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Memories of Stottville – Kitty Jenks

Kate Oakley Pearson Jenks (1878- ?)

I can shut my eyes now and hear the mill bell ringing before daylight. Bill Hill pumping the well water, the hum of the mill machinery, the horses coming down the hill from the church and over the bridge, and the creek rushing over the dam.

I can smell the wool and grease in the mills, the sulphur water I went with Bill Hill to draw at the springs, the lilac by the north parlor window, the yellow rose bush.

Grandma’s beds of heliotrope and verbena, the buffalo robes in the big sleigh and the ole-kuchen baking in Auntie’s basement kitchen.[...] read more

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The 6th Regiment, or: how Sgt. Stott defeated Napoleon and underestimated the Americans

Found some original notes yesterday in the files: reminiscences collected by three Stott cousins and written up by “H.S.F.,” a granddaughter of Jonathan Stott, sometime after World War I. I’m pretty sure H.S.F. must be Grace Helene Stott Franchot (1867-1939), who was Grandma’s aunt. Still trying to figure out who everybody else is but the contents of the files are gold.

Here’s more background on Jonathan Stott’s family and military career. The story of his mother’s funeral is particularly arresting.[...] read more

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The rise and fall of Stottville

A story in three generations

Two of the former Stott mills, ca. 1900

We last left Jonathan Stott operating a single hand-powered mill in Hudson, New York,  and looking for a source of power nearby. He found it in Springville, three miles up the road, where Claverack Creek drops 58 feet and the Van Rensselaer family at one time owned all of the waterpower rights. In 1828 he bought the rights of a fulling mill and a small woolen factory there and built his first water-powered factory. It had two sets of 36 inch cards and a dozen looms and was dedicated to the production of flannel.[...] read more

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Jonathan Stott, 1793-1863

Jonathan Stott, 1793-1863

Born at Failsworth in Lancashire, as a boy Jonathan Stott learned the weaving trade in his father’s silk mill. But he chose to follow the military example of his older brother Joseph, who enlisted at 17. (Joseph was killed only two years later, probably in India.) Jonathan joined the Sixth Foot Regiment, now known as the First Warwickshire Regiment of Foot. Formed in 1674, it’s one of the oldest in the British Army.

After fighting in Spain and France, his regiment was ordered to Canada to serve in the Niagara Campaign of the War of 1812. They landed in Quebec in June of 1814. By August, they were fighting the Siege of Fort Erie, the longest engagement of that campaign. For six weeks, the British battered the fort held by the Americans, suffering heavy casualties as well as illness and exposure in their rough encampment. On September 14, 1814, Jonathan Stott was captured by the Americans.[...] read more

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Thomas Baxter, a somewhat unpleasant person

“A Piratical Vessel destroying a Merchant Ship,” from The Pirate’s Own Book, by Charles Ellms, 2004

Mercenary, pirate, double-crosser, jailbird, bigamist, wife-abandoner. “Well, at least he didn’t kill anybody,” says one descendant.

Meet Thomas Baxter, born between 1626 and 1628, either in Shropshire or Norfolk. We don’t know how he got here but he may have come with his father George as part of the Winthrop fleet to Massachusetts in 1630. We don’t know his mother’s name for sure, but it might have been Mary Adams. The Baxters moved to New Amsterdam with a few other English families in 1635, and in 1641 were given a grant of farmland on the site of present-day Bellevue Hospital, on the East River. Thomas probably grew up on that farm. George worked for the Dutch West India Company, was secretary and translator for both governors Kieft and Stuyvesant, and also did business with the bloodthirsty Captain John Underhill (a Vail ancestor), but those stories are for another day.[...] read more

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The Oranjeboom expedition of 1625

Antique Dutch Delft ca. 1625-1650

In 1625, a small family from a town near Utrecht – Wolffaert Gerritsz Van Kouwenhoven, his wife Neeltgen Jacobsdochter, and their children Gerrit, Pieter, and Jacob – set out on a midwinter crossing from Amsterdam. They were part of a six-vessel expedition, organized by the Amsterdam Chamber, carrying hundreds of colonists and supplies to New Amsterdam. It was the largest colonizing effort yet undertaken by the Dutch. The six ships were called, in English, the Orange Tree, Cow, Black Horse, Sheep, Mackerel, and Rider. In addition to people the Oranjeboom carried most of the expedition’s farming tools, seeds, and live plants. The Koe and the Swaerte Paert carried hundreds of cows, horses, sheep, and hogs. The Schaep and Mackereel carried equipment and passengers, and the Ruijter held people and livestock.[...] read more

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Aunt Jane’s garden

Jane Charlotte Stott (1820-1904)

Five years ago, through a generous cousin, I came across some delightful information about the family of Jonathan Stott. I knew that he and his wife Julia Cooper Bennet had two sons: Charles Henry, our ancestor, and Francis Horatio, who went off to sea on the clipper ship Sea Witch before being recalled to the family business. After Jonathan’s death these two brothers formed the firm of C.H. & F.H. Stott Woolen Mills, and later hired a young bookkeeper named John Magoun Pearson. 

Now I learn that there were also three daughters. Two of them, Mary Elizabeth and Julia Matilda, died within days of each other in 1823. They were 5 and 3 years old, respectively. But the third daughter, Jane Charlotte, lived a long and evidently happy life. She was our grandmother’s great-aunt. She never married; rather, she stayed home, gardened, and had a strong influence on generations and dozens upon dozens of nieces, nephews, grand-nieces & grand-nephews. One of them, Lella Seeley, wrote this lovely piece about her aunt’s garden in Stottville. [...] read more

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Josephs, Wilson, Pearson & Stott immigrants by year

I just added a new page to the history department and am reproducing it here.

Here’s a PDF chart showing every ancestor of our father’s family I can find who came from elsewhere. It shows their dates of arrival but not the ships they came in on; that information can be found here. I separated the immigrants into four lines based on the families of our paternal great-grandparents: Josephs, Wilson, Pearson, and Stott. Altogether I’ve found  228 Josephs forebears who chose to emigrate to this country, and 95% of them got here in the 1600s. Moreover, 85% of them were part of the Great Migration and were here by the 1640s.[...] read more

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Stott ancestors, Bronx division

Tippett’s Creek in Spuyten Duyvil, the Bronx. From The Art Journal: Volume 7; Volume 13, 1861, James S. Virtue, London & New York

In this installment we meet some of Grandma’s more colorful English ancestors, some of whom who ended up in the Bronx, then considered part of Westchester. In the 1640s, Westchester was a border zone between two colonies with very different cultures and politics: New Netherlands and New England. The region even had two opposite names. The Dutch called it “Oostdorp” or “East Village,” because it was their easternmost settlement in the area. To the English trickling in from Connecticut and Long Island, it represented a western outpost, and they called it “Westchester.”[...] read more

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Samuel Libby: an insider account of the American Revolution

Fort Ticonderoga 1775 by Heppenheimer and Maurer

“Grandfather has been telling of his service in the Revolutionary War,” writes Jonathan Pearson in his diary. 

Samuel Libby (1757-1843) had an eventful service. He was present at the surrender of Fort Ticonderoga, fought under General Horatio Gates, was captured three times while privateering, escaped from a prison ship in Savannah harbor, and told the tale to the Marquis de LaFayette. Here is Pearson’s account: 

Grandfather has been telling of his service in the Revolutionary War. When the battle of Bunker Hill was fought, he was at home in Rye but soon after he enlisted into the war. He was stationed at Fort Ticonderoga when it was given up to the British by Genl. Schuyler, which army retreated to S. Keenesboro in batteaux where they left them and retreated from thence to Fort Ann and to Fort Edward, pursued by the the enemy with whom they had some smart skirmishes. On the retreat he was one of a small party who fought with two battalions of the enemy and repulsed them. He was under the command of Col. Long of this State [NH].[...] read more

Dorothy Stott Pearson family tree

This is just a shorty version, four generations to get your bearings. For Grandma’s full tree going back about 12 generations, check the trees for John…
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A few of the later Pearsons & Stotts

Hudson, New York

Grandma was from Hudson. Her father was John Magoun Pearson, and her mother was Kate Stott. John Pearson worked, at least for a time, at C.H. & F.H. Stott Co. in Stottville, where he married the boss’s daughter. I’ve attached a short four-generation tree so you can see the players, but it doesn’t include interesting aunts and uncles. One uncle would have been Dr. Will Pearson, another son of Jonathan Pearson’s. Will Pearson stayed in Schenectady and never married. I have the horsehair lap robe his patients gave him in gratitude and concern, because he went out in all weather to look after them. I think Sarah may have his lantern?[...] read more

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Back in the archives

LCJ about 1877

Dear Josephs People,

I’m back in the archives. Seven years of research has yielded some amazing finds, mountains of tidbits, and great stories about our family. My biggest challenge for a while has been putting it in readable form. So far I’ve made three false starts, organizing the material chronologically, then by region, and then by the ship they came in on. All three approaches died of unnecessary complication. Abandoned manuscripts litter my computer. Charts spill out of drawers. Books have colonized my office, multiplying in the night. (And I’m not even counting the e-books).[...] read more