The Stantons in America

The Patrilineal Ancestry

of

Charles Howland Stanton

Patrick Hoggard

December, 2015

Contents

Introduction 1

The Rhode Island Stantons

Robert Stanton 5

John Stanton 29

John Stanton 45

The Nantucket Stanton

Samuel Stanton 66

The Peripatetic Stantons

William Stanton 72

Zaccheus Stanton 88

The Indiana Stantons

Eli Stanton 118

Dilwin Stanton 129

The California Stantons

Will Stanton 141

Charles Stanton 153

Final Thoughts 158

Introduction

To follow the Stantons from their first arrival in America down

to Charles Howland Stanton is largely to trace the history of

Quaker migrations in this country. Consequently two of the

questions we shall be asking are who was the first Stanton

Quaker in this line and who was the last Quaker. Also, out of

general interest, inquiring minds would like to know how or

whether this line is related to the two most prominent Stantons

in American public life, Edwin Stanton, the Secretary of War

under Lincoln, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton (meaning, of course,

her husband).

But first, a very brief introduction to Quaker movements in

America. The birth of the Quakers in England is set by many in

the year 1652, when George Fox began to attract large number of

followers to his ideas. He and his Friends of the Light shortly

thereafter began to be referred to as Quakers because of

references to trembling before the Lord. The first Quakers

appeared in America in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1656,

getting an icy reception there. Quakers were persecuted

indefatigably, and four of them were hanged in Boston in 1660.

The first real settlement of immigrant and converted Quakers

was in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, where they were tolerated. A

2

split among sects led to what would become an even larger

group of Quakers in Newport, a few miles distant.1

Smaller enclaves grew up in the various colonies, like Maryland,

that would refrain from chasing them out. Then in 1681 William

Penn acquired the charter for Pennsylvania and, himself a

Quaker, threw open the doors. Around 1700 a Quaker settlement

arose, more through conversion than immigration, on Nantucket

Island in Massachusetts. It grew rapidly.2

Later in the 1700s, North Carolina attracted large numbers of

Quakers. The first settlement, in the early part of the 18th

century, consisted of a group that migrated from Newport and

Portsmouth in Rhode Island and settled in Carteret County, on

the eastern seaboard. The second settlement was in the interior,

in what was called New Garden (today part of the city of

Greensboro), and came about from a massive and extended

migration beginning in the 1750s, mostly of Quakers from

Nantucket, the whole island at the time almost entirely Quaker

and, in fact, running over with them.3

Beginning around 1800, Quakers from the South began to

emigrate to Ohio, in large part to escape the slave-owning

society around them. Abolitionist sentiments were not a big part

of the Quaker faith at the beginning, but abolitionism developed

over time and became quite strong after the Revolutionary War.

The centers of Quaker settlement can be inferred from the

locations of their yearly meetings. Friends attended their local or

“monthly” meetings twice a week and a regional meeting four

times a year. Once a year they would travel, if they could,

1 Thomas D. Hamm, The Quakers in America, 2003. 2 Ibid 3 Ibid

3

however far they had to go to attend the yearly meeting.

Quarterly and yearly meetings were multi-day affairs. New

Garden was the location for a yearly meeting, but it stopped

being so after losing most of its Quaker population. The new

yearly meeting site in Ohio was in Mt. Pleasant, in Jefferson

County.4

4 Ibid

4

The Rhode Island Stantons

5

Robert Stanton (1599-1672)

The first of the Charles Howland Stanton line to arrive in

America was Robert Stanton. He was probably also the first

Quaker, although not for many years after his arrival. Robert

Stanton was born in England in 1598 or 1599. He married Avis

Almy while still in England. They embarked for New England,

probably in the early or middle 1630s. The name of the ship is

unknown, but they probably landed at Plymouth (the Plymouth

Plantation, as it was then called). By 1638, however, they were

living in the Rhode Island Colony, shortly after the first

settlement at what is now Providence by Roger Williams in 1636.

Robert Stanton is listed as one of the early settlers of Rhode

Island in Wikipedia,5 in particular as one of the original

inhabitants (in 1638) of Aquidnick island.

Roger Williams founded Providence after he was exiled from the

Massachusetts Bay Colony for heresy. He reached it from Salem

overland and by canoe, and brought several families with him.

The following year a different group of “heretics” , including

5 Wikipedia, List of early settlers of Rhode Island

6

several prominent citizens, was first disarmed,6 and several

months later exiled. One group of 19 exiles sailed with their

families to Providence in early 1638 and were advised by Roger

Williams to settle on the north end of Aquidnick island, as it was

known even then. Aquidnick was sometimes called Rhode

Island, and the original name of the colony was Rhode Island

and Providence Plantation. In March, 1638, the island was

purchased from local tribes, as Providence had been, and the

new settlement was called Pocasset.7 A year later its name was

changed to Portsmouth. Robert Stanton was not among the

initial purchasers of Aquidnick, but in the fourth town meeting

held in Pocasset, in September, 1638, the only item of business

appears to have been the following:8

By virtue of a Warrant, George Willmore, George Parker, John

Lutner, John Arnold, Samuell Smith, Robert Stanton, Anthony

Robinson, John Vahun, being summoned to appeare before the

Body for a Riott of drunkenesse by them committed on the 13th

of the 7th month [i.e., September in the Julian Calendar]: It was

accordingly agreed and ordered in Regard the default was

different in some Circumstances, That George Willmore and

George Parker shuld pay into the Treasury 5 shillings a peece,

and to sitt till the Evening in the Stockes; and that John Lutner

shuld pay 5 shillings and sitt one howre in the Stockes; and

that Samuell Smith, Robert Stanton, Anthony Robinson and

John Vahun should pay 5 shillings a peece as fine for their

default.

6 Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, Records of the Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay, Vol I, 1628-1641, Boston, William White Press, 1853, p. 211. 7 Edward Field, State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations at the End of the Century: A History, Boston, Mason Publishing, 1902. Note: at that time the Julian calendar was in use and the year ended in March, so it was recorded as 1637. 8 Howard M. Chapin, Documentary History of Rhode Island, Vol. 2, 1919, p. 44

7

In March of 1639,9 Robert Stanton was admitted as an inhabitant

of Pocasset in another town meeting. In the spring of 1639, many

of the inhabitants decided to move to the south end of the island,

about 15 miles south of Pocasset. This seems to have happened

quite rapidly. In a Pocasset town meeting on April 28, 1639, it

was decided to “propagate a plantation in the midst of the

island, or elsewhere.” 10 During the next town meeting, on May

16, 1639, it was “agreed and ordered that the Plantation now

begun at this south west end of the island shall be called

Newport.” Robert Stanton was one of the people to relocate to

Newport, where he was admitted as a freeman (i.e., with the

9 Recorded as 1638. 10 Richard M. Bayles, History of Newport County, Rhode Island, 1888, p. 141

8

right to vote) on Dec. 17, 1639,11 and the land he occupied, along

with that of the other ten original proprietors of Newport, was

entered in the records in March, 1640.12 Newport grew rapidly

and in May, 1641, there were 62 freemen in Newport. The map

shows the inhabited parts of the colony of Rhode Island around

1660, Warwick having been first settled around 1642, and settlers

having taken up residence in the area that became Pawtucket

later in that decade.

Robert Stanton remained in Newport until his death in August

of 1672. His name appears several times in the town records, as a

jury member and as a “sarjant” on the town council. In 1642 he

purchased an additional tract of land from its first English

occupant, Thomas Beeder.13 Many years later he was a party to a

purchase of still more land, directly from the Indian owners.

Robert and Avis Stanton, according to Our Ancestors, The

Stantons,14 had six children:

Robert, born 1627 in England

Sarah, born 1640 in Newport

Mary, born 1642 in Newport

John, born 1645 in Newport

Daniel, born 1648 in Newport

Prudence, born 1649 in Newport

I can find no independent evidence for a Robert Stanton Jr.,

purportedly born in 1627. As an individual, he appears in

11 Chapin, loc. cit., p. 80. 12 Bayles, loc. cit., p. 142 13 Ibid, p. 137 14 William Henry Stanton, A Book Called Our Ancestors the Stantons, 1922, p. 30.

9

several hundred family trees on Ancestry.com, but without the

names of a wife or children, and with no source records. Sarah,

however, is known to have married Henry Tibbetts in 1661, the

marriage being recorded in the Rhode Island Friends Records.15

Rhode Island here means specifically Aquidnick Island (the

terms were still synonymous at the time), i.e., the towns of

Portsmouth and Newport. The Friends records, and other

church records, constitute the best available evidence for births,

marriages, and deaths in the colonial period and for decades

thereafter. The first Friends meeting on Aquidnick Island is

thought to have been in 1661, but records of vital statistics date

only from 1676, and those are less complete than after 1699,

when the Quakers underwent a tighter organization. Note that

the marriage of Sarah Stanton to Henry Tibbetts, like a number

of other records, must have been entered ex post facto, since there

was no registration of marriages by the Quakers, as far as is

known, until 1676.16

Mary Stanton does not appear in the Friends records that have

come down to us, but her existence has been attested to (see

below). John’s birth in 1645 appears among the Friends records,

obviously long after the event itself. While there is no Friends

record of Daniel’s birth or marriage, the birth of Elizabeth, a

daughter of Daniel Stanton and his wife Elizabeth, is recorded in

1672, again after the fact. Of Prudence Stanton I can find no

records. Perhaps she died as a child.

Robert was very likely the first Stanton Quaker. His death in

August, 1672, is recorded in the Rhode Island Friends Records,

along with the notation that he was 73 years old at the time of

15 James N. Arnold, Vital Record of Rhode Island 1636-1850, Vol. VII. Friends and Ministers, 1895. 16 Ibid

10

death.17 This record, like others noted above, was very likely

added sometime after the actual death. It probably indicates that

Robert was indeed a Quaker, but we can’t dismiss the possibility

that it was placed there as a courtesy to one of his children.

Robert Stanton’s conversion to the Quaker religion must have

taken place late in his life, because the first Quakers to arrive in

the Colonies came in 1656, arriving at Boston, two in one ship

and eight in a second that came some two months later. Both sets

of Quakers were imprisoned for several weeks and then

“deported” on an outbound vessel. The next year six of them

returned in a small ship, manned and captained by Quakers, and

landed at Newport, where they found a friendlier reception (five

others went to New Amsterdam). They were evidently quite

persuasive and converted a sizable fraction of the inhabitants,

including some of the more prominent residents. They also

found converts in other settlements in Rhode Island and

neighboring parts of Connecticut.

Upon hearing that Quakers had landed in Newport, the

governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony sent a letter

demanding that Rhode Island expel them, to prevent them from

“dispersing their pernicious opinions” throughout the colonies.

Benedict Arnold, the president of Rhode Island (and ancestor of

the better known Benedict Arnold) replied that the Quakers

gained more converts by being punished for their beliefs than

they did by their preaching, and “as to the damage that may in

likelyhood accrue to the neighbor Colloneys by theire being here

entertained, we conceive it will not prove so dangerous in regard

of the course taken by you to send them away out of the country,

as they come among you.”

17 Ibid, p. 122

11

The next year, two women from Newport, converts to

Quakerism, walked through the wilderness to Weymouth, in the

Massachusetts Bay Colony, to proselytize. They were Herodias

Gardiner, who had her newborn baby with her, and Mary

Stanton, Robert’s daughter, just 16 years old. They were

promptly arrested, taken to Boston, and given “ten lashes with a

threefold knotted whip of cord”. In addition, they got 14 days in

jail. All in all, better treatment than the most notable Quaker

missionary to Massachusetts, Mary Dyer, who two years later

was hung, along with several men.

Herodias18 and her husband, George,19 were Stanton neighbors

and their activities, some of which involved the Stanton family,

add a bit of color to our picture of life in the earliest stages of the

colony of Rhode Island. George Gardiner, though not one of the

original purchasers of Portsmouth, arrived almost immediately

after the purchase, taking part in the first town meeting in May,

1638.20 He was not one of the group that indulged in a “Riott of

drunkenness” along with Robert Stanton in Pocasset, but the two

of them relocated to Newport at about the same time, and

George Gardiner and Robert Stanton were admitted as freemen

in Newport during the same town meeting in December, 1639.21

They were both present at the town meeting (two of the 17 in

attendance) in March, 1640, in which Pocasset was renamed

Portsmouth and the towns of Newport and Portsmouth agreed

to joint government, which was then referred to as the

government of Aquidneck Island.22

18 Wikipedia, Herodias Gardiner 19 Wikipedia, George Gardiner (settler) 20 Chapin, loc. cit., p. 117; there were 18 freemen at the time of the first Pocasset town meeting, and 14 more at the conclusion of the 4th town meeting, when Robert Stanton was admitted. 21 Chapin, loc. cit., p. 66 22 Chapin, loc. cit., p. 95

12

George Gardiner and Robert Stanton owned adjacent tracts of

land, as noted in the Newport town meeting records from 1640

detailing the distribution of land among the original proprietors,

of which there were eleven. Robert Stanton’s entry is as

follows:23

Whereas, according to certain orders, &c., Be it known,

therefore, that Robert Stanton, having exhibited his bill under

the Treasurer’s hand, into the sessions held on the 10th of

March, 1640, wherein appears full satisfaction to be given for

the number of 58 acres of land, lying within the precincts of

such bounds as the committee, by an order appointed, did

bound it withal, viz.: To begin upon George Gardiner’s line,

and so to run by the harbor marsh, to a marked stake, and so

upon a straight line to a marked tree upon the rocks, with a

home lot and two cows’ hay; West upon George Gardiner in

Southmead and one cow’s hay, in harbor marsh; North upon

Mr. Jeoffreys and 3 acres and 3 quarters of cow common lying

West upon George Gardiner’s by the water and swamp, all

which parcels of land amounts to his proportion. This,

therefore, doth evidence and testify, that all those parcels of

land before specified, amounting to the number of fifty-eight

acres, more or less, is fully impropriated to the said Robert

Stanton and his heirs forever.

Many years later, Robert Stanton increased his land holdings

substantially, but first, here is more about Herodias Gardiner.

There are two versions of her birth and marriage in England.

According to a “marriage allegation” made in London in 1637,24

Herodias Long was 21 years old when she married John Hicks,

two years her senior. Her father, William Long, a husbandman,

23 Extracts from Rhode Island Colonial Records, in Newport Historical Magazine, Vol. 2, p. 67 (1881) 24 London Marriage Allegations, Vol. 19, p. 92, as reported in John Hicks, The First Husband, http://www.rebelpuritan.com/Hicks.html.

13

gave his consent to the marriage (the second version makes a

better story and will be recounted in due course). That same

year, 1637, John and Herodias emigrated to the colonies, settling

in Weymouth, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, where John was

given three acres of land.25 They moved to Newport in 1640, not

long after the original 11 proprietors took up land there.

In March, 1644, the following entry was made in the Aquidnick

Quarter Court Records:26

John Hickes of Nuport being bound to the peace by the Govr

& Mr. Easton in a bond of x li [i.e., 10 pounds] for beating his

wife Harwood Hicks & presented this Court was ordered to

continue in his bonds till the next & then his wife to come &

give evidence concerning the case.

Herodias also used the name Harwood. She had previously

lodged a complaint with the governor of the colony, William

Coddington, in late 1643. There seems to be no record of

Herodias appearing in the Aquidnick Quarter Court, probably

because John Hicks promptly took their two children and all of

the inheritance Herodias had recently received from her mother

and departed for New York (New Netherland at that time).27

From his new home in Flushing, John Hicks sent a letter asking

for a divorce to John Coggeshall, assistant to the governor, at

least part of which was recorded in the Aquidnick Quarter Court

Records:28

Now for parting what way ther is seeing she have carried the

matter so subtilly as she have I know not, but if ther be any

25 John Hicks, The First Husband, http://www.rebelpuritan.com/Hicks.html. 26 Chapin, loc. cit., p. 151. 27 John Hicks, The First Husband, http://www.rebelpuritan.com/Hicks.html. 28 Chapin, loc. cit., p. 152.

14

way to bee used to unti that Knott, which was at the first by

man tyed that so the world may be satisfied I am willing ther

unto, for the Knot of affection on her part have been untied

long since, and her whordome have freed my conscience on

the other part, so I Leave myself to yor advise being free to

condissend to yor advice if ther may be such a way used for

the finall parting for us.

Coddington and Coggeshall, judging themselves without

authority to grant a divorce, issued the following decree:29

"This witnesseth tht in the yeare 1643, decemb. the 3d/

Harrwood Hicks, wife to John Hicks, made her Complaint

to us of Many greevances, & Exstreeme violence, that her

Husband used towards her, uppon which she desired ye

peace of him uppon ye Examination whereof we found such

due grounds of her Complaints by his Inhumane &

barbarous Carriages such Crewell blows on Divers parts of her

body, with many other like Cruelties, that we fearing

the ordenarie & desperate afects of such barbarous Cruelties,

murthering, poysioning, drowning, hanging, wounds & Losse

of Limbes, Could not but bind him to ye peace, Moreover we

found him soe bitterly to be Inraged, & soe desparate in his

Expreshions, uppon which the poore woman fraught with

feares, Chose Rather to subject herselfe to any Miserie than to

Live with him; He also as desirous thereof as She, Solicited us

to part them, with much Impretunyty we therefore diligently

observing & waighing, ye prmeses Conceived & Concluded,

that it were better, yea farr better for them to be separated, or

devorced than to Live in such bondage being in such parfect

hatred of one another, & to avoayde & prevent the said

desperate hazards premised, yet observing & knowing how

Odious this act was amongst men, Refused to order theire

separation, but tould them theire act should be theires wherein

if they agreede we would be witnesses thereof uppon which

they Came to an accord, & declared it to us which

29 New York Genealogical & Biographical Record, 70, 116 (1939).

15

Accordingly we doe testifie the same, being perswade that god

had separated them soe Inmeewtablie, that they were free

from that marriage bond before god, Now we being

Majestrates in this place, & in Commission for ye peace, & by

order we are to walke accordinge to ye Lawes of England,

under grace of our Soveraigne, had no direct Rule to walke by

to devorce them did therefore under grace by our Authoritie

declare them duly separate in wittness where of we

therfor sett to our hands this is a True Coppie Prime

William Coddington

John Coggeshall

Before or after this decree, Herodias moved in with George

Gardiner. The common law marriage could not be properly

sanctioned, since she had been granted a separation from John

Hicks, not a divorce. Herodias had seven children with George

Gardiner.

In 1655 John Hicks, wishing to marry a rich widow, Florence

Carman, obtained a divorce decree in New Netherland, signed

by the Governor, Peter Stuyvesant.

We the councillors of New Netherland having seen and read

the request of John Hicks sheriff on Long Island, in which he

remonstrates and presents that his wife Harwood Longh had

ran away from him about 9 years ago with someone else with

whom she has been married and had by him 5 or 6 children.

His wife having therefore broken the bond of marriage

(without him having given any reason thereto) he asks to be

qualified and given permission to marry again an honorable

young girl or a widow (in accordance with political and

ecclesiastical ordinances). The above mentioned councillors

having taken notice of the above request and in addition of the

affidavits and declarations attached thereto made by

trustworthy inhabitants of this Province, they find that this

request cannot be refused and that they therefore have given

16

him letters of divorce and free and frank [words missing]

widow in the bond of marriage [words missing] allowed to

enter in accordance with political and ecclesiastical

ordinances.30

Florence died six years later, after which her relatives

successfully sued John Hicks to recover her estate.31

Herodias probably adopted Quakerism in 1657, soon after the

small boatload of Quakers disembarked at Newport. She

decided, or was persuaded, to return to Weymouth in order to

proselytize there, where she knew many of the residents. As

mentioned previously, she left on foot with her infant daughter,

Rebecca, and Mary Stanton. A florid, almost contemporary

account exists, written by George Bishop as a protest to the

citizens of the Massachusetts Bay Colony sometime in the early

1660s, then edited and reprinted in 1703:

Harriet Gardner [sic] is the next [Quaker persecuted], - being

the mother of many children, and an inhabitant of Newport, in

Rhode Island, who came, with her babe sucking at her breast,

from thence to Weymouth, a town in your colony; where,

having finished what she had to do, and her testimony from

the Lord, unto which the Witness of God answered in the

people, she was hurried by the baser sort to Boston, in the 11th

of Third Month [i.e., May 11], 1658, before your governor, John

Endicott; who, after he had entertained her and the girl – Mary

Staunton, who came with her, to help bear her child – with

much abusive language, he committed them both to prison,

and ordered them to be whipped with ten lashes a-piece,

which was cruelly laid on their naked bodies with a three-fold

knotted whip of cords, and then were continued for the space

of fourteen days longer in prison from their friends, who could

30 H. F. Seversmith, Colonial Families of Long Island, New York and Connecticut, 1944. 31 John Hicks, The First Husband, http://www.rebelpuritan.com/Hicks.html

17

not visit them. The woman came a very sore and – according

to man – hardly accomplishable journey, through a

wilderness, between Rhode Island and Boston, of about sixty

miles, and being kept up, after your cruel usage of their

bodies, might have died; but you had no consideration of this

or of them, though the mother had of you, who, after the

savage, inhumane, and bloody execution on her of your

cruelty as aforesaid, kneeled down and prayed the Lord to

forgive you.32

How Herodias and Mary got back to Newport is not described.

George Gardiner might have been a Quaker also, but there are

no entries for him, Herodias (Harwood), or any of their seven

children in the Friends Records, which may indicate that

Herodias’ zealotry cooled after her whipping and imprisonment

in Boston.

In 1657, John Porter, one of the original 19 purchasers of

Portsmouth (Pocasset) and one of the signers of the original

Rhode Island Charter along with Roger Williams, together with

three others purchased Pettaquamscutt Hill and surrounding

lands from the Narragansett Indian chiefs for 17 pounds.33 That

land was on the mainland to the west of Newport, where the

present town of South Kingstown is, and was referred to as the

Pettaquamscutt Purchase (in red below). John Porter took up

residence there. The four founders gradually sold tracts of this

large land purchase, one of them to the governor, Benedict

Arnold, and became wealthy.

32 George Bishop, New England Judged by the Spirit of the Lord, London, T. Sowle, 1703, pp. 52-53. 33 Thomas W. Bicknell, The History of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Vol. II, 1920, p. 473.

18

In 1660, Robert Stanton and four others from Newport bought a

tract of land from a Narragansett Indian chief named Socho,

with the objective of creating a “Plantation or Towneshipe” with

30 to 50 settlers, following the example of John Porter and the

other purchasers of Pettaquamscutt.34 The deed reads in part:35

This deed or writing, bearing date this present twenty-ninth

day of June, one thousand six hundred and sixty, witnesseth:

That T. Socho, an Indian Captain of Narraganset, being the

true and lawful owner of a tract of land called Misquamicoke,

for a valuable consideration in hand paid to my content have

bargained and sold unto William Vaughan, Robert Stanton,

John Fairfield, Hugh Moshur, James Longbottom, all of

Nuport in Rhode-Island and others their associates, which said

tract of land being bounded as followeth, Easterly by a place

called Weecapaug or Passpatanage, joining to the Nianticut

land, on the South by the main sea, on the West by Pawcatuck

river, and so up the chief river or stream northerly and

34 J. R. Bartlett, Records of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations in New England, Vol. I, p. 450. 35 Ibid.

19

northeasterly to a place called Quequatuck or

Quequachanocke, and from thence on a straight line to the

first named bounds called Wecapoag or Patchatanage joining

upon the Nianticut land.

This would be prime beachfront property today, between the

town of Weekapaug and the Pawtucket River, which constitutes

the border between Rhode Island and Connecticut. The total area

was around 35 square miles.

The town of Westerly eventually grew from this land, called the

Misquamacock (later, Misquamicut) Purchase. From the

beginning, “town” in Rhode Island (as in New York) referred to

a large area of settlement, like a township in many other states. It

was then, and perhaps still is, a more significant unit of

government than the counties, which comprised several towns.

Not long after Westerly was given the status of a town, it was

expanded to include additional land purchases and filled an area

of approximately 200 square miles.36 It corresponded roughly to

what in the map below is referred to as Narragansett Country.

The area in Westerly was under constant dispute with

Connecticut for several decades.

36 Frederic Denison, Westerly and its Witnesses, 1626-1876, Providence, Reid, 1878.

20

21

Only one of the original purchasers actually settled in Westerly.

Robert Stanton did not, but his son Daniel did, sometime

between the purchase date (1660) and 1668, when he was made a

freeman of Westerly. At that time Westerly was identical with

the Misquamicut Purchase and its western border was (is) only

five miles by land, or two miles by water, from Stonington,

Connecticut, where Thomas Stanton, who may have been, but is

not known for sure to have been, related to Robert, was one of

the first settlers.37

George Gardiner was a witness to the deed for the Misquamicut

Purchase. A year later, George Gardiner and Robert Stanton

made a purchase on their own of about six square miles west of,

and adjacent to, the Pettaquamscutt Purchase.38 The land was

between the Beaver and Usquepaug rivers and was commonly

referred to in official documents as Stanton’s Purchase.39 This

did not pan out into the profitable venture they had imagined.

Part of their land was in what was (and is) called the Great

Swamp, and the rest was not easy to get to from the

Pettaquamscutt settlements.40 Even today that land is very

sparsely populated. More on the Stanton Purchase will be found

later in this narrative.

In 1665, Herodias Gardiner filed a petition with the court in

Rhode Island to sever ties with George Gardiner. In it she

37 William A. Stanton, A Record, Genealogical, Biographical, Statistical, of Thomas Stanton of Connecticut and His Descendants, 1891. 38 Elisha R. Potter, The Early History of Narragansett, 1835, p. 66 39 Ibid 40 George Gardner, The Second Husband, http://www.rebelpuritan.com/Gardner.html.

22

recounts a different story than what had been written in the

Marriage Allegation before her marriage to John Hicks:41

Whereas, I was upon the death of my father sent to London by

my mother in much sorrow and griefe of spirit, and there

taken by one John Hickes unknown to any of my friends, and

by the said Hickes privately married in the under Church of

Paules, called Saint Faith’s Church, and in a little while after,

to my great griefe, brought to New England, when I was

between thirteen and fourteen years of age, and lived two

years and halfe at Waymouth, twelve miles from Boston; and

then came to Rhode Island about the yeare 1640; and there

lived ever since, till I came heare to Pettecomscott. Not long

after my coming to Rhode Island, there happened a difference

between the said John Hickes and myself, soe that the

authority that then was under grace, saw cause to part us, and

ordered I should have the estate which was sent mee by my

mother, delivered to me by the said John Hickes; but I never

had it, but the said John Hickes went away to the Dutch, and

carried away with him most of my estate; by which meanes I

was put to great hardship and straight. Then I had thought to

goe to my friends, but was hindered by the warres, and the

death of my friends. My mother and brother, loosing their

lives and estates in his Majestyes service, and I being one not

brought up to labour, and young, knew not what to doe to

have something to live, having noe friend; in which straight I

was drawne by George Gardener to consent to him soe fare as

I did, for my mayntainance. Yett with much oppression of

spirit, judging him not to be my husband, never being married

to him according to the law of the place: alsoe I told him my

oppression, and desiered him, seeing that hee had that little

that I had, and all my labour, that hee would alow mee some

maintainance, either to live apart from him, or else not to

meddle with mee; but hee has always refused. Therefore, my

humble petition to your honours is, that of that estate and

41 J. R. Bartlett, Records of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations in New England, Vol. II, p. 101 (1857).

23

labour hee has had of mine, hee may alow it mee; and that the

house upon my land I may enjoy without molestation, and

that hee may alow mee my child to bring up with

maintainance for her, and that hee may bee restrained from

ever meddling with me, or trobleing mee more. Soe shall your

poor petitioner ever pray for your honours peace and

prosperity.

Her name is written in the records as Horod Long. I imagine that

Horod might be a phonetic spelling of Harwood, or maybe she

decided she like Horod better. The General Assembly of Rhode

Island considered the case, calling several witnesses, the gist of

whose testimony was recorded:42

There having been much debate upon the petition of Horod

Long, alias Gardener, and the Court having demanded of the

aforesaid Horod whether she would returne to George

Gardner and live with him as a wife ought to doe, her plaine

and absolute answer is, that to accept or embrace that motion,

whatever becomes of her she would not, but says she was at

the Courts pleasure to doe with her what they saw good.

And the answer of George Gardener was, that he was free to

accept of her if she were free, and did desire her to returne,

notwithstanding that agreement of theirs to live apart.

George Gardener being called before the Court, and being

asked whether he can prove that ever he were according to the

manner and custom of the place married; to that hee plainly

answers that he cannot say that ever hee went on purpose

before any magistrate to declare themselves, or to take each

other as man and wife, or to have their approbation as to the

premises.

Robert Stanton being called before the Court, and being asked

whether hee could informe the Court whether hee knew that

42 Ibid, p. 99

24

ever George Gardener and Horod, his reputed wife were ever

married according to the custom of this place; to which hee

answered that hee knew noe other marridge, but onlye one

night being at his house both of them did say before him and

his wife that they did take one the other as man and wife.

Robert Stanton’s evidence did not suffice. The members of the

Assembly were shocked, apparently, to discover what had been

going on in their midst.

Whereas, Horod Long, heretofore the wife of John Hickes, and

since the reputed wife of George Gardener of Newport, in

Rhode Island, by a petition, presented unto the Right

honourable his Majestyes Commissioners, did most

impudently discover her owne nakedness by declaring therein

unto their honours, that although she had lived for a long

space of time with the aforesaid Gardener as in a married

estate, and had owned him as her lawfull husband, yet she

was never lawfully married to him, neither could owne him in

such a relation, and soe consequently that she had lived all this

time in that abominable lust of fornication, contrary to the

generall apprehension of her neighbors, she having had by the

aforesaid Gardener many children, … we have found it to be

even soe as the abovesaid Horod hath declared, and that by

the confession alsoe of the aforesaid Gardner, soe that that

horrible sin of uncleanness in which they had lived for the

space of eighteen or twenty years together, and had under the

covert of pretended marridge (owning each other as man and

wife), being now and not before, by her owne acting and

confessions brought to light and most shamefully expressed to

the publicke view, to the extreme reproach and scandal of this

jurisdiction; therefore this present Assembly laying to heart

the fowlness of the aforesaid sin, and manifesting their great

abhorrence and detestation of such lieke practices, doe order

as a mult [penalty], far inferior to their demerits, that the

aforesaid George Gardener and Horod Long shall pay or cause

to be paid into the publicke treasury the summe of twentye

pounds, each of them…. And farther it is ordered … that the

25

aforesaid Gardner and Horod are hereby straightly required

that from henceforth they presume not to lead soe scandolose

a life, lest they feel the extreamest penalty that either is or shall

be provided in such cases.43

Quite possibly these fines were never paid. The very next

measure passed by the Assembly consisted in recognizing all de

facto marriages prior to 1647, when an act had gone into force

prescribing that marriages be declared and registered publicly.

This would presumably have included George and Herosiad’s.

The act also made the previously enacted penalties for

fornication (whippings and fines) discretionary rather than

mandatory.44

You may judge for yourself to what extent it was a matter of

pure coincidence that the following petition was received by the

Assembly at almost the same time they were rendering the

judgement transcribed above.

Whereas, there hath been a petition presented to this present

Assembly by Margarett Porter, the wife of John Porter, of this

jurisdiction of Rhode Island, in which the said Magarett doth

most sadly complaine that her said husband is destitute of all

congugall love towards her, and sutable care of her; that hee is

gone from her, and hath left her in such a nessesetous state

that unavoidably she is brought to a mere dependence upon

her children for her dayley supply, to her very great grieffe of

heart; and the rather considering that there is in the hands of

her said husband a very competent estate for both their

subsistence; whereupon the said Margarett hath most

earnestly requested this Generall Assembly to take care of her,

and to take her deplorable estate into their serious

consideration, so as to make some sutable provision for her

43 Ibid, p. 102-103 44 Ibid, p. 104-105

26

reliefe, out of the estate of her husband; and that speedily,

before both hee and it be convayed away.45

The court was moved by Margaret’s plea.

The Court therefore, taking the matter into their serious

consideration, and being thoroughly satisfied, both by

common fame and otherwise, that the complaints are true, and

that the feares premised, of convaying at least his estate away,

are not without grownds; and having a deepe sense upon their

hearts of this sad condition which this poore anciante matron

is, by this meanes, reduced into, and how much it is

incumbent upon them, both upon the score of justice and

mercy; she having thus committed herself and cause to them

to take care for and to put to their helping hand in order to her

spedy reliefe: doe therefore declare and enacte … that all the

estate both personall and reall of the abovesaid John Porter,

lying and being in this jurisdiction, is hearby secured, as if

actually seized upon and deposited for the reliefe of the

aforesaid complainant … until hee hath settled a competent

reliefe upon his aged wife to her full satisfaction.46

John Porter did exactly that and his land holdings were

disencumbered.

You might have noticed in Herodias Gardiner’s testimony that

she had been living in “Pettecomscott”, which is where John

Porter had his estate. The next year, 1666, Herodias was again

charged with cohabitation, this time with John Porter.

Upon an Indictment by the solicitor in October:1666, against

Horrud Long (alias) Gardner she being Mandamossed and in

Courd Cald did not apeere; And after Mr John Porter

apeereing with a paper signed Horrud Long the Court doe

45 Ibid, p. 119 46 Ibid, p. 120

27

owne him her Aturney: the sayd Mr Porter in her behalf:

pleads Not Guilty of Liveinge in incontunancy and Refers her

Tryall to god and the Cuntry.

The Juris verdict – Horrud Long not Guilty by punktual

Testimonys.47

Robert Stanton was one of the jurors.48

Two years later, in 1668, Herodias was again charged with

cohabitation, and this time John Porter was too. Nevertheless,

the result was the same. The entry for John is as follows:

Upon an Indictment by the solicitor against Mr John

Porter for liveinge in way of incontenancy with Horrud

Long (alias) Gardner. The sayd Mr John Porter beinge

Mandamassed, and in Court Called pleads not Guilty and

Referrs him Selfe to the Cuntry for Tryall.49

The jurris Verdict. John Porter not Guilty.

Horrud (Herodias) was also indicted and also judged not guilty.

One wonders what the standards of evidence were. The very

next case was for fornication and the result was guilty with a

sentence of 15 stripes. As a matter of fact, it appears that over

half of all cases heard by the court were for fornication. Robert

Stanton was on many such juries, essentially the Supreme Court

of the colony of Rhode Island, during the 1660s.

Robert Stanton died in August, 1672. I cannot find a record of

Avis’s death in the Quaker records or anywhere else.

47 Rhode Island Historical Society, Rhode Island Court Records 1662-1670, p. 70 48 Ibid 49 Ibid, p. 65

28

Robert

Sarah Mary John Daniel Prudence

Avis Almy

29

John Stanton (1645 – 1728)

Upon his death in 1672, Robert Stanton owned 56 acres in

Newport, several square miles in Westerly (the Misquamicut

Purchase), less whatever had been sold to settlers, and he shared

the six square mile Stanton Purchase with George Gardiner.

Daniel, the younger son, had been living in Westerly for several

years. However, Westerly was abandoned for about five years

following the outbreak of King Philip’s War in 1675, because the

town was not in a position to defend itself. Daniel moved back to

Newport, where he appeared on a deed in 1679, a tax list in 1680,

and a jury list in 1688.50 Although his marriage with Elizabeth

(last name unknown, possibly Woolley) is not recorded in the

Quaker records, six children are recorded in the Newport

Quaker records, born between 1676 and 1689. Possibly his

marriage took place in Westerly, of which there are virtually no

records from that time, and possibly there were other children

born earlier in Westerly. The children born in Newport consisted

of four girls and two boys, Daniel and Benjamin. Benjamin died

the year after he was born. Daniel II was a sailor. He married in

50 John O. Austin, Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island, Baltimore, Genealogical Publishing Co., 1982 (original 1887), p. 390.

30

Newport and then, as did several other Quaker residents of

Newport around the same time, moved to Philadelphia, where

the Quakers were just starting to get a foothold. He died at sea in

1708 and Abigail, his wife, died soon thereafter. They left one

child, also Daniel, who kept a diary detailing his activities as a

Quaker preacher, particularly in the Caribbean, and even in

England, which was published posthumously.51

There are no records after 1789 related to the senior Daniel.

Possibly he moved back to Westerly, but the several Stantons

that are recorded as living in Westerly in the early 1700s were

related to Joseph Stanton (son of Thomas Stanton of

Connecticut), including a son Daniel. This was perhaps natural,

since Westerly was much closer to Stonington, Connecticut, than

to Newport or any other permanently inhabited part of Rhode

Island.

John, the elder son of Robert Stanton, appears to have inherited

Robert’s property in Newport and the Stanton Purchase, while

Daniel, the younger son, was at the time of Robert’s death living

on some part of the Stanton holdings in Westerly. Records

referring to John Stanton during this time must be examined

carefully, because Thomas Stanton of Stonington, Connecticut,

progenitor of large quantities of Stantons, had a son John, born

four years before John, son of Robert Stanton, and this John

became an Indian translator (as was his father, Thomas), and

therefore was much more prominently featured in

contemporaneous records. Thus both of Robert’s sons had

eponymous counterparts from Stonington.

51 Daniel Stanton, A Journal of the Life, Travels & Gospel Labours of a Faithful Minister of Jesus Christ, Philadelphia, Joseph Crukshank (in Third Street, opposite the Work-House), 1777.

31

To avoid as much confusion as possible as John Stantons begin

to proliferate in this story, this John Stanton (son of Robert) will

henceforth be referred to as John I and Johns in the direct line

from John I will be called John II, John III, and John IV. John I

married Mary Harndell, daughter of John Harndell of Newport.

They had at least these six children, all attested to in the Quaker

records:52

Mary 1668

Hannah 1670

Patience 1672

John (II) 1674

Content 1675

Robert 1677

The births were almost certainly recorded (the same may be said

of Daniel’s children) well after the events. But after Robert’s

birth the records fail us, even though John had two more

children:

Benjamin 1684

Henry 1688

The births of Benjamin and Henry are not to be found in the

Newport Quaker records, and I’m not sure how their birthdates

are known, though they appear in the Genealogical Dictionary of

Rhode Island.53 Several other family events involving Benjamin

are in the Newport Quaker records, including his death in 1760,

the marriages of three children born to him and his wife Martha,

52 James N. Arnold, Vital Record of Rhode Island 1636-1850, Vol. VII. Friends and Ministers, 1895. 53 Austin, op. cit., p. 389.

32

Martha’s death in 1759, and the deaths of the three children.54

Henry, on the other hand, went completely unmentioned in the

Newport Quaker records. He became a sailor, and when he was

in his 30s he pulled up roots completely and resettled in Carteret

County, North Carolina [Craven County at the time], where he

spawned a major branch of Stantons. This was not just a whim.

Henry Stanton was part of the first of the several large

migrations of (originally) Rhode Island Quakers. In a short

history of Carteret County we find the following:55

In 1721 Quakers from Rhode Island came in family units and

settled on the north side of the Newport River … The largest

plantations, given by grants or purchased, were in the central

and western parts of Carteret County. Large land owners

included Robert Williams, William Borden, and the Stanton

family.

The Carteret County branch of the family is the one on which

was based a book with the peculiar title A Book Called Our

Ancestors the Stantons.56

Mary (Harndell), John I’s wife, was Benjamin’s mother, but she

died sometime around 1686, the exact date unrecorded.

Subsequently, John I married Mary Cranston, the widow of John

Cranston, who died in 1680. John Cranston was, at the time of

his death, Governor of the Colony of Rhode Island. Mary

Cranston was born Mary Clarke. Her father, Jeremiah Clarke,

came from a well-to-do family in England. He, along with Robert

54 Avis (married Peleg Slocum in 1728), Martha (married James Gould, 1734), Benjamin (married Joanna Slocum, 1750). 55 North Carolina History Project, Carteret County, http://www.northcarolinahistory.org/commentary/54/entry 56 William Henry Stanton, A Book Called Our Ancestors the Stantons, self-published, 1922.

33

Stanton, was one of the original 11 proprietors of Newport.

Mary’s mother, Frances Latham, came from an even more

prominent family in England. The date of John I and Mary’s

marriage is unknown, but their son Henry was born in May,

1688.

Although I have seen several family trees stating that Mary

(Clarke) Cranston was also Benjamin’s mother, that can be ruled

out based on the will of Mary Harndell’s father, John. I have

only an extract from that will, as published in the Genealogical

Dictionary of Rhode Island. It was dated 9 Feb 1685 (which would

be 1686 in the Gregorian calendar) and was “proved” in 1687:57

Executrix daughter Mary Stanton, wife of John. Overseers

Robert Hughes and John Coggeshall. To kinsman Robert

Stanton, son to John Stanton, house and 10 acres at age, but if

he die without issue then to kinsman Benjamin Stanton, son of

John Stanton. To son-in-law John Stanton, a mare, and to

kinsman Robert Stanton a mare. To daughter-in-law Rebeckah

Mosure, wife of Hugh Mosure of Portsmouth, a good ewe

sheep. To son-in-law John Maxson a good ewe sheep. To Mary

and Hannah Stanton, daughters of John, two good ewe sheep

each.

Hugh Mosher (Mosier) was one of the six primary shareholders

(Robert Stanton being another) in the Misquamicut Purchase that

spawned the town of Westerly. Rebecca was named as daughter-

in-law, but that term was also used for step-daughter. In fact,

Rebecca and John Maxson were both step children, born of John

Harndell’s wife, also Rebecca, and her first husband, John

Maxson, who was killed by Indians. Mary Harndell was John

Harndell’s only natural child.

57 John O. Austin, Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island, Baltimore, Genealogical Publishing Co., 1982 (original 1887), p. 93, with amendments from www.wikitree.com/wike/Harndell-4.

34

Thus, Mary Harndell Stanton was still alive in 1685 and must

have been Benjamin’s mother. The Stanton family picked up the

lion’s share of the inheritance. It is interesting that Robert, 8

years old when the will was drawn up, was the prime

beneficiary. Benjamin (2 years old) was only a contingent

beneficiary, while Stanton children John II, Patience, and

Content (if she was alive) got nothing.

It can also be established that Mary (Clarke) Cranston was

Henry’s mother, because she died in 1708, leaving a will

mentioning her Cranston children as well as Henry Stanton.58

The Stanton Purchase

Many years after Robert Stanton and George Gardiner bought

the Stanton Purchase, there was finally some activity. Perhaps

roads had been built near enough to make it practical to think

about living there. John I and Joseph Gardiner, George’s son,

sold several pieces of the Stanton Purchase and, in this

connection, had the land surveyed in 1694 (the copy on the next

page is disjointed in the center because of the tight binding in the

original).59

Joseph Clarke of Westerly (no relation to Jeremy Clark, father of

Mary Clark, John I’s second wife) purchased the 200 acre lot at

the far left of the survey (the farthest south), and the deed was

58 John O. Austin, Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island, p. 388 59 Rhode Island Historical Society Collections, Vol. 28, 1935, p. 80-81.

35

recorded on June 24, 1694, in the presence of Benedict Arnold as

witness:60

60 Susan Stanton Brayton, The Stanton Purchase, Rhode Island Historical Society Collections, Vol. 28, 1935, pp. 101-110.

36

[By payment of] ten pounds current money of New England

… Wee the said John Stanton & Joseph Gardiner – Doe give

grant Bargaine Sell … and Confirm unto the Said Joseph

Clarke his heirs and assigns forever the Southwestward part of

a Neck of land … lying in the Narragansett Cuntry between a

River Cald Awooscopaug River and a River Cald Bever River

the which said South west part of said Neck Contains two

hundred Acres More or Less as is now laid out And Diliniated

on the Drauft of Said Neck And bounded Southwardly on the

great River Comonly Caled pawcatuck River, Westwardly on

said Bever River Northerly And Esterly on Lands belonging to

Said John Stanton & being part of Said Neck, the which Said

Neck of land Was formerly purchased of Wanamachin Sachim

& owner thearof by Robert Stanton father of Said John Stanton

And George Gardiner father of Said Joseph Gardiner.

The survey shows the next lot to the right of Joseph Clarke’s to

have been assigned to Daniel Stanton, whereas the deed states

that it belonged to John Stanton. We can’t be sure whether

Daniel actually owned the land or not, but the next lot after that

was certainly John I’s, the two lots both being 309 acres.

To get a better idea of where the Stanton Purchase was, the

general area is shown on a USGS topographical map, outlined in

black. To match the topo map with the survey, remember that

the survey map is “sideways” with south pointing left. Note also

that the Awooscopaug River in the deed is now written

Usquepaug. Part of the Beaver River, on the left side of the topo

map meanders into the adjacent quadrangle and, in fact, flows

into the Pawcatuck just to the left of the point at which the

Pawcatuck leaves the map. Some of the land is in the present

Great Swamp Wildlife Reservation. You may notice, just outside

the boundary of the Stanton Purchase, across the Usquepaug

River, is the Great Swamp Fight Site. This was the location of a

major battle in King Philip’s War in 1675.

37

38

Perhaps a better picture of the location comes from this

contemporary map.

39

The Stanton Purchase constitutes what is now the southeast

corner of the town (it would be called a township in most other

states) of Richmond. Joseph Clarke’s land was actually

inhabited not long after the survey was done, which we know

because in 1717 Joseph deeded the land “to my son Samuel

Clarke 200 acres in Westerly … formerly of John Stanton and

Joseph Gardiner, which tract has been improved upwards of 21

years by my son Samuel, he being in actual possession of same

for term aforesaid.”61 Possibly other tracts in the Stanton

purchase were also occupied, but I haven’t seen any indication

that either John or Daniel Stanton lived there during their

lifetimes.

From the 1717 deed we see that the Stanton Purchase was at that

time considered to be part of the town of Westerly. From the

beginning the town was the basic unit of local government in the

colony, and in the 1670s geographical boundaries began to be

set. Initially, the area covered by the current towns of

Hopkinton, Richmond, Westerly, and Charlestown constituted

the town of Westerly. The village of Westerly was in the

southwest corner of the town. In 1738 the eastern part became

the town of Charlestown, and in 1747 the northern part of

Charlestown became Richmond, the southeast corner of which

was the Stanton Purchase. In the late 1600s and early 1700s, the

village of Westerly was more accessible to anyone living on the

Stanton Purchase than the geographically much closer South

Kingstown.

61 Ibid., p. 104.

40

Captain(?) John Stanton

John I is given the title of Captain in a few internet sources. The

only significant military source for such a title would have been

King Philip’s War. There is a listing of soldiers in that fought in

that war62 that indicate that there were only a few soldiers from

62 George M. Bodge, Soldiers in King Philip’s War, Boston, David Clapp & Sons, 1891.

41

Rhode Island. There was a Captain John Stanton in that war, but

it was the other John Stanton, from Connecticut, the son of

Thomas Stanton. I have found one contemporaneous record that

refers to John I as Captain, from a compilation of Portsmouth

vital records, reporting the marriage of John I’s son, John II (see

below). I will assume that at some time John I captained a

merchant ship. Probably even one voyage would confer a life-

long title. One source states that John Stanton was a merchant in

Newport.63 If so, he would have been doing what most of the

Newport settlers were doing, because trading proved to be more

profitable than farming on Aquidnick Island.

Disputed Date of Death

According to the Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island,64 John I

died on October 3, 1713. That volume, originally printed in 1887,

seems to be the original source for that date, quoted in other

genealogical publications.65 I cannot, however, find anything

like a transcript of an original record. His death is not recorded

in the Newport Friends Records – possibly he had moved onto

the Stanton Purchase by then or was living with one of his

children somewhere else. What I can find is a picture of a

memorial headstone (see below).

63 Genealogical and Biographical Record of New London County, Connecticut, Chicago, J. H. Beers, 1905. 64 John O. Austin, Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island, Baltimore, Genealogical Publishing Co., 1982 (original 1887), p. 388. 65 For example, Historical and Genealogical Register, Vol. 20, 1920, p. 101, p.134.

42

JOHN STANTON

Died Jan. 22, 1762

Aged 89

His Father

JOHN STANTON

Died in Newport 1728

Aged 83

His Grandfather

ROBERT STANTON

Died at Newport 1672

Aged 73

His First Wife

ELIZABETH

Died at Newport 1730

Aged 50

His Last Wife

SUSANNAH

Died at Richmond 1807

Aged 92

Erected by B. Stanton, a

Great-Grandson, in 1841

This headstone was found on the Stanton Purchase by Susan

Stanton Brayton, the author of an article on the Stanton

Purchase.66 She describes the site in the article:

Opposite the [Boss] Meeting House [now gone] was the Stanton

Farm. The dwelling house, reached by a wide and grassy lane

bordered by locust trees, lingers in memory as a quiet and

pleasant retreat remote from the road, with a charming view of the

valley beyond. Fire visited it many years ago, and weeds and

bushes now grow over the stones of the fallen chimney and cellar

wall.

Near the ruins of the Stanton House is the Stanton burial lot,

hidden among forest trees which have crept over once fertile

66 Susan Stanton Brayton, The Stanton Purchase, Rhode Island Historical Society Collections, Vol. 28, 1935, pp. 101-110.

43

meadows and would have encroached upon this spot had it not

been kept open by Miss Kenyon.

Although this is a memorial stone, not an original gravestone,

given that John II’s great-grandson erected it, I would guess that

the dates were reliable.

Only two of the other stones are marked, but they appear to be

actual gravestones:

In Memory of Deacon John Stanton who died Dec. 31 1842 In the

81st year

In Memory of Mary Stanton Wife of John Stanton who died Sept. 18,

1841 in the 75 year of her age

Here’s the weird thing: the same triple memorial appears at the

base of a stele in the Windham Cemetery in Windham,

Connecticut. The stele was erected for Robert Stanton, a

grandson of John I. Robert died in 1824. The inscriptions are in

excellent shape, which may mean that the stele was erected long

after Robert’s death. John I’s segment is shown below:

44

Whether 1713 or 1728 is the correct date of death could be settled

if John I left a will. In fact, it appears that he did, though the

reference I have to it is quite abbreviated, stating:67

He named his son John executor of his estate; will dated 17

MAY – and probated in Newport 5 JUL 1725. Besides John, he

mentioned sons, Benjamin and Henry, and daughters Mary

Coggeshall, Hannah Carr and Patience Norton(?).

This doesn’t state the year the will was drawn up, but implies

that John I died in 1725, or even earlier. The information is so

sketchy, I will assume that the memorial stones provide the

correct date.

67 John Stanton/Mary Clarke on Family Central, www.familycentral.net/index/family.cfm.

Robert

Sarah Mary John Daniel Prudence

Mary Hannah Patience John II Content Robeert Benjamin Henry

Avis Almy

Mary Harndell

45

John Stanton (1674-1762)

The memorial stones just mentioned include John II and confirm

the birth and death dates listed in the Genealogical Dictionary of

Rhode Island.68 According to that source, John II married twice

and had 25 children. His first wife was Elizabeth Clarke,

daughter of Latham Clarke, who was the brother of Mary

Clarke, John I’s second wife (not John II’s mother). Their

marriage took place in Portsmouth (Elizabeth’s home) and the

listing in Rhode Island Vital Records is the one item I have found

that refers to John I as Captain:69

STANTON, John, of Capt. John, of Newport, and Elizabeth

Clarke, of Latham, of Portsmouth; m. by Samuel Cranston,

Governor, Feb. 3, 1699-1700.

Conceivably, the date was transcribed incorrectly, because

Newport Friends’ Records show their first child, Hannah, to

68 John O. Austin, Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island, Baltimore, Genealogical Publishing Co., 1982 (original 1887), p. 388 69 James N. Arnold, Vital Record of Rhode Island, Vol. 4, Newport County , Providence, Narragansett Historical Publishing Co., 1893, p. 43, original source Portsmouth Record Book I, p. 76.

46

have been born Dec. 4, 1698, 14 months before they were

married. The second child, John III, was born 7 months after the

marriage date above. On the other hand, the marriage does not

appear in the Quaker record books. Maybe that’s significant.

The twelve children of John II and Elizabeth were

Hannah 1698

John (III) 1700

Robert 1702

Mary 1703

Joseph 1705

Samuel 1708

Daniel 1710

Latham 1712

Elizabeth 1714

Joseph 1717

Jonathan 1719

David 1721

The Newport Quaker records confirm the dates of birth of 11 of

the children of John II and Elizabeth Clarke. The only child

missing is the second Joseph, purportedly born in 1717. The

Quaker records state that the first Joseph, “son of John, Jr. and

Elizabeth of Newport”, died Aug. 8, 1707, aged 24 years (should

be aged 2 years, no doubt a transcription error). The Quaker

records also show that John II and Elizabeth’s son Daniel

drowned at Easton’s Beach in 1717.

Elizabeth (Clarke) Stanton died in 1730, at age 50. At some point

thereafter, whether before or after his second marriage, John II

moved from Newport to the Stanton Purchase, at that time still

considered part of the town of Westerly. One source implies that

the reason for the move was that John II had failed as a merchant

47

in Newport.70 Another states that John “removed to Westerly in

1733 and married (second) October 16, 1734, Susanna

Lamphere.” 71 Susanna Lamphere (or Lanphere) was just 18

years old. Shortly after moving to the Stanton Purchase, John II

sold his Newport property for £4,000. The deed states in part:

John Stanton, of Westerly, R. l., yeoman, in consideration of

four thousand pounds, conveys to John Brown, of Newport, R.

I., merchant, "two certain pieces, farms, or parcells of land,

situate, lying and being in the Town of Newport. One of said

parcells of land containing, by estimation, ninety acres, be the

same more or less, being bounded-Northerly, on the harbour

of Newport; Easterly, partly on the land of John Gardner, with

two small offsetts to the eastward, and partly on the land ·of

Abraham Coggeshall; Southerly, upon the land of Jahleel

Brenton,Esq., and Westerly, upon the land of Edward Pelham,

with a small offsett to the westward, and partly on the other of

the above granted parcells of land. The said other parcell of

land containing, by estimation, twenty seven acres, be the

same more or less, bounded-Northerly, upon the land of

Edward Pelham; Easterly, upon the other described and

granted parcell of land ; Southerly and Westerly, upon the

land of Jahleel Brenton, Esq." He reserves unto himself, his

heirs and assigns forever, "a small burying-ground, about two

rods square, …

The deed was signed by John II and by Susanna Stanton. To be

noted is that the original 56 acres that Robert Stanton acquired as

one of the original settlers of Newport had become two parcels

of 90 and 27 acres. Whether this was Robert’s, John I’s, or John

II’s doing (or all three) I don’t yet know , but it sounds as though

at least someone had been successful. The “burying ground”

70 Richard A. Wheeler, History of the Town of Stonington, New London, Day Publishing Co., 1900, p. 601. 71 William Richard Cutter, New England Families, Genealogical and Memorial, Vol. 1, Lewis Historical Publishing Co., 1915, p. 30.

48

was presumably a family plot. John II may have intended that he

be buried there … and maybe he was. We can’t be sure that the

memorial headstone on the Stanton farm in Richmond

corresponded to an actual grave. It would be quite interesting to

locate the “burying ground”.

One thing we can try to do with the help of this deed is to locate

generally the area in which Robert Stanton’s property lay. The

49

earliest map of Newport that I was able to locate that could be of

any help is from 1831, almost 100 years after John II sold the

land. The useful landmarks from the deed are the harbor to the

north, Jahleel Brenton’s land to the south, and Abraham

Coggeshall’s to the east. Only a Brenton’s Reef and a

Coggeshall’s Ledge are to be seen, but if those were each a part

of the corresponding properties, then the land John II sold to

John Brown was approximately where the upper of the two

Hazards is inscribed, passing from there up to the harbor. Worth

£4000 in 1736, but imagine how many zeroes would be added to

reach today’s value!

The two Hazard locations probably indicate large landholdings

by someone in the Hazard family, just as the Peckham property

to the west belonged to one of the richest families in Newport,

derived, like the Stantons, from one of the 11 original

proprietors. The family of Jahleel Brenton, by the way, was Tory.

Jahleel’s nephew Jahleel was an admiral in the British fleet. All

the Brenton properties were confiscated during the

Revolutionary War.

John II and Susanna’s children were

Robert 1735

Job 1737

Susannah 1738

Benjamin 1740

Hannah 1743

Elizabeth 1744

Samuel 1745

John (III-B) 1748

Mercy 1750

Sabra 1752

Mary 1754

50

Joseph 1757

Hannah 1759

There are no Newport Quaker records that refer to John II’s

marriage to Susanna nor to any of their children. Some sources

have questioned whether it was actually John II, widower of

Elizabeth, who married Susanna, noting in particular that John II

would have been 85 years old when Hannah, the last child, was

born. Some have suggested that either John II’s son John III was

the one who married Susanna Lamphere or it was some other

John Stanton entirely. The Quaker records, however, show that

John III married Ann Slocum in Portsmouth in 1725 and record

also the birth of seven of their children, up to the year 1740.

Evidently John III died not long afterwards, hence a John III-B

from the second family.

Probably the reason that John II and Susanna’s progeny did not

appear in the records is simply that John II and Susanna had

moved away from Newport, to land that was considered to be

first in the town of Westerly, then Charlestown, and finally

Richmond. Richmond was organized with the Kingstown

Friends Meeting, but that meeting did not even begin until

1743,72 and transportation in that direction was still difficult.

That John II did marry both Elizabeth Clarke and Susanna

Lamphere is demonstrated by his will. John II outlived every one

of the children from his first marriage, although David Stanton

was still alive when he wrote the will and is named first. The

will names all the living children from his second marriage and

several grandchildren from his first:73

72 James N. Arnold, Vital Record of Rhode Island 1636-1850, Vol. VII. Friends and Ministers, 1895. p. iv. 73 Alden Gamaliel Beaman, Rhode Island Vital Records, New Series, Vol. 4, Washington County Births from Probate Records, 1685-1860.

51

Be it remembered that on the twelfth day of November in

the 26th year of the reign of our sovereign lord George II over

Great Britain the King, Anno Domini 1756.

I, John Stanton of Richmond in the County of Kings in the

Colony of Rhode Island & Providence Plantations in New

England, yeoman, being weak and infirm of body but of a

perfect mind and memory, blessed be God for the same, and

calling to mind the mortality of my body and knowing it is

appointed for man once to die, and the time thereof being

uncertain, do make and ordain this to be my last will and

testament ….

First of all I give & recommend my soul into the hands of

God who gave it and my body to the earth to be buried in a

decent Christian like manner at the direction of my executor

hereinafter named, and as such worldly estate wherewith it

hath pleased God to bless me with in this life, after my just

debts and funeral expenses are fully satisfied and paid (but all

fraudulent obligation I utterly disallow, namely that of Capt.

John Browns’ bond of Newport, which is already fulfilled

according to obligation but yet he retains the bond), I give,

divide and bequeath in that manner and form following:

I give and bequeath to my loving son David Stanton of

Richmond town the sum of ten pounds in bills of the old tenor

to be paid to him by my son Robert Stanton within two years

after my decease, he having received his portion already in

land.

I give and bequeath unto my beloved son Robert Stanton of

said town of Richmond the sum of five pounds in bills of the

old tenor to be paid by my executor hereinafter named within

two years after my decease, he having received his portion

already in land.

I give and bequeath unto my beloved son Job Stanton when

he shall arrive to the age of one and twenty years … the sum

of six hundred pounds in bills of the old tenor, to be paid to

him by my son Robert Stanton out of the estate I have already

given unto him.

I give and bequeath unto my beloved son Benjamin Stanton

when he shall arrive to the age of one and twenty years …the

52

sum of six hundred pound in bills of the old tenor to be paid

to him by my son Robert out of the estate I have already given

unto him.

I have and bequeath unto my beloved son Samuel Stanton

when he shall arrive to the age of one and twenty years … the

sum of six hundred pounds in bills of the old tenor to be paid

by my son Robert out of the estate I have already given unto

him.

I give and bequeath unto my beloved son John Stanton

when he shall arrive to the age of one and twenty years … the

sum of six hundred pounds in bills of the old tenor to be paid

to him by my son Robert out of the estate I have already given

unto him.

I give and bequeath unto my beloved daughter Susannah

Stanton when she shall arrive to the age of one and twenty

years the sum of one hundred pounds in bills of the old tenor

to be paid by my son Robert out of the estate I have already

given unto him.

I give and bequeath unto my beloved daughter Hannah

Stanton when she shall arrive to the age of eighteen years the

sum of one hundred pounds in bills of the old tenor to be paid

by my son Robert out of the estate I have already given unto

him.

I give and bequeath unto my beloved daughter Mercy

Stanton when she shall arrive to the age of eighteen years the

sum of one hundred pounds in bills of the old tenor to be paid

by my son Robert out of the estate I have already given unto

him.

I give and bequeath unto my beloved daughter Sabra

Stanton when she shall arrive to the age of aighteen the sum of

one hundred pounds in bills of the old tenor to be paid by my

son Robert out of the estate I have already given unto him.

I give and bequeath unto my beloved daughter Mary

Stanton when she shall arrive to the age of eighteen years the

sum of one hundred pounds in bills of the old tenor to be paid

by my son Robert out of the estate I have already given unto

him.

I give and bequeath unto my beloved child not yet born

when it shall arrive to the age of eighteen years the sum of one

53

hundred pounds in bills of the old tenor to be paid by my son

Robert out of the estate I have already given unto him. And I

do further order that the above child shall be brought up and

maintained out of my personal estate by my executrix

hereinafter named.

I give and bequeath unto my loving grandson John Stanton

of Newport in the county of Newport the sum of five shillings

old tenor to be paid to him by my executrix and executor

hereafter named within two years after my decease.

I give and bequeath unto my loving granddaughter

Hannah Easton of Newport the sum of five shillings in bills of

the old tenor to be paid to him by my executrix and executor

hereafter named within two years after my decease.

I give and bequeath unto my loving grandson William

Stanton of Nantucket the sum of five shillings old tenor to be

paid to him by my executrix and executor hereafter named

within two years after my decease.

I give and bequeath unto my loving grandson John Casey

of Newport the sum of five shillings in bills of the old tenor to

be paid to him by my executrix and executor hereafter named

within two years after my decease.

I give and bequeath unto my loving grandson Robert

Taylor of Newport the sum of five shillings old tenor to be

paid to him by my executrix and executor hereafter named

within two years after my decease…

I give and bequeath unto my beloved wife Susanna Stanton

my dwelling house during her natural life as also my

household goods to be disposed of at her discretion to my

children, and further I give unto my beloved wife all my

Negroes and also my stock of whatsoever kind, and further I

give unto my wife all my personal estate be it of whatsoever

nature, excepting such as is within given and bequeathed, and

further I give unto my wife the sum of four hundred pounds

old tenor to be paid by Robert.

And further my will is that my son Robert shall pay all my

just debts out of the estate I have already given unto him.

I do hereby …. appoint my said wife to be my executrix and

my son Job to be my executor of this last will and testament.

54

Of the grandchildren mentioned in the will, John Stanton was

John IV (the son of John III), who will appear again later in this

narrative. Hannah Easton was the daughter of Hannah Stanton

and Samuel Easton. John Casey was the son of Mary Stanton and

John Casey. William Stanton was the son of the first Samuel

Stanton. Robert Taylor was the son of Elizabeth Stanton and

Robert Taylor.

It looks like David, from the first set of children, and Robert,

from the second set, divided John II’s lands in some fashion,

before the will was drawn up. David died in 1760, two years

before his father, so that portion of the estate might have passed

to David’s children. Aside from David’s share, the heirs by John

II’s marriage to Elizabeth Clarke were all but written out of the

will.

John II having sold his property in Newport, the estate in

question constituted the farm on the Stanton Purchase, where he

and Susanna had been living for three decades.

Slavery

The reader will have noticed that John II willed “all my

Negroes” to Susanna. Many people are inclined to think that

slavery was virtually nonexistent in colonial New England, and

especially in Rhode Island, because of the strong influence of the

Quakers. In fact, abolitionism was not a major part of the Quaker

faith at the outset, even though it is fair to say that the Quakers

were eventually a major driving force in that movement. We

have already mentioned Daniel Stanton, the great-grandson of

Robert Stanton, who left a journal of his activities as a Quaker

preacher. He was a staunch abolitionist, but a major part of his

mission was to convert Quakers themselves to this cause. As

55

more Quakers began to stir up abolitionist sentiment in the early

part of the 18th century, it was a very long and slow process to

convert even their own brethren in faith. Rhode Island, in fact,

was probably the northern colony with the highest percentage of

slaves and, even worse, Rhode Island, and specifically Newport,

supplied the largest contingent of slave traders, plying the

notorious triangular routes between Newport, Africa, and the

Caribbean. It has been estimated that in the middle of the 18 th

century, Newport supplied more slave ships and crews than the

rest of the United States put together.74 Ships from Rhode Island,

in fact, continued to engage in the slave trade surreptitiously

after it was banned in that state in 1787.75

In southern Rhode Island the tolerance of Quakers for slavery

was not really challenged until at least 1750. Over the next 20

years a few Quakers publicly manumitted their slaves.

Sentiment turned first against buying more slaves and then only

gradually to actually freeing slaves already owned. Records kept

by the Friends in South Kingstown (which included Richmond)

showed that most slaves held by their members had been freed

by around 1770, but five were “liberated in 1773, and eight more

… were freed at intervals till 1786, which was two years after the

Emancipation Act (which banned the buying of slaves but did

not actually emancipate them) had been passed by the Rhode

Island legislature.” 76 The southern Rhode Island Quakers were

certainly not the first to jump on the bandwagon.

74 Elaine Forman Crane, A Dependent People, New York, Fordham University Press, 1985, p. 17. 75 Elizabeth Donnan, Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade, Vol. III, Washington, D.C., Carnegie Institute, 1932, pp. 338-340. 76 Caroline Hazard, The Narragansett Friends’ Meeting, Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1900, p. 150.

56

In Newport, slaves functioned as household servants, but across

Narragansett Bay, where John II was living, they were mostly

field hands:77

In Narragansett County, conditions favored large-scale

farming, and here more than anywhere else in the North a

system began to emerge that looked like the Southern

plantation colonies. In parts of "South Country" (as

Narragansett also was called), one-third of the population was

black work force by the mid-18th century. That's comparable

to the proportion of slaves in the Old South states in 1820.

Narragansett planters used their slaves both as laborers and

domestic servants. William Robinson owned an estate that was

more than four miles long and two miles wide, and he kept

about 40 slaves there. Robert Hazard of South Kingstown

owned 12,000 acres and had 24 slave women just to work in

his dairy. The Stantons of Narragansett, who were among the

province's leading landowners, had at least 40 slaves.

The Stantons? OK, we know that John II had slaves. He probably

had crops and livestock on several hundred acres of the Stanton

Purchase. But 40 slaves? Here is another version of that

information:78

With regard to the number of slaves held by the Narragansett

Planters, accounts differ, … [but] the greatest number reported by

tradition is forty, reputed to be held by the Stanton Family.

No, it wasn’t John II or any of his relatives. It was the

“Connecticut Stantons”. Thomas Stanton first settled in

Hartford, but later helped to found the town of Stonington, on

the ocean, a stone’s throw from the Rhode Island border and the

77 Douglas Harper, Slavery in Rhode Island, http://slavenorth.com/rhodeisland.htm. 78 William Davis Miller, The Narragansett Planters, Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, April, 1933, p. 70.

57

new Westerly settlement that Robert Stanton helped to start.

Joseph, one of Thomas’s sons, acquired a large tract of land from

the Mohegan tribe in 1714 in what was then considered the town

of Westerly, but which later was Charlestown, Rhode Island.79

Joseph moved his family there and they spawned a large

number of descendants in and around the town of Charlestown.

As the original purchasers, it makes sense to discover that

Joseph’s grandson, also Joseph, was later the largest landholder

in the Narragansett area.80

A history of Westerly notes that81

Col. Joseph Stanton owned one tract of four and a half miles

long and two miles wide; he kept forty horses, as many slaves,

and made a great dairy, besides other productions. …. Stanton

was a large land-owner, and held title to his land through his

ancestors from the Indians. The expression used was, that “he

owned a lordship in Charlestown”. He lived on the farm at the

Cove.

79 William A. Stanton, A Record Genealogical, Biographical, Statistical of Thomas Stanton of Connecticut, Albany, Joel Munsell’s Sons, 1891, p. 421. 80 Robert K. Fitts, Inventing New England’s Slave Paradise: Master/Slave Relations in Eighteenth Century Narragansett, Taylor & Francis, 1998. 81 Frederic Denison, Westerly and its Witnesses, Providence, J.A. and R.A. Reid, 1878, p. 141.

58

So it was the Connecticut Stantons that were the infamous

slaveholders in Rhode Island. Nevertheless, John II did have

slaves, and he and his family definitely interacted with some of

the major players in the Rhode Island slave trade. Note that the

Hazard family, one or more of which owned the original Stanton

lands in Newport in 1831 (see map on pg. 40), eventually

surpassed the Stantons in land ownership, having 12,000 acres,

according to the material quoted above from Douglas Harper,

which also mentioned that Robert Hazard had 24 slave women

for his dairy.

John Brown, the man who purchased the Newport property

from John II, was even deeper into the business of slavery. He

listed his occupation as distiller, which was true, but in Newport

distiller also meant slave trader. The Brown family was at the

top of the distiller/slave trader pyramid:82

The Browns, one of the great mercantile families of colonial

America, were Rhode Island slave traders. At least six of them

-- James and his brother Obadiah, and James's four sons,

Nicholas, John, Joseph, and Moses -- ran one of the biggest

slave-trading businesses in New England, and for more than

half a century the family reaped huge profits from the slave

trade. "When James Brown sent the Mary to Africa in 1736, he

launched Providence into the Negro traffic and laid the

foundation for the Brown fortune. From this year until 1790,

the Browns played a commanding role in the New England

slave trade."83 Their donations to Rhode Island College were so

generous that the name was changed to Brown University.

82 Douglas Harper, Slavery in Rhode Island, http://slavenorth.com/rhodeisland.htm. 83 Lorenzo J. Greene, The Negro in Colonial New England, 1620-1776, New York, Columbia University Press, 1942, p. 30

59

The portage bills (manifests) from a number of Newport vessels

from the 18th century have been preserved. One such was that of

the Marigold, covering its voyage in 1759/60 from Newport to

Nassau to Guinea,84 which at that time referred to a wide swath

of the west African coast that includes about a dozen present-

day nations. We can infer the actual landing place, because 11

dozen of the 17 dozen slaves purchased (from at least three

different slave traders) for a total of 19 oz. of gold were listed as

“Quanoe”,85 which is probably the Kono tribe, native to Sierra

Leone. The remaining 8 dozen were of unspecified origin and

might also have been Kono. In Nassau 112 slaves were sold at a

price of 30 pounds each and rum, molasses, and tobacco were

loaded for the trip back to Newport. Although it appears that

half of the slaves died en route, the discrepancy is probably due

to the fact that some of the outlay in Guinea was actually settling

a previous account. In addition, a few slaves doubtless were

taken to Newport, because it was the custom that the captain

and the mates receive “privilege” slaves that were theirs to keep

or to sell.

The 13-man crew of the Marigold consisted of the captain, two

mates, seven sailors, two “raw sailors”, and a boy. The boy was

named John Stanton. He was so young that his name was listed

as “John Stanton and his mother”, who probably had to give

permission. John’s mother no doubt took custody of the £42

advance. John’s wages were £30 a month, and he collected £469

84 Elizabeth Donnan, Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America: New England and the Middle Colonies, New York, Octagon Books, 1965, p. 175. 85 Ibid.

60

for the voyage. One author took special note of this circumstance

and drew some extensive conclusions:86

Perhaps a poignant illustration of the material needs that

propelled some Newporters lies in the ship registers that show

“boys” signing on for the slave trade. In one particular case, a

mother registered her son, John Stanton, on the ship

“Marigold”, setting sail for the African coast on July 22, 1760

[sic – it was 1759]. Although Stanton’s age may have required

his mother to register him, her presence and his receiving £42

in advance suggest that Stanton’s family needed his income

for subsistence. His advanced wages was a rather large sum

for a sailor making £30 per month, since most sailors received

only a month’s wages in advance. John Stanton’s advanced

wages suggest that his circumstances required additional

sums. Perhaps he was the eldest male in the family and his

income was expected to provide for his family. Why the

captain chose to advance Stanton this sum is unclear, however

it suggest how Newport’s links to Atlantic commerce

facilitated interdependent social relations. Recognizing the

dangers entailed in maritime trade, perhaps the captain

offered this additional sum to Stanton’s mother to provide for

his family.

Indeed, most of the sailors drew a month’s wages in advance,

but John Stanton was not the only Marigold crew member to

draw more than that. I would not assume that there was

anything “poignant” about a boy signing on to a ship at that

time. It was probably the normal way to start a seafaring career.

In 1759 there were only a handful of John Stantons in Rhode

Island. John II was 85 years old, John III was dead, and John IV

was 28, certainly too old to sign on as a “boy”. John II’s son

86 W. Bryan Rommel-Ruiz, Atlantic Revolutions: Slavery and Freedom in Newport, Rhode Island and Halifax, Novia Scotia in the Era of the American Revolution, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Michigan, 1999.

61

David, from his first family, had a son John, who was born in

1742 and would have been 16 years old when the ship left port.

That fits pretty well, but we don’t know exactly when David or

his wife (Martha) died. I assume, though I really don’t know

what the custom was, that if the father were alive, it would be he

that registered the son on a ship. A David Stanton was a justice

of the peace in Exeter (the township just north of Richmond) in

the 1760s, and though this could be an unrelated Stanton, if it

was David, son of John II, it adds some uncertainty to the

identification of the John Stanton on the Marigold as David’s

son.

Then we have the “Connecticut Stantons”, many of whom were

living in the town of Charlestown. There was only one John

Stanton, however, and he was 37 years old at the time. Thus I

conclude that, despite the (thin) evidence that his father was still

alive, the John Stanton who sailed on the Marigold was the

grandson of John II, David’s son.

It’s hard to avoid connections between “John Stanton” and

slavery. Below is an advertisement from a New York newspaper

in 1760:87

87 New York Mercury, December 8, 1760, pg. 3.

62

Here the Charlestown location points straight at a “Connecticut”

Stanton, and the John Stanton mentioned above, born in 1722,

must be the one offering to pay $20 for the return of his slave,

whom one cannot help but root for. We can assume that Toby

had been purchased from the Hazard family, who, by the way,

were Quakers. Many Hazards, Robert among them, appear in

the Quaker records of Rhode Island.88 One of Robert Hazard’s

sons was apparently stung by hearing his faith criticized thusly:

“Quakers! They are not a Christian people; they hold their

fellow-men in slavery.” Thus Thomas Hazard freed his own

slaves and began working to get his neighbors to do the same.89

At least two of John II’s grandchildren, both sons of John III,

were sea captains, and most probably on slave ships. A list of

ships importing molasses (to distill into rum) to Newport in 1769

survived an almost total loss of custom house books and records.

There were 16 deliveries, among them the ship Betsy, returning

from St. Lucia and captained by John Stanton, and the ship Polly,

returning from Jamaica and captained by Giles Stanton.90 Since

Giles was definitely John III’s son, it is very likely that John was

Giles’ older brother, John IV. The Betsy delivered to the merchant

Silas Cook and the Polly to George Gibbs. Both of them were

prominent slave traders;91,92 thus we can assume that the

88 James N. Arnold, Vital Record of Rhode Island 1636-1850, Vol. VII. Friends and Ministers, 1895. 89 Caroline Hazard, The Narragansett Friends’ Meeting, Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1900, p. 86. 90 Edward Peterson, History of Rhode Island, New York, John S. Taylor, 1853, p. 86. 91 Elizabeth Donnan, Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade, Vol. III, Washington, D.C., Carnegie Institute, 1932. 92 Elaine F. Crane, A Dependent People, New York, Fordham University Press, 1985.

63

molasses deliveries were preceded by a trip to Africa to procure

slaves to sell in the West Indies.

It was almost certainly John IV who was the Captain John

Stanton who drew attention in Rhode Island for his many

triangular voyages,93 and who eventually landed in considerable

trouble for having trafficked in slaves after the practice had been

banned.94 The Hope was registered in Newport, from which she

sailed for Africa in 1787. Spurred by the newly abolitionist

Quakers, in 1787 and 1788, every state in New England passed a

law prohibiting the slave trade. Nevertheless, in 1789, the Hope

undertook another triangular voyage, this time embarking from

New Bedford, Massachusetts. They bought 116 slaves in Africa

and sold them in Martinique.95 They unloaded their cargo at

Newport, at which point a group of Quaker abolitionists had a

warrant served for the arrest of John Stanton and the ship

owners. Catching wind of this, they took the ship to Boston, but

they were prosecuted there. Rather than the state preferring

criminal charges, the Quaker group had to sue them. Despite

being defended by the Rhode Island attorney general, whose line

of defense was that John Stanton and the owners were Rhode

Island residents and thus were not subject to Massachusetts law

when on the high sea, they were convicted, though they had to

render only a small financial penalty.96

93 Jay Coughtry, The Notorious Triangle, Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 1981, pp. 47, 50. 94 Elizabeth Donnan, Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade, Vol. III, Washington, D.C., Carnegie Institute, 1932 95 Ibid. 96 Coughtry, op. cit.

64

65

The Nantucket Stanton

66

Samuel Stanton (1708-1743)

Long before John IV enriched himself and the ship owners by

means of the slave trade, Samuel Stanton, son of John III and

Elizabeth Clarke and next in line of the Charles Howland

Stanton ancestors, left Newport for good. He moved to

Nantucket, and was the only Stanton to do so.

There had been a small trickle of Rhode Islanders relocating to

Nantucket in the early 1700s, but nothing like a concerted

migration. Presumably ships from Newport would occasionally

put in at Nantucket, for trade or because of bad weather, and

possibly what the sailors saw and who they met determined

some of them to return for good. When Samuel arrived in

Nantucket does not seem to have been recorded, but if I had to

guess, I’d say that it happened after his mother died in 1730,

when all the other changes were occurring in the family – John II

marrying again, selling his Newport lands, and moving onto the

Stanton Purchase in what became Richmond. What Samuel

would have found in Nantucket is a community that by then

was largely Quaker and almost entirely devoted to the whaling

industry. In fact, those may have been the factors that persuaded

him to pick up stakes.

67

Nantucket was a seriously inbred community at that time. The

first proprietors included the Macy, Coffin, Starbuck, Swain, and

Gardner families, who, with a few other families, intermarried

over and over. The Quaker religion began to grab hold around

1710, Mary Coffin Starbuck being its most ardent proselyte. By

the time Samuel Stanton arrived, half the island was Quaker.

Samuel left few traces that I can find. He was one of the

witnesses to the will of Charles Crosby on Jan. 7, 1733 (1732 in

the Julian calendar).97 Samuel married Sarah Coffin on Feb. 12,

1734 (1733 Julian calendar). The entry in Vital Records of

Nantucket reads 98

[Coffin] Sarah and Samuel Stanton, 14 th, 12 mo., “called

February,” 1733-34, C.R. 4.

The notation C.R. 4 indicates that the original source was a

church record of the Society of Friends. It’s easy to understand

why most family trees have Samuel and Sarah’s marriage date

listed incorrectly as Dec. 14, 1734 (or sometimes 1733).

The Quaker records also establish, to some degree, the dates of

birth of their children:

William [date not recorded; states that he was born before child

born on 4 May 1737]

Elizabeth 4 May 1737

Samuel [date not recorded, states that he was born after child

born on 4 May 1737]

97 Henry B. Worth, Nantucket Lands and Land Owners, Nantucket Historical Association Vol. 2, Bulletin 1, 1901, p. 310. 98 Vital Records of Nantucket Massachusetts to the Year 1850, Vol. III, Boston, New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1925, p. 310.

68

Sloppy record keeping, but then again, these are among the very

earliest records. As it turns out, William’s birthday can be

deduced to be Nov. 15, 1734, from the information on his death

record in the Nantucket Friends Records.99 The death data for

Samuel Jr. are not sufficient to pin down his birth date.

Whaling was a profitable occupation, and Samuel was able to

afford a decent house. In 1882 that house was considered to be of

historic interest:100

The Samuel Stanton, Sr., house, next above that now owned

and occupied by Capt. Henry Coleman (Milk Street), was

probably built about 1734, as he (Stanton) was married Feb. 14,

1733-34 O.S., and died before 1744. It was afterwards

purchased by “Uncle” John Coleman, who died in 1805.

With Google Street View you can see a couple of old shingle

houses on Milk Street. Who knows? Maybe one of them was

Samuel’s. Incidentally, there is a house on Orange St. that once

belonged to Peleg Coggeshall, a cousin of Samuel’s (John I was

his great-grandfather), who moved to Nantucket a few decades

after Samuel did, that is in the Historic American Buildings

Survey.101

Samuel’s death is not recorded in the Nantucket Friends’

records, but some sources say that he was lost at sea en route

from Surinam in 1743.102 Although whaling was by far the

predominant occupation on Nantucket, this does not fit with a

whaling expedition. Eventually Nantucket whalers ventured

99 Ibid., 100 Edward K. Godfrey, The Island of Nantucket. What is Was and What it Is, Boston, Lee and Shepard, 1882, p. 234. 101 http://www.nps.gov/hdp/habs/ 102 Newport Mercury, Feb. 10, 1900, p. 8.

69

that far south, and even into the Pacific, but in 1743 whales were

still plentiful in the local area.103 Surinam was notorious for the

importation of thousands of Africans as slaves to work the

plantations, and if Samuel was coming from Surinam, it was

probably as one leg in a triangular slave route, with which he

had probably been familiar in Newport. Nantucket Quakers

were far in advance of Newport Quakers in acting against

slavery, and they completely emancipated their slaves in 1777,

but decades earlier the sentiment was not unanimous. A few

Nantucket ships did participate in the slave trade,104 though it

seems more likely that a sailor like Samuel might have signed on

with one of the slave ships that regularly docked at Nantucket,

such as those of Timothy Fitch of Medford, Massachusetts.105 In

any case, on July 25, 1743 his widow, Sarah, was named

administratrix of his estate, which came to a total of £900. Sarah

later remarried and had two more children.

103 William F. Macy, The Story of Old Nantucket, Nantucket, Inquirer and Mirror Press, 1915 (revision of Obed Macy’s book from 1835). 104 Nathaniel Philbrick, Away Off Shore, London, Penguin Books, 1994/2011, p. 301. 105 The Medford Slave Trade Letters, http://www.medfordhistorical.org/collections/slave-trade-letters/.

70

71

The Peripatetic Stantons

72

William Stanton (1734 – 1811)

Upon Samuel Stanton’s death in 1743, his widow, Sarah, was left

with three young children. She had been born a Coffin, so there

was undoubtedly some family support available. She acquired

more when she married James Pinkham on January 31, 1745.

Thus the Stanton children grew up in the Pinkham household.

Then their mother died in 1750, at which point there were five

children in the house. James Pinkham remarried in 1755, but

William, Samuel’s eldest son, probably had struck out on his

own by then. If he was like everyone else, he would have joined

the crew of a whaling ship, though I can’t find any specific

records to confirm this.

William Stanton married Phebe Macy, daughter of Zaccheus and

Hepzibah (Gardner) Macy, on January 1, 1756.106 Their children,

as recorded in the Nantucket Quaker records were107

106 Vital Records of Nantucket Massachusetts to the Year 1850, Vol. IV, Boston, New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1925, p. 170 (from Quaker records). 107 Ibid., Vol. 2, pp. 489-491.

73

Sarah 1765

Samuel 1766

James 1767

William 1769

Hepzibah 1770

Two other children are recorded, Job and Latham, but they

apparently died in infancy, for there is no further mention of

either.

Although whaling brought prosperity to Nantucket, it didn’t

appeal to everyone. Sailors were at sea for months at a time.

Starting in 1761, several sustained emigrations occurred – to

Nova Scotia, New York, and Maine, for example.108 Perhaps after

hearing about the area from several visitors to Nantucket from

North Carolina,109 one group of about 40 families left in the early

1770s for Guilford County, North Carolina, where there was

already a small Quaker settlement. In 1782, a French observer

wrote:110

Some of the Friends … yearly visit the several congregations

which this society has formed throughout the continent. By

their means a sort of correspondence is kept up among them

all… and by thus travelling they unavoidably gather the most

necessary observations concerning the various situations of

particular districts, their soils, their produce, their distance

from navigable rivers, the price of land, etc. In consequence of

information of this kind, received at Nantucket …, a

considerable number of them purchased a large tract of land in

… North Carolina, situated on the several springs of Deep

108 Ibid., p. 62 109 Nathaniel Philbrick, Away Off Shore, London, Penguin, 1994/2011, p. 159. 110 J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer, Letter VII, New York, Fox, Duffield, 1904.

74

River, which is the western branch of Cape Fear River. The

advantage of being able to convey themselves by sea to within

forty miles of the spot, the richness of the soil, etc., made them

cheerfully quit an island on which there was no longer any

room for them.

The Quakers were excellent record keepers and they issued

certificates to members leaving one meeting, to be presented to

the new meetings at their destinations. William presented his

certificate to the New Garden Friends Meeting on Aug. 8,

1772.111 The old New Garden meeting house, pictured here, was

used as a hospital for both sides during the Battle of Guilford

Courthouse in the Revolutionary War. The current meeting

house, on the same site, is adjacent to Guilford College (founded

by the Quakers), about five miles west of Greensboro, North

Carolina.

The Nantucket immigrants did not travel together, instead

dribbling in over a period of about five years. For example, four

different Starbuck families presented certificates at New Garden

from 1773 to 1775, and some Coffins arrived in 1771. Many of the

111 William W. Hinshaw, U.S. Encyclopedia of American Quaker Genealogy , Vol. 1, Baltimore, Genealogical Publishing Co.,1936-50, p. 574.

75

Nantucket immigrants, William and Phebe included, settled a

few miles to the southwest of the New Garden settlement. In

1778, they acquired their own monthly meeting, the Deep River

meeting.

Samuel Stanton, William’s younger brother, also emigrated to

the same general area with his family. They settled, with other

Nantucket families, about 15 miles southeast of New Garden, in

Randolph County. They were associated with the Center

Monthly Meeting, which split off from New Garden in 1773.

Unfortunately, a large part of the Center Meeting records were

lost, so there is only the sketchiest information on Samuel. We

don’t know when he arrived. He had six children in North

Carolina and died in Randolph County in 1822.112

A letter written in 1778 by William Stanton to Phebe’s father,

Zaccheus Macy, has been preserved by the Nantucket Historical

Society. It reads in part:113

It is a difficult time to these parts on some counts. Iron and Salt

scarce and dear. Sal t not so dear as has been. To be had now for

15 or 16 dollars. I brought paper money which is of small account

here away. As for our circumstances, we can’t complain of , for we

have plenty enough to subsist on at present. Many articles thou

mentioned in thy letter is not so dear here as I manage to get

molasses 2 dollars a gallon. Flour 2s 6p wood for cutting. We

raised about 320 bushels corn, 50 wheat, 100 oats and meat

plenty. Flax 150 or 200. There is no goods in these parts to be

had. We made all the cloth we ware. Phebe is hardy and fit and

able to spin and Sarah likewise and William able to plow. Phebe

has had 3 children since we came to these parts. The names are

Phebe, Deborah, and Latham, which is about 9 months old. Our

112 Ibid, Center Monthly Meeting, p. 668. 113 Robert H. Frazier, Nantucket and North Carolina, Alumni Journal, Guilford College Bulletin, 1949.

76

children remember their love to their grandfather and

grandmother and their relations and folks of Nantucket every day

and them that was born here talk of Nantucket as much as them

that was born there and frequently talk of going there to see

grandfather and grandmother. Please to remember our love to all

our brothers and sisters.

You have to wonder how difficult it was to deliver such a letter

during the war. It appears to be the first letter sent back to

Nantucket since they arrived in North Carolina. William and

Phebe’s children born in North Carolina were

Phebe 1772

Deborah 1775

Latham 1777

Zaccheus 1779

Phebe, the daughter, while mentioned in the letter above to

Zaccheus Macy, probably died as a child, because I can find no

further record of her.

In 1779, the minutes of the Deep River Friends Meeting reported

the following:

It being the united sense of our yearly Meeting that Friends

cannot consistent with our principles take any Affirmation of

Allegiance or Fidelity now under the present unsettled state of

affairs in Government and still to be determined by military

force: But divers amongst us through unwatchfulness have

given way thereto; but through the favour of Divine goodness

… several of [them] … appeared at our Monthly Meeting and

condemned the same to the satisfaction of Friends, whose

names are as follows: Seth Coffin, Daniel Bills, Richard

Gardner , William Stanton, Sylvanus Gardner.

77

By condemning himself for signing an oath of allegiance,

William managed to keep from being disowned. The demands

for oaths of allegiance were probably frequent and strong at that

time, when the war was particularly heated in that part of North

Carolina.

In 1773 another Stanton appeared briefly in New Garden, having

come from Carteret County, North Carolina, where he was a

member of the Core Sound Monthly Meeting. This was Benjamin

Stanton, a first cousin once removed to William Stanton. Perhaps

accompanying his brother, John, when he moved a year earlier

to New Garden from Carteret County, Benjamin met Abigail

Macy in New Garden. They married in New Garden, but moved

back to Carteret County. In 1779, Benjamin obtained a certificate

of removal to take his family to New Garden, but apparently he

never did. Benjamin was the grandfather of Edwin Stanton, the

Secretary of War during the Civil War.

In 1782, William and Phebe decided to move again, this time

about 130 miles to the north to Campbell County, around the

fledgling town of Lynchburg, Virginia. There was already a

Quaker community there, and a monthly meeting, founded by

Sarah Lynch, called the South River Meeting. On May 6, 1782,

William and Phebe obtained certificates from the Deep River

Meeting to remove to the South River Meeting.114 On August 16

of the same year, their certificates were accepted at the South

River Meeting.

They remained in the Lynchburg area a long time. Despite an

emphasis on the equal ministerial role of all members, the

Quakers had ‘elders’ and ‘overseers’. The difference was

generally that elders were responsible for spiritual oversight,

114 Ibid., p. 839.

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while overseers provided pastoral care.115 The South River

minutes record that William was at various times each of these.

He was also treasurer of the Meeting. William and Phebe had

one more child after moving to Campbell County.

Aaron 1784

The South River minutes record the marriages of most of their

children. At this juncture the Holloway family, who had

migrated from New Jersey, becomes important. Three of

William’s children married Holloways. Hepzibah Stanton

married Amos Holloway and James married Mary Holloway, a

sister of Amos. William Stanton (Jr.) married Catharine

Holloway, a first cousin to Amos and Mary. When the Stantons

left Virginia, Amos, along with other Holloways, moved with

them.

The Butler family also became connected to the Stantons. Latham

married Huldah Butler and Zaccheus married Sarah Butler.

Huldah and Sarah were cousins.

Aaron broke the mold when he married Lydia Fosdick, not only

not a Holloway or a Butler, but not even a Quaker! Naturally he

got in trouble for this, and he was disowned by the South River

Monthly Meeting for marrying “outside the discipline”. Three

years later, he condemned himself for marrying “contrary to

discipline” and was restored to membership.116 Lydia had

moved with her family to Campbell County from Nantucket,

where the Stantons and the Fosdicks had probably known each

115 Pauline B. Cheek, A Flame Still Burns. The Story of Salem Friends’ Meeting 1992, unpublished (copy found in Union County Public Library). 116 William W. Hinshaw, U.S. Encyclopedia of American Quaker Genealogy , Vol. 1, Baltimore, Genealogical Publishing Co.,1936-50, p. 340.

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other. The Fosdicks were numerous in Nantucket, but were not

Quakers. Lydia, however, later became one.

Aaron was not the only Stanton son to run afoul of the

congregation. When James married Mary Holloway in 1792, both

James and Mary were disowned. Mary was reported to have

married “one making the same profession” (i.e., a Quaker), but

to have married contrary to discipline. Perhaps they eloped. That

would have caused a stir. Two years later, however, James and

Mary “condemned the conduct for which they were disowned”,

and were reinstated.

In 1799, William Stanton (the son) made the following public

confession at the South River meeting:117

Dear Friends:

Whereas I have so far deviated from the rules of good order

which we profess as to be guilty of drinking strong drink to

excess, I hereby give this as my humble acknowledgment that

I am truly sorry for it and do condemn myself in so doing, and

request my Friends to pass by this my offense, and hope my

future conduct will render me more worthy.

William Jr.’s self condemnation was accepted and all was well.

Phebe, William’s wife of 46 years, died in 1802, at which time all

the children were married except for Deborah, who continued to

live with her father.

The South River minutes report several instances in which

property (a saddle, for example) was seized by the Sheriff in lieu

of a muster fine. Young men were required to serve in the

militia, which, of course, the Quakers could not do. Neither were

117 Our Quaker Friends of Ye Olden Time, Lynchburg, J. P. Bell, 1905, p. 165.

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they allowed to pay the muster fine, which would have

acknowledged the obligation. In North Carolina, the authorities

tended to look the other way, but in Virginia, they would

frequently enforce the law by seizing items of property. William

and Phebe’s son Latham, for example, “suffered the seizure … of

a feather bed, sheet and bolster”.118

In 1805 began a migration of the William Stanton family. It did

not happen in one big caravan, but it would end up with every

family member moving to Ohio. Along with William himself,

each of the eight Stanton children who reached adulthood

obtained a certificate of removal from the Quaker monthly

meeting they attended, and so we have a complete picture of the

events. The Stantons were part of a general removal to the north

of southern Quakers in the first two decades of the 19th century,

mainly because their abolitionist views were getting stronger

and they found it difficult to live in a slave-owning society. The

muster fines probably didn’t help either.

Taking a family snapshot, at the beginning of 1805 William and

six of his children were living in Campbell County and attending

the South River monthly meeting in Lynchburg (which was not,

and still is not, actually a part of Campbell County, but a city

independent of a county). Earlier, William Jr. and James had

moved to North Carolina, near where the Stantons had

originally settled in the 1770s, where they were both members of

the Cane Creek monthly meeting, near Guilford. By 1805,

however, William had moved back to Campbell County, leaving

James and his family. Sarah, who had married Eliab Gardner in

New Garden, never left and they were still part of the same

Deep River monthly meeting, also near Guilford, that all the

Stantons had once belonged to. Below is a table showing

118 Hinshaw, loc. cit.

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removal dates for each of the family and the monthly meeting in

Ohio they removed to.

Ohio Migration MM

removed

from

Certificate

date

MM

removed to

County

William Stanton South River 12 Apr 1806 Salem Columbiana

Sarah and Eliab

Gardner

Deep River,

NC

5 Aug 1811 Elk Preble

William and

Catharine

(Holloway)

South River 11 Oct 1817 Cincinatti Hamilton

James and Mary

(Holloway)

Cane

Creek, NC

6 Apr 1805 Concord Belmont

Hepsibah and

Amos Holloway

South River 10 Aug

1805

Middleton Columbiana

Deborah South River 12 Apr 1806 Salem Columbiana

Latham and

Huldah (Butler)

South River 8 Sep 1810 Fairfield Highland

Zaccheus and

Sarah (Butler)

South River 12 Apr 1806 Salem Columbiana

Aaron and Lydia

(Fosdick)

South River 9 Nov 1805 Salem Columbiana

This has the look of a diaspora, but as we will see, centripetal

forces went to work immediately.

James was the first Stanton to leave. He and his family were

officially received by the Concord monthly meeting in

November, 1805. Shortly thereafter, Aaron and his family moved

to Columbiana County, and Aaron was received at the Salem

monthly meeting. Apparently this land was more appealing than

Belmont County, and James quickly pulled up stakes and joined

Aaron. James and family were officially received at the Salem

meeting in June, 1806. At that point, Lydia, Aaron’s wife, and

their children were not yet church members, so they were not

recorded. Four years later they were all received into the Salem

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congregation. William and his daughter Deborah were also

officially received by the Salem meeting in June, 1806. Zaccheus

and family arrived at, or nearly at, the same time as William and

Deborah, being officially received in July, 1806. Another family

that migrated with the Stantons was that of Micajah Macy, who

had married Sarah Holloway, but after her death two years later

married another Sarah. Their family was received at Salem in

1807.

The Salem meeting was in Salem, Ohio, in Columbiana County,

to the west of the Middleton monthly meeting in the same

county, where Amos and Hepzibah Holloway had been officially

received in February, 1806. Two months later, however, they too

associated with the Salem meeting. By the end of 1806 William

had five of his eight children living near him.

We have a fairly good idea where the Stantons first settled,

because James and Aaron each applied for 160 acres of federal

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land and patents were issued to them in 1810 (federal land cost

$1.25 an acre). The two properties are marked in red on the

historical map shown below. They may have occupied other

lands as well.

These two tracts are southeast of Limaville and north of the town

of Alliance. The quarter section on the left is currently under

water, being covered by the Deer Creek Reservoir. At the time

the Stantons were there, it was just Deer Creek, a tributary of the

Mahoning River, which passed through the quarter section on

the right. When the Stantons arrived, this area was in

Columbiana County, but in 1808 the county split off Stark

County on the western side, which included the Stanton

property. Today Limaville and Alliance are in Lexington

Township. Back in the first decade of the 1800s they, and the

Stanton land parcels, were all part of the township of

Nimishillen.

The Stantons, including Amos and Hepzibah Holloway, were

apparently among the very first to settle in the present Lexington

Township. They were joined by other Quakers. William Perrin

relates the following story about an immigrant group of Quakers

from eastern Virginia in the History of Stark County:119

Jesse Felts, wife and two children … constituted one of the

seven families who in company, removed from Virginia to

Ohio in 1807. The party consisted of about fifty souls … On

April 22, 1807 they set out in their wagons to traverse the

country and cross into Ohio, in search of a home in the new

and unsettled West. They arrived at Salem, Columbiana Co.,

the following June. There they encamped on a lot which had

been partially cleared, and were the recipients of much

119 William H. Perrin, History of Stark County, Chicago, Baskin & Battey, 1881, p 752

84

kindness at the hands of some few settlers at that point.

Taking Salem as a basis of operations, they began to look

around for permanent locations. Jesse Felts and Charles

Hamlin soon set out on a prospecting tour, and wandering

into what is now Lexington Tp., Stark Co., accidentally found

the “Stanton” settlement, which had been made near the

Mahoning, near Lexington village, several years before. The

Stantons persuaded Felts and Hamlin to settle in their vicinity.

The Salem monthly meeting with which the Stantons, and the

other Quakers nearby, were affiliated was in the town of Salem,

about 20 miles east, in Columbiana County. The difficulty of

traversing this stretch every month caused the formation of a

local meeting, called the Marlborough Preparative Meeting, in

Nimishillen Township, about five miles from the Stantons. The

local Quakers met there, but records were kept in Salem, to

which they still officially belonged.

The 1810 census was taken in Ohio, but it was almost entirely

lost to fire. An Ohio tax list for that year, however, lists Aaron

Stanton and William Stanton in Nimishillen Township of Stark

County, as well as Amos Holloway. Zaccheus was not listed,

probably because he had moved a few months earlier to an

unorganized portion of Stark County, later known as Perry

Township.

William Stanton died in October, 1811. He left a will written in

January of that year.120

I William Stanton of the County of Stark and State of Ohio

being sound of mind and memory and caling to mind the

uncertainty of this life do make and ordain this my last will

and testament viz it is my will and desire first that all my just

120 Ohio Wills and Probate Records, Will Records 1811-1888, Stark Co., Provo, UT, Ancestry.com, 2015.

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debts be justly and truly paid by my Executors hereafter

named and out of my estate within convenient time after my

decease.

I give and bequeath unto my daughter Sarah Gardner an equal

proportion of all my household furniture and money that I

leave at my decease and further it is my desire that all my

Books and Tools be equally divided amongst all my children

except what is hereafter mentioned and otherwise particularly

disposed of.

I give and bequeath unto my son William Stanton an equal

proportion of all my household furniture and money that I

leave at my decease.

I give to my son James Stanton an equal proportion of my

household furniture and money that I leave at my decease.

I give to my Daughter Hephzibah Holloway an equal

proportion of all my household furniture and money that I

leave at my decease.

I give and bequeath to my Daughter Deborah Stanton one

feather bed and furniture and an equal proportion of my

household furniture and money that I leave at my decease.

I give and bequeath to my Son Latham Stanton an equal

proportion of my household furniture and money that I leave

at my decease.

I give and bequeath to my Son Zaccheus Stanton and his heirs

the tract of land whereon I now live and all the stock and the

farming Utentials and an equal proportion of my household

furniture and money that I leave at my decease and further the

said Zaccheus Stanton and his heirs be bound in the penalty of

One thousand dollars for the support of his sister Deborah

Stanton during her life and at her decease for Zaccheus or his

heirs to have what was given to the said Deborah and further

if my Executors hereafter named should find or think that the

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said Deborah has not sufficient care taken of her then it is my

desire that one of her brothers or sisters should take her and

for Zaccheus and his heirs to support her in a decent and

becoming manner during her life.

I give to my son Aaron Stanton an equal proportion of my

household furniture and money that I leave on my decease.

And lastly I do hereby constitute and appoint my sons James

Stanton, Zaccheus Stanton, Aaron Stanton, Amos Holloway

with my trusty friend Micajah Macy Joynt Executors to this

my last will and testament and hereby revoking all other wills,

in witness whereof I the said William Stanton hath hereunto

set my hand and affixed my seal this thirteenth day of the first

month in the year of our Lord Eighteen hundred and Eleven.

We can assume that the eight children mentioned by William in

the will were all that were still living in 1811. In particular,

Samuel (born 1766 in Nantucket) and Phebe (born 1772 in New

Garden, North Carolina) were probably deceased and had had

no children.

87

88

Zaccheus Stanton (1779 – 1869)

As related above, Zaccheus Stanton was born in 1779 in Guilford

County, North Carolina, near the present town of Deep River.

Three years later the family moved to Campbell County,

Virginia, where Zaccheus grew up.

Zaccheus married Sarah (Sally) Butler in 1800. She was a Quaker,

but not from the Nantucket group. They married at the Hills

Creek meeting house in Campbell County, about 20 miles south

of the South River meeting house. That must have been the

monthly meeting with which the Butlers were affiliated.

Zaccheus moved with Sarah and their daughter, Hannah, to

Columbiana County, Ohio in 1806, along with other Stantons.

Perrin’s History of Stark County states that

Settlement in Lexington Township was made in 1805-06 by

families attached to the Quaker faith, among the first of whom

were Amos Holloway, Zaccheus Stanton, Nathan Gaskill, John

Grant, David Berry, and Jesse Feltz.

Recall that Amos Holloway was married to Zaccheus’ sister,

Hepzibah. Perrin notes that Amos Holloway erected the first

89

house in Lexington township (then part of Nimishillen

township) and the first with a shingle roof.121

Zaccheus and Sally had three more children in Ohio, recorded in

the Salem monthly meeting minutes, giving them a total of four.

Hannah 1804 (born in Virginia)

Thomas 1807

Eli 1810

Seth 1812

One source states that the Quaker emigrants from Virginia and

North Carolina brought their slaves with them, in order to free

them on arrival. In fact, Amos and Hepzibah Holloway did

exactly that.122 A town of freed slaves by the name of New

Guinea, arose in Lexington Township, near the town of Alliance.

It was reputed to have had as many as 200 inhabitants, but it

faded away rapidly and has not left a trace. Those Quakers who

migrated from Nantucket to settle in New Garden would

probably never have acquired slaves in the first place.

Shortly before William Stanton’s death in 1811, Zaccheus

decided to move further west, though still remaining in Stark

County and still remaining associated with the Marlborough

preparative meeting and perforce with the Salem Monthly

Meeting. Aaron had remained in Nimishillen (Lexington)

township with William and Deborah, but upon William’s death,

he leapfrogged Zaccheus and moved his family to Indiana

Territory, having obtained a certificate to remove to the

121 William H. Perrin, History of Stark County, Chicago, Baskin & Battey, 1881, p 422. 122 Theresa M. Davis, Women in the Nineteenth Century Stark County Court in Ohio, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Akron, 2013.

90

Whitewater monthly meeting in the town of Richmond in

Wayne County. His brothers Latham and James moved there

shortly afterwards. The Whitewater meeting house, about 70

miles east of Indianapolis, was built in 1808 and was the first

Quaker meeting house in Indiana.

There was virtually no one there when Zaccheus arrived in what

later became Perry Township. That changed drastically after the

arrival of Thomas Rotch, originally from Nantucket, who

purchased 2,800 acres of land in 1811 from the federal land

office, laid out lots for a town, which he called Kendal, and

sought to attract Quakers to the new settlement, in part by

advertising in Nantucket. Zaccheus Stanton was one of the first

to acquire one of the Kendal lots.123 Several of the first settlers

came directly from Nantucket or were from families originally

from Nantucket, including an assortment of Coffins and

Macys.124 The original 1812 plat is shown below.125

123 Ibid., p. 375 124 Ibid., p. 376 125 www.kendalohio.com

91

In addition to town lots, most residents also had farms. Zaccheus

Stanton’s farm was northeast of town, as described by Perrin:126

State street …was the great thoroughfare from east to

west. Originally, the road from Canton west diverged

in a northwesterly direction on the top of the hill near

the Russell farm, running through the farm … then

126 Perrin, op. cit., p. 379.

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occupied by Zaccheus Stanton, and intersecting the

east end of State street in Kendal.

The location can be gleaned from an 1875 historic map of Perry

Township:

The small red X marks the center of the original community of

Kendal, which long ago was incorporated into Massillon. The

Russell farm referred to in the Stark County history was still

there in 1875 (southwest quarter of Township 9), from which we

can infer that Zaccheus occupied the land just to the northwest,

straddling the road going to Genoa and then on to Canton and

watered by Sippo Creek. In the present Massilon, the Stanton

farm would be around N. 16th St., just north of Lincoln Way

(Highway 172). The middle of the Stanton farm was about a half

mile directly south of Thomas Rotch’s farmhouse, and their

farms may have been adjacent.

The reason that last datum is significant is because a community

of Quakers in Ohio, 100 miles or so from West Virginia (then just

93

Virginia), was a natural stop for the Underground Railroad. In

fact, Kendal was well-known for just that, and Thomas and

Charity Rotch were known as the chief contacts.127 Their home,

called the Spring Hill House, is an historic monument today

(with tours). Perrin recounts one story about Thomas Rotch:128

In the spring of the year 1820, a woman with two children

called at his residence and satisfied him that they were

fugitive slaves; he at once provided them with a place of safety

in the second story of a spring house almost adjoining his

residence. In the morning of the following day, immediately

after breakfast, a couple of strangers on horseback rode up to

the door and inquired if Mr. Rotch lived there, and, on being

answered in the affirmative, commenced to make their

business known, which was that of slave-hunters, one being

known as a man who was in the habit of aiding slaves to

escape, advising them what route to take, then following them

for the reward offered by their masters; the name of De Camp,

the slave catcher, had become as familiar as household words.

Thomas heard him very patiently describe the woman and

children, and say that he had traced them to his (Thomas')

residence, and produced a warrant for their seizure issued

under the act of Congress of 1793, and supposed his work was

done—that the Quakers being a law-abiding people, the

mother and children would be at once delivered.

After he had exhausted his vocabulary, Thomas said, “Dost

thou think thou can take the woman and her children here if

thou canst find them?”

"Certainly," replied the slave-catcher. "Well," said Thomas,

“thou may be mistaken. Thou hast not found them yet, and

shouldst thou find them, thou might have trouble to take

them."

127 Mary Ellen Snodgrass, The Underground Railroad: An Encyclopedia of People, Places, and Operations, New York, Taylor & Francis, 2008, p. 684 and elsewhere. 128 Perrin, op. cit., p. 374.

94

The strangers had not been invited into the house, and while

the dialogue was going on between Thomas and him having

the warrant, the farm hands, of whom Thomas kept three or

four, gathered around, and seeing such a crowd, the strangers

began to look at each other and evinced alarm, which Thomas

was not slow to notice, and, breaking a momentary silence,

said to the person having the warrant. "Dost thou know a man

who follows the business of slave-catching by the name of De

Camp”? "I do," answered De Camp, for it was he, and was

betraying fear of bodily harm, and inquired, "Have you any

business with me? My name is De Camp." By this time, the

men of Thomas' household, himself included, had formed a

sort of circle around the slave-catchers.

Thomas replied with the utmost coolness, "I expect very

soon to have some very important business with thee, and it

will be well for thee to be prepared for it." De Camp and his

confrere concluded it would be best to beat a retreat, which

they did without delay. On reaching their horses, they sprang

into their saddles and left the Spring Hill farm and its Quaker

occupants, and never again called there for human chattels.

The Quakers organized rapidly, forming the Kendal Preparative

Meeting in 1813, Zaccheus Stanton among the principal

members.129

Nevertheless, a few years later Zaccheus and family picked up

roots yet again and movedto Union County, Indiana (until 1822

part of Franklin County). This move was different, however.

Earlier relocations had often meant leaving family members. In

this case, family members reunited:130

Zaccheus Stanton was a native of Campbell County, Va.,

where he was reared, and married to Miss Sarah Butler. In

1806, he moved to Stark County, Ohio, where he remained

129 Ibid., p. 377. 130 1884 Atlas of Union County, Indiana, Selby Publishers, 1884, p. 72.

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until 1817, when he and his brothers, who had resided up to

this time in Virginia, came to Union County, Ind., and located

in Center Township. William, Latham, James, Samuel and

Aaron were the names of the brothers, and all were married

and all reared families in Union County. Aaron was

Commissioner of Union County a number of years, and other

members of the family were called upon to fill positions of

honor and trust. They were members of the Friends Society,

strongly opposed to the institution of American slavery, and

prominently connected with the famous "Underground

Railway". Many of their descendants are still living in Union

County, and are among its most useful and honored citizens.

The wife of Zaccheus Stanton died soon after coming to the

county, and a few years later he married Miss Elizabeth Swain,

a native of Guilford County, N. C. By the first marriage, there

were four children, and by the last, five. Mr. and Mrs. Stanton

were highly respected by all who knew them, and reared their

large family in a very creditable manner. Mr. Stanton died

March 19, 1869, and his wife July 14, 1868.

This account is not completely accurate. Samuel Stanton who is

listed as one of Zaccheus’ brothers was actually a nephew, son of

William Stanton, the oldest of the Stanton brothers. William was

the only one of the brothers who had been living in Virginia

prior to moving to Indiana. The rest had all been in Ohio.

As with the earlier migration of the Stantons from Virginia and

North Carolina to Ohio, the transfer to Indiana did not happen

all at once. Just as occurred during the migration to Ohio, it was

James Stanton that took the lead. While still living in Stark

County, Ohio, he applied for 160 acres of federal land in Indiana

Territory. The patent was issued in 1812, and he had to have

paid $200 for it. The location was southeast of the present town

of Liberty, as shown in red on the map from 1884 shown below.

James and his family received a certificate from the Salem

Monthly Meeting and presented it to the only Friends meeting in

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Indiana Territory, the Whitewater Monthly Meeting in

Richmond, about 15 miles north of their newly acquired land in

Union (then Franklin) County.

Aaron then applied for a quarter section of land, which was

patented to him in 1815. He did not wait until then to move his

family, however. Taking advantage of space provided by his

brother, he arrived later in 1812 and was received with his

family (Lydia now being a Quaker in good standing) at the

Whitewater meeting in November of that year, after presenting

his certificate from the Salem Monthly Meeting. This tract is

shown in green on the map.

Two years later Eliab and Sarah (Stanton) Gardner arrived in

Union (Franklin) County with a certificate from the Elk Monthly

Meeting in Ohio, where they had spent three years since moving

97

from North Carolina. Eliab too acquired a patent for federal

land, issued in April, 1816. It was sandwiched between James’

and Aaron’s parcel, and is outlined in black.

Latham was next. He arrived in 1814 with a certificate from the

Miami Monthly Meeting in southwestern Ohio (to which the

Fairfield Meeting to which he presented his certificate from

Virginia belonged until 1815). He came with his children, but his

wife Huldah had died the previous year. He too applied for

federal land and received a patent in 1819. That tract is shown in

yellow on the map. He married Rachel Hollingsworth just a

month after being received at the Whitewater meeting.

In 1817, the Whitewater Monthly Meeting authorized a new

meeting in the part of Franklin County that became Union

County. It was called the Silver Creek preparative meeting, held

about two miles due west of Liberty. In 1818 the Whitewater

meeting took the unusual step of authorizing a second

preparative meeting in Salem (the Quakers were fond of reusing

place names), about three miles southeast of Liberty, provided

that the two groups worked together and alternated meetings at

the two sites. The Silver Creek meeting eventually merged into

the Salem meeting, and the Silver Creek church is now entirely

gone, except for an uncared for cemetery. The Salem church is

still used and an icon for it can be seen on the map above in

Section 21, practically touching the northeast corner of Aaron

Stanton’s quarter and the southeast corner of Eliab Gardner’s

quarter. The Salem church was particularly well situated for the

Stantons, but it should be remembered that a large fraction of

their neighbors were also Quakers.

By 1818 William Stanton, back in Virginia, had gotten the

message, and arrived with his family and a certificate from the

South River meeting, which was presented at Silver Creek-

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Salem. William had evidently already applied for federal land,

and he received a patent in August, 1818. His land abutted on

James’ and is outlined in blue.

Zaccheus, Sarah, and family also came to Union County in 1818,

armed with a certificate from the Marlborough monthly meeting

(they had just begun keeping records separate from its Salem

monthly meeting parent), which was accepted at the Silver

Creek-Salem meeting in May. Zaccheus was the only brother

who did not patent federal land in Union County. Presumably

he lived on one of the tracts his brothers owned. He did

eventually buy 80 acres from a private seller in 1823, and the

location of that parcel is outlined in brown on the map.

His wife Sarah died very soon after their arrival in Indiana. A

year later Zaccheus married Elizabeth Swain, whose Nantucket

parents had met and married in New Garden, North Carolina.

Deborah arrived with Zaccheus in 1818, armed with her own

certificate from the Marlborough meeting, and joined the Silver

Creek-Salem congregation at the same time.

With the arrival of Deborah and Zaccheus, seven of the eight

adult children of William Stanton had relocated to what was to

become Center Township in Union County, but at that time was

still Franklin County. Amos and Hepzibah Holloway remained

in Stark County, where Amos, according to one source, became

prominent in the underground railroad, helping many slaves

make their way to Canada.131 A stone monument to Amos

Holloway, as the founder of Lexington Township, stands in a

field near the corner of Rockhill and Greenbower, north of

Alliance, while a plaque commemorating the first six settlers in

131 Craig Bara and Lyle Crist, Alliance, Arcadia Publishing, 1998, p. 11.

99

the township, including Amos Holloway and Zaccheus Stanton,

resides in the Alliance City Hall. Even though Amos and

Hepzibah remained in Ohio, their son Stephen did go to Indiana,

arriving early in 1815 and presenting his certificate to the

Whitewater monthly meeting.

Aaron, who would develop into the largest of the Stanton

landowners, obtained another 160 acres by federal patent in

1819, in Section 6 on the map, outlined in maroon.

In the 1820s Zaccheus and Elizabeth had five children:

Luzenia 1820 (died in 1833)

Mahala 1821

Cynthia 1824

Milton 1826

Milo 1827

In 1821 Union County split off from Franklin County. At that

time the Stanton family, all located in Center Township near the

county seat in Liberty, was a big part of the county and of the

Quaker church. The numerous sons and daughters of the next

generation were starting to mature and purchase their own

lands.

But it didn’t last. Within a few years the members of the older

generation had mostly died or moved away, though remaining

in the same general area of Indiana. One reason the older

generation might have moved away was all those second

generation Stantons, who needed land of their own. Another,

possibly more important reason, arose from differences with the

church. As founders of the Salem meeting, the elder Stantons

probably found it hard to swallow when the meeting turned on

them as, from time to time, it certainly did. Several Stantons,

100

both men and women, had held supervisory roles in the initial

years. As just one example, the Salem minutes report that in

1824-25, “Zaccheus Stanton and William Macy investigated the

situation of a minor, William Wight, and raised funds for his

clothing and schooling”.132

A major reason for infighting was that in 1828 there was a major

schism among the Quakers, who divided into the Hicksite and

Orthodox branches. The differences were mostly doctrinal, the

Hicksites emphasizing the role of the “Inner Light”, but they also

included attitudes toward slavery – Quakers had long since

manumitted their own slaves, but the Orthodox were more

cautious about exhorting others to do likewise. The Salem

monthly meeting, to which the Stantons in Union County

belonged, became (remained) Orthodox.

The fate of the first generation, as far as we know it, can be

summed up thusly:

1. James died in 1824 at the age of 56. His wife, Mary, was

reported twelve years later, in 1836, for not attending

meetings, and was disowned. She went to live with her son

Joseph. Joseph had moved to La Porte County after being

disowned in 1829 for violating the rules of plain dress, for

attending a place of diversion, and for attending a marriage

contrary to discipline.

2. Aaron, who had been one of the first commissioners of the

Silver Creek-Salem monthly meeting, was disowned in 1829,

along with Lydia, for adhering to Hicksite beliefs. In 1831

Aaron and his sons began a massive program of federal land

132 Pauline B. Cheek, A Flame Still Burns. The Story of Salem Friends’ Meeting 1992, unpublished (copy found in Union County Public Library).

101

purchases in La Porte County, where there was a Hicksite

Quaker community. Of course, they promptly relocated to La

Porte County.

3. In 1828, William, repeating an offense for which he had

condemned himself back in the South River meeting in

Lynchburg, was reported for “furnishing spirituous liquors

at a gathering and using it unnecessarily himself”. He

condemned his own misconduct, but a year later he was

disowned anyway (possibly for adhering to the Hicksites).

He too moved to La Porte County.

4. About 1828, Latham moved to Fayette County (adjacent to

Union County), where he bought a considerable amount of

land over the next few years. He died in 1835. His wife

Rachel remained in the Fayette County homestead for a

number of years with her daughter, Salome, and her family,

then joined her daughter Esther, and her family, in New

Garden, Indiana.

5. After Deborah was received by the Silver Creek-Salem

meeting, there appears to be no further mention of her in the

minutes. From census returns, however, it is clear that she

was living with Zaccheus and Elizabeth in 1820, but not in

1830. Presumably, she died in the interim.

6. Eliab and Sarah Gardner remained in Union County, but

they both died in the 1830s.

Meanwhile, Zaccheus and Elizabeth remained in Union County

long enough to bring Zaccheus’ first family (with Sarah Butler)

to adulthood. Except for Hannah, the Stanton children from the

first family all had run-ins with the Salem meeting. In 1826

Thomas was reported for “striking a young man in anger and

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trying to dance after music” (I can’t imagine he was very

successful). He was promptly disowned. Two years later, Eli was

reported for violating the plain dress rule and for “being

concerned with gaming”. Disowned. In 1830 Seth was reported

for failing to attend meetings, violating the plain dress rule, and

attending a marriage contrary to discipline. Of course, he was

disowned.

In 1833 Zaccheus and Elizabeth, shortly after the death of

Luzenia, their first child together, left Union County with the

four remaining children from Zaccheus’ second family. Zaccheus

obtained three patents to federal land in Shelby County, three

counties directly west of Union. They obtained a certificate from

the Salem monthly meeting to transfer to the Duck Creek

monthly meeting, where they were accepted in May, 1834. The

Duck Creek monthly meeting, in Madison County, was almost

as far away from Zaccheus’s land as Salem, but a number of

Quaker families settled in that part of Shelby County, and they

soon had permission from Duck Creek to have their own

meeting, the Walnut Ridge preparatory meeting.

Zaccheus’s land in Shelby County was situated in Union

Township and was on the border with Rush County to the east.

The nearest town in Shelby County was Marion, about six miles

west. Carthage, in Rush County, was only four miles northeast

and, certainly not by chance, was the site of the Walnut Ridge

Monthly Meeting.

103

Even the trek to Carthage was apparently too arduous, because

the Quakers in the northeast corner of Union Township in

Shelby County, together with others just on the other side of the

county line in Rush County, almost immediately established a

preparatory meeting, called the Little Blue River Meeting, just a

mile east of Zaccheus’ land (the river in the map just south of the

larger of his two parcels is the Little Blue River). Since it was

only a preparatory meeting, all the records were kept with the

Walnut Ridge Monthly Meeting. Zaccheus’ role in setting up the

meeting is related in the Centennial History of Rush County,133

The Little Blue River Meeting of Friends (called Quakers), in

the southwestern corner of Posey township has had an

organization since the year 1833, when a company of Friends

in that vicinity erected a little log meeting house on the line

between Rush and Shelby counties, three miles north of the

present village of Manilla, and associated themselves together

for worship and praise. This pioneer meeting house was

133 A. L. Gary and E. B. Thomas, Centennial History of Rush County, Indiana, Vol. 1, Indianapolis, Historical Publishing Co., 1921, p. 431

104

erected by Thomas Macy, Moses Coffin, Asa Barnard, Thomas

Swain, Zaccheus Stanton and William Worth, who with their

respective wives, Rebecca Macy, Phoebe Coffin, Hulda

Barnard, Lydia Swain, Elizabeth Stanton and Phoebe Worth,

constituted the first congregation. The first sermon in this

meeting house was preached by John Kinley, whose text was

"Behold, the Lord is in this place and I knew it not." The little

log meeting house sufficed the needs of the Meeting for ten

years or more, or until about 1845, when a frame meeting

house was erected nearby the log house.

Note the Nantucket names: Macy, Coffin, Barnard, Stanton, and

Swain. This is quite possibly a clue as to why Zaccheus moved to

Shelby County. By the early 1830s a second, less formal, schism

was developing among the Quakers. Many began to press hard

for abolitionism and form themselves into groups for the

purpose. The Salem meeting, like many others, began to disown

members who joined these cliques.134 It isn’t clear to which side

the Little Blue River meeting adhered, but the large number of

Nantucket Quakers leads me to suspect that they were distinctly

more radical, and several of them may have decided it would be

easier all around if they left Union County and avoided a fight.

A scholarly article analyzing anti-slavery attitudes of Quakers in

Spiceland, Indiana, on the Blue River, a few miles north of the

Little Blue River meeting, noted that the abolitionist Quakers,

only 22 out of a total 254 members, had one thing in common:135

Most Anti-Slavery Friends at Spiceland had at some time been

members of New Garden Monthly Meeting in Guilford

County, North Carolina – sixteen of the twenty-two adults, in

134 Pauline B. Cheek, A Flame Still Burns. The Story of Salem Friends’ Meeting, 1992, unpublished (copy found in Union County Public Library), p. 23. 135 Thomas D. Hamm, David Dittmer, Chenda Fruchter, Ann Giordano, Janice Mathews, and Ellen Swain, Moral Choices: Two Indiana Quaker Communities and the Abolitionist Movement, Indiana Magazine of History, Vol. 87,1991, p. 134.

105

fact, had lived in Guilford County, the heart of piedmont

North Carolina Quakerism.

If the authors had pressed harder, and traced back further, they

might have noted the common roots of the Anti-Slavery Quakers

in Nantucket.

Zaccheus and Elizabeth owned a total of 320 acres. Over the next

few years they sold off pieces of these properties, disposing of

the last parcel in 1842. Long before that time, Zaccheus and

Elizabeth had moved east, to Fayette County, where they lived

on land that had belonged to Latham Stanton in Jackson

Township, adjacent to the border with Union County,.

My conclusion is that they moved specifically to take over a

carding mill and hominy mill that Latham had bought, or

possibly constructed. The first reason for this conclusion is the

following excerpt from the History of Fayette County:136

The first grist mill of the township was erected on … [Eli’s

Creek] in the year 1816 by Dr. Johnson. In 1818 Johathan

Wright built the first saw mill in the eastern part of the

township. This stood about a half mile east of the grist mill,

and was on the line separating the counties of Fayette and

Union … Between the grist and saw mill Zacheas Stanton built

a carding machine, and in connection with it had a hominy

mill, both of which, not far from the year 1848, were sold to

Elisha Cockefair, who converted them into a looking-glass

factory.

136 History of Fayette County, Indiana, Chicago, Warner, Beers & Co., 1885, p. 205.

106

The land in question, part of the southeast quarter of Section 23

on the map, is about three miles east of the small town of

Everton. In this 1875 map,137 the land, as well as much of the

surrounding properties, was still in the possession of Cockefair

family members.

Looking at the relevant deeds, the details are not exactly as

specified in the excerpt above. In 1827, Latham bought a parcel

of land within this quarter for $100.138 In 1833 he sold what

appears to have been about half of this parcel, with all the

appurtenances, to Elisha Cockefair for $2500.139 That seems to

indicate that a lot of “appurtenances” had been acquired in the

meantime. In 1843, Zaccheus Stanton sold the other part of the

parcel to Elisha Cockefair for $190. It’s rather puzzling, but my

137 Fayette County 1875, Higgins Belden and Co., 1875, from Historic Map Works 138 Fayette County Deed Book E, p. 336 139 Fayette County Deed Book F, pp. 208-209

107

interpretation is that Elisha Cockefair bought the carding mill

and hominy mill from Latham, but Latham, and later Zaccheus

lived on the adjoining property and worked the mills.

In the 1843 deed, Zaccheus and Elizabeth are listed as residents

of Fayette County. They had, in fact, been there for a

considerable time. Zaccheus and family reassociated with the

Salem Monthly Meeting in 1839. Their certificates from Walnut

Ridge were accepted in March; thus the Shelby County sojourn

lasted only five years. They did not, however, attend meetings in

Salem, but in a meeting house directly adjacent to their land:140

In the early settlement of Fayette and Union Counties many of

the pioneers of the latter were of the Friend or Quaker

element, and established their meetings soon after effecting a

settlement. Silver Creek monthly meeting (Union County) was

established in 1817. What was known as Poplar Ridge meeting

house was constructed of logs and stood at the little burying-

ground still known by that name in the eastern part of the

township (Section 23) and was both an established and

140 History of Fayette County, Indiana, Chicago, Warner, Beers & Co., 1885, p. 207.

Hominy Mill Wool Carding Machine

108

preparative meeting in the early history of Fayette County, but

was ' 'laid down" many years ago.

The Poplar Ridge meeting was “preparatory”, attached to the

Salem Monthly Meeting, with whose records all of those relating

to Poplar Ridge were mingled. An icon showing a school can be

seen in the map above, at the center of Section 23, which was the

location of the Poplar Ridge meeting house, directly adjacent to,

or possibly even within, the land originally occupied by Latham

Stanton, and later by Zaccheus.

In the 1840 census, Zaccheus was a resident of Jackson

Township, in Fayette County, together with his wife (Elizabeth)

and four children (Mahala, Cynthia, John (sometimes called

Milton, his middle name), and Milo. Also living in Jackson

Township was Rachel (Hollingsworth) Stanton, Latham’s

widow, with three children, in all, apparently enough Stanton

children to elicit the following:141

In the old log meeting-house that stood at the graveyard on

Poplar Ridge, and for a number of years served the Friends as

their place of worship, school was sometimes held. One

Thomas O'Brien, an Irishman of considerable learning, taught

quite a period in the schools of this settlement, and among his

pupils were the Wards, the Wrights, the Truslers, the Becketts,

the Stantons, and many others.

After earning a living farming and running mills in Fayette

County for several years, Zaccheus, at age 69, decided that he

needed a new occupation. In 1848 he went in with a partner,

John Engle, in the purchase from Benjamin Bond of a weaving

and dyeing facility in Union County, paying $2500.142 The

141 Ibid., p. 205 142 Union County Deed Book L, pp. 524-525

109

machinery was housed in brick buildings located in Harmony

Township in the southwest portion of Union County, situated in

the northwest corner of Section 33 in the 1884 map below:143

It will be noted immediately that the map area described was

denoted as Quakertown.144 A map of Quakertown is shown

below. In 1884, according to the map, the Stantons were still well

represented in Quakertown, but there is no indication that the

weaving and dyeing plant was still there.

143 1884 Atlas of Union County, Indiana, Selby Publishers, 1884. 144 Today, the damming of the Whitewater River having placed it underwater, Quakertown is memorialized by the Quakertown Recreation Area adjacent to the water.

110

We don’t know for sure that Zaccheus and Elizabeth attended

meetings at Salem rather than Poplar Ridge after moving to

Quakertown, but the distance to Salem was slightly shorter.

Reassociating with that congregation probably became easier

after 1843, when the Salem meeting was formally “laid down” as

part of the Indiana Yearly Meeting, but in fact continued as an

Anti-Slavery congregation, joining a few other Quaker meetings

in the state.145

In the 1850 census Zaccheus was listed, in Harmony Township,

with his wife Elizabeth and the same four children (Mahala,

Cynthia, John, and Milo, now 23 to 27 years old). Also in the

household was his grandson, Albert Stanton (Seth’s son) and a

145 Pauline B. Cheek, A Flame Still Burns. The Story of Salem Friends’ Meeting, 1992, unpublished (copy found in Union County Public Library), p. 25.

111

child I haven’t identified, Josephine Price. Albert must have been

visiting, because he was also listed with Seth’s family.

The new affiliation of the Salem congregation with the Anti-

Slavery faction did not lessen the need to conform to the

established discipline, and the remaining four children followed

in the footsteps of their half-siblings twenty years earlier. In 1846

Milo was reported for nonattendance, not dressing plainly, and

using profane language. He was disowned. In 1848 John Milton

was reported for nonattendance, not dressing plainly, using

profane language and believing “that all mankind will finally be

restored to happiness”. Disowned. In 1852 Mahala was reported

for nonattendance, not dressing plainly, and attending the

marriage of a member contrary to discipline. The complaint was

dropped, but in 1857 there was no way to avoid being disowned

after it was reported that she was not dressing plainly and had

“become the mother of an illegitimate child”. Cynthia was

reported in 1852 for not dressing plainly, nonattendance, and

marrying contrary to discipline. Disowned.

In the 1860 census the household consisted of Zaccheus, now 80

years old, Elizabeth (72), and Mahala, together with 4-year old

Geraldine Stanton, the child who had gotten Mahala disowned.

Just in Indiana, they had lived in four different homes. The

locations are shown as red dots on the following map..

112

113

Elizabeth died in Union County in 1868 and Zaccheus died in

1869. They are both reported to be buried in the Salem Friends

Cemetery in Union County. The cemetery is located on S. Salem

Rd., a short distance south of the intersection with U.S. Hwy 27

between Liberty and College Corner. I was unable to locate

either headstone during a visit. I wish the next seeker better luck.

Zaccheus left the following will, recorded in Union County,

clearly made out before Elizabeth’s death:

I, Zaccheus Stanton of the County of Union and State of

Indiana, being far advanced in life though of a sound mind,

memory and understanding do make this to be my last will

and testament, hereby revoking all others heretofore made by

me and dispose of any property both real and personal in the

following manner.

1st that all my debts be duly and seasonably paid after my

decease by my executors who are hereinafter named.

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2nd I give and bequeath to my beloved wife Elizabeth Stanton

all my estate both real and personal (after the payment of my

just debts) for her own use during her life or so long as she

remains my widow, but should she at any time marry I then

give her an interest equal in value to her two sons, Milton and

Milo, in my real estate, except the part herein otherwise

disposed of to my daughter Mahala.

3rd I give and bequeath to my daughter Hannah Cornell five

dollars.

4th I give to my son Thomas Stanton’s heirs five dollars.

5th I give to my son Seth Stanton five dollars.

7th I give to my daughter Mahala Stanton after the decease of

her mother all the land lying between and not hereinafter

named in the two lots to Milton together with the buildings

and everything in any wise appertaining thereto, including the

household furniture and notes, accounts or money and

everything left by her mother for her to have and hold at her

disposal while she remains single and finally to go to her

daughter Geraldine O. Stanton. But should either of them at

any time marry it is my will that an equal division in value be

then made of all between Mahala and her daughter Geraldine.

8th I give to my daughter Cynthia Thomas five dollars.

9th I give to my son Milton Stanton the lot of land adjoining the

Josia Rigby lot on which he (Milton) now lives, beginning at

the road and running a northwesterly direction as far as it

goes, and bounded on the other side by the garden and yard of

the premises that are now occupied. Also I give him all the

land which my present deed covers lying below M. C. Greer

and running a little to the north of east and leaving the present

wood shed thirty five feet and so to the road a few feet below

the big gate, for a boundary on the east and southeast, for him

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to have and to hold together with appurtenances thereunto

belonging for his heirs and assigns forever.

10th I give to my son Milo Stanton one hundred dollars which I

consider equal in value to the lower lot of land above

described to Milton before it was improved by him.

11th And lastly I appoint my wife Elizabeth Stanton my

executrix and David Huddleston, Milo Stanton and Milton

Stanton my executors of this my last will and testament.

In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand this the

nineteenth day of the fifth month in the year of our Lord one

thousand eight hundred and sixty two.

A codicil follows:

Whereas my daughter Cynthia Thomas is now a widow and

living with me, my will and desire is that she have the

privilege of a home here with my daughter Mahala so long as

she may remain single or unmarried.

In testimony whereof I have set my name this twenty fifth of

seventh month in the year of our Lord one thousand eight

hundred and sixty eight.

I did not leave out the 6 th bequest in the list. In the original,

handwritten version in the Union County Will Book there is

none. The land bequeathed to Mahala was still in her possession

in 1884, the date of the map of Quakertown shown above.

116

117

The Indiana Stantons

118

Eli Stanton (1810 – 1895)

The missing #6 in Zaccheus Stanton’s could only have been his

son, Eli. It is not at all clear why, at the time the will was drawn

up, Eli should have been so completely out of favor as to merit a

missing entry, not even the token $5 his siblings by Sarah,

Zaccheus’ first wife, received.

Zaccheus Stanton lived for such a long time in Indiana that one

almost forgets that he was born in North Carolina, grew up in

Virginia, lived with his first wife and their children in Ohio, and

did not move to Indiana until he was 38 years old.

Eli Stanton was born in Stark County, Ohio, and spent the first

seven years of his life there. All his remaining years were lived

in Indiana, mostly in the very same parts of Indiana that his

parents lived in, or had previously lived in. Here is a brief

biography based on recollections of one of his children:146

146 Jehu Z. Powell, History of Cass County Indiana, Vol. 2, Chicago, Lewis Publishing Co., 1913, p. 976.

119

Eli Stanton followed farming through the greater part of his

life. He was a pioneer of Shelby county, having located there

when the district was practically all dense woods. He was a

Quaker, reared in that rugged and simple faith by his parents,

and his life exemplified in every way the training he had

received in the faith. His faithful wife died in March, 1850, and

he later married Elizabeth Gardner, a cousin of his first

wife. She, like his earlier helpmate, was a Quaker. Three

children were born of this second marriage. In 1864 he sold his

place and returned to Union county, Indiana, where he had

lived previous to his Shelby county experience, and there he

passed the remainder of his life, death claiming him in 1895.

Another summary of the family history, however, says that he

was a miller:147

The Stanton family originated in Germany, were transplanted

to England, and one of the family came across the ocean with

the early immigrations of Quakers. He first settled on the

Island of Nantucket. The founder of the family in Indiana was

Zacceus Stanton, who was a pioneer settler in Northern

Indiana. He was in Indiana before any wagon roads were

broken through the woods and across the prairies. Zacceus

Stanton was the grandfather of Eunice Stanton. The latter's

parents were Eli and Elizabeth (Gardner) Stanton. Eli Stanton

was born in Indiana, was a miller by trade, and both he and

his wife were devout Friends. They are buried in the Salem

Cemetery.

It is interesting to see just how garbled this account of the

Stanton ancestry was, considering that the source was a

grandson of Eli Stanton. Just as Zaccheus ran a wool carding

machine and a hominy mill along with his farming activities, Eli

was probably both a farmer and a miller.

147 Charles Roll, Indiana One Hundred and Fifty Years of American Development, Vol. 3, Chicago, Lewis Publishing Co., 1931.

120

Eli Stanton was born in 1810, shortly after Zaccheus and his first

wife, Sarah (Butler) had moved from Nimishillen Township in

Stark County, Ohio (the part that is now Lexington Township) to

land that would soon be associated with the town of Kendal and

later Massilon, after Kendal was absorbed into that town. Eli’s

birthplace is recorded as Massilon in various Quaker records.

When Eli was 7, the family moved to Union (then Franklin)

County, Indiana, where Eli grew up. From the 1830 census we

can surmise that Eli was still in Zaccheus’ household at age 20,

as was Eli’s older brother, Thomas. Eli’s mother had died by

then, and Zaccheus had remarried.

Eli married Eunice Barnard, a member of the Salem Monthly

Meeting in Union County, in November, 1832. All four of her

grandparents were from Nantucket, which by now should not be

a big surprise. Recall that Eli had been disowned in 1829. Eunice

was disowned in 1833 for marrying contrary to discipline. At

that point it becomes harder to track their moves, because they

no longer appear in the Quaker records. Thus, we don’t know

whether they moved to Shelby County along with Zaccheus and

Elizabeth in 1833 or 1834. As it turns out, Eli bought and sold a

great deal of property during his lifetime, and the deeds to these

properties provide a decent substitute for the Quaker records

that dried up when he was disowned.

Whether or not they initially went to Shelby County with

Zaccheus and Elizabeth, we know that Eli and Eunice found

their way to Rush County by 1837 at the latest, when they

bought 80 acres in Rushville Township from Eunice’s brother,

Paul.148 The land was in Posey Township in a section adjacent to

148 Rush County Deed Book H, p. 287

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one of the sections that Zaccheus acquired in Shelby County by

federal land patent, although Zaccheus and Elizabeth may

already have moved to Fayette County by 1837. In the 1840

census, Eli and Eunice were enumerated in Posey Township.

In 1841, Eli and Eunice sold their land in Rush County149 and

bought 120 acres nearby in Shelby County.150 They bought and

sold several parcels in Shelby County, including a purchase of

the last of Zaccheus’ land in 1853. A map of their acquisitions in

Shelby County is shown below, super-imposed on the map of

Zaccheus’ Shelby County properties, shown in red.

Eli’s 1841 purchase is shown outlined in black in Section 33. In

1850 he bought 101 acres in Section 4 from Tristram Macy,151

which Tristram had bought from Zaccheus in 1842152 plus an

149 Rush County Deed Book M, pp. 6-7 150 Shelby County Deed Book M, p. 356. 151 Shelby County Deed Book KK, p. 465. 152 Shelby County Deed Book K, p. 262

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addition 34 acres that Tristram Macy had acquired, but which

had previously belonged to Zaccheus. Thus Eli then owned

almost the entire portion of Section 4 originally acquired by

federal land patent by Zaccheus. In 1853 Eli bought from

Zaccheus the 40 acre parcel in Section 31 outlined in green for

$300.153 I haven’t yet figured out how Zaccheus acquired it.

During their time in Union, Rush, and Shelby Counties, Eli and

Eunice had seven children that survived infancy:

Alexander 1833

Oscar 1835

Martetia 1836

Dilwin 1839

Samantha 1841

Anderson 1843

Lydia 1845

Eunice died in March, 1850 at age 39 in Union Township, Shelby

County. She is buried at the Little Blue River Friends Cemetery

in Manilla, in Rush County.

In the 1850 census Eli was living with his seven children in

Union Township of Shelby County. In the same census we find

Elizabeth Gardner, a cousin of Eunice, living in Center Township

in Union County, the township in which the original five Stanton

brothers had located when they moved to Union County in the

1810s. Elizabeth’s paternal grandfather was Isaac Gardner of

Nantucket, who was also Eunice Barnard’s maternal

grandfather. Elizabeth, age 36, was living with her parents and

three unmarried sisters. She married Eli Stanton in 1851 and

was promptly disowned by the Salem Monthly Meeting.

153 Shelby County Deed Book FF, p. 416.

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Eli and Elizabeth had three children, all born in Union

Township, Shelby County:

Luzena 1855

Eunice 1858

Abraham Lincoln 1860

In the 1860 census, Eli and Elizabeth had these three children

living with them, along with Dilwin, Samantha, Anderson, and

Lydia from Eli’s first marriage. They were still living in Union

Township, Shelby County.

In 1863 Eli Stanton was a delegate from Union Township to the

Shelby County Union Convention (that would have been

impossible had he still been a Quaker). The Union Party had

developed in a few border states, like Indiana, with the sole

platform of restoring the Union, so that Democrats could join

without having to support Republican policies they disagreed

with. The advantages of this approach were so great that

Abraham Lincoln ran for the presidency in 1864 as a candidate

of the National Union Party, not as a Republican.

In short order, three of Eli’s children married children of Randall

Rutherford, of Shelby County. Oscar married Martha Rutherford

in 1859, Dilwin married Eliza Rutherford in 1860, and Samantha

married McHenry Rutherford in 1861.

In 1863 Eli filed a lawsuit against his son-in-law, McHenry

Rutherford, but I have yet to discover what this suit dealt with

or what the outcome was.

In 1864, Eli and Elizabeth decided to move back to Union

County. They sold their land in Shelby County and purchased

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two parcels totaling 57 acres in Liberty Township, about a half

mile southwest of Dunlapsville and even closer to Quakertown

to the south. They also bought a 6.45-acre parcel in Quakertown

itself, which is probably where they lived. They sold off the

farmland in Liberty Township over the next few years in smaller

lots.

The property they bought in Quakertown consisted of two

distinct lots, one of which corresponds to part of the 6.36 acre lot

owned in 1884 by T. C. Macy in the map below. The other part is

harder to pin down, but probably included the grist mill

pictured in the map, because around this time Eli Stanton, in

partnership with Paul Gardner, his brother-in-law, started the

enterprise Quakertown Mills. The company was not related to

Quaker Oats, which was founded in Ohio by non-Quakers.

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In the 1870 census the household consisted of Eli and Elizabeth,

with children Luzena, Eunice, and Abraham. Also in the

household were Alphia Bond, age 2, and Kate Parvis, age 18,

listed as a domestic servant. Alphia is a bit of a puzzle. She was

also listed in the household of Eli’s son, Alexander, who was

living with his wife and children in Marion County, Indiana. The

census was taken on June 13 at Alexander’s residence and on

July 14 at Eli’s. More on Alphia later. Eli’s occupation was listed

as farmer, despite his participation in the mill operation.

In 1871 the Salem Monthly Meeting had a major discussion on

the topic of whether it had a duty to cast off members, following

which disownment became very rare.154 It is thus not a

coincidence that shortly thereafter, Eli and Elizabeth applied to

be reinstated as members and in May, 1872, were accepted.

There is no mention of their children in the Salem records, thus

they probably never joined the Quakers.

In 1876 Eli dissolved his partnership with Paul Gardner in the

Quakertown Mill, leaving the latter as the sole owner of the

mill.155 Eli and Elizabeth sold one of their lots in Quakertown to

Paul Gardner (it must have been the one with the mill) and

bought a small tract closer to the Salem church, in a section

belonging to Liberty Township that would have been in Center

Township if the lines had been drawn straight. Eli and Elizabeth

moved to this farm,156 shown below when it still belonged to the

Hayden family. It is about one mile east of Roseburg.

154 Pauline B. Cheek, A Flame Still Burns. The Story of Salem Friends’ Meeting, 1992, unpublished (copy found in Union County Public Library), p. 35. 155 Liberty Herald, March 23, 1876, p. 3. 156 Liberty Herald, May 11, 1876, p. 3.

126

In the 1880 census Eli and Elizabeth were still in Union County,

but not on the old Hayden farm. Their location was listed as

Dunlapsville, the major town near Quakertown, which means

that they were back in Quakertown, living on the two acres that

remained after the sale to Paul Gardner. Eli’s occupation was

listed as miller, from which we may assume that he was still

working at the Quakertown Mills, even if he wasn’t running it

any longer. With Eli and Elizabeth was their son, Abraham, and

Alphia Bond. She was listed as a granddaughter. In the 1870

census (but not the 1880), the family enumerated directly after

Eli Stanton’s was that of Levi Bond, age 36, also a miller,

presumably also working at the Quakertown Mills at that time.

The Bonds had four children between 1 and 8. If you want to

take a guess about what went on with Alphia, it will probably be

better than mine.

In 1886 Eli and Elizabeth applied for a certificate of removal to

the Indianapolis Monthly Meeting, which was accepted in March

of that year. Where they went is a mystery. They are not listed in

the 1886 or 1887 Indianapolis city directories, so they were

presumably living with a relative. None of their children, male

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or female, is listed in these directories, so perhaps it was one of

Elizabeth’s relatives.

After some time in Indianapolis, Eli and Elizabeth returned to

Union County and rejoined the Salem Monthly Meeting. Just

when is not clear, because evidently there was a transcription

error in one of the records. The Indianapolis meeting records

state that they were granted certificates of removal to the Salem

Monthly Meeting in July, 1889, while the Salem meeting records

say that Eli and Elizabeth were “received on certificate” from

Indianapolis in August, 1887.

In either case, Eli and Elizabeth lived the rest of their lives in

Union County, Indiana. They sold the two acre lot they were

living on in Quakertown in 1894, possibly moving in with one of

their children. Eli died in 1895 and Elizabeth in 1899. They are

both buried in the Salem Friends Cemetery near Liberty, as are

all four of their parents.

128

129

Dilwin Stanton (1839 – 1927)

Dilwin Stanton was born while Eli and Eunice were living in

Posey Township, in Rush County. He grew up in Union

Township in Shelby County. His parents having been disowned,

neither Dilwin nor any of his brothers and sisters was raised a

Quaker.

Dilwin was one of the three children of Eli and Eunice to marry a

Rutherford. The Rutherfords were a slaveholding family from

Wythe County, Virginia, from whence Randolph moved to

Shelby County in the 1830s and bought land in the section

adjacent to that occupied by Zaccheus, and later Eli, Stanton.

Randolph himself had not owned slaves in Virginia and, in fact

in Shelby County there is a record showing that in 1851

Randolph Rutherford, a resident of Shelby County, bought a

slave named William Cox from his brother Calvin in New

Orleans for $400, and promptly manumitted him. William Cox

was one of five slaves that Calvin inherited upon his father’s

death in 1841. Randolph also inherited a slave named Andrew,

whom we can presume he freed.

Dilwin married Eliza Rutherford in August, 1860. They lived in

Union Township, probably with Eli and Elizabeth at first. When

130

Eli and Elizabeth moved back to Union Township in 1864 and

sold the last of their property in Shelby County the same year,

Dilwin and Eliza evidently moved a few miles north to Hanover

Township, occupying land that Eliza had inherited from

Randolph Rutherford.

Dilwin did not serve in the Civil War. After the national

conscription act was passed in 1863, he was registered for the

draft, which is how we know that he was living in Union

Township. Indiana only drafted 3,000 men, however, and Dilwin

was not one of them.

In 1868 Dilwin and Eliza sold the land Eliza had inherited in

Shelby County for $820.157 They purchased 60 acres in Johnson

County, the next county west, for $3,800.158 The farm was in

Pleasant Township, about two miles west of Greenwood. In 1880

they bought a lot in Greenwood itself and moved there. They

were enumerated in “Greenwood Village” in the 1880 census.

Dilwin and Eliza lived in Pleasant Township, mostly in

Greenwood, for almost 60 years. They had seven children, the

first three (or four) born in Shelby County:

Charles 1861

William 1863

Fannie 1866 (Frances)

Carrie 1868

Sallie 1872

Daisy 1879

Carl Ed 1884 (Edward Carl)

157 Shelby County Deed Book S, p. 472. 158 Johnson County Deed Book 5, p. 111.

131

After moving to Greenwood, Dilwin at first continued to farm.

He was, however, drawn into other occupations, and finally sold

the farm in 1890.159 They collected only $1,500 for it. Just the

year before, their residence in Greenwood suffered fire

damage:160

Grafton Johnson’s barn, at Greenwood, was burned by

incendiarism on Saturday night, and the flying sparks set fire

to the Baptist Church and D. B. Stanton’s residence, doing

considerable damage.

Dilwin apparently preferred to go by D. B., even in many official

documents, such as deeds.

Around 1890, Dilwin and Eliza moved to Southport, a town in

Perry Township in Marion County, about halfway from

Greenwood to Indianapolis. Now the Indianapolis suburbs

extend continuously out to Greenwood and beyond, but in 1895

Southport was still a separate town. All the children went with

them, with the probable exception of Charles, of whom I have

found no trace after the 1880 census, in which he was 19 years

old. Dilwin and Eliza returned to Greenwood a few years later,

probably around 1895.

The decennial censuses provide a few snapshots into Dilwin’s

life. He listed an occupation in every single census, even the

1920, when he was 81 years old. These are listed below (note that

the entire 1890 census was lost to fire):

1860 farmer (still living with parents)

1870 farmer

159 Johnson County Deed Book 24, p. 338. 160 Inidanapolis News, Dec. 30, 1889.

132

1880 farmer

1900 stock dealer

1910 field agent for canning factory

1920 stock buyer for dairy

Dilwin bought and sold lots in Greenwood, compiling even

more transactions in total than his father did, a total of 28 in his

lifetime. He did not make much profit on the turnovers, often

selling for the same price he bought the lot for, or even less.

Dilwin and Eliza stayed under the radar for most of their lives.

Two compendious histories were written of Johnson

County,161,162 neither one of which mentions Dilwin or Eliza. In

the newspapers of the time we learn that Dilwin was elected

president of the Greenwood Cemetery Association in 1918.163

They also appeared a few times in the society pages with

information such as:164

Mrs. Kitgeley and daughter, Miss Susie, of Dallas, Texas, were

entertained at dinner at the home of Mr. and Mrs. D. B.

Stanton, Tuesday evening. They are friends whom Mr. and

Mrs. Stanton met when they were visiting in the southwest

last year.

For several years in the 1910s, Dilwin was the president of the

Stanton family association, a group of those descended from the

six Stanton siblings that originally settled Union County,

Indiana: James, William, Latham, Zaccheus, and Aaron Stanton,

161 Elba L. Branigin, History of Johnson County, Indiana, Indianapolis, B. F. Bowen, 1913. 162 David Banta, History of Johnson County, Indiana, Chicago, Brant & Fuller, 1888. 163 Franklin (Indiana) Evening Star, April 11, 1918, p.2. 164 Franklin (Indiana) Evening Star, September 4, 1919, p. 2.

133

plus Sarah Gardner. The main business of the association was to

organize an annual reunion, sometimes in Liberty (Union

County), but more often in Indianapolis, which, because the

diaspora, was easier to reach for most people.165

165 Liberty Herald September 2, 1915 and September 14, 1916.

134

135

In 1920, Dilwin and Eliza celebrated their 60 th anniversary,

which was commemorated with a newspaper article. Their 65 th

was written up in the Indianapolis News.166 Edwin Stanton is

incorrectly referred to as a first cousin in this article, and a

similarly close relationship was propagated by family tradition.

The actual relationship is specified at the conclusion of this

narrative.

A story on Dilwin ran in the local paper on the occasion of his

87th birthday.167

D. B. Stanton is proudly announcing that he is 87 years of age

today and that just two weeks from today he and Mrs. Stanton

will celebrate their sixty-sixth wedding anniversary. Mrs.

Stanton, who will be 84 years of age the sixteenth of next

December, is in better general health than she has been for the

past year. She has not been able to get around as well as she

would like, but she is much improved in that respect also.

Mr. Stanton is as spry as a man twenty-five or thirty years

younger, and says he is enjoying better health than he has for

several years.

He says he promised Mrs. Stanton this morning that they

would have a real celebration of their wedding anniversary six

years from this coming August 26; that is their 72nd

anniversary.

Unfortunately, that was not to be. However, their 66 th

anniversary was again taken note of in Indianapolis:168

166 Indianapolis News, August 26, 1925. 167 Franklin (Indiana) Evening Star, Aug. 12, 1926. 168 Indianapolis News, August 26, 1926.

136

137

Eliza died a few months later, on January 6, 1927, and was

buried in the Greenwood cemetery. Dilwin died five months

afterwards and is buried next to her.

Dilwin left a will in which he specified that his property and

other assets be divided up among the four children still living.

He provided that the inheritance pass to the children of two of

the four living children, in case they died before he did, but did

not make provisions for grandchildren belonging to the other

two living children or the three deceased children (even Charles

Dilwin Myers, one of Sallie’s children). This may have had to do

with the financial situations of the various families.

I, DILWIN B. STANTON, late of Greenwood, Indiana, now

residing in the city of Indianapolis, Indiana, do hereby make,

publish and declare the following to be my last will and

testament, and by this will I do hereby forever revoke any and

all other wills at any time by me made.

I will and direct that as soon as practicable after my death that

my representatives hereinafter named shall proceed to pay my

funeral expenses, the expenses of my last sickness and all

other debts and obligations owing by me at the time of my

death.

I will, devise and bequeath unto my four children, Fannie

Green of San Diego, California, Carrie Noble of the city of

Greenwood, Indiana, Daisy Hogate and Carl Ed Stanton, both

of the city of Indianapolis, Indiana, all of my property, both

real and personal, share and share alike, and to their heirs

forever.

In the event that my daughter Fannie Green shall predecease

me, then I will, devise and bequeath the interest of my estate

hereinbefore devised and bequeathed to her, to her child,

Stanton Green and his heirs forever.

138

In the event that my daughter Daisy Hogate shall predecease

me, I will, devise and bequeath that interest in my estate by

this instrument I willed to her, to her daughter, June Hogate

and her heirs forever.

I nominate and appoint my daughter Carrie Noble as executrix

and my son Carl Ed Stanton as executor of this will, these two

to act jointly in all things in connection with the carrying out

of the provisions of this will.

In witness thereof I have hereunto this 12th day of April, 1927,

set my hand and seal.169

169 Indiana Wills and Probate Records, Marion County Wills, 1927-28, p. 101.

139

140

The California Stantons

141

Will Stanton (1863-1925)

Born William G. Stanton, and called Willie as a boy, later in life

he always referred to himself as Will, hence we will too.

Of course, Will was born and raised in Greenwood. When the

family moved a few miles north to Southport around 1890, he

went with them. It was there that he met Amelia Howland, who

went by the name Minnie when she was younger.

The Howlands of Perry Township were descended from Henry

Howland, who arrived in Plymouth in 1624, joining his brother,

John Howland, who had come on the Mayflower. Amelia’s

grandfather, Powell Howland, had emigrated to Indiana.

Powell Howland is a native of the Empire State. He was born

on the 16th of October, 1799, at the old town of Saratoga… and

there remained as a farmer until the 17th of October, 1839, at

which time he came to Marion County, and purchased of

Benjamin Purcell the farm on which he now resides,

containing then but one hundred and sixty acres. This farm is

situated four miles north of the city, on the Noblesville road

and Peru railroad. He added to this farm until it aggregated

three hundred and fifteen acres.

142

Mr. Howland was never a chronic office seeker, yet he was

selected as one of the county commissioners, and also

represented the county in the House of Representatives of the

State Legislature. Mr. Howland has sold one hundred and

twenty-one acres of his farm, fifty of which have been laid out

as suburban lots of the city.

Mr. Howland has ever taken a lively interest in horticulture as

well as agriculture, growing the finest varieties of fruits,

making a speciality of grapes and pears. His farm and farm

buildings are the pictures of thrift, industry and comfort. He

was the personal friend of the late Governor Joseph A. Wright,

who, with his family, for some time resided under his

hospitable roof.170

Powell’s eldest son, Morris Howland, dealt, as did Dilwin

Stanton at that time, primarily in livestock. The History of

Indianapolis and Marion County contains the following

biographical sketch:171

Mr. Howland, who is the grandson of Elisha Howland and the

son of Powell Howland, was born on the 30th of January, 1823,

in Saratoga County, N. Y., where he resided until sixteen years

of age, and received such advantages of education as the

neighboring schools afforded. His father having determined to

leave the Empire State for the unsettled West, his son Morris

started on the 25th of September, 1839, with a pair of horses

and a wagon for Indianapolis, reaching his destination after a

journey of forty two days. The family on their arrival located

in Centre township, where Morris remained four years, after

which he engaged in flat-boating at points between Cincinnati

and New Orleans. In 1844 he embarked in business near

170 John H.B. Nowland, Sketches of Prominent Citizens of 1876, Indianapolis, Tilford & Carlon, 1877. 171 B. R. Sulgrove, History of Indianapolis and Marion County, Indiana, Philadelphia, L. H. Everts, 1884, pp. 595-596.

143

Evansville, Ind., and on abandoning this enterprise made an

extensive tour by steamboat and on horseback through many

of the States of the Union, with a view to pleasure and an

intelligent comprehension of the extent and resources of the

country. On returning in 1845, he, on the 22d of January of that

year, married Miss Susan Marquis, of Perry township, Marion

Co., and settled in the last-named township, where he became

a farmer. The children of this marriage are Sarah (Mrs. F. S.

Turk) and Mary (Mrs. John Epler).

Mrs. Howland died in August, 1852, and he was again

married on the 22d of February, 1854, to Miss Jane Gentle, who

was of Scotch descent, and a resident of the same township.

Their children are Powell, Lida, and Minnie. Mr. Howland has

principally engaged in farming and stock dealing, in which he

has been signally successful. He has been actively interested in

developing the resources of his county and township, and

constructed the first gravel road in the county, of which he is

still president. He is a member of the Wool-Growers'

Association, and of the Short-Horn Breeders' Association, and

actively interested in the subject of horticulture. He was in

politics a Democrat until the introduction of the Kansas-

Nebraska bill in 1854, when a disapproval of the measures

adopted by the party induced him to cast his vote with the

Republicans. He has been actively interested in the success of

his party, and participated in various local campaigns, though

not an aspirant for the honors which it confers. Though

repeatedly declining official positions of importance, he has

held various offices in the township, among which may be

mentioned that of justice of the peace. He is a member of the

Masonic fraternity, and connected with Southport Lodge, No.

270, of that order. Mr. Howland is an active member and one

of the founders of the Southport Methodist Episcopal Church,

in which he has been successively steward, class-leader, and

trustee. His influence and active labor in the cause of

temperance have accomplished a salutary work in Perry

township, and given it a decided moral strength in the county.

144

Will had presumably been engaged in raising and selling

livestock on Dilwin’s farm in Greenwood (although one source

states that he was a clerk for a few years) and, continuing his

activities in Southport, it would be natural to become acquainted

with Morris Howland. Will may even have worked for him. In

any case, he met Minnie, and they were married May 6, 1891.

They had two children in fairly short order:

(Margaret) Jean 1893

Charles 1894

There were no further children.

Around 1895, Dilwin and Eliza moved back to Greenwood. Will

went to work for a newly formed livestock trading firm in

Southport, Jeffery, Fuller & Company. One description of the

company in 1897 includes the following:172

Mr. George W. Fuller … has had many years experience in the

handling and sale of hogs; enjoying an intimate acquaintance

among the leading buyers for both local packing and

shipment; he is assisted by W. J. Shinn, who has been actively

connected with the stock yards for the past eighteen years. Mr.

F. F. Churchman is the financial man of the house. Mr. Wm. E.

Deer looks after the sale of sheep, and Mr. Will Stanton

handles the hogs which arrive by wagon, both being well

qualified for the transaction of business in their departments.

After several generations of Stantons had remained within a

small corner of Indiana, in 1902 Will and Minnie (who began to

use her given name, Amelia) moved to Los Angeles, where Will

engaged took up the real estate and insurance business. The

172 Max R. Hyman, Ed., Hyman’s Hand Book of Indianapolis, 1897. The same description appears in the 1898 edition.

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following clipping was from a newspaper article on the various

real estate agents in Los Angeles, written in such a style as to

arouse the suspicion that it was paid for by the agents whose

businesses were described in the article.173

Taking advantage of his experience with livestock, Will almost

immediately added to his real estate activities that of livestock

auctioneering in the Imperial Valley, just beginning in 1902 and

1903 to attract farmers and ranchers. He had immediate success

at this. In 1903, the Live Stock and Dairy Journal reported the

following:

173 Los Angeles Herald

146

Will Stanton, the Imperial Valley at Calexico, officiated on

block recently at a sale of dairy stock Company. The stock

averaged $135 per head for cows. The sale was well attended,

as they all are when the smiling Mr. Stanton presides…

Breeders would do well to communicate with Mr. Stanton, as

he is in a position to place high-grade stock.174

A biographical sketch that appeared in 1910 reads as follows:175

There are few business men in the Imperial Valley who do not

enjoy a personal acquaintance with Will Stanton, the genial

auctioneer and stock broker of Calexico, a man who, though

deeply engrossed in the concerns of a large and growing

business, has found time to cultivate his social nature and to

enjoy the pleasures of companionship with his fellow men.

Few men are sufficiently versatile or are possessed of the

peculiar ability to successfully follow the occupation of

auctioneer, but Mr. Stanton, having the happy faculty of being

able to please both buyer and seller, has attained unquestioned

eminence in his line, and is carrying on transactions with some

of the leading business firms of the west. Mr. Stanton was born

in Indiana in 1863, and is a son of D. B. and Elizabeth

(Rutherford) Stanton, natives of the Hoosier state where both

at present reside. Mr. Stanton's father is a well-to-do farmer,

who carries on extensive operations and deals largely in stock.

The family consisted of seven children, Will being the second

in order of birth, and besides whom one other, Mrs. Williams,

lives in California.

Will Stanton received the advantages of a common school

education and was reared to agricultural pursuits. Naturally

he took up the business of stock raising, both from training

and inclination, and for nine years he followed that occupation

in company with his father, with the exception of several years

174 The Live Stock and Dairy Journal, 1903. London, Forgotten Books, p. 187. 175 Robert J. Burdette, Ed., American Biography and Genealogy, California Edition Vol. 2, Chicago, Lewis Publishing Company, 1910, p. 1102.

147

during his young manhood which were spent in clerical

pursuits. The year 1902 saw his advent in the west when he

moved to Los Angeles, and after he had spent some years in

the real estate business he located in the Imperial Valley,

desirous and determined to share in the success that was

awaiting those of industrious habits and progressive ability.

He was not particular as to the nature of his work, save that it

be honest, as he was ready to grasp any opportunity that

presented itself, and in 1909 he took up auctioneering, in

which he had previously had considerable experience. Mr.

Stanton was the pioneer auctioneer in the valley, and his

efforts met with immediate success. Although others have

followed where he led, it is generally conceded that none have

had his ability nor met with such universal approval. His sales

are always largely attended, the ready wit and constant good

nature of the auctioneer assuring the prospective purchasers of

entertainment, while they may also be just as confident of

receiving exceptional value for their money. He is universally

popular among his fellow citizens and deservedly so. All the

sales of the C. M. Company, a concern that controls 1,000,000

acres of Imperial Valley land, are carried on by Mr. Stanton,

and he also does a large business as a stock broker, his office

being located in the Calexico Hotel building. In addition he

has leased two dairy ranches adjoining the city on the north,

his herd consisting of one hundred head of Jersey and

Holsteins, but this ranch is operated by his son, Mr. Stanton's

other interests demanding all of his time and attention.

In 1891 Mr. Stanton was married to Miss Amelia H.

Howland, and to this union there have been born two

children: Margaret J., who married W. Swerdferger; and

Charles H., who is an alert and enterprising young business

man now conducting his father's dairy ranch.

According to the biography, Will and Amelia moved their family

first to Los Angeles in 1902,176 and then to Calexico sometime in

176 One family story says it was in April, 1900; see Philip Miller, Recollections. available from the author at pnmiller4@gmail.com.

148

the decade of the 1900s; however, the statement that Will first

took up auctioneering in 1909 is directly contradicted by the

report quoted above from the Live Stock and Dairy Journal of 1903.

After moving to Calexico, Will continued with business activities

in Los Angeles, and the Stantons maintained a home there.

At times, Will would offer his services gratis, one example being

an auction for the Purebred Livestock Breeders association in

1922:

Plans are progressing rapidly for a sale of some of the best of

southern California’s purebred livestock to Imperial valley

farmers Saturday, April 15. A meeting was held last Saturday

in the farm bureau office in El Centro and attended by W. W.

Van Felt, secretary of the Southern California Purebred

Livestock Breeders association, C. C. Jenkins, manager of the

Imperial valley fair, D. L. Zinn, who with W. L. Stanton and

Wachtel Bros. will auctioneer the sale…

[The] auctioneers, Wachtel brothers, W. L. Stanton and D. L.

Zinn, had been interviewed and had generously offered to cry

the sale for nothing, all of them realizing the immense benefits

to the valley of getting in a lot of purebred livestock.

One of the more interesting episodes in Will’s life revolved

around his identification of “Bluebeard”, a serial murderer who

married as many as 22 women under false names, took their

money, and disposed of most of them. The report below, one of

several in California newspapers, is from the Santa Ana Register

on May 8, 1920:

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Harvey (one of many aliases) was on

his way to San Quentin exactly two

days later:177

Justice was certainly swifter back then.

What happened was that James

Watson/Charles Harvey (and many

other aliases) had committed murders

in the state of Washington, where he

thought he would be rapidly executed.

He figured he could work a deal for life

in prison in exchange for a guilty plea

in California, which is what happened.

He died in San Quentin in 1939.178

In Los Angeles, Will and Amelia’s house was at 1419 S. New

Hampshire Ave.179 In Calexico, Will’s ranch was called the

Weeping Willow Ranch and was one-half mile northwest of the

city limits of Calexico at the time.180

177 San Jose Evening News, May 10, 1920. 178 Maria Bovsun, My husband Bluebeard, New York Daily News, May 4, 2008. 179 1905 Los Angeles City Directory 180 Thurston’s Imperial Valley Directory, 1916.

150

Will Stanton died in the city of Los Angeles on January 5, 1925.

Several years after his death he was remembered in a memorial

volume on the Imperial Valley:181

Everybody in Imperial Valley knew Will Stanton, the

genial auctioneer and stock broker. His genial personality

enabled him to please both buyer and seller and he

attained unquestioned eminence in his line. He came to

Imperial Valley and went into ranch work and took up

auctioneering as a side line. Later he moved to El Centro,

where for some time he was in partnership with D. L.

Zinn, and then again was in the brokerage business for

himself. Two children, Margaret Jean and Charles H.,

came to the Stanton home. Mr. Stanton died a few years

ago, and Mrs. Stanton lives in Los Angeles. Margaret is

the wife of Wilmer Swerdfeger, a successful rancher in the

Valley.

After Will’s death, Amelia went to live with her daughter, Jean

Swerdfeger, in Meloland, near El Centro. She was active for

several years in the Meloland Ladies’ Social Club. Both club

activities and ordinary social events frequently adorned the

social pages of the San Diego Union, just two examples of which

are shown below.

181 Otis B. Tout, The First Thirty Years 1901-1931, a History of Imperial Valley, Imperial County Historical Association, 1931, p. 81.

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Around 1930 Amelia moved to Los Angeles, where she died in

1937.

152

153

Charles Stanton (1894-1980)

Charles Howland Stanton was born while the family was living

in Southport, Indiana. On his Selective Service registration forms

(WWI and WWII), he listed Indianapolis as his birthplace. He

moved to Calexico with his family when he was about 8 years

old.

This section will be quite brief, because there exists a quite

detailed account of Charles Stanton’s life, written by a grandson

who knew him well.182 In short, Charles attended schools in both

Los Angeles and in Imperial County.183 He met Josephine

Mayhew in Los Angeles and they married in 1915. After a failed

attempt to homestead in Utah, they returned to California. In

1917, when Charles registered for the draft, his occupation was

listed as motor truck driver for the Imperial Irrigation District.

Philip Miller recalls that Charles leased and bought land in

Imperial Valley, farming successfully for a while, but eventually

182 Philip N. Miller, Recollections, available from the author at pnmiller4@gmail.com. 183 Their home on New Hampshire Ave. in Los Angeles was a block away from the Berendo St. School, discussed in Philip Miller’s Recollections.

154

failed when prices fell and sold out to his brother-in-law, Wilmer

Schwerdfeger, in 1921.184 Charles and Josephine moved with

their family to Long Beach, where Charles worked in the oil

fields.

I will only add what I have been able to find out about the

origins of his wife, Josephine Mayhew, which are shrouded in

mystery and conflicting family lore. Josephine was born in Fort

Wayne on May 30, 1895, a matter of no dispute. She was

adopted. The name of her natural parents was Hanson or

Hansen or Johanssen or Johnson. She did or did not have a twin.

This twin (or someone else) once showed up at a family picnic in

Long Beach. Or the L.A. County Fair in Pomona. After being

adopted, Josephine’s family went to Idaho. Or she was given to

someone else who went to Idaho. Or she somehow got to

Oregon and it was there, in Medford, that she was adopted.

When Charles Stanton met her, she was living with “Auntie

May” in Los Angeles.

Here is what we know. On Charles and Josephine’s marriage

certificate, Josephine Mayhew’s parents are listed as Allen

Mayhew and Mary Poorman. Mary was 21 years old when

Josephine was born. I could not find Allen Mayhew in either the

1900 or 1910 census, however 1899 articles in newspapers

throughout the state of Indiana related how he, a resident of St.

Joseph Township near Fort Wayne, killed a neighbor’s cat after it

had raided the eggs in his chicken coop too many times.185 In

1901 Allen and Mollie Mayhew bought property in Allen County

(in which Fort Wayne is located) from Mary’s parents. In the

1900 census, however, Mary was living by herself in Fort Wayne,

without her husband and, most importantly, without Josephine.

184 Ibid. 185 Fort Wayne Sentinel, August 10, 1899, p. 3.

155

There is a birth record in Fort Wayne showing that Josephine

Hanson was born May 30, 1895. Hers was the only birth I could

find on that date (though the births are not always in

chronological order). However, I have corresponded with

Jeanette Sherbondy, who has found a birth record dated May 30,

1895 for a Georgia Kratzsch. In any case, Josephine’s record

shows the following information for the child and for the

parents:

Child: born in Fort Wayne, legitimate

Father: Jacob Hanson; age, occupation, birthplace not

listed

Mother: name and maiden name not listed; age 32,

residence Fort Wayne, birthplace Fort Wayne,

had two previous children

Despite the hints, I have not been able to discover anything more

about either parent.

The birth certificate does not state which hospital she was born

in. However, we do know (from the city directory) that in 1895

Mary Mayhew was a nurse in Hope Hospital in Fort Wayne, and

her sister, Nancy, was superintendent of the hospital. Allen

(listed as a laborer in the directory) was their brother.

I have never found Josphine Mayhew in the 1900 census,

anywhere in the United States, just as I have failed to find Allen

Mayhew and Jacob Hanson. In the 1910 census, however,

Josephine was living in Los Angeles with none other than Nancy

Mayhew, the nurse superintendent who apparently passed

Josephine under the table to Allen and Mary Mayhew. She was

the “Aunt May” of family lore.

156

But what about the picnic in Long Beach, which must have taken

place in the early 1950s, when a female relative came and was

embraced by Josephine. Was it her biological twin or biological

sister? Was it someone from a family she had been living with

during the “lost” years from 1896 to 1910? Was it her adoptive

mother Mary, who divorced and remarried (Willis Gooch) and

moved to Stockton sometime before 1920? Mary Gooch lived in

Stockton until her death in 1958.

Philip Miller, Charles and Josephine’s grandson, has clarified

some of this.186 The woman who appeared at the picnic was in all

probability “Aunt Marian”, Marian Harris, with whom Philip

was well acquainted. To members of Philip’s family, “Aunt

Marian” was Josephine’s twin sister. According to the family

story, which is probably true, Marian and Josephine did meet by

chance at a Los Angeles county fair, after not having seen each

other for many years.

In fact, Marian was born Marian Purcell and was three years

older than Josephine. She was not Josephine’s sister, though it is

conceivable that Josephine lived with the Purcell family in Fort

Wayne for a time. That time would not have included 1900, since

Josephine was not listed in the Purcell household on the 1900

census. Marian’s father, Frank Purcell, was a manager at the

Hotel Rich in Fort Wayne. The Purcell family moved to Los

Angeles a few years later and is recorded on the 1910 census

(without Josephine).

It seems that a lot of Fort Wayne residents did exactly the same

thing and, furthermore, stayed in contact in L.A. In 1911 there

was a newspaper account in a Fort Wayne newspaper about a

picnic of Fort Wayne ex-pats in Los Angeles, listing all of the

186 Philip N. Miller, op. cit.

157

numerous attendees. Among them were Marian Purcell and

Josephine and Nancy Mayhew.187

Thus we can assume that Josephine and Marian knew each other

well as children, but after Josephine and Charles married and

they moved away from Los Angeles, Josephine and Marian lost

contact. After Charles and Josephine moved to Long Beach, the

chance encounter took place at the county fair, and the

relationship was reestablished.

187 Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, September 11, 1911, p. 5

158

Final Thoughts

There were several questions we wanted to answer about the

Stanton heritage:

1. When did the Stantons cease being Quakers?

It wasn’t a clean break, because Eli, who, along with his two

wives, was disowned, rejoined the Friends in his 60s. He lived

among the Quakers his whole life, even though he did not

participate for much of it. His children, however, were not

Quakers, and Dilwin in particular was a lifelong member of the

Greenwood Christian Church.

2. How was Charles Howland Stanton related to Edwin Stanton,

Lincoln’s secretary of war?

Charles Stanton has to go back 6 generations to find a common

ancestor, John (I) Stanton. Said another way, Edwin Stanton was

Zaccheus Stanton’s third cousin. Thus Charles Stanton was

Edwin Stanton’s third cousin four times removed. Dilwin

Stanton, whose newspaper biography claimed that he was a first

cousin to Edwin Stanton, was actually a third cousin, twice

removed.

3. How was Charles Howland Stanton related to Elizabeth Cady

Stanton’s husband, Henry Brewster Stanton?

They weren’t related. At least not within the American

continent. Henry’s lineage traces back to Thomas Stanton of

Connecticut. It is possible that he was a brother of Robert

Stanton of Rhode Island, but this has never been verified. That

159

didn’t stop Eli Stanton’s son Anderson from naming one of his

daughters Elizabeth Cady Stanton.