Thomas Needham Gardner

Images of Yore
August 4, 2019
Facebook

On FB, there is a group where people post interesting photos (Images of yore). Recently, there was one of a Thomas Gardner (Cutter's Memoirs). He is mentioned in Dr. Frank's book as the son of Daniel Gardner #338 on page 275. He married Agnes Littlefield. On a closer look, Thomas is a great-uncle of Dr. Frank. FindAGrave for Thomas N. Gardner.

Follow the discussion about Thomas via the New England Family Genealogy and History FB group.

His mother was Elizabeth B. Manning. Thomas lived from 1804-1875, so he is of the same time frame as is Nathaniel Hawthorne whose mother was Elizabeth C. Manning. Any connection? It will be interesting to look at this; it is nice to see the interconnections between the families of Salem. On his father's side, Nathaniel was a descendant of sons, George and Thomas, of Thomas and Margaret.

Thomas married 1) Mary E. Fabens, daughter of Joseph Fabens and Elizabeth Curtis. She died in 1857. He married 2) Agnes Leslie Littlefield, daughter of Edson Lysander Littlefield and Lydia (Smith) Davis. Find A Grave, for Agnes' mother: Lydia Smith Davis Littlefield.

Note: Some work needs to be done with the FindaGrave records. Thomas' FAG only shows his first wife, Mary. Lydia's FAG does not show Agnes (she died as Winchester).

Remarks: Modified: 07/09/2022

11/20/2019 -- He's mentioned in Sidney's History of Salem on page 1-77.

07/09/2022 -- Thomas was of Gen 8, post Thomas and Margaret. 

Streets of Salem

This is a blog that has very interesting posts as Donna, the blogger, does walk-abouts as did our friend, Sidney Perley. I have commented a couple of times of late: Massey's Cove and Tale of Benjamin West, the Patriot. The first post came about by seeing the Cove on one of Sidney's maps. Conant and crew spent their first winter in that location (1626). The second post related to a veteran of Bunker Hill who was overlooked. Turns out that Benjamin West was the only casualty from Salem.

Of late, there was this post: Cemetery under Siege. Of course, that called for bringing some attention to the experience of Gardner's burial plot. We covered that in several posts, with the first one from 2010; this deals with the question: Where is Thomas?

This is the text of the comment (unaltered).

It isn’t as if a cemetery or two has not already been destroyed in little Essex County of Massachusetts. At last count, there were over 200 graves that would need attention.

Start to read about it here: https://thomasgardnerofsalem.blogspot.com/2019/02/another-twist.html. I point to a report by a Trask researcher about Lynn’s movement of stones, leaving the remains. But, have, since, found other references to this sort of thing.

Before discovering that little jewel of news about disappear cemeteries, and after much reading and talking to people, it became evident to me that we had this very thing in Salem. In short, the Gardner burial plot, which was near the current Trask one, was disturbed. It was violated in the interest of commerce which is not unlike now with the witch mania (every fall). At first, this news was troublesome, I took a long while before accepting the fact. But, I heard from people about missing bodies. Also, I went deeper into Sidney’s (need I mention his last name, Perley’s) work. Later I saw that he mentioned that some bodies had been moved to the Trask plot. https://thomasgardnerofsalem.blogspot.com/2018/10/new-twist.html

Lots of research pending.

Some graves had already been destroyed in the Gardner plot when Simon Pickering Gardner visited the site in the 1830s (stones thrown about). I have tracked down who sold the land, etc. This is a story waiting to be told. The property had been in the Gardner family since Thomas’ time.

But, about October’s cah’ching of the registers due to visitors and tramplers of graves. Right near where the Gardner plot had been (according to Sidney, again), we now have the Holy Ghost Center. To me, how appropriate it would be for Salem to mark that area and direct some attention that way. Say, before getting in revelries, consider that some of this stuff is real.

Some have argued this, well, Harmony Grove is where this site was. These two (HGC and Gardner’s plot) were on different sides of the brook/river (Gardner/Proctor/North, what have you) that disappeared, evidently filled in with the bones of our ancestors.

Much to discuss, especially given the 400th that is pending.

I wrote 'Simon' rather than 'Samuel' for the 1830s visitor. But added in a correcting comment. Again, we're putting together the next issue of The Gardner Annals. Contributions of articles is encouraged.

Remarks: Modified: 08/15/2019

08/15/2019 --

Samuel Gardner

This post is about Samuel Gardner (Gardner-614) and John Curwen (Corwin-10). John was the step-brother of Mary (White-3107), Samuel's wife.

We were looking to see who was Mary's father. Anderson did not mentioned her maiden name (Great Migration (requires NEHGS account), see Image 1). But, then, Torrey did not either.

Dr. Frank did. Was he correct? Well, Frank mentioned that Elizabeth was Mary's mother and she had married John White. Mary's father died, and Elizabeth married George Curwen (Corwin). We know this from Torrey (New England marriages prior to 1700 (requires NEHGS account), see Image 2).

But, we know more. The NEHGR published an article about Elizabeth. In it, Mary and Samuel are mentioned. So, Dr. Frank was correct. However, this work was after Anderson published, so he is off the hook.See NEHGR Vol 163 (requires NEHGS account), page 190, (see Image 3) starting at page 192. As we can note, the research had to be carried out in England.

Images 1, 2, 3 

This is an example of the type of thing that families need to do and which the TGS sees as in its mission.

There is more to be found in NEHGR Vol 150 (requires NEHGS account), page 190 (see Image 4), "Elizabeth Herbert, Wife of (1) John White and (2) George Corwin." Elizabeth was the mother of Mary who married Samuel Gardner. The article mentions a petition to the court by Samuel with regard to the estate of George Corwin. Dr. Frank had mentioned that, too.

Elizabeth (Herbert)(White) Corwin

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Note: the family was in Cape Ann in the 1623/24 time frame. Thomas, George, and Richard were born in England (see WikiTree discussion on Margaret Fryer). John was born here, too. However, there is a record for a John in Dorset at the same time. This may have been John who came over later (open area of research). Samuel was born here, as well. The Samuel mentioned in Dorset in 1624 was of another family. We are working to separate the families as we try to figure out where Samuel's father came from.

Children (according to the NEHGS and the Great Migration Project - as represented by WikiTree): Thomas, George, Richard, John, Sarah, Samuel, Joseph, Miriam, Seeth.

List of descendants of Samuel. 

Remarks: Modified: 12/13/2020

12/05/2019 -- Added in the images to go with the links (which require a NEHGS account) as Samuel is important to our work. A middle child, somewhat. Too, he's the ancestor of Dr. Frank. So, that gives us a focus with which to work the unknowns.

12/13/2020 -- Added link to list of descendants of Samuel. 

Seeth Gardner

More specifically, Seeth (Gardner) Conant Grafton, the youngest daughter. She was buried with Thomas at the Gardner burial plot and is mentioned in several post related to the question of 'Where is Thomas?' (continuing research theme). Her stone is in Harmony Grove Cemetery. Her bones? We don't know.

Her nephew, Abel and his wife Sarah, were buried there, too. Abel was son of Samuel and progenitor of Dr. Frank.

It's about time that we looked at Seeth. Earlier, we looked at her sisters, Sarah Balch and Miriam Hill. This is an introduction; there will be more as we fill in her WikiTree Profile (Gardner-592) of her children. We just started to update the Profile for Seeth (Grafton) Andrew Hicks.

Turns out that a descendant of Seeth wrote for The American Genealogist about her. See TAG, Vol 71, pg 26. Craig Partridge, the researcher, was a professor at Stanford.

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Seeth married 1) Joshua Conant. He died. She married 2) John Grafton. One descendant is John Albion Andrew who was the 25th Governor of Massachusetts (1861-1866). The Essex Inst Hist  Coll (Vols 27-28) has part of his pedigree. See WikiTree (John Albion Andrew). We will be looking further at the collateral families (John Andrew, Nathaniel Andrew and Mary Higginson, and John Higginson and Hannah Gardner) which show a lot of inter-marriage.

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Children (according to the NEHGS and the Great Migration Project - as represented by WikiTree): Thomas, George, Richard, John, Sarah, Samuel, Joseph, Miriam, Seeth.

List of descendants of Seeth. 

Remarks: Modified: 12/13/2020

12/09/2019 -- Seeth featured this week at the portal to truth. Plus, we want to go out five generations.

12/13/2020 -- Added link to list of descendants. 

Threads through five generations

When we did the list of descendants that is on the Wikipedia page for Thomas, we browsed books, other genealogical sites, found connections, and did a quick assessment. For each entry, we put a year to relate their period plus identified the child.

Yesterday, we looked at some of these. And, picked Ezra Pound since he was documented on WikiTree. For Ezra, there was a link to his Wikipedia page, a note that he was ca. 1880s, and that his ancestor was Richard. We also looked at several others. Ezra Cornell is of Richard, too, but we need to review what has been done for him as there is some conflicting information. We found out that Gilbert Hovey Grosvenor is a descendant of Lion Gardner. In the mode of 'All things Gardner' work, we will move these to a side list showing these other families.

Today, we checked several other entries and considered that we need to approach this from the viewpoint of getting descendants of the children identified which would lead to the first five generations being written up. Along that line, the below list is a start. For now, we'll show the chart that maps to Henry VIII for its potential to show how collateral families come into play.

These can be thought of as threads. Some research might find them useful. I did. Those with resources have more motivation, too. I found that looking at work done by those folks would help with other lines, various ways.

This is a partial list with no particular order.

• Samuel - see Dr. Frank and Henry VIII
• Richard - see Ezra Pound, Nathaniel Gorham, Edith Kermit (Carow) Roosevelt 
• Thomas and George - see Nathaniel Bowditch
• George - see Alice Hathaway (Lee) Roosevelt
• Sarah - see Charles G. Dawes (he is also descendant of Thomas Gardner of Roxbury) 
• Seeth -- this will be a little different. Seeth married 1) Joshua Conant. He died. She married 2) John Grafton. One descendant is John Albion Andrew who was the 25th Governor of Massachusetts (1861-1866). The Essex Inst Hist  Coll (Vols 27-28) has part of his pedigree. See WikiTree (John Albion Andrew).  
• John -- see Henry Clay Folger, Jr. 

We still need one from Miriam. 

Remarks: Modified: 12/09/2019

12/09/2019 -- We have been featuring the children at our portal to truth.

Ezra Pound

There are lots of research areas that we can touch upon. It's an endless bit of stuff. But, we want to stay topical and relevant. Having looked at a couple cases of connections (Julia Ward Howe), we thought that we could pick someone interesting and look at the connections to see what comes up.

How to find someone? Well, we have a standing bit of pending work to prove the list of descendants that we wrote up on Wikipedia, long ago (Thomas Gardner - Planter). We built this list while reading. As we found associations, we recorded them, after finding out what child of Thomas and Margaret was the ancestor. That, of course, assumed that the information was correct. Well, we know that we need to verify everything.

So, we picked Ezra Cornell. Sure enough, he is a Thomas descendant via his mother who was a Barnard out of Nantucket. Now, several sources have this, including a good one, which is the work of William Addams Reitwiesner on the ancestry of William Shattuck. Rather than pick up that quest, for the moment, we decided to pick another name.

In fact, another Ezra. This time, it's Ezra Pound. He was born in Idaho, so we also see the western expansion. Upon querying WikiTree, we see that Ezra has many lines back to Thomas, via Nantucket, again. This comes via his 1st-great-grandmother, Minerva Judith Coleman, both of whose parents were descendants of Thomas and Margaret, several times.

So, let's check some connections. Using Deborah (Macy) Gardner (1658-1712), we get this link back to Henry VIII's mother. The link is via Joseph Gardner and his marriage to Ann Downing who has the link via her second husband, Simon Bradstreet. Using Thaddeus Coleman (1771-1847), we get a link to Henry VIII's wife, Anne Boleyn, via Coffin and West.

Shubael Gorham is on the list, too. So, using him, we get a link to Catherine Parr through Vaughan and Neville. Shubael's wife was Puella Hussey. She has a link back to Henry Fitzroy via Manning and Howard.

Finally, getting from that node and picking the Pound great-grandfather, we get a link to Jane Seymour. In these searches, there are many cultural links that are of the 'in-law' type. Any of these would be interesting to look deeper into.

This post is a look at a descendant with a little peek at the loads of information that would accrue if the tree were to be filled in. He represents one of hundreds of thousands. Meaning? Lots of work to do.

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So, Ezra was born in Idaho. That's a long way from New England. Of course, by 1883, the railroad made it easier to get out there. Why? Always needs to be asked. Well, we can look more at land management: General Land Office.

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On Ezra, see the Poetry Foundation.

Remarks: Modified: 03/27/2022

03/27/2022 -- A recent article was about the Gloucester summer home of the family of T.S. Eliot (Wikipedia, WikiTree). T. S., friend of Ezra, had an extensive New England heritage.