The People of the Eye: Deaf Ethnicity and Ancestry (26 page)

Moses and Esther's second Deaf child, Isaac Jellison, attended the Asylum and married Lydia LovejoyD; she was from a large and important Deaf clan discussed further below. Thus, IsaacD became an in-law of numerous Deaf Lovejoys, but also a relative of the many Deaf families with which the Lovejoys were affiliated. LydiaD's branch of the family lived thirty-seven miles southwest of Monroe in Sidney. There were eight Deaf Lovejoys who lived in Sidney at one time or another along with a SawtelleD, a GordonD, and a LordD. We do not know how LydiaD and IsaacD met but they did not overlap at the American Asylum and did not attend its reunions; after their marriage they attended the Mission. They had eight children, three Deaf. The first of those was JohnD C., who married his cousin, Edna Hattie JohnsonD, and they had a Deaf son. EdnaD had two Deaf brothers and a Deaf sister; EdnaD and her siblings were descended from Osgoods and Blaisdells, families with Deaf members.

The second Deaf child of IsaacD and LydiaD, James G. JellisonD, a mill operator, married Annie Wing; she was descended from Wing progenitor, Stephen Wing, who was a native of Kent. (Another descendant, George WingD, mentioned earlier in connection with travel by sleigh, invented a system for teaching English, and edited for a time the Gallaudet Guide and Deaf-Mutes' Companion; he had a Deaf brother.) The last of IsaacD and LydiaD's Deaf children was EddieD, who married a Deaf woman, Edna JaronD, and had two Deaf daughters. In the early 1900s, JamesD and EddieD were both in Wilton, no doubt employed in the woolen mills there.

Finally, the third and last of Moses' and Esther's Deaf children was SimonD who married Nellie ChapmanD, from an Appleton family, not far from Monroe, with several Deaf members. NellieD had been married to Benjamin AldenD (both Mission members) from nearby Camden, and AldenD had been married to Mary HansonD of nearby Searsport.

THE JACK CLAN

In 1878, Lucy JellisonD married into the Jack clan, located just five miles away from Monroe in Jackson, Maine (see Fig. 13, Jack pedigree). Her husband, Alfred JackD, had two Deaf brothers: RalphD, a farmer like AlfredD, and DunbarD a trapper.5 (When enrolling in the American Asylum, members of the Jack clan variously gave Dixmont, Jackson, Monroe, and Thorndike as residence; all are quite close to one another.) Alfred's parents were hearing but he had three Deaf uncles-LeviD, DanielD, and WilliamD Jack. In petitioning the state to pay for their education at the American Asylum, their father, Jonathan Jack, a sailor and wheelwright, stated that he had fifteen children, eleven sons and four daughters, three of the sons Deaf. Those sons apparently did not marry, but three of his hearing sons would give him Deaf grandchildren. The first of those Deaf grandchildren, Charles Augustus JackD (he later changed his name to Brown in honor of his step-father) lived in Belfast, twelve miles from Monroe, where he worked as a cobbler. CharlesD attended the American Asylum and overlapped there with Anna RandallD, from Durham, New Hampshire, who had Deaf relatives; she later became his wife. Charles JackD was president of the Maine DeafMute Mission (Ebenezer CurtisD was secretary and Rev. Samuel RoweD, state missionary). Six members of the Jack clan were Mission members. In addition, CharlesD served on the board of the NEGA; he was state manager for Maine.

Another Deaf grandson, Levi JackD, was a weaver who lived in Dixmont with his sister, SarahD, and their parents. Life was not kind to Levi JackD. According to the silent press, after he graduated from the American Asylum, LeviD spent some time in the poorhouse and then went to California but returned broken in body and mind. Next he spent two years in the Insane Hospital at Augusta, at the end of which he was discharged as cured. When LeviD returned to the poorhouse, he set it on fire and it burned down. One elderly resident died in the fire. LeviD was tried and pleaded guilty; without interpreters, however, he could not have had adequate representation and a fair trial.6 He was sentenced to be hung, but when physicians found him of unsound mind, he was recommitted to the Insane Hospital for life.? The last Deaf grandchild was Eta Jane JackD, who also attended the American Asylum; she had three Deaf uncles, six Deaf cousins, and a Deaf husband from Canada. She seems to have been more fortunate than her brother LeviD.

THE BERRY CLAN

The ancestry of the Berry clan has four major Deaf clusters: One based in Rockingham County, New Hampshire, and three in Maine-Palmyra, Vienna, and Phillips townships. Twenty-three Deaf individuals by the name of Berry have been identified (see Fig. 11, Berry pedigree). No other clan has provided as many challenges in reconstructing its pedigree; puzzles and conflicting information remain, despite diligent inquiry with the help of eminent Maine genealogists.8 The Berry clan is an important node in the Deaf kinship network with its several marriages to other Deaf families. The clan progenitor, William Berry, from Lancashire, England, was one of the pioneers settling an area then known as Strawberry Bank, which included all that is now Portsmouth, Rye, Newcastle, Newington, and Greenland, New Hampshire; he has descendants in all those places. William Berry received a grant of land in 1648 but died before 1654.9

The earliest Deaf Berrys were William's great grandchildren, BenjaminD and ElizabethD. It is noteworthy that they are the fruit of a union between a Berry and a Larrabee, for their mother comes from a family with three Deaf descendants in Maine (see Larrabee in Appendix A., Briefly noted lineages). In the next generation, the fifth, Ithamar Berry and wife Abigail (located toward the center of the pedigree chart) had seven children of whom four at least would have Deaf descendants. The first of these descendants in the sixth generation, Eliphalet Berry, married Lydia Morrill and had four sons, Aaron, Eliphalet, Ithamar, and Luthana, who moved to Palmyra at the same time. The town is located on the Sebasticook River which feeds into the mighty Kennebec, providing the town with waterpower for mills and rich soil. Palmyra was also on the stage road halfway between Bangor (on the Penobscot River) and Norridgewock (on the Kennebec); it would become a center of trade and business for the region.1° Seventh generation Eliphalet and wife, Mary Polly Kimball (she had two Deaf relatives), had six children of whom four were Deaf. MosesD, Sarah AnnD, Thomas HarrisonD, and Julia AnnD Berry all attended the American Asylum, along with their cousin Aaron Webster BerryD. Eliphalet's brother Aaron married his cousin Elizabeth Berry. Bell represented that they had a Deaf son. He also claimed AaronD was insane. However, that was not noted in the place provided in the 1850 census and AaronD was a member of the Maine Deaf-Mute Mission."

Returning to fifth-generation Ithamar and wife Abigail, the pedigree shows their children-Eliphalet Berry and wife Lydia, mentioned just above; also a son named Moses and twins, John and Ellet, who left Chester, New Hampshire, one day and moved to Vienna, Maine. Vienna, thirty-seven miles from Palmyra, is adjacent to the Sandy River town of New Sharon. Due to intermarriage with Moses's family, each of the twins acquired Deaf descendants. John's daughter, Sarah, gave him two Deaf grandchildren, according to Bell. Ellet had a Deaf daughter, AbigailD, three Deaf grandchildren, and five Deaf great grandchildren.

Among the grandchildren (all of whom were members of the Mission), George Albert BerryD, farmer and shoemaker, linked the Berrys and Lovejoys by marriage to Abigail LovejoyD in 1870. Her branch of the Lovejoy family resided in Vienna. Abigail had a Deaf father, a Deaf grandfather, three Deaf siblings, five Deaf cousins, and five Deaf nephews and nieces. GeorgeD and AbigailD settled in Chesterville, adjacent to Vienna, and had four Deaf children; the family was supported by the town. They also had four hearing children, one of whom, Annie, married James F. JellisonD, a noteworthy link. We would not repeat the gossip that Francis BerryD (son of GeorgeD and AbigailD, lower right in the diagram) had an adulterous affair with Mrs. Isaac Jellison (nee Lydia Augusta LovejoyD) were it not for the fact that this is another indication of ties between the Berry and Lovejoy families.12 GeorgeD and his brother, Llewellyn, attended the American Asylum, where each declared that he had a Deaf brother, four Deaf cousins, and other Deaf relatives. They were also members of the Deaf-Mute Mission. Llewellyn married Melintha Randall, whose pedigree has two other Deaf members (see Randall pedigree on the website).

Another branch of the Berry family begins with another son of progenitor William Berry, namely James of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Four generations later, his descendant, Moses Berry, married Sarah Tripp; she was descended from the Tripp progenitor, John. Moses Berry and his wife Sarah had five hearing children and four Deaf: MahalaD, SusanD, LydiaD, and Moses D Jr. The family resided in Phillips, Maine, which is twenty-seven miles from Vienna; the Sandy River runs through the center of the town. The first settler came in 1790. He was Perkins Allen, a sea captain from the Vineyard and a descendant of James Allen, of whom we spoke earlier.13

In addition to the marriage of George BerryD with Abigail LovejoyD some other important linking marriages should be noted. The Berry and Randall clans were linked by LlewellynDs marriage to Melintha. The marriage of Elizabeth BerryD in 1763 to Jonathan Osgood is noteworthy because the Osgood clan figures in the early ancestry of numerous Maine Deaf clans, including the Lovejoys, Andrews, Blaisdells, and Johnsons. The Berry-Tripp link was mentioned just above; Sarah comes from a clan with eight Deaf Tripps; she had four Deaf children. We also note in Fig. 11 a link to the Badger family, which has five Deaf children: one marriage in Phillips, and one in Palmyra in the eighth generation. (See Fig. 15, Badger pedigree.)14

THE LOVEJOY CLAN

The progenitor of the Lovejoys in America was John, who was born in London in 1622 and immigrated to Andover, Massachusetts, about 1633, as a young indentured servant (see Fig. 12, Lovejoy pedigree, arrow).15 Andover was settled by a group of about eighteen men during the early 1640s. It was patterned after the English open field villages; each inhabitant had at least 100 acres to wrest from the wilderness for farming.16 John Lovejoy acquired a seven-acre house lot after his settlement and eventually owned an estate of over 200 acres in the town. He married Mary Osgood in 1651. Their son and great-grandsons initiated three distinct branches of the Lovejoy clan, each of which had numerous Deaf descendants.17 (The Osgoods are in the ancestry of many Deaf people in Maine as we mentioned, although we have identified only two Deaf descendants with that family name.)

The progenitor John was the first of many Lovejoys who fought in American wars; when he was more than fifty, he fought the Indians to protect new settlements. The Indians were allied with the French against the British in six Indian wars fought over North American territory. The Kennebec figured prominently in those wars, which lasted nearly a century. John's great grandson, Captain Hezekiah Lovejoy, fought the British in the War of Independence, as did his son, Lieutenant John. The Captain initiated the Fayette-Sebec branch of the Lovejoy clan. Lieutenant John's son, John, married Mary Polly Jennings and moved from Amherst, New Hampshire, to Fayette; their son, CharlesD moved to Sebec, as we told in the section on the Sebec Lovejoys. The two remaining Lovejoy branches to consider are based in Concord, New Hampshire, and Sidney, Maine. The progenitor John Lovejoy's son, William, initiated the Concord branch of the Lovejoy clan. Deaf Lovejoys did not appear, however, until Ebenezer Lovejoy married his first cousin, Susanna Virgin. They had four Deaf and six hearing children; one of the latter, Henry, had a Deaf daughter who married a Deaf man and moved to Illinois. The reader may recall Joel LovejoyD, Henry's Deaf brother, who worked on the Thomas BrownD farm in Henniker; Concord was only fifteen miles away. Joel's brother WilliamD and sister CharlotteD also lived in Concord. When the New England Gallaudet Association of Deaf-Mutes held its second convention in Concord in 1856, there were thirty-four Deaf participants from that state, including the Concord Lovejoys. Further evidence suggesting there was a significant Deaf population in Concord and surrounding towns comes from a letter by the journalist William ChamberlainD: "During the past month we enjoyed the pleasure of a trip to New Hampshire. We visited Manchester and Concord, where we found all our mute friends well...."18

Captain Hezekiah Lovejoy's brother, Abiel, initiated the Sidney branch of the Lovejoy clan. He was born in Andover, Massachusetts, and served in the War of Independence as a scout under General George Washington. He married "the belle of Charlestown" (Mass.), Mary Brown, who was a descendant of the reverend John Lathrop and his Kentish wife, of whom we spoke earlier.19

Captain Abiel Lovejoy had a distinguished career as a soldier and ship captain. After settling in Pownalborough, a frontier village on the Kennebec River, he also became a wealthy landowner, shipbuilder, and merchant. He owned several slaves and had numerous employees. In 1775, Benedict Arnold's army passed up the Kennebec on the way to Quebec City (in the belief that once Quebec was conquered, the French colonists would join the American Revolution against the British). Legend has it that Captain Lovejoy exchanged hard currency for the army's Continental paper money, which would have been of no value to the soldiers when they reached Canada. This act of patriotism must have cost Lovejoy a small fortune as the Continental currency was never redeemed.

Captain Abiel and his wife sold their property in Pownalborough in 1776 and traveled up the Kennebec River, their possessions packed on flat boats and scows towed by row boats. They debarked at Vassalborough, part of which was later set off as Sidney, Maine. Abiel died in 1811 and his wife Mary shortly thereafter; they were buried on their property, alongside their slaves, overlooking the Kennebec. Over the years they had fifteen children; as far as we know only one was Deaf, Francis LovejoyD (1768-). He was the ancestor of five generations of Deaf Lovejoys in the Sidney branch of the clan.20 The Lovejoy genealogist relates the following details concerning his youth and marriage 21 FrancisD s parents at first thought he was retarded but the boy developed signs and was skilled at imitation. A certain Betsy Smith, daughter of Eliab Smith and Abigail Lewis of Waterville, Maine, was visiting Francis' sister Abigail there. She met FrancisD a few times and fell in love. His rather grand parents objected to the match as the Smith family was plainly inferior socially and FrancisD and Betsy might have Deaf children. In the end, however, the parents capitulated; Abiel deeded the couple a house and some land and FrancisD became a successful farmer and stock raiser; his daughter Abigail served as his interpreter. FrancisD was devoutly religious; a clergyman from nearby Belgrade conversed with him in sign language.