Some details of Simon's life before the move to Connecticut

I have a few more words to say about Simon's life before moving to Connecticut.
He was born on Appledore Island, also known as Hog Island, one of the Isles of Shoals in 1665. He is believed to have moved with his parents and siblings to Kittery on the mainland in 1669. He would have been 4 years old.

From all indications, Appledore, due most likely to its remoteness, has changed little from the days when Simon might have toddled on its sparse grasses. This 96 acre island serves today as the Shoals Marine Laboratory, associated with the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, MA.

Kittery, ME, on the other hand, is now an exit off of I-95, known here as the Maine Turnpike. Through the resources provided by Google Maps, I was able to locate the site of Andrew Newcomb's property in Kittery from the description provided in the Genealogical Memoir of the Newcomb Family, originally published by John Bearse Newcomb in 1874 - as follows: 

"This place in Kittery, York Co., Me., is on the southeast side of the mouth of Spinney Creek, and bounded westerly by the Piscataqua River, about half a mile from the city of Portsmouth"

This view is what a 9 year old Simon and his father Andrew might have experienced coming out of Spinney Creek into the river in 1674, with the notable exception of the I-95 bridge which now enters Portsmouth, NH at the right. The property which was owned by Andrew is on the left.

In 1674-5, after Simon's mother died, his father would move again to Edgartown on a much larger island in Massachusetts, Martha's Vineyard, where Simon would grow to adulthood and marry.
Google's Street View offers this glimpse from Edgartown, of Chappaquiddick, on which island Simon is known to have had sizable holdings where he raised cattle.

Simon's last move, described briefly in my last entry, was in 1713, to Lebanon, CT where he established himself and several members of his family. He would live there until his death in the winter of 1744-45.

Next, I promise, we will explore the life and movements of Simon's sons, including my ancestor, "Deacon" John.

The Newcomb family grew.


By 1700, when Mary, the last of Andrew's children by his second wife, was born, several of his offspring by his first wife were already married with families of their own. One key example of that is her half brother Simon, who married in 1687 and had a son, John, the following year.  A little later in this dialog, John will be the subject of some interesting moves just prior to the American Revolution. For the moment, let it be said that Mary was an aunt before she was born. Two year old John was her nephew upon her birth.

At that time, Andrew and his older sons owned considerable acreage on Matha's Vineyard and nearby Chappaquiddick, a six square mile island near Edgartown. With limited land available for expansion on the two islands (about 87 sq mi), it became incumbent on these older boys to move off Island. It seems that most of Andrew's children who left Martha's Vineyard settled within about 50 miles on the mainland. Simon went a little further in 1713 when he, and members of his family were among the first to leave Massachusetts.


The move to Connecticut

Simon's family settled in a young community known as Lebanon, in colonial New London County. These families would most likely have traveled by boat about 100 miles from Edgartown to Long Island Sound, then to New London via the Thames River, then perhaps another 15 miles on the river to Norwich where three rivers meet to become the source of the relatively short Thames. It would only have been a 12 mile wagon trip from Norwich to their ultimate destination.

More about that distant cousin, John Kendrick

Before we leave Massachusetts to follow the history of Simon and son John in their pursuits, I'd like to clear up my somewhat tenuous relationship with the adventurer I mentioned in my first blog - John Kendrick. To do that, I have to introduce you to his grandmother, Emlen, or maybe Emeline. She was the fourth of Andrew's children by his second wife, born in 1685.

In 1703, Emlen married Samuel Atkins and they settled in Chatham on Cape Cod, MA. Among their children was a daughter, Elizabeth, who would later marry Solomon Kendrick. Their son John was the mariner in question.

Now, back to Connecticut. In my next blog, I'll tell you more about (Deacon) John Newcomb.

In Travels with Charley, John Steinbeck points out, “The pioneers, the immigrants who peopled the continent, were the restless ones in Europe. The steady rooted ones stayed home and are still there.”

He went on to point out that we are all descendent from the restless ones.

Steinbeck did list one exception, the Negroes who were forced here as slaves, but I would point out another – those we today call Native Americans. They were already here when we Europeans arrived, but even they followed their food supply, and escaped adverse weather as they found their way from our common roots in Africa, to the North American continent many thousands of years ago.

How did we get here?
My earliest ancestors to touch the shores of North America arrived from England in two locations.

My tenth generation Newcombe ancestor, Andrew Newcomb, first appeared in records of meetings in 1666, on what are known today as the Isles of Shoals off the coast of Maine and New Hampshire. His first children were born there, or in Kittery, ME, where he, his wife Sarah, and their family lived in the early 1670s. Sarah died shortly after the birth of their seventh child in 1674. Andrew moved his young family to Edgartown, Martha's Vineyard, MA where he married Anna Bayes in 1676. They had eight more children.



Another, John Beebe, arrived in about 1650, probably in Massachusetts, but was soon found in New London, CT, where he married Abigail Yorke in 1659. Four generations later, a descendant, David Beebe, was born in Waterbury, CT in 1781, but by 1830 was living in Ridgeville. OH. His daughter Electa, would become my great-great grandmother when she married Elias Mann, who had come from Massachusetts. Their fifth child, Jerome Napoleon is my great grandfather. It is the story of his travels across our country that I will be telling during the next several weeks, as I trace his steps from Minnesota to Wyoming, and later to the valley where I was born, in Nevada.

Before that, however, in the next few entries, I'd like to fill in some details about the moves made before, during and slightly after, the Revolutionary War and the birth of our country.

My ancestors' moves across the United States began before the colonies became a nation, but those first moves were no further west than mid-Connecticut.

It was 1787 when a distant Newcombe cousin, John Kendrick, commanded a two ship private expedition from Boston to the coast of the Pacific Northwest via Cape Horn. It was the first expedition of a United States enterprise to trade with the NW Indians and China. At his insistence, the two captains swapped ships. John wanted the faster and smaller support ship Lady Washington to make runs to China and back via Hawaii. He left Robert Gray with the bigger Columbia Rediviva to trade for furs and explore the coastline of the Northwest in more detail.

Gray discovered bays, and more importantly, the mouth of a major river - which he named for his ship - the Columbia - claiming it for the new country. He then completed a round the world route back to Boston via the Indian Ocean and the Cape of Good Hope - a feat that even Magellan didn't accomplish in his much earlier attempt..

Kendrick didn't fare so well. He assisted the chief of the Island of Oahu in his attempt to avoid being part of  the consolidation of the islands by Kamehameha I. With Kendrick's help, they won the battle. It can be said that the first American battle at Pearl Harbor was won by the American forces - in December, 1794.

In a freak accident later in the day, a three gun salute to Kendrick for his victory was offered by a British ship which happened to be in Pearl Harbor at the time. When the third gun loaded with only wadding misfired, the crewman fired the next in line to complete the salute. Unfortunately, that gun had grape shot in it.

The shot hit the cabin of the Lady Washington and killed Kendrick.