Peter Warren, and a Massachusetts Birth in New Hampshire birth records


"New Hampshire, Birth Records, Early to 1900,"
index and images, FamilySearch.org,
GSU Film #1001056: accessed 5 June 2012.
Daniel Warren
1780-1866
My 4th great grandfather Daniel Warren was an early settler of the town of Warrenville (DuPage county), Illinois near Chicago. In fact, the town was named for the Warren family.  Daniel was born in Massachusetts, but I discovered a birth record for him in the New Hampshire Birth Records collection at FamilySearch.org.  

Oddly enough, the New Hampshire birth record gave his birthplace as Townsend, Massachusetts.  Why would a New Hampshire birth record list a Massachusetts town as a place of birth?  I read what I could about the database, then read more about New Hampshire and Massachusetts state boundaries, and still couldn’t come up with a reasonable explanation.

Then I discovered the Town Records of Hancock, New Hampshire in a small collection of free records at Fold3.com (which used to be my favorite site, Footnote.com).  Hancock was where Daniel Warren’s Massachusetts birth had been recorded, so I searched for him there and found two really interesting documents.  The first one was a hand-transcribed copy of an earlier record from the town authorities telling the Warrens (listing the parents and children all by name) to get out of town within 14 days! (This order is recorded on pages 39 and 40 of the volume Births and Marriages 1749-1821, 1788-1793.)
The “get out of town” order still baffled me, but I had recently seen similar records from Vermont for the same time period, so I knew it wasn’t really unique.  Thanks to Google Books, I think I have an answer, and more:

According to William Willis Hayward in his book, The History of Hancock, New Hampshire, 1764-1889,

"For a town to refuse to receive newcomers on the face of the transaction seems to have been an inhospitable act.  It was, however, the custom in those years. Persons warned out were not expected to leave.  If in after years they became dependent, it simply relieved the town of their support, or at least it was supposed to do so…  Many, who afterwards were known as being among the substantial citizens of the town, were among the number thus received, simply because they brought but little wealth with them.  No disgrace is therefore attached to the fact that any person was so received."

Hayward goes on to say something incredible:

"…No man was more respected than Peter Warren.  To him we are indebted for the almost perfect manner in which our early records were preserved, and in various ways he was a valuable citizen; yet he was one of those who were warned out, and in his bold and legible handwriting is the record of the fact preserved."

My 5th great grandfather, Peter Warren, was the one who wrote the records of Hancock, New Hampshire!  No wonder the birth dates of his own children, the ones born in Massachusetts as well as the ones born in New Hampshire, were carefully recorded!


This one-paragraph summary of the Peter Warren family in the records of the town of Hancock, New Hampshire, appears to be the likely source of the New Hampshire birth record that I found on FamilySearch.org.
As I have pondered the significance of this connection (me using a digitized copy of what my 5th great grandfather painstakingly recorded with a quill pen more than 200 years ago), I feel a certain sense of responsibility to be a vigilant record-keeper myself.  Peter Warren’s efforts have blessed many lives.  His descendents became community-builders and community-leaders.  They were people of faith who valued education, freedom and opportunity.  (Those are claims I can support with the records, by the way!)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A California gathering of Utah friends

Image
My Bird ancestors were early photography enthusiasts. As a result, I have access to hundreds of old photos, some dating back to the earliest days of photography. Happily, many are labeled with names, dates, and places.  In addition to family members, there are  photos of friends, neighbors, and colleagues.  I love sharing photos that someone else's family might be grateful to see! Tagging  photos  and documents to a deceased individual's profile in the FamilySearch Family Tree will trigger a notification to relatives of that individual (as determined by connections in the shared Family Tree), alerting them to the photo's presence when they log in.  This photo of Birds and friends/colleagues from MT Bird album #12 was taken in July 1948. Back row, L to R are Kenneth Madsen,  Fred and Elizabeth Knobel, my grandparents MT and Florence Bird, and David Madsen.  In front are Luna Brite, wife of Duncan Brite, and Mary Collins Madsen.  (Was Duncan B...
Read more

Delia A. Miner Cobb Bird Hooker stretches the truth

Image
This is the story of a death notice about a person who wasn't actually dead and how Delia Miner Cobb Bird Hooker used it to help her qualify for a Civil War widow's pension. The first time I ran across the 1866 death notice for Byron Bird in a California newspaper, I assumed there must have been two men by the same name living in California at that time, or that the notice might have had something to do with Bryon's wife, Delia. (Spoiler alert: it did have something to with Delia, but not in the way I imagined.) When I first read the notice, I already had ample evidence that "my" Byron Bird lived well beyond 1866. (The 1900 US Census , for example.) At the same time, I could find no record of Byron's wife Delia after the mid-1860s. It thought it was possible that the newspaper was announcing the death of Mrs . Byron B. Bird. Several pieces of evidence seemed to point to that conclusion: Byron is shown as a widower in the 1900 census. Delia was born in ...
Read more

Census records and Mortality schedules - John Ralph of New York City (1819-1860)

Image
This week I was finally able to confidently identify John Ralph , the brother of my ancestor Edward Martin Ralph . Family records indicated that Edward and John had immigrated together to the United States from Cornwall. But I have never been able to find any evidence of John living near his brother. So where was he? I recently used the FamilySearch messaging feature to contact someone who had made an edit to an ancestor's profile. I couldn't figure out the connection and wanted to know how we might be related. Happily, he responded quickly, and in his reply, he made reference to an old letter he had been given that provided details about both the Howe and Ralph families (our shared ancestors).  The undated letter from "Aunt Ella" Sedgwick Ralph (my g-g-grandmother) to her nephew William Withey provided many important Howe and Ralph family details, including this mention of John: Edward and his brother John Ralph came to this country when they were young me...
Read more