Genealogical Search of Individual or Family Names Mentioned in the Manuscript

Mindy Granger

The names I researched are Richard Sampson, Lewis Holmes, Fred Sparrow, and Nannie Harris. I also researched the surnames Wood, Perkins, Coggswell, and Gisby.

There are many wonderful genealogy websites available online. I stared my search at http://www.yahoo.com with the keywords Masschusets+geneology. This initial search led me to http://www.rootsweb.com a site dedicated to ancestry research in the state of Massachusetts. Each county has its own genealogy link. I found out that Middleborough is located in Plymouth County. The Plymouth County link has a surname search but this only leads to a message board for people looking for information on certain surnames. Some of these individuals had links to home pages but mostly the information I found on these pages was inconclusive.

My search reached many dead ends. I found out that the Sampson, Wood, Holmes, and Sparrow surnames are very popular in Plymouth County. I also linked to many sites that didn’t allow me to narrow my search down to a specific region or year. I then linked to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at http://lds.org This site has a wonderful genealogy link http://www.familysearch.org which allows a search for specific events (Birth, Marriage, Death) and specific years and regions and returns results from the Latter Day Saints records as well as from personal homepages. I keyed in each name I had, searching all events, and tried first searching each specific year, then each year plus or minus five years. This is what I found:

Richard Sampson married Mary Ann Wood in Middleboro in 1836. This could very well be the same Richard Sampson and Wood found in the manuscript. Mary Ann could have written a poem to her husband Richard Sampson on their first anniversary in 1837.

I found conflicting birth information for Richard Sampson. Both list a Richard Sampson as being born November 1811 in Middleboro to Samuel Sampson. But one record has his mother listed as Polly Bryant while the other says his mother’s name was Lydia Holmes.

The search for Lewis Holmes returned sixteen matches. Any of these birth, marriage, and death records could have been for the Lewis Holmes I was looking for. I was unsure because none of the events occurred in Middleboro or the other counties mentioned in the book. But then I found through the Rootsweb surname helper a Lydia Holmes of Middleboro, possibly the same Lydia Holmes mentioned above, daughter of John and Lydia Holmes. Lewis could have been her brother and she may be Richard Sampson’s mother, making Lewis Holmes a possible uncle. Lydia Holmes was married on December 15,1811 one month after Richard Sampson’s birth. Her record doesn’t list whom she married though.

I also through my searches stumbled upon http://www.vineyard.net/vineyard/history/tmindex.htm Every Name Index to Town Marriage Records in Tisbury, MA. 1850-1875. I had Tisbury and Titicut confused but found the marriage of William L. (Lewis?) Holmes September 1, 1870. Church records list his father Lewis Holmes in attendance and the date 1870 exactly matches one of the manuscript dates. Tisbury is on Martha’s Vineyard, just south of Middleboro.

A search for Gisby and Perkins continually turned up dead ends. Then I had the idea that some of these people may have been Civil War soldiers. Titicut is actually Camp Titicut, apparently a Military camp. An exhaustive search of website after website dealing with the Civil War turned up nothing. Then I found Harry C. Hadaway’s homepage at http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Lake/2937/, which has information on his Massachusetts ancestry.

Mr. Hadaway is related to Isaac Perkins (1744-1839) of Middleboro. Isaac served as sergeant in Capt. Amos Wade’s 3d company of minutemen. He was born and died in Middleboro. I never found any Gisby’s having lived in Massachusetts during the 1800’s.

The search on Fred Sparrow only returned one result. Fred Carleton Sparrow was born on January 19, 1857 in Middleboro. His parents where James Phillip Sparrow and Persis Lavina Smith.

The Coggswell family of Massachusetts lived in the towns of Leunenburg, Framingham, and Leominster according to my search results. One of these individuals may be associated with the manuscript. I could not find Leunenburg but Framingham and Leominster are both north of Middleboro, just outside of Plymouth County.

Finally, my search on Nannie Harris was very inconclusive. What we know about her is she was a black woman, perhaps a freed slave, and she died in Plymouth County. If she had been a slave, which is likely, it is doubtful there are any records available for her. I did find through my search on the Civil War this website: List of Slaves Emancipated in the Will of George W.P. Custis, December 29, 1862 http://www.ccharity.com/virginia/custisslavefreed.htm

I also sent several emails to researchers requesting any information they may have. Unfortunately I had not received replies from them by the time my research was due.

[Return to Nineteenth-Century Friendship Book Project Homepage]