Thank you to Kathy Fournier Jilson, for photographing the Farleys' and others' stones at Rose Hill Cem. See Ivan's ancestor, Amos Farley, and some of his children's pages, for stories. A quick overview is this: All New Englanders, Amos was NH-born, married his wife, the former Lucy Hall, about when his brother, Jesse Farley, married her sister, Mehitable Hall. The two couples took their first children, born in south Vermont, northward to Stanstead, a border town partly in Canada. Some people had houses right on the international line, as the one town was in two countries, with the Farleys were on the Quebec side. The brothers were there to run a stone-quarrying business.
In Quebec province, most towns were French, but theirs was English-speaking. Many New Englanders had gone there, maybe not for long. When Amos and his still growing family left later, Jesse's family stayed behind.
Amos wanted to leave before he could be conscripted to serve "on the wrong side", for the British, in the War of 1812. Jesse was already conscripted by the British, surprising them all? Typically, near a war's beginning, young single men are recruited. By the end, fear of losing causes one or both sides to "strongly encourage", maybe force, married men with children to serve. (That was seen also in the US, in the Civil War and in the Revolution.)
They paid a visit "back home", to visit his aging father, named Ebenezer, and a younger brother left behind, named Bethuel, who remained in NH. Amos took his family westward, to Ohio's Lake Erie's shore and ultimately, further west and then south, to the Lake Michigan shore.
A second Bethuel Farley, father to Ivan, was thus born in NE Ohio, in what is now Lake County, not yet split off from its mother, Geauga County. (It separated in 1840, long after they'd left.) Cleveland was near, but they'd had more ties to Painesville. In 1825, a Canal was put through, from Cleveland, to the Ohio River southward. That shifted Great Lakes ship trade from Painesville to Cleveland.
Both places were on rivers feeding the Lake. However, Cleveland had noticeably more sickness, what moderns would guess was due to having more malaria-carrying mosquitoes, Painesville instead had more land higher up, its waters moving faster, with less of Cleveland's standing stagnant water that encouraged mosquitoes. The canal fixed that by causing waters to move.
An irony---Despite leaving that behind, his grandfather, once in Michigan, would die in a time when its lakeshore had numerous ague cases and related deaths (malaria)
The uncle Bethuel left behind in the old hometown, Marlowe, NH, to care for their parents, never needed to leave, as he had invented something. He lacke their father's curse, being one of too many Farleys named Ebenezer Farley, so his tracks in records are clear. Uncle Bethuel was college-educated, an inventor of a vegetable-based ink resistant to freezing. The resulting factory kept the hometown of Marlow alive, when other small places died.
Ebenezer was a biblicalname, like Amos, used in Puritan times. Later, "Eben" became the modern nickname.
The first Ebenezer Farley dated back to the son born in Woburn MA, to George and Christian. Family not yet finished, the parents then moved further into the wilderness, with Christian's sister's family, and some others. Finding a place already cleared.
They did not say to themselves, "Who cleared this? Why are they not living here, at this minute?"
They would start a new town called Billerica. Billerica would be prone to attack when natives returned, apparently practicing what some college professors would call "transhumance", rotating across locations with the seasons, hunting up in the hills , farming and fishing down by some key steams where they'd cleared spots. Spots were rotated, resting the ground seen as a way to increase fertility.
Both sets would have been surprised to encounter each other. Both would beangry, worried the fruits of their hard work might go to someone else.
At one point, George and youngest son Timothy would arrange a meeting to talk about a peaceful settlement, if possible. They rode horseback, on the way. Once as far as what is now Worcester County, Mass., they were ambushed, culprits not known, but stopping the meeting. Timothy died.
Hysteria followed, with the drastic re-actions that hysteria brings. Overall, choosing dangerous locations, then hoping that threats and prayer and guns would solve it all was not the best strategy This native hysteria occurred around the same time as did the witch hysteria over in Salem. An in-law named Toothacre, with her nine-year old daughter and her accused husband, were incarcerated separately. Torture caused many to confess to things they had not done, hanging viewed as desirable, simply to get the otherwise never-ending torture to stop. Maybe the child could be plied more kindly with cookies, convinced to say both parents were witches?
The officials tried to get the wife to renounce her baptism as an adult. She refused. She did say she'd hoped her baptism would remove her fear of natives attacking. She admitted that the fear remained. Her husband died in prison, not murdered, yet his body "abused". The two surviving were released. (Said to live in a particularly poor location, the wife and daughter did indeed die in an attack later.)
The Farleys' first immigrants included George Farley (English, maybe a tailor at some point, definitely a farmer). He had one of the "garrison houses" at Billerica, thick stone, where people could gather if attacked. (The Farley house was renamed as the Jaquith house later. A share in it passed to a female Farley, who married Mr Jaquith. They were asked to care for some orphaned young Farleys who also owned shares. When the Farleys began leaving Billerica, her Jaquith spouse bought out the others' shares, giving some Farley grandsons "seed money" to move away.
Some in the Ebenezer line went to NH. Those in the Caleb line split up, some to what became NH, other left for what became NJ. Two served in the Revolution (on the Delaware R?) The NJ settlers were burnt out in the Revolution, forcing th two soldiers to ultimately follow Fisher in-laws to Penn.)
The first Ebenezer's and first Caleb's father was the George Farley early to Billerica The first Caleb and first Ebenezer born back in Woburn, before going to help found Billerica. Their father George helped found the town-owned church, a "meeting house" with space for town halls to meet and space for the one permitted church to meet.
Over a century later, the Billerica congregation voted to became Congregational. Everyone voted, not just elected elders, as Presbyterians would do, that being the Congregational's main difference. (Post-Revolution, with religious freedom, no King could any longer dictate church membership. Denominations were then declared and named. Before then, a town shared a church, had a covenant for prospective members to sign, saying what they agreed upon, if wanting to be a voting member. The terms could be almost anything, ranging from promises to pay for a teacher or minister, to some statements of Calvinist belief in pre-destination or the alternative of universal free will and acceptance, to statements of tolerance. What was agreed was not always public.
One town reportedly voted to execute anyone who disagreed with their beliefs. A British official, adding a "balance of power", chose to overrule them.
Parents who were infant baptizers essentially promised at the child's welcoming ceremony to take the child to church and otherwise raise them religiously. George was that, infants listed with parents named alongside was a regular thing for the Farleys, but the records at safer Woburn were more complete than at later, attacked Billerica.
George was thus not a Baptist, as some alleged. However, he strongly supported religious freedom for a Baptist neighbor. ("Baptist" meant an agreement that only adults be baptized, not leaving the choice to families. That aspect of religion is ethnic. The reliable infant-baptizers generally came from Scotland and northern England. The adult baptizers' prior geography instead was often Welsh or from other parts of Britain or Europe, not random spots, but those with "Holy Wells" and other medicinal waters called "Baths". Boric acid in some place cleared up blindness due to pink eye. Other waters had sulfur, anti-bacterial, useful for skin infections.)
George signed something to the effect that he wanted freedom of religion. He was fined for missing his own church service one Sunday, as he'd gone to a neighbor's Baptist service (down in Boston?), maybe to see what it was like.
Due to George being a King's name, not in the bible, his name was not re-used for his descendants. Repeating a name repeatedly was reserved for the Ebenezers and the Calebs.
A later Ebenezer Farley left Billerica, not alone. A large number moved close together in time, with siblings and cousins and neighbors.
They had reasons. Some descended of people hung (a female victim surnamed "Nurse"), or otherwise dying in the nearby Salem witch hysteria. Some were of a closely related Farley (Benjamin?). His wife, a midwife, so often out alone late at night, was threatened with whipping, after becoming the victim of rape.
They went to a frontier end of a once much larger Middlesex County , to a part that was to become the southmost counties of New Hampshire. (The shift in courthouses later caused some old NH records to stay at the Middlesex courthouse. Also meaning several locations to check, some old towns were spit down the middle, killing their church, as the congregation remaining on either side was too small to pay a minister.)
Their last church in NH, in the town of Marlow, had been Congregationalist, denomination matching George's in Billerica, recently becoming part of the UCC.
How did the Michigan-bound branch of the Farleys become Methodist? Many former Puritans became that, often explained by going "out west" early, to rural places with hamlets too small to support an educated minister. Mor e could be served if hamlets shared a minister, ministers moving around, here one Sunday, over there the next Sunday. That was definitely true in Geauga County, Ohio, as the War of 1812 ended, a "Shadrack Rourke" circulating earlier for people not wanting to be married by a JP.
The Wesleyans had begun as part of the Church of England, some extreme ones kicked out, others more moderate in a prayer society that endorsed plainness. That ended once clearly no longer a part of the Church of England, post-Revolution, post-King. (Using horses instead of canoes, those circulating essentially copied what the former Jesuits did earlier, rotating place-to-place. ) The children of the "circuit-riding"ministers one grown complained that their fathers were almost never home, so the circuit-riding practice stopped eventually. However, people served had been grateful, so converted.
Sociologists studying religion say the mother usually determines the child's faith, so marriage also was a factor. Some married Baptists, when Cupid shot an arrow in that direction. They had been in places with the Church of the Latter Day Saints ("Mormons") still forming. Deciding what their religion should be, many belonging came out early against polygamy, including the brother, wife and son of founder Joseph Smith. Like lived with like, causing branches to divide by geography.
Traces are seen across the Farley migration path, after leaving NH. One of that religion's founders (eventually polygamous) came from the county in Vermont where Amos Farley married Lucy Hall. That religion's next migrations included well-known Kirtland, Ohio, where Amos Farley was of record hired to do public service carpentry, in the years when the Kirtland Temple was built. After that, Michigan was a less well-known stop, maybe just for some, the non-polygamous.
Some, not all, were on the way to Nauvoo, at Illinois's westmost edge. Some were then to Missouri and/or Iowa, maybe via Wisconsin, and, finally, many paths converged on Salt Lake in Utah. Again, not all approved of that era's polygamy. At least one of their women chose a Farley, a descendant of Amos Farley the junior (buried at Salt Lake?).
THE DISPUTED GEORGE. George Farley had a too-common surname and too common first name. While being his remembered for leadership was justified, some descendants pursued a charming fairy tale with rhymes, claiming that all Farleys came from a castle called Falaise.
What Farleys came early, in George's era?
Some Farleys close-by, northward, were most likely to be related, but maybe not. They were millers. The miller Farleys were sent to that north end of the mas. colony, a part that later was included in Maine, in 1820. They'd been sent by Lord Saltonstall (of Halifax, in north England?).
A different set of Colonists called Farley, considerably further away, in coastal north Virginia.
Their moderns had a detailed tree, but never claimed the MA Farleys were related. Their immigrant father owned well-located land, with some known relatives of his wife, said to be royal-connected, though not obviously (someone in the line was illegitimate).She had relatives early in nearby Maryland, who were Catholic. Those Farleys had normal descendants, some going through W. VA to south Ohio. However, a tailor and a miller would be occupations too low in social class for those first in Virginia.
DNA tests of their modern Farley descendants, for both the Virginians and the Massachusetts millers, proved they were unrelated.
The other George Farleys confused with Billerica's George? It was easier to be confused if the other George Farley was cited in books. What might put them in books? One of the Virginians was easier to admire, hung for leadership in Bacon's Rebellion. One impossible to admire was hung in England for what he did in secret, to his wife.
More modern Farleys arrived later, mid-1800s onward, mostly Catholics from Ireland; only a few were Protestants from England. Analyze the surname.
A "-ley" has to do with "the lay of the land", in particular, a wood-side meadow,. The type of meadow is given by the meaning of "Far-". In some places, Farley meant a pasture used for sheep. In other places, Farley meant a meadow with ferns, beautiful, a sign of springs present . (Look at FamilyTreeDna.com for "surname studies", these partition a surname into related and unrelated DNAs, often sponsored by the involved families.)
Another immigrant was George's wife. She was called Christian (a non-English version of Christine). Christian's ethnicity one most likely arriving without a surname, maybe Dutch, maybe from what became Belgium, Scandinavian, etc.
Asked which of several called Christian she might be, she most likely said she was her widowed mother's, her father said to have died aboard ship on the way to the colonies. Her widowed mother's first name thus became Christian's last name. It was some form of Bietres, similar to Beatrice in English, misread as Births by someone long ago checking old records, to publish a book of records, from them.
The last Ebenezer Farleys in MIchigan were Bethuel's older brother and his son. The elder brother was called Capt. Ebenezer, as he was a steamboat captain on the long St. Joseph River, able to go beyond its mouth on big Lake Michigan and make contact with Chicago on the opposite shore. That business would clearly die as new-fangled trains came in. Trains would soon go around Lake Michigan's south end, where they lived, to carry farmers' produce and passengers to Chicago by land.
Trains were not yet common, not yet using standard-sized tracks, had not yet crossed the Miss. River, would not go to California for some time. Travel there was done old ways. If in a group, it was by wagon train or by ship. Ship passengers made their Atlantic-to-Pacific connection by crossing at the Panama Isthmus, no modern Panama Canal there then.
Capt. Ebenezer, son of Amos the senior, looking for a new occupation, was said to organize a wagon train there. They were in time for the gold rush, any early money earned useful to buy his orchard land south of the San Fran Bay. How quickly did it become better to sell fruit to the miners? Especially once the easily found gold was gone?
Suggesting gold money had been made, a descendant became a banker, banks then using gold-based currency. In-law A. French bought a hotel, probably the A. French who'd served as a legislator while temporarily up at a mining camp outside of Sacramento. He'd been a miller/distiller back in Michigan, the same occupations seen for Jacob French when back in Ohio, living close to the Farleys, in next-door townships. He'd brought with him a second wife, called Nancy French when they married, so maybe also widowed, and a son or two surnamed French, seen in Michigan censuses. He sponsored big political meetings at his hotel south of the Bay, apparently liked horseracing. The journalist writing his obituary said he was called the "King of Milpitas" after a racehorse of that name, but due to his sponsoring political meetings. The journalist sadly used Mr. French's obituary to describe the man, said zero about his family, did not mention the burial place. French was said to be a Democrat. Democrats from Michigan with New England backgrounds were adamantly anti-slavery, willing to enlist when Republican Abraham Lincoln asked for that. The hotelkeeper had a Climena French boarding, listed with other guests, after his own family, in the 1860 US Census. Not stated was that she was a teacher, to marry a fellow teacher and future school superintendent ,Samuel Shearer. Her brother was Civil War veteran, Ebenezer French, his Civil War stone in California still standing. His mother was a Farley, daughter of Amos, sister to the captain, not to be left out of Ebenezer lineage.
She had two sons survive the Civil War, the one to California worked his way up to Capt., was wounded several times, yet re-enlisted. He was damaged enough to shorten his lifespan. He worked as a printer in San Jose before he died, seen in lists registering to vote, something not allowed to his sisters or mother, who surely had opinions. He was apparently denied a pension, as unable to prove his identity (early Michigan, like Ohio, recorded marriages, but not births). A Civil War stone is found for him in a cemetery south of the Bay (at Mountain VIew?).
His and Climena's mother was Rebecca Farley, born in Stanstead, Canada, to Amos and Lucy. She'd married former Ohio-neighbor Ransom French once done in Berrien County, MI (at the river-mouth town of St Joseph?).
Both Rebecca Farley and spouse Ransom French were said to have come with their parents. That was written in an old book on Berrien County, in a biography for/by their other son to go to the Civil War, married to his first wife at the time, A. O. French. He was a farmer and former peach orchardist.
Like his cousin Bethuel Farley, A. O French long stayed in Berrien County, farming, when everyone else moved, mostly to California. "They never came back", one could almost hear hitears hitting the page as he wrote his biography.
To die too quickly out in California--His close-in-age sister Climena, a young mother at the time, their mother Rebecca Farley French, and war-damaged ex-soldier Ebenezer French, only the last with a stone surviving.
Again, the brother of Rebecca Farley French was Capt. Ebenezer Farley. After Ransom died, she and her younger children not off to California lived with those Farley relatives still in Berrien County, apparently dis so until her youngest died, Olive French, post Civil War.
The maiden surnname of Lucy Hall is too common to research that side well. A younger Ebenezer Farley would write a book covering best the set of Farleys off to California, asking other relatives to send information. It was reasonably accurate, except for one thing. The author remembering a child's bedtime story, the type a school teacher would devise, as it had a rhyme, matching Farley to Falaise, so children hearing it would remember the story.
The family author thought the story was factual, so suggested a trail of descendants leading from the castle to George. Farley of Billerica. When more things by volunteers were online, a genealogist in England said her ancestor with possible castle connections seemed to match George Farley of Billerica, but they were not the same George Farley. So sorry , people! Her emphasized her George Farley remained in England, did not leave. She said she could show people the grave location if they wished.
He was the reasonable George Farley suspected of being a match. Less reasonable, but also
proposed were two others.
One George Farley was hung for his role in Bacon's Rebellion. He was a George of the Virginians, said to be very good at math. A son he had arranged to be sent to the Virginia colony to live with him was put into a wrongful indenture, arranged by the boy's ship captain. The Virginian George had that huge pain, but also other grievances, so joined Bacon's Rebellion,became a leader locally. That rebellion predicted the American Revolution? The anger over child indenture predicted the end of slavery? (As many as half of the children sent to early Virginia under indenture were said to die before their contracts finished, normally at age 14 or after seven years. Some were kidnapped into indenture. Was that the Virginian George's view of what happened to his son? Some were "sold" to pay off parents' debts, real or imagined. Was that the ship captain's view? (The captain demanded far more than the original ticket cost, which had already been paid, and George could not pay the extra.)
After a large number of deaths of indentured, a set found death resistant was brought over, in increasing numbers. We moderns know they were malaria-resistant, suffered from something else. A warning of the Civil War to come, those employers who valued their own freedom, but not that of others, used contracts and laws to turn temporary indenture, bad enough, into something worse, indenture for life, hereditary, also called slavery. Congregations gave themselves rights many ministers had been calling immoral, had they only listened, instead of sending the "erring" ministers on their way, replaced by ministers trained to be "more agreeable". Three denominations had many churches in both locations. They would eventually split into north vs south over slavery, Baptist, Methodist and Presbyterian. Congregationalists in the north essentially decided to no longer send their well-educated ministers, the south not having been willing to build its own Harvard. Instead of dividing into north and south denominations, they pulled out of the south.
An earlier George Farley, of noble birth, but unsavory ideas, was hung in England. He was someone in their family the Virginia Farleys would not have liked. That unwelcome George Farley was executed, after turned in by his father-in-law. His unsavory acts? Imprisoning his wife in the cellar and torturing her there, her father wondering what had happened to her. Her father was high in social class, so his insistence on checking was heeded. The act was punished harshly. If she'd been more ordinary? We hope they'd check, too. The husband's name would not make its way into books.
written by JB, 2023, Jan.
I will be turning some Farley pages over to Todd M. He has been accurately researching the more recent generations, in the Michigan end, Bethuel's descendants the ones staying close to home. Bethuel's brother Daniel Farley had children locally, but he died young, his wife remarried, his children harder to track.
In Quebec province, most towns were French, but theirs was English-speaking. Many New Englanders had gone there, maybe not for long. When Amos and his still growing family left later, Jesse's family stayed behind.
Amos wanted to leave before he could be conscripted to serve "on the wrong side", for the British, in the War of 1812. Jesse was already conscripted by the British, surprising them all? Typically, near a war's beginning, young single men are recruited. By the end, fear of losing causes one or both sides to "strongly encourage", maybe force, married men with children to serve. (That was seen also in the US, in the Civil War and in the Revolution.)
They paid a visit "back home", to visit his aging father, named Ebenezer, and a younger brother left behind, named Bethuel, who remained in NH. Amos took his family westward, to Ohio's Lake Erie's shore and ultimately, further west and then south, to the Lake Michigan shore.
A second Bethuel Farley, father to Ivan, was thus born in NE Ohio, in what is now Lake County, not yet split off from its mother, Geauga County. (It separated in 1840, long after they'd left.) Cleveland was near, but they'd had more ties to Painesville. In 1825, a Canal was put through, from Cleveland, to the Ohio River southward. That shifted Great Lakes ship trade from Painesville to Cleveland.
Both places were on rivers feeding the Lake. However, Cleveland had noticeably more sickness, what moderns would guess was due to having more malaria-carrying mosquitoes, Painesville instead had more land higher up, its waters moving faster, with less of Cleveland's standing stagnant water that encouraged mosquitoes. The canal fixed that by causing waters to move.
An irony---Despite leaving that behind, his grandfather, once in Michigan, would die in a time when its lakeshore had numerous ague cases and related deaths (malaria)
The uncle Bethuel left behind in the old hometown, Marlowe, NH, to care for their parents, never needed to leave, as he had invented something. He lacke their father's curse, being one of too many Farleys named Ebenezer Farley, so his tracks in records are clear. Uncle Bethuel was college-educated, an inventor of a vegetable-based ink resistant to freezing. The resulting factory kept the hometown of Marlow alive, when other small places died.
Ebenezer was a biblicalname, like Amos, used in Puritan times. Later, "Eben" became the modern nickname.
The first Ebenezer Farley dated back to the son born in Woburn MA, to George and Christian. Family not yet finished, the parents then moved further into the wilderness, with Christian's sister's family, and some others. Finding a place already cleared.
They did not say to themselves, "Who cleared this? Why are they not living here, at this minute?"
They would start a new town called Billerica. Billerica would be prone to attack when natives returned, apparently practicing what some college professors would call "transhumance", rotating across locations with the seasons, hunting up in the hills , farming and fishing down by some key steams where they'd cleared spots. Spots were rotated, resting the ground seen as a way to increase fertility.
Both sets would have been surprised to encounter each other. Both would beangry, worried the fruits of their hard work might go to someone else.
At one point, George and youngest son Timothy would arrange a meeting to talk about a peaceful settlement, if possible. They rode horseback, on the way. Once as far as what is now Worcester County, Mass., they were ambushed, culprits not known, but stopping the meeting. Timothy died.
Hysteria followed, with the drastic re-actions that hysteria brings. Overall, choosing dangerous locations, then hoping that threats and prayer and guns would solve it all was not the best strategy This native hysteria occurred around the same time as did the witch hysteria over in Salem. An in-law named Toothacre, with her nine-year old daughter and her accused husband, were incarcerated separately. Torture caused many to confess to things they had not done, hanging viewed as desirable, simply to get the otherwise never-ending torture to stop. Maybe the child could be plied more kindly with cookies, convinced to say both parents were witches?
The officials tried to get the wife to renounce her baptism as an adult. She refused. She did say she'd hoped her baptism would remove her fear of natives attacking. She admitted that the fear remained. Her husband died in prison, not murdered, yet his body "abused". The two surviving were released. (Said to live in a particularly poor location, the wife and daughter did indeed die in an attack later.)
The Farleys' first immigrants included George Farley (English, maybe a tailor at some point, definitely a farmer). He had one of the "garrison houses" at Billerica, thick stone, where people could gather if attacked. (The Farley house was renamed as the Jaquith house later. A share in it passed to a female Farley, who married Mr Jaquith. They were asked to care for some orphaned young Farleys who also owned shares. When the Farleys began leaving Billerica, her Jaquith spouse bought out the others' shares, giving some Farley grandsons "seed money" to move away.
Some in the Ebenezer line went to NH. Those in the Caleb line split up, some to what became NH, other left for what became NJ. Two served in the Revolution (on the Delaware R?) The NJ settlers were burnt out in the Revolution, forcing th two soldiers to ultimately follow Fisher in-laws to Penn.)
The first Ebenezer's and first Caleb's father was the George Farley early to Billerica The first Caleb and first Ebenezer born back in Woburn, before going to help found Billerica. Their father George helped found the town-owned church, a "meeting house" with space for town halls to meet and space for the one permitted church to meet.
Over a century later, the Billerica congregation voted to became Congregational. Everyone voted, not just elected elders, as Presbyterians would do, that being the Congregational's main difference. (Post-Revolution, with religious freedom, no King could any longer dictate church membership. Denominations were then declared and named. Before then, a town shared a church, had a covenant for prospective members to sign, saying what they agreed upon, if wanting to be a voting member. The terms could be almost anything, ranging from promises to pay for a teacher or minister, to some statements of Calvinist belief in pre-destination or the alternative of universal free will and acceptance, to statements of tolerance. What was agreed was not always public.
One town reportedly voted to execute anyone who disagreed with their beliefs. A British official, adding a "balance of power", chose to overrule them.
Parents who were infant baptizers essentially promised at the child's welcoming ceremony to take the child to church and otherwise raise them religiously. George was that, infants listed with parents named alongside was a regular thing for the Farleys, but the records at safer Woburn were more complete than at later, attacked Billerica.
George was thus not a Baptist, as some alleged. However, he strongly supported religious freedom for a Baptist neighbor. ("Baptist" meant an agreement that only adults be baptized, not leaving the choice to families. That aspect of religion is ethnic. The reliable infant-baptizers generally came from Scotland and northern England. The adult baptizers' prior geography instead was often Welsh or from other parts of Britain or Europe, not random spots, but those with "Holy Wells" and other medicinal waters called "Baths". Boric acid in some place cleared up blindness due to pink eye. Other waters had sulfur, anti-bacterial, useful for skin infections.)
George signed something to the effect that he wanted freedom of religion. He was fined for missing his own church service one Sunday, as he'd gone to a neighbor's Baptist service (down in Boston?), maybe to see what it was like.
Due to George being a King's name, not in the bible, his name was not re-used for his descendants. Repeating a name repeatedly was reserved for the Ebenezers and the Calebs.
A later Ebenezer Farley left Billerica, not alone. A large number moved close together in time, with siblings and cousins and neighbors.
They had reasons. Some descended of people hung (a female victim surnamed "Nurse"), or otherwise dying in the nearby Salem witch hysteria. Some were of a closely related Farley (Benjamin?). His wife, a midwife, so often out alone late at night, was threatened with whipping, after becoming the victim of rape.
They went to a frontier end of a once much larger Middlesex County , to a part that was to become the southmost counties of New Hampshire. (The shift in courthouses later caused some old NH records to stay at the Middlesex courthouse. Also meaning several locations to check, some old towns were spit down the middle, killing their church, as the congregation remaining on either side was too small to pay a minister.)
Their last church in NH, in the town of Marlow, had been Congregationalist, denomination matching George's in Billerica, recently becoming part of the UCC.
How did the Michigan-bound branch of the Farleys become Methodist? Many former Puritans became that, often explained by going "out west" early, to rural places with hamlets too small to support an educated minister. Mor e could be served if hamlets shared a minister, ministers moving around, here one Sunday, over there the next Sunday. That was definitely true in Geauga County, Ohio, as the War of 1812 ended, a "Shadrack Rourke" circulating earlier for people not wanting to be married by a JP.
The Wesleyans had begun as part of the Church of England, some extreme ones kicked out, others more moderate in a prayer society that endorsed plainness. That ended once clearly no longer a part of the Church of England, post-Revolution, post-King. (Using horses instead of canoes, those circulating essentially copied what the former Jesuits did earlier, rotating place-to-place. ) The children of the "circuit-riding"ministers one grown complained that their fathers were almost never home, so the circuit-riding practice stopped eventually. However, people served had been grateful, so converted.
Sociologists studying religion say the mother usually determines the child's faith, so marriage also was a factor. Some married Baptists, when Cupid shot an arrow in that direction. They had been in places with the Church of the Latter Day Saints ("Mormons") still forming. Deciding what their religion should be, many belonging came out early against polygamy, including the brother, wife and son of founder Joseph Smith. Like lived with like, causing branches to divide by geography.
Traces are seen across the Farley migration path, after leaving NH. One of that religion's founders (eventually polygamous) came from the county in Vermont where Amos Farley married Lucy Hall. That religion's next migrations included well-known Kirtland, Ohio, where Amos Farley was of record hired to do public service carpentry, in the years when the Kirtland Temple was built. After that, Michigan was a less well-known stop, maybe just for some, the non-polygamous.
Some, not all, were on the way to Nauvoo, at Illinois's westmost edge. Some were then to Missouri and/or Iowa, maybe via Wisconsin, and, finally, many paths converged on Salt Lake in Utah. Again, not all approved of that era's polygamy. At least one of their women chose a Farley, a descendant of Amos Farley the junior (buried at Salt Lake?).
THE DISPUTED GEORGE. George Farley had a too-common surname and too common first name. While being his remembered for leadership was justified, some descendants pursued a charming fairy tale with rhymes, claiming that all Farleys came from a castle called Falaise.
What Farleys came early, in George's era?
Some Farleys close-by, northward, were most likely to be related, but maybe not. They were millers. The miller Farleys were sent to that north end of the mas. colony, a part that later was included in Maine, in 1820. They'd been sent by Lord Saltonstall (of Halifax, in north England?).
A different set of Colonists called Farley, considerably further away, in coastal north Virginia.
Their moderns had a detailed tree, but never claimed the MA Farleys were related. Their immigrant father owned well-located land, with some known relatives of his wife, said to be royal-connected, though not obviously (someone in the line was illegitimate).She had relatives early in nearby Maryland, who were Catholic. Those Farleys had normal descendants, some going through W. VA to south Ohio. However, a tailor and a miller would be occupations too low in social class for those first in Virginia.
DNA tests of their modern Farley descendants, for both the Virginians and the Massachusetts millers, proved they were unrelated.
The other George Farleys confused with Billerica's George? It was easier to be confused if the other George Farley was cited in books. What might put them in books? One of the Virginians was easier to admire, hung for leadership in Bacon's Rebellion. One impossible to admire was hung in England for what he did in secret, to his wife.
More modern Farleys arrived later, mid-1800s onward, mostly Catholics from Ireland; only a few were Protestants from England. Analyze the surname.
A "-ley" has to do with "the lay of the land", in particular, a wood-side meadow,. The type of meadow is given by the meaning of "Far-". In some places, Farley meant a pasture used for sheep. In other places, Farley meant a meadow with ferns, beautiful, a sign of springs present . (Look at FamilyTreeDna.com for "surname studies", these partition a surname into related and unrelated DNAs, often sponsored by the involved families.)
Another immigrant was George's wife. She was called Christian (a non-English version of Christine). Christian's ethnicity one most likely arriving without a surname, maybe Dutch, maybe from what became Belgium, Scandinavian, etc.
Asked which of several called Christian she might be, she most likely said she was her widowed mother's, her father said to have died aboard ship on the way to the colonies. Her widowed mother's first name thus became Christian's last name. It was some form of Bietres, similar to Beatrice in English, misread as Births by someone long ago checking old records, to publish a book of records, from them.
The last Ebenezer Farleys in MIchigan were Bethuel's older brother and his son. The elder brother was called Capt. Ebenezer, as he was a steamboat captain on the long St. Joseph River, able to go beyond its mouth on big Lake Michigan and make contact with Chicago on the opposite shore. That business would clearly die as new-fangled trains came in. Trains would soon go around Lake Michigan's south end, where they lived, to carry farmers' produce and passengers to Chicago by land.
Trains were not yet common, not yet using standard-sized tracks, had not yet crossed the Miss. River, would not go to California for some time. Travel there was done old ways. If in a group, it was by wagon train or by ship. Ship passengers made their Atlantic-to-Pacific connection by crossing at the Panama Isthmus, no modern Panama Canal there then.
Capt. Ebenezer, son of Amos the senior, looking for a new occupation, was said to organize a wagon train there. They were in time for the gold rush, any early money earned useful to buy his orchard land south of the San Fran Bay. How quickly did it become better to sell fruit to the miners? Especially once the easily found gold was gone?
Suggesting gold money had been made, a descendant became a banker, banks then using gold-based currency. In-law A. French bought a hotel, probably the A. French who'd served as a legislator while temporarily up at a mining camp outside of Sacramento. He'd been a miller/distiller back in Michigan, the same occupations seen for Jacob French when back in Ohio, living close to the Farleys, in next-door townships. He'd brought with him a second wife, called Nancy French when they married, so maybe also widowed, and a son or two surnamed French, seen in Michigan censuses. He sponsored big political meetings at his hotel south of the Bay, apparently liked horseracing. The journalist writing his obituary said he was called the "King of Milpitas" after a racehorse of that name, but due to his sponsoring political meetings. The journalist sadly used Mr. French's obituary to describe the man, said zero about his family, did not mention the burial place. French was said to be a Democrat. Democrats from Michigan with New England backgrounds were adamantly anti-slavery, willing to enlist when Republican Abraham Lincoln asked for that. The hotelkeeper had a Climena French boarding, listed with other guests, after his own family, in the 1860 US Census. Not stated was that she was a teacher, to marry a fellow teacher and future school superintendent ,Samuel Shearer. Her brother was Civil War veteran, Ebenezer French, his Civil War stone in California still standing. His mother was a Farley, daughter of Amos, sister to the captain, not to be left out of Ebenezer lineage.
She had two sons survive the Civil War, the one to California worked his way up to Capt., was wounded several times, yet re-enlisted. He was damaged enough to shorten his lifespan. He worked as a printer in San Jose before he died, seen in lists registering to vote, something not allowed to his sisters or mother, who surely had opinions. He was apparently denied a pension, as unable to prove his identity (early Michigan, like Ohio, recorded marriages, but not births). A Civil War stone is found for him in a cemetery south of the Bay (at Mountain VIew?).
His and Climena's mother was Rebecca Farley, born in Stanstead, Canada, to Amos and Lucy. She'd married former Ohio-neighbor Ransom French once done in Berrien County, MI (at the river-mouth town of St Joseph?).
Both Rebecca Farley and spouse Ransom French were said to have come with their parents. That was written in an old book on Berrien County, in a biography for/by their other son to go to the Civil War, married to his first wife at the time, A. O. French. He was a farmer and former peach orchardist.
Like his cousin Bethuel Farley, A. O French long stayed in Berrien County, farming, when everyone else moved, mostly to California. "They never came back", one could almost hear hitears hitting the page as he wrote his biography.
To die too quickly out in California--His close-in-age sister Climena, a young mother at the time, their mother Rebecca Farley French, and war-damaged ex-soldier Ebenezer French, only the last with a stone surviving.
Again, the brother of Rebecca Farley French was Capt. Ebenezer Farley. After Ransom died, she and her younger children not off to California lived with those Farley relatives still in Berrien County, apparently dis so until her youngest died, Olive French, post Civil War.
The maiden surnname of Lucy Hall is too common to research that side well. A younger Ebenezer Farley would write a book covering best the set of Farleys off to California, asking other relatives to send information. It was reasonably accurate, except for one thing. The author remembering a child's bedtime story, the type a school teacher would devise, as it had a rhyme, matching Farley to Falaise, so children hearing it would remember the story.
The family author thought the story was factual, so suggested a trail of descendants leading from the castle to George. Farley of Billerica. When more things by volunteers were online, a genealogist in England said her ancestor with possible castle connections seemed to match George Farley of Billerica, but they were not the same George Farley. So sorry , people! Her emphasized her George Farley remained in England, did not leave. She said she could show people the grave location if they wished.
He was the reasonable George Farley suspected of being a match. Less reasonable, but also
proposed were two others.
One George Farley was hung for his role in Bacon's Rebellion. He was a George of the Virginians, said to be very good at math. A son he had arranged to be sent to the Virginia colony to live with him was put into a wrongful indenture, arranged by the boy's ship captain. The Virginian George had that huge pain, but also other grievances, so joined Bacon's Rebellion,became a leader locally. That rebellion predicted the American Revolution? The anger over child indenture predicted the end of slavery? (As many as half of the children sent to early Virginia under indenture were said to die before their contracts finished, normally at age 14 or after seven years. Some were kidnapped into indenture. Was that the Virginian George's view of what happened to his son? Some were "sold" to pay off parents' debts, real or imagined. Was that the ship captain's view? (The captain demanded far more than the original ticket cost, which had already been paid, and George could not pay the extra.)
After a large number of deaths of indentured, a set found death resistant was brought over, in increasing numbers. We moderns know they were malaria-resistant, suffered from something else. A warning of the Civil War to come, those employers who valued their own freedom, but not that of others, used contracts and laws to turn temporary indenture, bad enough, into something worse, indenture for life, hereditary, also called slavery. Congregations gave themselves rights many ministers had been calling immoral, had they only listened, instead of sending the "erring" ministers on their way, replaced by ministers trained to be "more agreeable". Three denominations had many churches in both locations. They would eventually split into north vs south over slavery, Baptist, Methodist and Presbyterian. Congregationalists in the north essentially decided to no longer send their well-educated ministers, the south not having been willing to build its own Harvard. Instead of dividing into north and south denominations, they pulled out of the south.
An earlier George Farley, of noble birth, but unsavory ideas, was hung in England. He was someone in their family the Virginia Farleys would not have liked. That unwelcome George Farley was executed, after turned in by his father-in-law. His unsavory acts? Imprisoning his wife in the cellar and torturing her there, her father wondering what had happened to her. Her father was high in social class, so his insistence on checking was heeded. The act was punished harshly. If she'd been more ordinary? We hope they'd check, too. The husband's name would not make its way into books.
written by JB, 2023, Jan.
I will be turning some Farley pages over to Todd M. He has been accurately researching the more recent generations, in the Michigan end, Bethuel's descendants the ones staying close to home. Bethuel's brother Daniel Farley had children locally, but he died young, his wife remarried, his children harder to track.
Thank you to Kathy Fournier Jilson, for photographing the Farleys' and others' stones at Rose Hill Cem. See Ivan's ancestor, Amos Farley, and some of his children's pages, for stories. A quick overview is this: All New Englanders, Amos was NH-born, married his wife, the former Lucy Hall, about when his brother, Jesse Farley, married her sister, Mehitable Hall. The two couples took their first children, born in south Vermont, northward to Stanstead, a border town partly in Canada. Some people had houses right on the international line, as the one town was in two countries, with the Farleys were on the Quebec side. The brothers were there to run a stone-quarrying business.
In Quebec province, most towns were French, but theirs was English-speaking. Many New Englanders had gone there, maybe not for long. When Amos and his still growing family left later, Jesse's family stayed behind.
Amos wanted to leave before he could be conscripted to serve "on the wrong side", for the British, in the War of 1812. Jesse was already conscripted by the British, surprising them all? Typically, near a war's beginning, young single men are recruited. By the end, fear of losing causes one or both sides to "strongly encourage", maybe force, married men with children to serve. (That was seen also in the US, in the Civil War and in the Revolution.)
They paid a visit "back home", to visit his aging father, named Ebenezer, and a younger brother left behind, named Bethuel, who remained in NH. Amos took his family westward, to Ohio's Lake Erie's shore and ultimately, further west and then south, to the Lake Michigan shore.
A second Bethuel Farley, father to Ivan, was thus born in NE Ohio, in what is now Lake County, not yet split off from its mother, Geauga County. (It separated in 1840, long after they'd left.) Cleveland was near, but they'd had more ties to Painesville. In 1825, a Canal was put through, from Cleveland, to the Ohio River southward. That shifted Great Lakes ship trade from Painesville to Cleveland.
Both places were on rivers feeding the Lake. However, Cleveland had noticeably more sickness, what moderns would guess was due to having more malaria-carrying mosquitoes, Painesville instead had more land higher up, its waters moving faster, with less of Cleveland's standing stagnant water that encouraged mosquitoes. The canal fixed that by causing waters to move.
An irony---Despite leaving that behind, his grandfather, once in Michigan, would die in a time when its lakeshore had numerous ague cases and related deaths (malaria)
The uncle Bethuel left behind in the old hometown, Marlowe, NH, to care for their parents, never needed to leave, as he had invented something. He lacke their father's curse, being one of too many Farleys named Ebenezer Farley, so his tracks in records are clear. Uncle Bethuel was college-educated, an inventor of a vegetable-based ink resistant to freezing. The resulting factory kept the hometown of Marlow alive, when other small places died.
Ebenezer was a biblicalname, like Amos, used in Puritan times. Later, "Eben" became the modern nickname.
The first Ebenezer Farley dated back to the son born in Woburn MA, to George and Christian. Family not yet finished, the parents then moved further into the wilderness, with Christian's sister's family, and some others. Finding a place already cleared.
They did not say to themselves, "Who cleared this? Why are they not living here, at this minute?"
They would start a new town called Billerica. Billerica would be prone to attack when natives returned, apparently practicing what some college professors would call "transhumance", rotating across locations with the seasons, hunting up in the hills , farming and fishing down by some key steams where they'd cleared spots. Spots were rotated, resting the ground seen as a way to increase fertility.
Both sets would have been surprised to encounter each other. Both would beangry, worried the fruits of their hard work might go to someone else.
At one point, George and youngest son Timothy would arrange a meeting to talk about a peaceful settlement, if possible. They rode horseback, on the way. Once as far as what is now Worcester County, Mass., they were ambushed, culprits not known, but stopping the meeting. Timothy died.
Hysteria followed, with the drastic re-actions that hysteria brings. Overall, choosing dangerous locations, then hoping that threats and prayer and guns would solve it all was not the best strategy This native hysteria occurred around the same time as did the witch hysteria over in Salem. An in-law named Toothacre, with her nine-year old daughter and her accused husband, were incarcerated separately. Torture caused many to confess to things they had not done, hanging viewed as desirable, simply to get the otherwise never-ending torture to stop. Maybe the child could be plied more kindly with cookies, convinced to say both parents were witches?
The officials tried to get the wife to renounce her baptism as an adult. She refused. She did say she'd hoped her baptism would remove her fear of natives attacking. She admitted that the fear remained. Her husband died in prison, not murdered, yet his body "abused". The two surviving were released. (Said to live in a particularly poor location, the wife and daughter did indeed die in an attack later.)
The Farleys' first immigrants included George Farley (English, maybe a tailor at some point, definitely a farmer). He had one of the "garrison houses" at Billerica, thick stone, where people could gather if attacked. (The Farley house was renamed as the Jaquith house later. A share in it passed to a female Farley, who married Mr Jaquith. They were asked to care for some orphaned young Farleys who also owned shares. When the Farleys began leaving Billerica, her Jaquith spouse bought out the others' shares, giving some Farley grandsons "seed money" to move away.
Some in the Ebenezer line went to NH. Those in the Caleb line split up, some to what became NH, other left for what became NJ. Two served in the Revolution (on the Delaware R?) The NJ settlers were burnt out in the Revolution, forcing th two soldiers to ultimately follow Fisher in-laws to Penn.)
The first Ebenezer's and first Caleb's father was the George Farley early to Billerica The first Caleb and first Ebenezer born back in Woburn, before going to help found Billerica. Their father George helped found the town-owned church, a "meeting house" with space for town halls to meet and space for the one permitted church to meet.
Over a century later, the Billerica congregation voted to became Congregational. Everyone voted, not just elected elders, as Presbyterians would do, that being the Congregational's main difference. (Post-Revolution, with religious freedom, no King could any longer dictate church membership. Denominations were then declared and named. Before then, a town shared a church, had a covenant for prospective members to sign, saying what they agreed upon, if wanting to be a voting member. The terms could be almost anything, ranging from promises to pay for a teacher or minister, to some statements of Calvinist belief in pre-destination or the alternative of universal free will and acceptance, to statements of tolerance. What was agreed was not always public.
One town reportedly voted to execute anyone who disagreed with their beliefs. A British official, adding a "balance of power", chose to overrule them.
Parents who were infant baptizers essentially promised at the child's welcoming ceremony to take the child to church and otherwise raise them religiously. George was that, infants listed with parents named alongside was a regular thing for the Farleys, but the records at safer Woburn were more complete than at later, attacked Billerica.
George was thus not a Baptist, as some alleged. However, he strongly supported religious freedom for a Baptist neighbor. ("Baptist" meant an agreement that only adults be baptized, not leaving the choice to families. That aspect of religion is ethnic. The reliable infant-baptizers generally came from Scotland and northern England. The adult baptizers' prior geography instead was often Welsh or from other parts of Britain or Europe, not random spots, but those with "Holy Wells" and other medicinal waters called "Baths". Boric acid in some place cleared up blindness due to pink eye. Other waters had sulfur, anti-bacterial, useful for skin infections.)
George signed something to the effect that he wanted freedom of religion. He was fined for missing his own church service one Sunday, as he'd gone to a neighbor's Baptist service (down in Boston?), maybe to see what it was like.
Due to George being a King's name, not in the bible, his name was not re-used for his descendants. Repeating a name repeatedly was reserved for the Ebenezers and the Calebs.
A later Ebenezer Farley left Billerica, not alone. A large number moved close together in time, with siblings and cousins and neighbors.
They had reasons. Some descended of people hung (a female victim surnamed "Nurse"), or otherwise dying in the nearby Salem witch hysteria. Some were of a closely related Farley (Benjamin?). His wife, a midwife, so often out alone late at night, was threatened with whipping, after becoming the victim of rape.
They went to a frontier end of a once much larger Middlesex County , to a part that was to become the southmost counties of New Hampshire. (The shift in courthouses later caused some old NH records to stay at the Middlesex courthouse. Also meaning several locations to check, some old towns were spit down the middle, killing their church, as the congregation remaining on either side was too small to pay a minister.)
Their last church in NH, in the town of Marlow, had been Congregationalist, denomination matching George's in Billerica, recently becoming part of the UCC.
How did the Michigan-bound branch of the Farleys become Methodist? Many former Puritans became that, often explained by going "out west" early, to rural places with hamlets too small to support an educated minister. Mor e could be served if hamlets shared a minister, ministers moving around, here one Sunday, over there the next Sunday. That was definitely true in Geauga County, Ohio, as the War of 1812 ended, a "Shadrack Rourke" circulating earlier for people not wanting to be married by a JP.
The Wesleyans had begun as part of the Church of England, some extreme ones kicked out, others more moderate in a prayer society that endorsed plainness. That ended once clearly no longer a part of the Church of England, post-Revolution, post-King. (Using horses instead of canoes, those circulating essentially copied what the former Jesuits did earlier, rotating place-to-place. ) The children of the "circuit-riding"ministers one grown complained that their fathers were almost never home, so the circuit-riding practice stopped eventually. However, people served had been grateful, so converted.
Sociologists studying religion say the mother usually determines the child's faith, so marriage also was a factor. Some married Baptists, when Cupid shot an arrow in that direction. They had been in places with the Church of the Latter Day Saints ("Mormons") still forming. Deciding what their religion should be, many belonging came out early against polygamy, including the brother, wife and son of founder Joseph Smith. Like lived with like, causing branches to divide by geography.
Traces are seen across the Farley migration path, after leaving NH. One of that religion's founders (eventually polygamous) came from the county in Vermont where Amos Farley married Lucy Hall. That religion's next migrations included well-known Kirtland, Ohio, where Amos Farley was of record hired to do public service carpentry, in the years when the Kirtland Temple was built. After that, Michigan was a less well-known stop, maybe just for some, the non-polygamous.
Some, not all, were on the way to Nauvoo, at Illinois's westmost edge. Some were then to Missouri and/or Iowa, maybe via Wisconsin, and, finally, many paths converged on Salt Lake in Utah. Again, not all approved of that era's polygamy. At least one of their women chose a Farley, a descendant of Amos Farley the junior (buried at Salt Lake?).
THE DISPUTED GEORGE. George Farley had a too-common surname and too common first name. While being his remembered for leadership was justified, some descendants pursued a charming fairy tale with rhymes, claiming that all Farleys came from a castle called Falaise.
What Farleys came early, in George's era?
Some Farleys close-by, northward, were most likely to be related, but maybe not. They were millers. The miller Farleys were sent to that north end of the mas. colony, a part that later was included in Maine, in 1820. They'd been sent by Lord Saltonstall (of Halifax, in north England?).
A different set of Colonists called Farley, considerably further away, in coastal north Virginia.
Their moderns had a detailed tree, but never claimed the MA Farleys were related. Their immigrant father owned well-located land, with some known relatives of his wife, said to be royal-connected, though not obviously (someone in the line was illegitimate).She had relatives early in nearby Maryland, who were Catholic. Those Farleys had normal descendants, some going through W. VA to south Ohio. However, a tailor and a miller would be occupations too low in social class for those first in Virginia.
DNA tests of their modern Farley descendants, for both the Virginians and the Massachusetts millers, proved they were unrelated.
The other George Farleys confused with Billerica's George? It was easier to be confused if the other George Farley was cited in books. What might put them in books? One of the Virginians was easier to admire, hung for leadership in Bacon's Rebellion. One impossible to admire was hung in England for what he did in secret, to his wife.
More modern Farleys arrived later, mid-1800s onward, mostly Catholics from Ireland; only a few were Protestants from England. Analyze the surname.
A "-ley" has to do with "the lay of the land", in particular, a wood-side meadow,. The type of meadow is given by the meaning of "Far-". In some places, Farley meant a pasture used for sheep. In other places, Farley meant a meadow with ferns, beautiful, a sign of springs present . (Look at FamilyTreeDna.com for "surname studies", these partition a surname into related and unrelated DNAs, often sponsored by the involved families.)
Another immigrant was George's wife. She was called Christian (a non-English version of Christine). Christian's ethnicity one most likely arriving without a surname, maybe Dutch, maybe from what became Belgium, Scandinavian, etc.
Asked which of several called Christian she might be, she most likely said she was her widowed mother's, her father said to have died aboard ship on the way to the colonies. Her widowed mother's first name thus became Christian's last name. It was some form of Bietres, similar to Beatrice in English, misread as Births by someone long ago checking old records, to publish a book of records, from them.
The last Ebenezer Farleys in MIchigan were Bethuel's older brother and his son. The elder brother was called Capt. Ebenezer, as he was a steamboat captain on the long St. Joseph River, able to go beyond its mouth on big Lake Michigan and make contact with Chicago on the opposite shore. That business would clearly die as new-fangled trains came in. Trains would soon go around Lake Michigan's south end, where they lived, to carry farmers' produce and passengers to Chicago by land.
Trains were not yet common, not yet using standard-sized tracks, had not yet crossed the Miss. River, would not go to California for some time. Travel there was done old ways. If in a group, it was by wagon train or by ship. Ship passengers made their Atlantic-to-Pacific connection by crossing at the Panama Isthmus, no modern Panama Canal there then.
Capt. Ebenezer, son of Amos the senior, looking for a new occupation, was said to organize a wagon train there. They were in time for the gold rush, any early money earned useful to buy his orchard land south of the San Fran Bay. How quickly did it become better to sell fruit to the miners? Especially once the easily found gold was gone?
Suggesting gold money had been made, a descendant became a banker, banks then using gold-based currency. In-law A. French bought a hotel, probably the A. French who'd served as a legislator while temporarily up at a mining camp outside of Sacramento. He'd been a miller/distiller back in Michigan, the same occupations seen for Jacob French when back in Ohio, living close to the Farleys, in next-door townships. He'd brought with him a second wife, called Nancy French when they married, so maybe also widowed, and a son or two surnamed French, seen in Michigan censuses. He sponsored big political meetings at his hotel south of the Bay, apparently liked horseracing. The journalist writing his obituary said he was called the "King of Milpitas" after a racehorse of that name, but due to his sponsoring political meetings. The journalist sadly used Mr. French's obituary to describe the man, said zero about his family, did not mention the burial place. French was said to be a Democrat. Democrats from Michigan with New England backgrounds were adamantly anti-slavery, willing to enlist when Republican Abraham Lincoln asked for that. The hotelkeeper had a Climena French boarding, listed with other guests, after his own family, in the 1860 US Census. Not stated was that she was a teacher, to marry a fellow teacher and future school superintendent ,Samuel Shearer. Her brother was Civil War veteran, Ebenezer French, his Civil War stone in California still standing. His mother was a Farley, daughter of Amos, sister to the captain, not to be left out of Ebenezer lineage.
She had two sons survive the Civil War, the one to California worked his way up to Capt., was wounded several times, yet re-enlisted. He was damaged enough to shorten his lifespan. He worked as a printer in San Jose before he died, seen in lists registering to vote, something not allowed to his sisters or mother, who surely had opinions. He was apparently denied a pension, as unable to prove his identity (early Michigan, like Ohio, recorded marriages, but not births). A Civil War stone is found for him in a cemetery south of the Bay (at Mountain VIew?).
His and Climena's mother was Rebecca Farley, born in Stanstead, Canada, to Amos and Lucy. She'd married former Ohio-neighbor Ransom French once done in Berrien County, MI (at the river-mouth town of St Joseph?).
Both Rebecca Farley and spouse Ransom French were said to have come with their parents. That was written in an old book on Berrien County, in a biography for/by their other son to go to the Civil War, married to his first wife at the time, A. O. French. He was a farmer and former peach orchardist.
Like his cousin Bethuel Farley, A. O French long stayed in Berrien County, farming, when everyone else moved, mostly to California. "They never came back", one could almost hear hitears hitting the page as he wrote his biography.
To die too quickly out in California--His close-in-age sister Climena, a young mother at the time, their mother Rebecca Farley French, and war-damaged ex-soldier Ebenezer French, only the last with a stone surviving.
Again, the brother of Rebecca Farley French was Capt. Ebenezer Farley. After Ransom died, she and her younger children not off to California lived with those Farley relatives still in Berrien County, apparently dis so until her youngest died, Olive French, post Civil War.
The maiden surnname of Lucy Hall is too common to research that side well. A younger Ebenezer Farley would write a book covering best the set of Farleys off to California, asking other relatives to send information. It was reasonably accurate, except for one thing. The author remembering a child's bedtime story, the type a school teacher would devise, as it had a rhyme, matching Farley to Falaise, so children hearing it would remember the story.
The family author thought the story was factual, so suggested a trail of descendants leading from the castle to George. Farley of Billerica. When more things by volunteers were online, a genealogist in England said her ancestor with possible castle connections seemed to match George Farley of Billerica, but they were not the same George Farley. So sorry , people! Her emphasized her George Farley remained in England, did not leave. She said she could show people the grave location if they wished.
He was the reasonable George Farley suspected of being a match. Less reasonable, but also
proposed were two others.
One George Farley was hung for his role in Bacon's Rebellion. He was a George of the Virginians, said to be very good at math. A son he had arranged to be sent to the Virginia colony to live with him was put into a wrongful indenture, arranged by the boy's ship captain. The Virginian George had that huge pain, but also other grievances, so joined Bacon's Rebellion,became a leader locally. That rebellion predicted the American Revolution? The anger over child indenture predicted the end of slavery? (As many as half of the children sent to early Virginia under indenture were said to die before their contracts finished, normally at age 14 or after seven years. Some were kidnapped into indenture. Was that the Virginian George's view of what happened to his son? Some were "sold" to pay off parents' debts, real or imagined. Was that the ship captain's view? (The captain demanded far more than the original ticket cost, which had already been paid, and George could not pay the extra.)
After a large number of deaths of indentured, a set found death resistant was brought over, in increasing numbers. We moderns know they were malaria-resistant, suffered from something else. A warning of the Civil War to come, those employers who valued their own freedom, but not that of others, used contracts and laws to turn temporary indenture, bad enough, into something worse, indenture for life, hereditary, also called slavery. Congregations gave themselves rights many ministers had been calling immoral, had they only listened, instead of sending the "erring" ministers on their way, replaced by ministers trained to be "more agreeable". Three denominations had many churches in both locations. They would eventually split into north vs south over slavery, Baptist, Methodist and Presbyterian. Congregationalists in the north essentially decided to no longer send their well-educated ministers, the south not having been willing to build its own Harvard. Instead of dividing into north and south denominations, they pulled out of the south.
An earlier George Farley, of noble birth, but unsavory ideas, was hung in England. He was someone in their family the Virginia Farleys would not have liked. That unwelcome George Farley was executed, after turned in by his father-in-law. His unsavory acts? Imprisoning his wife in the cellar and torturing her there, her father wondering what had happened to her. Her father was high in social class, so his insistence on checking was heeded. The act was punished harshly. If she'd been more ordinary? We hope they'd check, too. The husband's name would not make its way into books.
written by JB, 2023, Jan.
I will be turning some Farley pages over to Todd M. He has been accurately researching the more recent generations, in the Michigan end, Bethuel's descendants the ones staying close to home. Bethuel's brother Daniel Farley had children locally, but he died young, his wife remarried, his children harder to track.
In Quebec province, most towns were French, but theirs was English-speaking. Many New Englanders had gone there, maybe not for long. When Amos and his still growing family left later, Jesse's family stayed behind.
Amos wanted to leave before he could be conscripted to serve "on the wrong side", for the British, in the War of 1812. Jesse was already conscripted by the British, surprising them all? Typically, near a war's beginning, young single men are recruited. By the end, fear of losing causes one or both sides to "strongly encourage", maybe force, married men with children to serve. (That was seen also in the US, in the Civil War and in the Revolution.)
They paid a visit "back home", to visit his aging father, named Ebenezer, and a younger brother left behind, named Bethuel, who remained in NH. Amos took his family westward, to Ohio's Lake Erie's shore and ultimately, further west and then south, to the Lake Michigan shore.
A second Bethuel Farley, father to Ivan, was thus born in NE Ohio, in what is now Lake County, not yet split off from its mother, Geauga County. (It separated in 1840, long after they'd left.) Cleveland was near, but they'd had more ties to Painesville. In 1825, a Canal was put through, from Cleveland, to the Ohio River southward. That shifted Great Lakes ship trade from Painesville to Cleveland.
Both places were on rivers feeding the Lake. However, Cleveland had noticeably more sickness, what moderns would guess was due to having more malaria-carrying mosquitoes, Painesville instead had more land higher up, its waters moving faster, with less of Cleveland's standing stagnant water that encouraged mosquitoes. The canal fixed that by causing waters to move.
An irony---Despite leaving that behind, his grandfather, once in Michigan, would die in a time when its lakeshore had numerous ague cases and related deaths (malaria)
The uncle Bethuel left behind in the old hometown, Marlowe, NH, to care for their parents, never needed to leave, as he had invented something. He lacke their father's curse, being one of too many Farleys named Ebenezer Farley, so his tracks in records are clear. Uncle Bethuel was college-educated, an inventor of a vegetable-based ink resistant to freezing. The resulting factory kept the hometown of Marlow alive, when other small places died.
Ebenezer was a biblicalname, like Amos, used in Puritan times. Later, "Eben" became the modern nickname.
The first Ebenezer Farley dated back to the son born in Woburn MA, to George and Christian. Family not yet finished, the parents then moved further into the wilderness, with Christian's sister's family, and some others. Finding a place already cleared.
They did not say to themselves, "Who cleared this? Why are they not living here, at this minute?"
They would start a new town called Billerica. Billerica would be prone to attack when natives returned, apparently practicing what some college professors would call "transhumance", rotating across locations with the seasons, hunting up in the hills , farming and fishing down by some key steams where they'd cleared spots. Spots were rotated, resting the ground seen as a way to increase fertility.
Both sets would have been surprised to encounter each other. Both would beangry, worried the fruits of their hard work might go to someone else.
At one point, George and youngest son Timothy would arrange a meeting to talk about a peaceful settlement, if possible. They rode horseback, on the way. Once as far as what is now Worcester County, Mass., they were ambushed, culprits not known, but stopping the meeting. Timothy died.
Hysteria followed, with the drastic re-actions that hysteria brings. Overall, choosing dangerous locations, then hoping that threats and prayer and guns would solve it all was not the best strategy This native hysteria occurred around the same time as did the witch hysteria over in Salem. An in-law named Toothacre, with her nine-year old daughter and her accused husband, were incarcerated separately. Torture caused many to confess to things they had not done, hanging viewed as desirable, simply to get the otherwise never-ending torture to stop. Maybe the child could be plied more kindly with cookies, convinced to say both parents were witches?
The officials tried to get the wife to renounce her baptism as an adult. She refused. She did say she'd hoped her baptism would remove her fear of natives attacking. She admitted that the fear remained. Her husband died in prison, not murdered, yet his body "abused". The two surviving were released. (Said to live in a particularly poor location, the wife and daughter did indeed die in an attack later.)
The Farleys' first immigrants included George Farley (English, maybe a tailor at some point, definitely a farmer). He had one of the "garrison houses" at Billerica, thick stone, where people could gather if attacked. (The Farley house was renamed as the Jaquith house later. A share in it passed to a female Farley, who married Mr Jaquith. They were asked to care for some orphaned young Farleys who also owned shares. When the Farleys began leaving Billerica, her Jaquith spouse bought out the others' shares, giving some Farley grandsons "seed money" to move away.
Some in the Ebenezer line went to NH. Those in the Caleb line split up, some to what became NH, other left for what became NJ. Two served in the Revolution (on the Delaware R?) The NJ settlers were burnt out in the Revolution, forcing th two soldiers to ultimately follow Fisher in-laws to Penn.)
The first Ebenezer's and first Caleb's father was the George Farley early to Billerica The first Caleb and first Ebenezer born back in Woburn, before going to help found Billerica. Their father George helped found the town-owned church, a "meeting house" with space for town halls to meet and space for the one permitted church to meet.
Over a century later, the Billerica congregation voted to became Congregational. Everyone voted, not just elected elders, as Presbyterians would do, that being the Congregational's main difference. (Post-Revolution, with religious freedom, no King could any longer dictate church membership. Denominations were then declared and named. Before then, a town shared a church, had a covenant for prospective members to sign, saying what they agreed upon, if wanting to be a voting member. The terms could be almost anything, ranging from promises to pay for a teacher or minister, to some statements of Calvinist belief in pre-destination or the alternative of universal free will and acceptance, to statements of tolerance. What was agreed was not always public.
One town reportedly voted to execute anyone who disagreed with their beliefs. A British official, adding a "balance of power", chose to overrule them.
Parents who were infant baptizers essentially promised at the child's welcoming ceremony to take the child to church and otherwise raise them religiously. George was that, infants listed with parents named alongside was a regular thing for the Farleys, but the records at safer Woburn were more complete than at later, attacked Billerica.
George was thus not a Baptist, as some alleged. However, he strongly supported religious freedom for a Baptist neighbor. ("Baptist" meant an agreement that only adults be baptized, not leaving the choice to families. That aspect of religion is ethnic. The reliable infant-baptizers generally came from Scotland and northern England. The adult baptizers' prior geography instead was often Welsh or from other parts of Britain or Europe, not random spots, but those with "Holy Wells" and other medicinal waters called "Baths". Boric acid in some place cleared up blindness due to pink eye. Other waters had sulfur, anti-bacterial, useful for skin infections.)
George signed something to the effect that he wanted freedom of religion. He was fined for missing his own church service one Sunday, as he'd gone to a neighbor's Baptist service (down in Boston?), maybe to see what it was like.
Due to George being a King's name, not in the bible, his name was not re-used for his descendants. Repeating a name repeatedly was reserved for the Ebenezers and the Calebs.
A later Ebenezer Farley left Billerica, not alone. A large number moved close together in time, with siblings and cousins and neighbors.
They had reasons. Some descended of people hung (a female victim surnamed "Nurse"), or otherwise dying in the nearby Salem witch hysteria. Some were of a closely related Farley (Benjamin?). His wife, a midwife, so often out alone late at night, was threatened with whipping, after becoming the victim of rape.
They went to a frontier end of a once much larger Middlesex County , to a part that was to become the southmost counties of New Hampshire. (The shift in courthouses later caused some old NH records to stay at the Middlesex courthouse. Also meaning several locations to check, some old towns were spit down the middle, killing their church, as the congregation remaining on either side was too small to pay a minister.)
Their last church in NH, in the town of Marlow, had been Congregationalist, denomination matching George's in Billerica, recently becoming part of the UCC.
How did the Michigan-bound branch of the Farleys become Methodist? Many former Puritans became that, often explained by going "out west" early, to rural places with hamlets too small to support an educated minister. Mor e could be served if hamlets shared a minister, ministers moving around, here one Sunday, over there the next Sunday. That was definitely true in Geauga County, Ohio, as the War of 1812 ended, a "Shadrack Rourke" circulating earlier for people not wanting to be married by a JP.
The Wesleyans had begun as part of the Church of England, some extreme ones kicked out, others more moderate in a prayer society that endorsed plainness. That ended once clearly no longer a part of the Church of England, post-Revolution, post-King. (Using horses instead of canoes, those circulating essentially copied what the former Jesuits did earlier, rotating place-to-place. ) The children of the "circuit-riding"ministers one grown complained that their fathers were almost never home, so the circuit-riding practice stopped eventually. However, people served had been grateful, so converted.
Sociologists studying religion say the mother usually determines the child's faith, so marriage also was a factor. Some married Baptists, when Cupid shot an arrow in that direction. They had been in places with the Church of the Latter Day Saints ("Mormons") still forming. Deciding what their religion should be, many belonging came out early against polygamy, including the brother, wife and son of founder Joseph Smith. Like lived with like, causing branches to divide by geography.
Traces are seen across the Farley migration path, after leaving NH. One of that religion's founders (eventually polygamous) came from the county in Vermont where Amos Farley married Lucy Hall. That religion's next migrations included well-known Kirtland, Ohio, where Amos Farley was of record hired to do public service carpentry, in the years when the Kirtland Temple was built. After that, Michigan was a less well-known stop, maybe just for some, the non-polygamous.
Some, not all, were on the way to Nauvoo, at Illinois's westmost edge. Some were then to Missouri and/or Iowa, maybe via Wisconsin, and, finally, many paths converged on Salt Lake in Utah. Again, not all approved of that era's polygamy. At least one of their women chose a Farley, a descendant of Amos Farley the junior (buried at Salt Lake?).
THE DISPUTED GEORGE. George Farley had a too-common surname and too common first name. While being his remembered for leadership was justified, some descendants pursued a charming fairy tale with rhymes, claiming that all Farleys came from a castle called Falaise.
What Farleys came early, in George's era?
Some Farleys close-by, northward, were most likely to be related, but maybe not. They were millers. The miller Farleys were sent to that north end of the mas. colony, a part that later was included in Maine, in 1820. They'd been sent by Lord Saltonstall (of Halifax, in north England?).
A different set of Colonists called Farley, considerably further away, in coastal north Virginia.
Their moderns had a detailed tree, but never claimed the MA Farleys were related. Their immigrant father owned well-located land, with some known relatives of his wife, said to be royal-connected, though not obviously (someone in the line was illegitimate).She had relatives early in nearby Maryland, who were Catholic. Those Farleys had normal descendants, some going through W. VA to south Ohio. However, a tailor and a miller would be occupations too low in social class for those first in Virginia.
DNA tests of their modern Farley descendants, for both the Virginians and the Massachusetts millers, proved they were unrelated.
The other George Farleys confused with Billerica's George? It was easier to be confused if the other George Farley was cited in books. What might put them in books? One of the Virginians was easier to admire, hung for leadership in Bacon's Rebellion. One impossible to admire was hung in England for what he did in secret, to his wife.
More modern Farleys arrived later, mid-1800s onward, mostly Catholics from Ireland; only a few were Protestants from England. Analyze the surname.
A "-ley" has to do with "the lay of the land", in particular, a wood-side meadow,. The type of meadow is given by the meaning of "Far-". In some places, Farley meant a pasture used for sheep. In other places, Farley meant a meadow with ferns, beautiful, a sign of springs present . (Look at FamilyTreeDna.com for "surname studies", these partition a surname into related and unrelated DNAs, often sponsored by the involved families.)
Another immigrant was George's wife. She was called Christian (a non-English version of Christine). Christian's ethnicity one most likely arriving without a surname, maybe Dutch, maybe from what became Belgium, Scandinavian, etc.
Asked which of several called Christian she might be, she most likely said she was her widowed mother's, her father said to have died aboard ship on the way to the colonies. Her widowed mother's first name thus became Christian's last name. It was some form of Bietres, similar to Beatrice in English, misread as Births by someone long ago checking old records, to publish a book of records, from them.
The last Ebenezer Farleys in MIchigan were Bethuel's older brother and his son. The elder brother was called Capt. Ebenezer, as he was a steamboat captain on the long St. Joseph River, able to go beyond its mouth on big Lake Michigan and make contact with Chicago on the opposite shore. That business would clearly die as new-fangled trains came in. Trains would soon go around Lake Michigan's south end, where they lived, to carry farmers' produce and passengers to Chicago by land.
Trains were not yet common, not yet using standard-sized tracks, had not yet crossed the Miss. River, would not go to California for some time. Travel there was done old ways. If in a group, it was by wagon train or by ship. Ship passengers made their Atlantic-to-Pacific connection by crossing at the Panama Isthmus, no modern Panama Canal there then.
Capt. Ebenezer, son of Amos the senior, looking for a new occupation, was said to organize a wagon train there. They were in time for the gold rush, any early money earned useful to buy his orchard land south of the San Fran Bay. How quickly did it become better to sell fruit to the miners? Especially once the easily found gold was gone?
Suggesting gold money had been made, a descendant became a banker, banks then using gold-based currency. In-law A. French bought a hotel, probably the A. French who'd served as a legislator while temporarily up at a mining camp outside of Sacramento. He'd been a miller/distiller back in Michigan, the same occupations seen for Jacob French when back in Ohio, living close to the Farleys, in next-door townships. He'd brought with him a second wife, called Nancy French when they married, so maybe also widowed, and a son or two surnamed French, seen in Michigan censuses. He sponsored big political meetings at his hotel south of the Bay, apparently liked horseracing. The journalist writing his obituary said he was called the "King of Milpitas" after a racehorse of that name, but due to his sponsoring political meetings. The journalist sadly used Mr. French's obituary to describe the man, said zero about his family, did not mention the burial place. French was said to be a Democrat. Democrats from Michigan with New England backgrounds were adamantly anti-slavery, willing to enlist when Republican Abraham Lincoln asked for that. The hotelkeeper had a Climena French boarding, listed with other guests, after his own family, in the 1860 US Census. Not stated was that she was a teacher, to marry a fellow teacher and future school superintendent ,Samuel Shearer. Her brother was Civil War veteran, Ebenezer French, his Civil War stone in California still standing. His mother was a Farley, daughter of Amos, sister to the captain, not to be left out of Ebenezer lineage.
She had two sons survive the Civil War, the one to California worked his way up to Capt., was wounded several times, yet re-enlisted. He was damaged enough to shorten his lifespan. He worked as a printer in San Jose before he died, seen in lists registering to vote, something not allowed to his sisters or mother, who surely had opinions. He was apparently denied a pension, as unable to prove his identity (early Michigan, like Ohio, recorded marriages, but not births). A Civil War stone is found for him in a cemetery south of the Bay (at Mountain VIew?).
His and Climena's mother was Rebecca Farley, born in Stanstead, Canada, to Amos and Lucy. She'd married former Ohio-neighbor Ransom French once done in Berrien County, MI (at the river-mouth town of St Joseph?).
Both Rebecca Farley and spouse Ransom French were said to have come with their parents. That was written in an old book on Berrien County, in a biography for/by their other son to go to the Civil War, married to his first wife at the time, A. O. French. He was a farmer and former peach orchardist.
Like his cousin Bethuel Farley, A. O French long stayed in Berrien County, farming, when everyone else moved, mostly to California. "They never came back", one could almost hear hitears hitting the page as he wrote his biography.
To die too quickly out in California--His close-in-age sister Climena, a young mother at the time, their mother Rebecca Farley French, and war-damaged ex-soldier Ebenezer French, only the last with a stone surviving.
Again, the brother of Rebecca Farley French was Capt. Ebenezer Farley. After Ransom died, she and her younger children not off to California lived with those Farley relatives still in Berrien County, apparently dis so until her youngest died, Olive French, post Civil War.
The maiden surnname of Lucy Hall is too common to research that side well. A younger Ebenezer Farley would write a book covering best the set of Farleys off to California, asking other relatives to send information. It was reasonably accurate, except for one thing. The author remembering a child's bedtime story, the type a school teacher would devise, as it had a rhyme, matching Farley to Falaise, so children hearing it would remember the story.
The family author thought the story was factual, so suggested a trail of descendants leading from the castle to George. Farley of Billerica. When more things by volunteers were online, a genealogist in England said her ancestor with possible castle connections seemed to match George Farley of Billerica, but they were not the same George Farley. So sorry , people! Her emphasized her George Farley remained in England, did not leave. She said she could show people the grave location if they wished.
He was the reasonable George Farley suspected of being a match. Less reasonable, but also
proposed were two others.
One George Farley was hung for his role in Bacon's Rebellion. He was a George of the Virginians, said to be very good at math. A son he had arranged to be sent to the Virginia colony to live with him was put into a wrongful indenture, arranged by the boy's ship captain. The Virginian George had that huge pain, but also other grievances, so joined Bacon's Rebellion,became a leader locally. That rebellion predicted the American Revolution? The anger over child indenture predicted the end of slavery? (As many as half of the children sent to early Virginia under indenture were said to die before their contracts finished, normally at age 14 or after seven years. Some were kidnapped into indenture. Was that the Virginian George's view of what happened to his son? Some were "sold" to pay off parents' debts, real or imagined. Was that the ship captain's view? (The captain demanded far more than the original ticket cost, which had already been paid, and George could not pay the extra.)
After a large number of deaths of indentured, a set found death resistant was brought over, in increasing numbers. We moderns know they were malaria-resistant, suffered from something else. A warning of the Civil War to come, those employers who valued their own freedom, but not that of others, used contracts and laws to turn temporary indenture, bad enough, into something worse, indenture for life, hereditary, also called slavery. Congregations gave themselves rights many ministers had been calling immoral, had they only listened, instead of sending the "erring" ministers on their way, replaced by ministers trained to be "more agreeable". Three denominations had many churches in both locations. They would eventually split into north vs south over slavery, Baptist, Methodist and Presbyterian. Congregationalists in the north essentially decided to no longer send their well-educated ministers, the south not having been willing to build its own Harvard. Instead of dividing into north and south denominations, they pulled out of the south.
An earlier George Farley, of noble birth, but unsavory ideas, was hung in England. He was someone in their family the Virginia Farleys would not have liked. That unwelcome George Farley was executed, after turned in by his father-in-law. His unsavory acts? Imprisoning his wife in the cellar and torturing her there, her father wondering what had happened to her. Her father was high in social class, so his insistence on checking was heeded. The act was punished harshly. If she'd been more ordinary? We hope they'd check, too. The husband's name would not make its way into books.
written by JB, 2023, Jan.
I will be turning some Farley pages over to Todd M. He has been accurately researching the more recent generations, in the Michigan end, Bethuel's descendants the ones staying close to home. Bethuel's brother Daniel Farley had children locally, but he died young, his wife remarried, his children harder to track.
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