Remember from Part 1, we are looking for the First Rector in Nova Scotia, or the father of my foremother Ellenor Rector Spence, who I hope is the same person (see Spence Pedigree Chart). As we left our last episode, we had just hit the jackpot!
Crown Land Grant Map
If all those Samuels are named after the first Spence man I can find, and all the Roberts are named after Ellenor's possible brother, and all the Reubens are named after the "ugliest, meanest, bad-tempered man that God ever gave breath to," then who are all the George Francises named after? Surely, the First Rector in Nova Scotia - the Original - the Founding Father?
So I was not at all surprised when the jackpot, a land grant petition, was signed by the mark of George Rector.
The petition is made to His Excellency Sir George Prevost Baronet, Lieutenant Governor and Commander in chief in and over His Majestys Province of Nova Scotia. Our George had petitioned for land before, to the previous governor, Sir John Wentworth. Gov. Wentworth had authorized a survey to be made of the 250 acres that George Rector had apparently asked for. The survey had been returned to the Surveyor General's office, but it seems that was all that was done. Bureaucracy! Red tape!
In 1808 Governor Wentworth died, so George was worried about getting his land. He petitioned again:
"The Petition of George Rector of Parrsborough Humbly Sheweth (shows)
That your Petitioner was Born in Germany, that he Served His Majesty during the late Revolutionary War in America as a Private in the Fifty-Seventh Regiment that at the close of that War he was regularly discharged at Halifax and has been Settled in this County for twenty years last past that he has a large Family to Support consisting of a wife and six children that he has never received any lands froms Government."
They weren't big on punctuation back then.
Wow that's a lot of info!
The jackpot petition was accompanied by a 1976 letter written by T.M. Punch, genealogist with the NS Historical Society. In addition to the information found in the petition, Mr. Punch also informed us that there were no Rectors anywhere else in Nova Scotia at that time, and especially not among the "foreign Protestants," the German residents. Mr. Punch concluded that George was "what they used to call a Hessian."
George Rector was born in Germany. How does that fit with the Rectors being of Dutch descent? And what about Reuben and Ellenor in 1891 saying their father was born in the Netherlands? Well, sometimes "Dutch" means German, because the German word for German is Deutsch, pronounced Doitch. The Pennsylvania Dutch are from Germany, the Flying Dutchman is a German ghost ship, and a stubborn Dutchman is from, you guessed it, Germany. Why people from The Netherlands are called Dutch, I have no idea. I have never heard of any other Nova Scotians of German descent call themselves Dutch, but that seems to be what has happened here. After 100 years here, either Reuben and Ellenor thought their father was from The Netherlands, or more likely since they were in their 90s, their child who answered the census thought their grandfather was from The Netherlands. On the other hand, it could be another example of a census taker's mistake.
That he fought in the Revolutionary War is another stupendous piece of information. Now we know where he emigrated from, when, why, and under what circumstances. And with his regiment number, we will be able to find out a lot more.
Area of Cumberland County where George's land grant was. You can see Lakelands where Ellenor was born. Not far is the land grant, at the top above the E-18.
Even more exciting for me is that he has a wife and 6 children in 1808. That would include 3 we already know about:
Robert born 1795
George F. born 1801
Thomas born 1803
? born before 1808
? born before 1808
? born before 1808
The others we know about were born after 1808. But who are the 3 missing children? Either they died before adulthood, or they are girls whose adult surnames are not Rector.
We can draw more conclusions than that. If Mrs. Rector gave birth to 6 children between 1795 and 1808, assuming Robert is the oldest, that is an average of one child every other year. That kind of frequency gives her the fertility of just about every other woman I have ever come across who lived between 1600 and 1900. And it means that she probably didn't suddenly stop having children in 1808. She probably kept right on until she had Ellenor in 1820.
The 25 years between Robert and Ellenor is a little wide of a spread compared to other ancestors I know, but not out of the ballpark. If the earliest she could have had Robert is age 16, and the latest she could have had Ellenor is age 46, we are looking for a woman born between 1779 and 1774. That narrows it down! That means that George's future wife was born when he was a fighting soldier - she is a lot younger than he.
So now we have evidence bolstering our theory that all those early Rectors are siblings:
Robert born 1795
George F. born 1801
Thomas born 1803
? born before 1808
? born before 1808
? born before 1808
James born 1810
Reuben born 1817
Ellenor born 1820
There are 6 years between Robert and George F.; 7 years between Thomas and James; 7 years between James and Reuben. Now we know to look for more children who were born in those blank spaces.
George also states "That he is well acquainted with the farming business and has a growing Family to Support and to enable him to till the Land, he humbly begs your Excellency will be pleased to cause a grant of Confirmation to be made of the Same, and also for Such further quantity as your Excellency may please to alow." George has taken the oath of allegiance and promises to be a peaceable subject to the best king ever. (notice he plans to use his children as farm laborers)
His Excellency was pleased to allow a total of 400 acres, almost double the original 250 requested. Unfortunately George's grant is split between Land Grant Maps 50 and 51. It continues on Map 50 as the sliver that says B.A. P 37, 400 A., and I think Robert Rector has the L-shaped piece to the left of it that says 1899.
These wonderful Crown Land Grant maps are not from a particular year, but are a compilation of all the grants made.
Want to see the original property today? It looks to me like if you travel northeast on Canaan Road from Halfway River, pass West Brook Rd and Canaan Mountain Rd., pass a house on your left and go over a creek, when you come to the next intersection on your left with a dirt road that doesn't seem to lead anywhere, the land grant would be on the northeast side of the intersection.
Now we have a wife and husband, and a whole family we can look for. A nice man on the Cumberland County Genealogy Facebook group directed me to the Parrsboro Township Book.
Delightfully, the Planters from New England brought with them their Township form of government. My favorite part of that system is the keeping of Township Books, where everything, and I mean everything, was recorded. From marriages to where to build a road. From how to cut your pig's ear so everyone would know that was your legal swine, to ordering the sheriff to arrest a violent drunk who was cursing out the tavern keeper, an old lady whose husband was too sick to get out of bed.
Between the Parrsboro Book and the Southampton Township Book, we are able to form a pretty complete picture of the first Rector family. On March 21, 1791, George married Mary Sparks in Parrsboro. (Not only George, but 4 of his sons marry women named Mary! 5 Mrs. Mary Rectors! Driving me crazy!) Mary was born to Robert and Joanna Sparks on December 19, 1776, in River Hebert. That fits our parameters for her birth date, but it means that she married a 31-year-old man at age 14. Teenage girls marrying much older men is not unheard of at the time, but 14 seems quite strange. However, both dates look absolutely right in the original records. It would explain why there is a 25-year spread between oldest and youngest children - Mary started early. Their first child appears to be Elizabeth, who was baptized as an infant on 27th of April 1794. Mary was 17 by then.
Elizabeth baptized 1794 (born before 1808)
Robert born 1795 married 1819
Mary born before 1808 married 1816, so must have been born before George in 1801
George F. born 1801
Thomas born 1803
Hannah born before 1808 married 1820
James born 1810
Christianna born 1813
Reuben born 1817
Ellenor born 1820
The 3 unknown children born before 1808 turn out to be girls who marry and change their surnames. Besides Elizabeth, two more daughters, Mary (another one!) and Hannah, marry in 1816 and 1820, so that makes them part of the 6 kids born by 1808. Robert marries in 1819. George F. and Thomas are baptized as infants in 1801 and 1803. The records stop there. A Christianna born in 1813 in Parrsboro was added by her descendants (in 1891 her father was born in, you guessed it!, The Netherlands, but the rest of the time Christie said she was German). And we still have Reuben and Ellenor. That gives us 10 kids, but there is still a 7-year gap between Thomas and James, so there may be more.
Now we know why there are so many Robert Rectors! They are all named after Robert Sparks, Mary's father, Mr.-Before-the-First-Rector. Maybe he is the Original Immigrant. Must check that out.
What was George's life like before Nova Scotia? Why did he leave his home and family in Germany? And what was it like to be a soldier in the Revolution?
Stay tuned!
References:
https://novascotia.ca/natr/land/indexmaps/
1976 letter from T.M. Punch shared on Ancestry by Joe Patterson in 2017
copy of land grant petition shared on Ancestry by Miss Sisson in 2017
are these dates what you intended to say?
ReplyDeleteThe 25 years between Robert and Ellenor is a little wide of a spread compared to other ancestors I know, but not out of the ballpark. If the earliest she could have had Robert is age 16, and the latest she could have had Ellenor is age 46, we are looking for a woman born between 1779 and 1774.
Thank you for commenting! I apologize for the late reply - I am new at blogging and I didn't know I had a comment. I have set it up now so I get an email when someone comments - at least I hope so.
DeleteYes, that was what I intended to say. Robert Rector was born in 1795, and Ellenor Rector was born in 1820, so there are 25 years between them. With that age gap, what could their relationship be? They could be father and daughter, but they could also be siblings. Could they have the same mother?
The youngest that a mother could probably be in this culture is 16. If she had Robert at age 16, she would have been 41 in 1820 when Ellenor was born - young enough to have given birth to Ellenor too. If she was 16 in 1795 when she had Robert, that would put her birth date at 1779.
That is the youngest she could be, or the latest her birth date could be.
Suppose Mother was older than that. Suppose she had Ellenor at age 46, the oldest I have knowledge of women giving birth in that century. If Mother was 46 in 1820, then she would have been born in 1774.
That is the oldest that Mother could be, or the earliest her birth date could be.
So we can pinpoint her birth date within 5 years - between 1774 and 1779.
It turns out, from the Township Book evidence, that Mother was actually born in December 1776. She was 18 when Robert was born, and 43 when Ellenor was born.
( Township records also show that Mother had a child, Elizabeth, in 1794 at age 17. And she got married in 1791, when she was 14. But I didn't know that when I was first looking at the dates to see if the same mother could have had Robert and Ellenor).