Trying to Transcribe--From Probate File of Stephen Scoval - 1813

This was an important find for me as it shows that my 3rd gt-grandmother, Lucy How(e) was the daughter of Ichabod How and an heir to Stephen Scoval.

Stephen Scovil's | An Inventory of the estate of Mr Stephen Scoval, late

           Inventory | of Cornwall, in the Probate District of Litchfield, _______

about 236 acres of land, in Cornwall, with the welling House

  Barn & other building thereon at                                    $3852.00

Amount of personal estate as per inventory on file           825.10

March 16th, 1813                                                                  $4677.10

                          taken by Oliver Burnham appraisers on

                                         Noah Rogers _________

At the same time Ichabod How, Administrator on the estate of the sd

Stephen Scovel decd and Father of Levi How, Thirza How, Luman N. How,

Lucy How, all minors under the age of twenty one years represented to

this court that said children are Heirs at Law to a part of the estate

of the sd Stephen Scovel decd & thereupon on motion of the sad

Ichabod, & on due consideration this court did appoint the sd Ichabod

How guardian to take charge of the estate of the sd minor children

which hath descended to them as aforesaid agreeable to the statutes in

such case provided - an the said Ichabod, as principal, Daniel

Harrison as his surety became bound to this court in four separate ______

bonds each of the sum of $1000. to secure the faithful & legal per-

formance of the duties of sd trusts, as per bonds on file.

Ancestor Birthday - September 16 - Lucy Irene Howe - 1811- 1882

Yesterday I wrote about an ancestor who lived in Wallingford, Connecticut, Jeremiah Howe. Today it is his 2nd gt-granddaughter, who was my 3rd gt-grandmother, that I intend to write about, Lucy Irene Howe. Lucy didn't live in Wallingford. She was born in the town of Cornwall, Litchfield County, Connecticut, 16 Sep 1811 to Ichabod and Irene (Scovill) Howe.

Lucy was just 2 years old when her mother Irene died. Irene died just a few days after her father. She was listed in his will, so Lucy was entitled to that inheritance from her grandfather and her father filed papers with the probate court to be appointed guardian for her. It was there I learned who her parents were and so gained a large number of Connecticut relatives. Lucy had an older sister and 2 older brothers. Her father remarried sometime before the 1820 census, so she grew up with a step-mother.

Lucy married Timothy Chase on New Years Eve, 31 Dec 1832, in Cornwall. She and Timothy had 8 children, 3 girls and 5 boys. The family did not stay put. They were in Sharon, Connecticut in the 1840 census and were in Goshen, Connecticut for the 1850 census. Then they moved to Ohio and were in Leroy township Lake County in the 1860 census. But they didn't stay in Ohio and were in Illinois in Rivoli township, Mercer County for the 1870 census. There was at least one more move to Nebraska. Her husband had settled on homestead land in Atlanta Township, Saline County, but died 5 Jul 1877 before finishing his claim, so it was patented to Lucy, as his widow. Lucy was living with her youngest son and his family on the 1880 census there in Nebraska. She died 10 Mar 1882 and we believe both she and Timothy, her husband, were buried in Atlanta Cemetery, Atlanta Township, Saline County, Nebraska.

Considering the Censuses for Ichabod Howe

In order to look at the various censuses for Ichabod I had to look them up. I discovered that the indexers at Ancestry.com had been very creative in the ways they spelled his name. See some examples: 1850 - Pehabod Howe; 1830 - Iehabod Hone; 1820 - Jchabod Howe; 1810 - Schabod How; 1800 - Tchabod Now. All of these were located where he lived, in the town of  Cornwall, Litchfield County, Connecticut.

1850.  Now I want to share my reasoning for some conclusions I have come to about Ichabod's family in the censuses. Since we are usually advised to start with the information nearest to us in time I began with the 1850 census. I found 81 year old Ichabod was living with a Norton Howe, age 40 with a wife Harriet and 3 children, Edward, Mary and Luman. When I wrote about Ichabod's father-in-law, Stephen Scoville, on 28 Jan 2017 I noted that Stephen's probate papers gave information about his grandchildren, the children of Ichabod and Irene. However I failed to give their names. They were Levi born about 1803, Thirza born about 1806, Luman born about 1810 and Lucy born in 1811. Since Luman was born about 1810, he was the same age as this Norton. Then I found that he was listed in some places as Luman N. Howe and that Luman had married someone named Harriet, so I believe this "Norton" is Luman and Norton was his middle name.

1840.  Now we move back 10 years to 1840. The indexers got this one right, although someone submitted a correction to change the surname to Flowe. In this census which only lists the head of household by name it gives the household composition as 1 male 70 to 79, 1 male 10 to 14, 1 female 70 to 79, 1 female 30 to 39. The older two would probably be Ichabod and his 2nd wife Lucy. Ichabod's daughter Thirza was born about 1806, so would be age 34 and she did not get married until 1842, so the 30 to 39 year old female is probably her. The 10 to 14 year old male is a mystery to me. But Ichabod's son Levi also had a 10 to 14 year old male in his household in 1840. Levi had 2 sons of about the right age, Dyer born in 1825 and Levi Jr born in 1827, so I suspect one was helping his grandfather. The 1840 census for Ichabod shows that 2 persons were employed in agriculture.

1830.  Since there was only 1 entry for Howe (sounds like or similar) in Cornwall in 1830, I found Ichabod. There were 4 persons in the household: 1 male 60 to 69, 1 male 15 to 19, 1 female 60 to 69 and 1 female 10 to 14. Again the older two would most likely be Ichabod and his 2nd wife Lucy. The 2 younger people do not fit any of Ichabod's known children with his first wife Irene. Since Lucy is listed as over 60, these children seem young to have been hers. Both daughters, Thirza and Lucy, were not yet married so they could have been in the household but these ages do not match them. A female 10 to 14 would have been born 1816 to 1820 and the male 15 to 19 would have been born 1811 to 1815. Since Levi Norton Howe was born about 1810, they could have made him a little younger and he would be the male 15 to 19. But the female 10 to 14 is still unknown.

1820.  The 1820 census shows two adults, 1 male over 45 and 1 female over 45, which would be Ichabod and Lucy. There are three who would probably be children, 1 female 10 to 15 which fits Thirza, 1 female under 10 which fits Lucy and 1 male under 10 which could be Luman. Since Levi would have been 17 or 18 he could be working somewhere. He did not get married until 1823.

1810.  The 1810 census is quite puzzling to me. It would be reasonable that the male 26 to 44 was Ichabod. The oldest female was 16 to 25 which was too young for Irene, his first wife, who should have been about 37 then. It shows 5 children and I know of 4 and the youngest of those had not been born yet. Did Ichabod and Irene have some children who died young, before 1813 when the children were named in the probate record? Were there nieces or nephews living in the household? I don't know.

1800.  The indexer really made Ichabod hard to find in the 1800 census. This census shows 1 male 26 to 44, 2 males under 10, 1 female 26 to 44 and 1 female under 10. The 2 adults fit the ages of Ichabod and Irene. However I have no record of any children born before 1800 and here are 3. With no names to check it makes it even harder. Maybe I will never know.

Ancestor Birthday - June 5 - Ichabod Howe - 1769-1857

Litchfield County, Connecticut

It seems so fitting that my 4th great-grandfather, Ichabod Howe, lived at Cornwall Hollow in the town of Cornwall, Litchfield County, Connecticut. He was the son of John Howe and John's second wife, Lydia Norton. John married his first wife, Mary Wadhams, in 1756 and they had 4 children before Mary died in 1765. So Ichabod had 4 older half-siblings as he was growing up. John's 2 marriages and the births of the 4 older children were recorded in Goshen vital records. The Howe Genealogies published in 1929 state that the family moved to Canaan Connecticut in 1766, apparently after John and Lydia's marriage 15 Apr 1766. Ichabod was born on 5 Jun 1769, the 2nd of 7 children born to Lydia. At least 3 of these children died young.

Ichabod was in the town of Cornwall by the 1800 census. The censuses before 1850 only name the head of household and give numbers for the various age categories, so it is difficult to know who the members of the household were. Tomorrow (6 Jun 2017) I will plan to write about some of my conclusions about the census entries for Ichabod's family.

As his father did, Ichabod also had two wives. His first wife, Irene Scovill, died in 1813 and his second wife, Lucy ? , died in 1841. Both are buried in the Cornwall Hollow Cemetery. I have not found a record for Ichabod's burial after his death 30 Apr 1857.

The town meeting minutes for Cornwall mention Ichabod Howe as one of the surveyors of highways in 1803, 1811, 1821 and 1822. In Theodore S. Gold's book of Historical Records of the Town of Cornwall..., there is a section on ecclesiastical history. Ichabod was named as one of those "brought into this fold of Christ" in a revival held in 1795. By 1822 he was listed as one of the deacons on the committee "to settle difficulties between brothers." In a historical address given in 1865, the following was written about him as one of the prominent laymen of the church: "Ichabod Howe will be remembered as a man of Pauline gentleness, and Christlike spirit of self-sacrifice for his brother's good. To a life of rectitude and consecration he added a very fitting closing chapter, by giving himself almost wholly to visitation of the parish and prayerful lay-labors for the conversion of men to his dear Lord. He died in 1857." It makes me feel good that he had this good reputation.

Ancestor Birthday - January 4th - Stephen Scovill[e] 1751/52-1813

I'll admit it. I made a mistake. When I entered the information in my database about my 5th great-grandfather Stephen Scovill, I failed to enter the day in January of 1751/52 that he was born. So my birthday calendar just said January and I missed him back on the 4th. Now it's time to make the correction and give him his post only 24 days late.

Stephen's birth is entered in the records at East Haddam, Connecticut, on 4 Jan 1751 [1751-52], son of Stephen and Rebeckah (Millard) Scoville. He was their second son named Stephen. The first was born 19 Sep 1729 and died 19 Sep 1751, so when this son was born a little over 3 months later, they named him Stephen.

It is believed that Stephen married his cousin Mary Scoville. (A Scovell family history gives a rather detailed explanation of this conclusion)¹ From his will of 1813 he had at least 4 children.

His death on 27 Jan 1813 at Cornwall, Connecticut, was reported in the Hartford, Connecticut, newspaper Connecticut Courant on 2 Mar 1813. There were 5 others there as well as one from Salisbury, who all died from the "prevailing epidemic." Doing a Google search, it appears that New England had suffered from a "spotted fever epidemic" in the spring seasons of 1812 and 1813. It was later called "malignant fever" and is believed to be what is now known as cerebro-spinal-meningitis.

Since my 4th great-grandmother, Irene (Scovill) Howe, also died in this epidemic a few days after her father, it meant that Irene's children would receive her inheritance. It was in those probate records I found my 3rd great-grandmother as a child and it identified both her parents and grandparents for me.

I am sad that both Stephen and his daughter Irene died in the epidemic, but at least the fact that their deaths were so close together created probate records which helped me put the family together.

1Jennie M. (Scoville) Holley and Homer Worthington Brainard, compilers, Arthur Scovell and His Descendants in America 1660-1900 (Rutland, Vermont: Tuttle Publishing Company, 1941). page 41

Mapping Monday - Cornwall, Connecticut

My 3rd great grandmother, Lucy Irene Howe, was born in the town [I would probably describe it as a township] of Cornwall, Litchfield County, Connecticut in 1811.

I was so excited when I found a record showing that she was the daughter of Ichabod Howe and Irene Scoville. I suddenly had a new number of New England relatives. 

But when I found that Ichabod Howe lived in the northeast section of Cornell, at Cornwall Hollow, I was ready to celebrate Halloween.