly a dozen siblings. This section is an absolute mess and frankly not worth the time and effort to address line by line. Could Nicholas’s parents have been John and Eleanor? I would say no. Any reference to support that is not given and, for reasons explained in Discovering Nicholas Ackley, Nicholas’s parents were most likely not from Shropshire.
THIRD: In the second entry on page 113, a Nicholas Ackley of St. Anselm is said to have given four acres of land to his brother in “Hampton Castle” in 1661. Who this Nicholas Ackley was is a mystery, but it was not our Nicholas and “Hampton Castle” is fictitious.
On the next page, Nicholas, supposedly the same one, is listed as the son of John Hackley and Elizabeth Bailey, born on “June 11, 1655.” That is obviously impossible for our Nicholas, who bought property, married and paid taxes as a householder in Hartford in 1655. And Nicholas cannot have had two sets of biological parents.
FOURTH: On page 115, it is noted that because Peter Hackley had emigrated, Nicholas Hackley was assigned as administrator of a will in 1684 because Nicholas was “then in England.” Again, this cannot be our Nicholas Ackley who was firmly planted in Connecticut.
This final mention also lists purported relatives of Peter Hackley “the Odgens [sic], Richardsons, Budd, Beach, Huntington, Bailyes [sic], etc., [who] had emigrated to the New World, some settling in Connecticut, and his own uncle, Nicholas Hackley (or as written, phonetically probably) Ackley, had settled at Hartford, Conn., and later on at East Haddam.” It is true that some of these family names are among those of the early settlers in the colonies. A man named John Bailey, in fact, was one of the founders of Haddam, with Nicholas. But Nicholas Ackley was not Peter’s uncle and, again, he did not live in East Haddam.
None of the entries in this publication, then, demonstrate Nicholas’s parentage or place of origin, and I very much doubt they ever were meant to do so. The entire purpose of the Haight publication was to honor Charles Henry Hackley as someone supposedly with noble roots in England and with ancestors involved in the early settlement of this country. Nicholas appears, I suspect, only because some information about him surfaced in the seminal publications about the early settlers that Haight would have used in his search for Hackleys. Nicholas Ackley’s parents, then, remain unidentified.
[1] L.P. Haight, 1949, The life of Charles Henry Hackley: drawn from old public and family records, Muskegon, MI: Dana Printing Company.
[4] It is not possible that he was born a few years before his baptism. Lag times between actual births and baptisms in England were short, no more than a week or two weeks. This was partly because of the alarmingly high rate of infant mortality and partly because of the English Crown’s desire to keep close count of its population for purposes of taxation. Note that civil records of births, marriages and deaths were not kept in England until the late 1830s; the Church of England was charged with keeping those records beginning in 1538. An individual’s official birthday, then, was his or her date of baptism.
[5] Hampton Court Palace, sometimes called Hampton Court Castle, was a day’s journey away, but the term referred only to the actual castle, not a surrounding town. There was no “Hampton Castle.” Given the political history of England, moreover, a churchwarden at Hampton Court Palace would not have been likely to continue to serve there after the beheading of King Charles I in 1649.
Dates of birth and maiden names of female ancestors often are undiscoverable, something that many amateur family historians find difficult to accept. In the modern era, we have become used to women being clearly identified in official records. It is easy to forget that this was far from true in colonial Connecticut.
As an example, in my line of Ackleys, the original families of the women in the first three generations remain unidentified: Hannah and Miriam, the wives of Nicholas-1 (abt 1630-1695); Elizabeth, the wife of James (abt 1677-1746); and Jerusha(?), the first wife of Nicholas-2 (1708-1763).[1]
A typical Puritan wedding: a civil ceremony with a small group in attendance
Sadly, online Ackley family histories routinely misidentify each of these women. This is unnecessary. Although available verifiable facts may not solve the puzzle, they can eliminate some possibilities and avoid perpetuating mistakes. We owe these hardy female ancestors the time it takes to sort through the puzzles pieces and toss those that just do not fit.
In a previous post, I outlined the common mistakes made about Elizabeth Ackley. I will be taking a closer look at Jerusha in a later post, but already know that she cannot be the Jerusha Graves so many online histories cite as the wife of Nicholas-2.
Hannah and Miriam, Wives of Nicholas-1 Ackley
Discovering Nicholas Ackley devotes several pages to exploring who Hannah[2] might have been, and includes a shorter section on Nicholas-1’s second wife, Miriam. What follows is a brief summary; please see Discovering Nicholas Ackley for additional details and a full list of sources, or contact me.
Hannah Ackley
Nicholas likely married Hannah, in 1655, although no record of the marriage itself exists. Marriages in Puritan Hartford were not the church affair most might assume. The Puritans saw marriage as a covenant, a legal contract between the man and the woman. It was a magistrate or other civil official who performed marriages, not a pastor or other church functionary. Puritans insisted couples marry for love because strong families, with faithful spouses, were seen as the bedrock of their way of life. The average age for women to marry in the colonies at that time was 23, based on the idea that younger women might lack the mature judgment required to select a life-long spouse.[3]
Where Hannah originated is unknown and the possibilities are extensive. So many more men than women had migrated to the New World in the 1630s and early 1640s that the ratio of men to women in Hartford was two to one. By 1640, the average age for men to marry was 30 because of the shortage of women.[4] Although it had begun to even out, the shortage still was serious when Nicholas married in the mid-1650s. Hannah, then, might have come from elsewhere in the colony or even recently arrived from England. It not impossible that they had travelled over together, well chaperoned, or even met on the voyage. It is unlikely Hannah travelled alone, however.
The possibilities of Hannah’s origin that are mentioned most often are as follows.
Hannah “Ford”
That maiden name for her does not appear in any of the references based on old town records.[5] A complication is that maiden names invariably were dropped once the woman married. However, it does not seem likely that Hannah was a Ford.
Not Hannah Ford born in Dorchester, County Dorset, England. Although this birthplace and date turn up in numerous online genealogies, this is not our Hannah. Thomas Ford of Windsor, Connecticut did have a daughter named Hannah born in Dorchester, England on 1 Feb 1628/9. But that Hannah died in England on 28 March 1629, just weeks after her birth.[6] (Thomas arrived in CT about 1635.)
Not Hannah Ford of Trumbull Street. A second possibility is that she was the daughter of the Thomas Ford who was admitted in 1649 as an inhabitant of Hartford with the address of Lot 42 on Trumbull Street.[7] This is the same property where Nicholas was living in 1655 when he was admitted as an inhabitant and where he lived with Hannah until his move to Haddam in 1667.
Is that a coincidence, or not?
A “Lot 42 Hannah Ford” is possible only if there were two Thomas Fords. But there were not. The only Thomas Ford who immigrated was the one noted above from Dorchester, England, whose only daughter named Hannah died shortly after her birth. It is a mystery as to why Ford owned the property in Hartford (see appendix 3 in Discovering Nicholas Ackley), but it is certain that he cannot have been the father of our Hannah.
According to Banks,[8] three other Fords did immigrate to the New England colonies between 1630 and 1650: John to Weymouth, Stephen to the Isles of Shoals, and William to Plymouth.[9]
John Ford arrived unmarried in Weymouth in 1635. He would have had to marry almost immediately to produce a Hannah old enough to marry Nicholas in 1655, unlikely although not impossible. A widow would have been too old to have produced Nicholas’s last child about 1677.
Stephen Ford emigrated to the Isles of Shoals but no more information about him is readily available. Given the location, he is unlikely to have been Hannah’s father.
William Ford arrived in Plymouth in 1621; he did marry a woman named Hannah. But she was still his wife when she died in the 1680s and none of his daughters was named Hannah.
With the idea that perhaps the old handwriting had been misread, I also looked at similar last names in the Hartford area, e.g., Lord. No Hannahs.
Hannah “Ford Mitchell”
The online Ackley family genealogies that list Hannah Ford Mitchell as Nicholas’s wife appear to refer to two different Hannahs. One was born in 1614, but died in 1650, about five years before Nicholas married. The other Hannah supposedly was born anywhere between 1629 and 1639, dates for which I have yet to find any source. Any date later than 1636 is probably too late, but not impossible. As noted above, the Puritans strongly discouraged early marriage.
The “Ford Mitchell” part of this name is never clearly explained.[10] Children were not given middle names for about another hundred years and women did not use their maiden names as middle names after marriage (how I wish they had!). Middle names do not appear in the records from early Connecticut.
Some Ackley family histories suggest Hannah was the widow of a Mitchell. For that to be true, her first husband had to have lived but briefly after the marriage. That a first husband died would be more likely than divorce, which was rare and took years. Had there been a first husband who died, however, probate would have been undertaken and the widow listed by name. No such probate record exists, and such records are remarkably complete for Connecticut at this time.
Mitchell appears as a name in several colonial Connecticut towns. John Mitchell, a barber, lived in early Hartford in Nicholas’s time.[11] In fact, Nicholas sold one of his Hartford properties to him in 1668. None of John Mitchell’s daughters, however, was named Hannah and all were still unmarried at his death in 1683. A Mitchell also lived in Wethersfield, not far away, but none of his daughters or wives was named Hannah. Neither Mitchell had a son who could have been a first husband of Hannah. A different Mitchell, from a more distant town, is a slight possibility.
I also attempted to locate a possible Hannah (or Hanna, or Hana, or Anna) by looking through all available probate records for the early settlers, which regularly listed all their children. The sprinkling of Hannahs I found either were too young or married to someone else. Any widows of a similar name also were unavailable.
A final possibility is that Hannah was the daughter of one of the few servants brought to the colonies. If that were the case, looking for her name among the early settlers would be pointless. The names of servants rarely were recorded in official documents.
For now, then, Hannah’s parentage remains unknown. What we do know of her is that she had to have been a strong woman to have met the challenges of the time and produced as many as 12 children, 10 of whom survived to adulthood.
Miriam
Hannah died in about 1687. In about 1688, Nicholas married his second wife, Miriam,[12] who is just as much of a mystery as Hannah.
All we know about Miriam is that she was a widow. We have no idea of Miriam’s age or whether she had children from her earlier marriage. No children from her first marriage are listed in the probate of Nicholas’s estate, but they would not have been entitled to any of the estate and so would not be mentioned. (Nicholas died without a will.) She and Nicholas did not have children, but that does not necessarily reveal her age.
Some Ackley family genealogies list Miriam’s surname as “Moore” at the time she married Nicholas. The source for that is unclear since records from the time note only that she was Nicholas’s second wife and do not list surname.[13] One false lead now discounted is that she was the Miriam Moore who was the daughter of Miles and Isabel Joyner Moore of New London. This Miriam married John Willey in 1670. In 1687, he moved with his family to the part of Haddam that became East Haddam, where some of the Ackley sons were settling. He died in May 1688, the year Nicholas married again. But Miriam Moore Willey married Samuel Spencer in 1689, not Nicholas Ackley.[14]
What happened to Miriam after Nicholas’s death in 1695 is unknown. Some of the children still were living at home and she may have remained with them at the homestead until it was sold three years later.
My search for Miriam was somewhat less thorough than for Hannah since she is not a direct ancestor. I did search various sources and probate records for “Miriam” or variations on that name. I found none with dates or marital status that would fit.
For many of these strong, remarkable female ancestors, then, we have very few facts. It is not impossible that records may yet be found, but every lead needs to be checked and rechecked. Knowing more about the culture of the time can help determine whether a particular fact could be true.
If anyone has any new information on any of these women in the Ackley family history, I would be thrilled to see it. Please contact me using the form on this website.
Copies of Discovering Nicholas Ackley are available on Amazon, Barnes & Nobles and from Lulu.com.
[1] The maiden name of his second wife is recorded.
[2] I have not seen any original documents showing that this was her name, but am accepting on faith that some ancient family history recorded that correctly.
[3] See DH Fischer, 1989, Albion’s seed: four British folkways in America, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 78-69
[4] JT Main, 1985, Society and economy in colonial Connecticut, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, p. 5
[5] The LDS/Ancestry database, while useful for clues, does not purport to be definitive and is based on family histories and recollection as well as primary sources. In the case of Hannah, it simply perpetuates misinformation.
[6] Dorset Holy Trinity Church, n.d., Dorset parish registers, 1559‐1812, Dorchester, England: Dorset History Centre.
[7] WS Porter, 1842, Historical notices of Connecticut, no.1: Hartford, Hartford: Elihu Geer’s Press, p. 37.
[8] CE Banks, 1963, Topographical dictionary of 2885 English emigrants to New England, 1620‐1650, Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Publishing Co.
[9] The information about John, Stephen and William Ford is from a search on Ancestry.com, so not exhaustive but enough to discount them as likely sources.
[10] It likely is just coincidence that Thomas Ford once owned Lot 42 on Trumbull Street, which Nicholas later bought, and that Nicholas sold his upland Hartford property to John Mitchell – “Ford” and “Mitchell” or “Ford Mitchell”. But this may well be the source of those last names being associated with Hannah.
[11] JH Trumbull (ed.), 1886, The memorial history of Hartford County, Connecticut, 1633–1884, vol. I. Boston: Edward J. Osgood, p. 275
[12] At least it is certain this was her given name since she is identified by name in Nicholas’s estate probate.
[13] It is possible that a source exists and I have not found it. Any mentions of “Moore” that I have seen do not indicate the source of information.
[14] OJ Harvey, 1899, The Harvey book: giving the genealogies of certain branches of the American families of Harvey, Nesbitt, Dixon and Jameson, and notes on many other families, together with numerous biographical sketches, Wilkes-Barre, PA: E.B. Yordy & Co, pp. 595-596.
Nicholas Ackley was an early settler of Connecticut, the first of my ancestors in the New World. He arrived in Hartford between about 1650 and 1652, just 15 years after the town was founded.
When I launched the project of writing up the 400-year genealogy of my Ackley ancestry, it was clear that Nicholas would require more than a couple of days’ research and a brief summary. In this era of instant internet genealogies, Nicholas’s story had been badly mangled. Information about him was easy to find, but it too often was inconsistent or contradictory — and some was just plain wrong.
As I began to wade through it all, I realized two things. First, sharing the results of my research might help counter some of the worst mistakes about Nicholas and his family that appear over and over again in online genealogy sites. And, second, some of the gaps in information about the Ackleys could be at least partially filled by understanding their times, England in the 1600s and early colonial Connecticut from about 1635 to 1700.
Due out in late 2021, Discovering Nicholas Ackley details what documented facts about Nicholas and his family exist. Where firm facts are missing, “educated guesses” about what is most likely to be true are based on the norms and customs of the time — and carefully identified as probable, not certain.Setting the story of Nicholas in the context of his times also provides a much richer view of this early Ackley family than is possible with just names and dates.
Nancy A. Mattison, 7th great granddaughter of Nicholas and Hannah Ackley
UPDATE: In progress! The publisher had a glitch with production, so it’s delayed, but look for it by the end of January 2022.
Discovering Nicholas Ackley 