www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-C3SL-K76C-R?cat=174954
While looking for Acadian genealogies on Family Search the other day, I stumbled upon the Harrison Family Papers which have been digitized and put online. Anyone remotely related to the Harrison Family will probably find something of interest there. The collection begins with a transcription of the Maccan, Nappan and Elysian Fields Township Records. The next section is a Harrison family genealogy compiled by William Harrison in the 1930's. Harrison also included genealogies and notes on families related to the Harrisons by marriage including Mills, Lewis, Lumley, Bent, Bacon, Black, Crane, Lovell, Allison, and Prescott. A third section contains a large number of original letters including the "famous" correspondence of Luke Harrison with his cousin and the letter from James Metcalf to his fiancee. Happy searching!
www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-C3SL-K76C-R?cat=174954
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It turns out that my understanding of the events surrounding Henry Ripley's homestead purchase was just dead wrong. I had assumed that DesBarres's tenants wanted to purchase their properties and that DesBarres had resisted selling when it was just the opposite.
DesBarres's agent Mary Cannon had granted the tenants 990 year leases at a very favourable rate. The tenants very much wanted to maintain their leases and had banded together to share costs in defending them. DesBarres sued Henry Ripley in 1816 to break his lease but Henry prevailed in court. The court case affirmed the tenants' leases and their ability to sell their leases to others. This rendered the property virtually worthless to the landlord who was unable to eject the tenant or raise the rent. It's as if you had rented your first apartment and obtained a lease for $100 for 999 years. As the rents went up to $1000, $2000, you could sell your lease to someone else but the landlord could not raise your rent, eject you, or prohibit you from selling your lease. It seems that Henry Ripley, who had been targeted by DesBarres with a lawsuit, emerged as the ringleader when the tenants made common cause. However, DesBarres agent James S. Morse claims to have exerted his personal influence with Henry and persuaded him to make an offer to purchase his homestead. This must be taken with a grain of salt as Morse made this claim in the context of a lawsuit defending a huge bill he had sent to the DesBarres estate for his services. However, it does raise an interesting question. Were the tenants wise to purchase their properties or should they have tried to hold onto their leases? I've updated the DesBarres vs Tenants page of my website. The lot that became the homestead of Jacob Porter and later Sylvester Porter in Nappan was located on the original homestead of Michael Keiver. On the William Keiver estate map it's the Pugsley lot south of Nappan Road and the "Moore" lot covered in my previous post. Michael Keiver had purchased 100-acre lots 15, 16, 17 and Edward Noiles Senior had purchased the adjacent Lot 14. It's unusual to find boundary descriptions so precise. The measurements in the 1909 deed may prove useful for determining the original layout of the 100-acre lots.
The "Moore" Lot was located north of Nappan Road in the northeast corner of Michael Keiver's original homestead. Since Michael Keiver owned 100-acre lots 15, 16, and 17, the lot was likely on Lot 15. Lot 14 adjoined on the east. Through the years, the property has been owned by Michael Keiver, William Keiver, Robert Pugsley, George Cruikshank, schoolmaster, Jacob Purdy, Jacob Corbet, George B. Moir, Robert R. Coates, Walton Isaac Bacon and his wife Blanche, and Harry W. Bacon. The northern half of the neighbouring dower lot of Nancy Keiver also became part of the homesteads of Walton Bacon and Harry Bacon. The schoolhouse was located on the Nancy Keiver lot, so it's interesting that George Cruikshank, teacher, lived on the adjacent "Moore" lot.
Michael Keiver purchased Amherst 100-acre lots 15, 16, and 17 in 1805. His homestead was bordered on the west by today's Lime Kiln Brook and properties owned by the Goulds, tenants of J. F. W. DesBarres. The property lay south of the distinctive Ox Box bend of the Nappan River and the 1000-acre grant of Henry Denny Denson on the north. Today's Lower Porter Road ran down the middle of the homestead. I'm attaching two documents to this post. The first covers Michael Keiver's purchase of the original lots and the various trades made between his sons after his death. Eventually son William Keiver and Michael's son-in-law Robert Pugsley owned the homestead jointly. The second document covers additional purchases and sales made by William Keiver to William Keiver's death in 1860. After the death of William Keiver, the property was dispersed to his widow and four daughters. The properties eventually became the homesteads of Charles Read, Price Read, Walton Bacon, William Bacon, Gordon Bacon, Allan Stiles, Henry Cousins, Amos Etter, Jacob and Sylvester Porter, schoolmaster George Cruickshank, George Moore, Robert Coates and others. I don't plan to produce detailed deed trails for all of these homesteads but I do have extensive notes on most of them. I'm happy to share what I have so far if you're working on any of these properties. Just comment on this post to make contact.
My previous 7 posts are the result of a year-long study of the properties on the boundary between the original Gmelin grant and Amherst Township. The rough sketch above shows the properties covered. I've sketched the Noiles, Bacon, Keiver and Gould properties as if they came to a nice neat logical point at the tip of the Samuel McCully Grant, but of course they did not. The deeds provide only a rough idea of the location of the properties relative to each other, so it must have been a nightmare for property owners in the area to finally sort out their actual boundaries. I hope they at least had good fences and windrows. Apparently there's a deep gorge and even a waterfall in the location that probably made the task even more difficult.
I had originally attempted to discover the location of the Gmelin Line, the supposed boundary between DesBarres and Amherst Township. I was able to confirm the location of the Gmelin Line where it ran north/south just east of the Fenwick Community Hall on the original Squire Pipes homestead as Myrtle Chappell had reported. The next time I'm in town, I plan to go there and jump up and down on the spot. I was unable to discover the location of the Gmelin Line in the section that ran with a northwest bearing through the Gould properties. In fact, locating the Gmelin Line become secondary to finding the Roach Line that lay east of the Gmelin Line and redefined the boundary between DesBarres and Amherst. My best guess is that the Gmelin Line ran west of the Nappan Road/Hwy2 intersection and the Roach Line ran east of the intersection. My next project is looking at the 100-acre lots that lay east of the Roach Line and ran in a north/south orientation. These appear to be, from west to east, Amherst Township lots 17, 16, 15, 14 and 25. Between lot 25 and Cobequid Road, there is another bank of 100-acre lots that ran in an east/west orientation. After 10 years of research, I haven't a clue what happened to the lots 18-24 marked on old maps south of the Nappan River. But I can at least describe the actual lots that remained. I have to chuckle every time I look at the Crown Land Index map and realize that even their surveyors didn't tackle this area other than marking in the Gmelin Line. Jedore Gould and Francis Gould were among the earliest settlers whom J. F. W. DesBarres settled on the Nappan River in 1771. Jedore subleased part of his 1816 lease to his sons John and Joseph Gould 2nd. After the death of J. F. W. DesBarres, son Augustus DesBarres sold portions of the leased properties to John and Joseph. Joseph Gould 2nd purchased 4 properties in all. A 67-acre property was covered in a previous blog post. This post covers two adjoining lots bounded on the north by the Nappan River, lying on either side of the Roach Line. The westernmost property was bounded on the south by Nappan Road and the easternmost property straddled what became today's Nappan Road. These properties eventually became part of the Price Read homestead. In 1792, the Goulds had been thrown off their leased land when a court ruled that the property belonged to Amherst Township. In 1796, they were reinstated by a different court case. During those years, the Gmelin Line was considered to be the boundary between DesBarres and Amherst Township. Roach's 1816 survey for the Samuel McCully Grant showed that the Gmelin Line was not as far east as previously determined in 1796. However, as Surveyor General Charles Morris recommended, the Acadians were allowed to remain "peaceably settled" on their properties. The Roach Line and today's Lime Kiln Brook became the de facto boundary between the Goulds on DesBarres property and the Keivers on lots 15, 16, 17 of Amherst Township.
If you have researched deeds in the Nappan area, you have probably seen references to the property of Bartlet Gould or to Bartlet's Creek, now known as Lime Kiln Brook. Bartlet Gould's lot lay north of Joseph Gould 2nd's lot featured in the previous blog post. Like Joseph's lot, the Bartlet Gould lot was bordered on the east by the Roach Line and the homestead of William Keiver. Portions of this lot later became the Charles Read and Price Read homesteads. James "Jim" Read is said to have built a house where Bartlet Gould once lived.
A 67-acre lot owned by Joseph Gould 2nd lay north of the David Keiver/Thomas Bacon homestead featured in the previous blog post. Joseph Gould 2nd was the son of Jedore Gould. He was known as "the 2nd" to distinguish him from Joseph Gould 1st, son of Francis Gould. The 67-acre lot was one of 4 lots Joseph purchased from Augustus DesBarres. Those lots had previously been part of 400-acre homestead his father Jedore Gould leased from J. F. W. DesBarres. The Gmelin Line has long been considered the boundary between the DesBarres estate and the Township of Amherst. The line ran southeast from the Nappan River, forming the eastern boundary of the 1816 Samuel McCully Grant. So we would expect that Joseph's 67-acre lot would lie west of the Gmelin Line. Instead, the lot lay east of the Gmelin Line and was bounded on the east by Roach's Line and the property of William Keiver. DesBarres had settled the Goulds on his estate in 1772. In 1792, Amherst had won a court case alleging the Goulds were settled on Amherst Property. That decision was reversed in 1796 and the Goulds were returned to their lands. At that time a new survey was conducted by Charles Baker. I suspect that when the survey for the 1816 Samuel McCully Grant was undertaken, Baker's survey was found to be in error. However, it seems the Goulds were allowed to remain on their lands.
The Noiles and Bulmer/Pipes lots, the subjects of my 3 previous posts, lined up nicely in a column between today's Hwy 2 on the west and the western boundary of the 1816 Samuel McCully Grant known as the Gmelin Line on the east. Today's post introduces two additional lots that lay east of the Noils lot. The first was the "extreme gore" or northernmost 45 acres of the McCully Grant that bordered the Noiles lot on the east. The second was a 100-acre portion of the Amherst Township Lot 1 that bordered the extreme gore on the east. This 100-acre lot had been the homestead of David Keiver and his wife Ann (Harrison). David died young and his wife Ann married Thomas Bacon, who had been appointed guardian of the Keiver children. Thomas Bacon owned the extreme gore property, and when the Keiver children came of age, they sold the adjoining 100-acre lot to Thomas Bacon. From Thomas Bacon, the combined property passed to Thomas Shipley Jr., his sons Ritchey and Isaac, Jacob Porter, his son Wellington Porter and eventually to Wallace Milner. Many thanks to Paul Gould who drew my attention to the "extreme gore" property several years ago. Apologies for the long delay in finally sorting out this property.
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AuthorHi there! My name is Mallory Burton and I started researching the Ripley family in 2011. I'd describe myself as a careful amateur who's more interested in story than names and dates. I hope you enjoy my website and blog. I also have a public Mallory/Ripley tree on Ancestry with over 4,000 names. To contact me, please comment on any one of my blog posts. Archives
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