"She was a mother of the Revolution."
"She spread the cloth before the chieftains and champions of our country's rights and liberty--and day after day, and week after week prepared the table for the soldiers of our republic while recruiting under Col. Barns, of Lanesborough, Mass., for the purpose of watching the motions and arresting the progress of Gen. Burgoyne, who was advancing from the north with an army which darkened the air, and spread terror and consternation thro the country. Her compensation, she informed me, for six weeks service, brought her just one paper of pins."
Source: From her obituary, written by son G.R. Hoyt, while in Clearfield County.
...Notes below list Nine Children, the first, born in Massachusetts, where Keturah Roblea had married Seth Hoyt, the rest ,in Vermont, where spouse Seth had left her a widow.
Her obituary was printed on Oct 20, 1845, in the Raftsman Journal, transcribed by Cindy Walcott. The full obituary is in a large document of 2010 by Ms. Walcott, archived, for now, at RobleesOnline.org.
=====================================================
Nine Children of Seth Hoyt and Keturah/Catharine, ages in 1850
=====================================================
1) Sarah Betsy (maybe went by Sally or Betsy), lived with youngest sibling, Patty, for 1850 US Census, age 68 then. (Counting backwards, 1850-68 =1782, makes 1781-1782 her calculated time of birth)
2) Patty, the first of two Patties (this one died young),
3) Seth Jr. (to Ill.) One of his grandsons, William Melancton Hoyt, built a wholesale grocery business after the Great Fire in Chicago. Grandson William's success was outweighed by multiple tragedies. Statued stones commissioned by him at Chicago's Graceland give an idea of the grief he felt. (A daughter and several of her children died in a theater fire. A son went to Yale, became a professional golfer, then died in an early car accident.)
4) Gould R. Hoyt with biography. Age 63 for his 1850 US Census, still in Huston Twp, 3 children still at home. For notes on all of Gould's seven children, see bio of their sibling Albert Jesse Hoyt. When Albert Jesse went to Wisconsin, Gould would follow, then moved again, with more land-ready children, barely across the state line, to Wabasha, Minn.
5) Dr. William H. Hoyt, with biography , age 62 in 1850,
6) Aurelia, Seen as Orelia Lamb, in Huston Twp, 1850, age 54 in 1850.
Her sons Ezra G., Orletus H., Julius F. Lamb, all went to Wabasha County, MN, with her spouse Freeman Lamb, and her brother Gould R.
7) Orris (tannery owner in PA, active in the ME church, died before the 1850 Census?),
8) Sophia (a mystery? maybe died by 1815?) Not in mother's pension application of Mar, 1836, so some thus believe she died before 1839, which makes sense. Others put her birth at about 1791, death in 1843, which raises the possibility she was adopted in some way. (Beware, the Sophia A. Hoyt who married William F. Green, in Huston Twp., 1850, was a namesake niece),
9) Patty (namesake for the first. Married Erasmus D. Patterson, still in Huston Twp. for 1850 Census, age 50, eldest sister Sally B. present).
(Sources: Name list from C. Walcott. Details from US Censuses, graveyard lists, and local histories. Especially helpful for daughters and granddaughters, was the 1850 Census list for Huston Twp, now in Clearfield County, archived at PAgenWeb.org/~elk/k/1850HustonCensus.htm)
WARNING: The 1871 book of D.W. Hoyt is used, but carefully. Good for ancestors and some siblings, it was weak for Hoyts close to Keturah. This weakness is presumed due to the death of Keturah's son Gould, a contributor/ proofreader for the book before he died. Gould R. Hoyt's death was in 1866, five years before the book was published in its last version. Example of an error--DW's book showed her spouse Seth Hoyt's death date as 1857, so after hers. In reality, he died before Keturah. The true date let her collect a Widow's Pension from Mar., 1836 through her death in 1845, which meant he died before Mar., 1836:
Source: FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-89WB-78FS
The criteria for collecting a pension back, then, went beyond the ex-soldier's death. The widow had to also be in financial need. After his death, she thus would not apply until her savings or income ran low. The actual date of his death was found to be 1831 by Cindy Walcott, when researching the pension files.
====================================================
In progress....
I. Namesake
II. Their Key Migrations
III. Life Before Pennsylvania
I. NAMESAKE. Married to Seth Hoyt, her maiden name would be spelled and re-spelled many ways in her and her parents' lifetimes, ranging from Robblee to Rublee to Roblea to Ruble, the "ending e" spoken, not silent. Named for her mother, both were given the Old Testament name of Keturah by their NY-born families. Both women preferred Catharine once in adulthood (sometimes seen as Catherine or Katharine).
If either Keturah was buried as Catharine, it would be this one. Why? She died, not in Vermont, like her mother, but in Pennsylvania, a place with more German speakers. Her new neighbors would recognize Catharine as similar to Katarine/Katarina, but would wrinkle their foreheads if hearing Keturah.
Both Keturahs lived their last days surrounded by grandchildren. Mother Keturah's obituary told of her having lived to see five generations, with "hundreds of descendants" by her death.
Her own mother was born a Baker. Her mother's known relatives included some brothers, Eleasor Baker and two more, Bethuel and Francis Baker, names seen as co-executors with her mother, on their father's will. Brother Francis was a junior to the Bakers' father.
This Keturah's father was William Robblee/Rublee. His beginnings were with his brother Reuben and others, in easternmost NY, between the well-settled Hudson River and the still-wild Connecticut. Early NY deemed the closer banks of the Connecticut River (currently in other states) as its easternmost boundary. The emerging adjacent states put their disagreement into action by sending settlers. Both sides, in fact, sent settlers into overlapping territory that each regarded as their own frontier. Moving south to north, the future states competing with NY for new land were CT, MA and VT. This helps explain how someone from a NY family, herself, married someone from a CT family, her spouse Seth. Their two families would meet each other in Massachusetts, with her uncle Reuben bringing his family there, too.
Her own generation would venture further north into Vermont, with their elders making varied choices. Her father William must have found good farm land in MA, as he stayed there, left a will naming everyone in her immediate family. Her uncle Reuben returned to NY, leaving her presumed cousin Permelia Ruble/Rublee Hoyt behind, with known cousin Philip Rublee later joining Permilia's spouse in Bristol Twp., VT, seen as neighbors in the same census, taken there after Permelia's death. Keturah's own mother, Keturah the senior, once widowed by William, would follow Keturah into the next place, Vermont.
Keturah's mother, once in Vermont, would marry a fellow widower and distant Hoyt cousin who spelled his name as Stephen Haight/Hait. Haight's family had long ago become Quaker, after moving down the Atlantic shoreline, from CT, to lower NY (above Long Island) and meeting Quaker neighbors. The Robblees were instead seen with their early baptisms in NY's Reformed Churches. (These Dutch and German churches were similar to Presbyterian, except that non-English parents followed the old European custom of selecting two godparents per child, often from the parents' siblings. Godparents were viewed as necessary, as they committed in public, in front of witnesses, to raising the new child well, religiously and otherwise, should the parents not be able. Godparents might volunteer to be guardians should the parents die. This tended to prevent "indenture", a temporary enslavement of an orphaned child until of a certain age. Everyone knew the godparents' names, the church had a record, there would be no argument, no grabbing of fatherless children off the streets as the Virginia Land Company was said to have done in London, in order to send cheap labor to its colonies. The different attitudes persist today, one of protecting children so they will have a good future versus the other, of victimizing the unprotected so adults can live extra-well. This produces different average outcomes in different parts of the United States, seen over decades of school, library and health statistics involving children.)
The Roblees probably knew the Haight subset of Hoyts back in NY, when both were in old Dutchess County. All three family surnames were found later in Addison County, Vermont. (Just the Hoyts and Robblees made it at an earlier date to Massachusetts, where Keturah was raised and married.)
Her uncle Reuben was less well documented as to children born near the time of buying his land in MA. It's known that he sold his MA land and would return to NY after his presumed daughter, Permelia Ruble Hoyt, married Seth Hoyt's brother, Uriah. Keturah and Permelia's children were thus extra-related, but we've not yet found signs of their many children being better buddies than average. None, for example, moved with cousins to the same new counties as they matured. They moved only with siblings. Was there some sad estrangement? Or, did the usual "accidents of life" separate them, someone "lucky in an old place", not needing to move to find a better life?
Seth and Keturah would finish raising their children on Lanesboro Street in New Haven, VT, where other Hoyt brothers and certain in-laws lived. Her brother-in-law, the Ezra Hoyt to be called both Judge and Hon., was becoming politically important, supporting Middlebury College, and raising his sons to be well-educated ministers (who would, thus, leave, to find churches to pastor). That Ezra would donate his own land on that street for a new church, bringing together two congregations into one building. Uriah and Permelia would name a child Ezra. That honored Uriah's father, not just his brother. Keturah and Seth did the opposite, would name no surviving child Ezra, so perhaps any estrangement involved a conflict with an earlier Ezra?
A local history of Addison County later remembered the other Hoyt brothers as living on Lanesborough Street. Uriah and Permelia would not be mentioned, as they had instead continued north out of town. At first, they went to Monkton. That was where Keturah's stepfather, Stephen Haight, had gone, to live with his son Stephen the Jr. The younger Stephen, like Judge Ezra, was becoming politically important. The War of 1812, against the British, over the US-Canadian boundary, had created a temporary job spurt in Monkton's direction. New work involved forging local bog iron to make gun boats for defending the nearby shipping channels on the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain. The workers supported new "corner stores" while their new jobs lasted. That job spurt ended. Cousin Permelia lost two children buried in Monkton, while Keturah saw one child lost back in New Haven.
Keturah's first Patty died young. The child's name was unusual by Puritan standards, a dancing kind of name, instead of the usual praying-and-preaching kind. Keturah would re-give that name to a later daughter. Naming a new child for a lost one was a common practice by old standards (British Isles and Puritan only? No, have since found this true back in Norway for ancestors of this writer's spouse.).
That habit of re-using a dead child's name would fade away after the Civil War, as large families would become rare. Son Gould R. would have many children, however. He would name a daughter Patty Mehitable (who called herself P.M. or Mehitable)and a son Ezra Jennings (who called himself E.J.). If there were hurts involving any early Ezra, they had been healed. Both namesake children were seen pre-marriage in the 1860 Census, starting new lives on new farms, out in Wabasha County, Minnesota. This big move happened after Keturah was gone from everyone's lives. She would die in 1845, well before Gould's death "out west", meaning past the Mississippi R., in 1865.
The signs are that, while spouse Seth still lived, Seth and Keturah stayed always in New Haven, Vermont, after leaving Lanesborough/Lanesboro, Massachusetts. With the Monkton location no longer working for them, cousin Permelia and Uriah would see Bristol as a better place. They drew a bit closer to New Haven by moving there. Did they perhaps own or co-own a store there with uncle Reuben Roblee's known son, Philip? Early US censuses named only the household head, nor the children or retirees present, nor the wife, unless widowed, so named as household head. These old censuses named Uriah as in Monkton in 1810, then in Bristol in 1820, before Permelia died. By the 1840 census, Uriah's in-laws were still his neighbors in Bristol, but using Rublee more often than Robblee. Two spellings would allow ministers and neighbors and any business people owed a debt to keep their records separate for two sub-branches of the same large family.
Each couple lost a key member around 1830. Permelia died a few years before 1830, and Seth, "just after". Permelia's unmarried daughter, Abigail, also died "too early". Stones for all three are missing. At least two should be in Evergreen Cemetery. That's the same graveyard used to bury this Keturah's mother, who remarried, so the mother's stone says "Keturah Haight", Evergreen is near her own church in VT, not near her first husband and their church back in Mass., nor in the mother's second husband's burying ground (Quaker) in Monkton.
Also at Evergreen: That part of Judge Ezra's family staying local. Ezra's in-laws. Parents to the four Hoyt brothers.
Not at Evergreen: Permelia's Uriah Hoyt, buried decades later, in Bristol, with his second wife. His brother, Seymour Hoyt, initially locating with brothers Seth and Ezra in houses/farmsteads on Lanesborough Street, so listed in the old Addison County history book. Seymour showed a new trend, being given a mother's surname as a first name. Seymour would be buried out in southwestern Michigan, an early settler on a later frontier, with other migrating Hoyts present, including Seth's nephew, a ministering son of Judge Ezra.
Seth's stone back in New Haven must have been lost before a round of recording stone inscriptions and locations began in the early 1900s in order to create county and state records of what previously had been town records. Washing rains or tossed grave dirt obliterated Seth's name and date. A paper record was made of Permelia's stone around 1910-1920, with its carved record still visible.
Multiple missing/illegible stones are signs that the rest of the family left the region early, were not around to re-carve a faded stone or pick-up a fallen one. For example, Keturah's grandson reported his father William's family was in their Penn. location by 1819. (William ended in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania, after becoming a teacher and doctor, made possible by attending uncle Ezra Hoyts's Middlebury College? There may have been an interval in NY state, first.)
II. THEIR KEY MIGRATIONS. The geography of the family was such that the Hoyts came from Connecticut; the Robblees/Rubblees, from eastern NY. They most clearly crossed paths in Lanesborough, Mass., pre-Revolution. This Keturah and spouse Seth Hoyt were raised and married in Lanesborough. Post-Revolution (a war in which husband Seth had served, not just her father William), the young couple would later move with Hoyt siblings and in-laws to New Haven, Vermont.
For the two Keturahs, both her and her mother, their spouse owned land or a business in an old place, so stayed and died there. The widows then followed their adult children, out to the next place, newly settled, wilder. This caused husband and wife to be buried in different states two generations in a row. Her father was buried first in Mass., her mother, some decades later, in Vermont. Her Seth died in Vermont, stone lost to time, while she was buried in Pennsylvania. Family records collected by C. Walcott say this Keturah is buried in Centre Cemetery. It's an old cemetery used by several of her children, in the town of Hyde, in Clearfield County.
Younger generations settling on the next new frontier as it moved away from the old. Her son Gould R. Hoyt's sons instead ended in the upper Midwest, buried in Wisconsin and Minnesota, c
their counties near/on the majestic Mississippi and its long tributary, the Wisconsin River. They moved to places with steamboats and logs set floating down the rivers, the timber on its way to mills, to be cut. The logging would not last, so there were further moves, mainly to find better farmland than whatever had been good for pineries (felled pines grew on sandy stuff? boggy? good for cranberries and pasture, once cleared, but not corn?). Some perhaps settled for a bit sandy land but extra-good scenery, plentiful in the "bluff country", along its rapidly descending rivers and "coulees".
Clearfield County in Pennsylvania settled first, before Wisconsin and then Minnesota opened to frontier settlers. Again, many of this Keturah's adult children moved to Pennyslvania's less Puritan-influenced, more Germanic places. Widowed Keturah Hoyt may have lived with son Gould R., who saw two sons born back in NY, first, then would be associated with different towns in Penn., especially Penfield, before he left with his maturing sons to go further west. (Gould and wife went first to Wisconsin, to help settle their older children there, seen in the 1850 Census. Their younger sons and daughters were there seen in the 1860 Census on the Minnesota side of the big Miss. river. Gould's last census would be Minnesota's state one, in 1865, seen widowed, living with son Ezra, the family of sister Aurellia Hoyt Lamb nearby, using the same cemetery.)
Son Orris remained in Pennsylvania. This Keturah was buried as "Catharine" in his Methodist cemetery. Gould's obituary for her indicated she had converted from Presbyterianism to a new faith, in the notion that God wanted all people to be saved. Was that perhaps his way of saying she became Methodist, had gone beyond a Methodist burial? (Reasons for changing varied. Some wanted total alcoholic abstinence to be a requirement. Other former Puritans had become disenchanted with the "New Light" extremism that emerged pre-Revolution. Extreme New Lights preached that God judged only a tiny few as worthy of favor at birth, with suicidal thoughts or depression an outward sign that God had already given up on the person and that the devil resided permanently within.)
The early walkers of Centre Cemetery found a lot there that had been bought by grandson Adam. No stones have his name. Is he buried there? Did he stay, or go further west? Some questions are slow to be answered.
Others were buried in other cemeteries nearby--For example, son William the Jr.
III. LIFE BEFORE PENNSYLVANIA. Her own father, William Robblee the senior, had owned a farm in Lanesborough, Mass. His will named both mother and daughter Keturah by their legal names, not by their nicknames of Catharine, according to their modern historian, C. Walcott.
The farm families of old were very large. Her father's will also named many surviving siblings, twelve in number, many (all?)linked to her parents at Findagrave. Their first names, Keturah's and her siblings', were also found by Walcott in one list made by the town/church back in Lanesborough.
"Town and church" were generally not yet separate under Puritanism, pre-Revolution. The one church authorized by the town received tax money and co-operated on record-keeping. Infant baptisms meant the names of all children could be gathered in one swoop out of church records, then put into town records at the same time, in a list, as if a census had been done. Tax collectors could also collect names, but that seemed less common. Those churched early, from infancy, baptized soon after birth in the authorized Puritan church, were better counted, making them easier to follow genealogically than would be either the children of adult baptizers or those baptized as infants inside chapels of the so-called King's Church. The records of the last were often burned or carried away in a Revolution that rejected praying for the king as "inimical".)
William Robblee wrote his will in the months preceding his death. C. Walcott researched its reaching Probate Court and the Court's appointment of guardians for his younger children.
====================================================
12 Siblings Named in Father's Will
====================================================
Brothers to this Keturah:
William, Hiram, Andrew^^, Francis^^, John Brush*, Erastus*
Sisters:
Lucy^, the Katura studied here, Rebekah, Susannah, Mary^, Sarah^^
Will Notes
^ Described as still single, so different provisions for their survival.
^^Minors, but over 14, given court-assigned a male guardian outside the family (allowing for indenture contracts?).
* Minors under 14, their mother, Keturah Sr., allowed to be guardian.
====================================================
Mother Keturah later followed daughter Keturah up into Vermont. Four migrating Hoyt brothers had taken their families there, that Ezra to become a judge and go to the state legislature, Seth, Seymour, and cousin Permelia's Uriah, plus their Hoyt parents, the Ezra Hoyt and Sarah Seymour who had married back in CT .
Now freed of British rule, the Hoyts and in-laws migrating to one place were free to call their new town as they wished. They named it for the New Haven back in Connecticut, from whence Seth's mother, Sarah Seymour Hoyt, had come.
Daughter Keturah and her siblings buried their mother Keturah in the same Vermont cemetery holding their presumed cousin, Permelia Ruble Hoyt (double-check this).
Themselves immigrants to America in the Puritan era, the Hoyts found their new location in Vermont overlapping with old homes of former enemies of the British, the Canadian-French people and perhaps Metis and First Nation peoples. When cousin Permelia left her spouse Uriah Hoyt a widow, he re-married a Pettibone (Pettitbon in French).
After father William died in Mass. in 1792, mother Keturah's second spouse, once in Vermont, was Stephen Haight. They married when both were past their child-raising years and ignored religious differences to do so. He was Quaker. According to Walcott, she joined the Congregational Church in New Haven, VT, in 1806, giving her name as "Mrs. Katherine Hait".
He must have come to Vermont with his son, Stephen Haight the junior. They came from the Nine Partners section of old Dutchess County in eastern NY, a county much larger then, than now, as it split into parts. Their family may have long known the Robblees. (The Robblees' part of Dutchess County, known as Philipse Patent, largely split off as Putnam County in 1812, well after they lef.t) Stephen the junior was among the first to settle in Monkton, Vermont, just north of the Hoyt's town of New Haven. He was among those "taking the freeman's oath" between the end of the Revolutionary War and 1787, according to an old book of 1886, History of Addison County, p.514, H. Perry Smith. "Freemen" had other meanings as well, but, in founding new towns, it usually meant they were free of indenture and mortgage, so owed work and money to no one, could afford to take on whatever new mortgage was needed.
Stephen was buried near the other two of his children, in the Quaker/Friends cemetery. The older Stephen can be confused with son Stephen the junior, who would become a judge, then a sheriff in Monkton, plus represent Monkton in the state legislature, then go onto Washington D.C. where he died.
(Haights vs. Hoyts. The first arriving Hoyt to America, Simon, was well-documented. This was partly due to land dealings including with adult children and being involved in several church/town foundings, until his last in CT. His family was probably of those who went by Hoyte back in England. Sounding out names, instead of seeing names written, those moving closer to Long Island changed theirs to the Haight spelling, while those staying in CT shifted to Hoyt. The Haights had located in a place populated mainly by Quakers. Many of the NY Quakers owned a few slaves, but ultimately came to see slave-owning as wrong. They freed their own slaves early, by the time Britain abolished slavery, maybe before 1820.)
The Roblea/Rubblee/Robblee name was spelled many ways by family members. The Robblee's family historian C. Walcott first saw it as Rublier when NY clergymen in one church kept records for William Robblee's father, another William, under Dutch-influenced spelling rules. Ruble was another common variation, used for her, along with Roblea, in the multi-family Hoyt history published by D.W. Hoyt in 1871.
A legal clerk for Dutch-influenced Phillipse Patent (Phillips Patent in English) spelled their surname as Rappelyea for two lots owned by William and Reuben in 1754, and for taxes owed by William through the 1760s, before moving elsewhere in NY. Due to just that one set of records, even though never used for them again, elsewhere, some have nevertheless speculated the Robblees/Robleas were related to the "silver spoon" family named Rapalje. That much more privileged family arrived in Fort Orange/New Amsterdam with the Dutch, then quickly received generous land grants from the Dutch. They were ethnically Walloon, not Dutch, not British. Their Fort Orange arrival was over 100 years before Keturah's family was of record. In addition to the far greater wealth of the Walloon Rapaljes, there were other differences. Through the American Revolution, so in Keturah's era, they were still using men's names that were Dutch (Cornelius, Garrett) or Walloon.
Like other Walloons and Dutch they did not always not use a permanent last name shared across family members, but substituted a father's first name as the last name. Once stable surnames became expected, then people agreed what to use, perhaps a place (farm? landed estate?) from whence recent ancestors came, giving honor to many in the source community, and not just one ancestor. In their case, this produced Rapalje, meaning a family originally from a place that sounded like Rapal. The "silver spoon" family was different from the Robblees/Robleas in more ways, giving some children first names that were not just Dutch, but Walloon (old French, meaning one of the so-called vulgar Latin dialects that together later led to the Romance languages). They continued to benefit from their high social status by being given more large grants of land for around one hundred and fifty years after immigration. The last grantees included one Rapalje family who, with associates, requested the grant and were given it in 1773. Loyal to the British king, but likely to be judged "inimical" to the American colonists, Garrett Rapalje fled. The Garrett who went to the Natchez area in Spanish territory (in to what became western Mississippi) had been given 25,000 acres. A Garrett Rapalje was still alive in 1791, but seems to have been Garrett II, the importer's son, doing business on the Big Black River. He had been listed in NY history as being in a family portrait as a child, with brothers George and Jacques Rapalje included, their names also seen along the Black River around that time. An older Garrett had been given 25,000 acres in west Florida by the British in 1774. He had left NY for NJ at first, where he owned the Brooklyn/Brookland forge in Sussex County in 1777, importing iron for its use, perhaps explaining his allegiance to the British if he needed their iron. He was incarcerated in 1778 and 1779 by the American forces, suspected of being inimical (aiding the British). He subdivided and sold the Florida land granted earlier to buy a plantation in Louisiana, near Baton Rouge, still under Spanish control. However, he did not move there until after the Revolution ended. Unsuccessful with his plantation, he wrote a letter to George Washington in 1794 asking to be appointed an intermediary between traders moving goods down the Mississippi River and the Spanish, a position he called a consulate. He was almost begging as he said he had a large family to support and had "suffered greatly" in the war, so would appreciate a small salary for his services and experience in commerce. Writing in Jan., he was denied in April, not by GW, but by an assistant (source: founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-15-02-0027, associated with the University of Virginia). Stories vary, as perhaps multiple Garretts were confused. Some say the Garrett born in 1830 returned to NY where he died.
Prior to those men receiving huge grants, William and his brother Reuben Robblee did not feel entitled by their heritage to huge grants of land. They were scrambling for small bits in Massachusetts. According to C. Walcott's court search, William bought two parcels, not all at once, so not expensively, but in different years, affordably. Not many years before moving to MA, both William and brother Reuben admitted to unpaid fines in 1765 in NY, a debt owed to the King, their names written as Rubeley when accused. It turned into Robblee for their later appearance in court, a spelling which then would be used frequently. He was in Massachusetts by 1768, just three years after his debt problem after being fined for disturbing the peace, complaints filed by a Simeon Bundy, according to Walcott. William ended with land and most likely a happier family than did Rappalje.
Some named Robblee, seen in Canada, said their name was Scottish. That fits cousin Permelia's name, taken from old-time Scottish wool-dying plants, and Reuben, a name popular among Scottish Protestants after the Reformation period. We might look for signs of Presbyterianism.
Keturah and presumed cousin Permelia Ruble/Roblea Hoyt married brothers, Seth and Uriah Hoyt, respectively. This was at the Lanesborough church, while still in Massachusetts. Once denominations were declared, it called itself Congregational. Presbyterians and some adult baptizers might split apart from the Congregationalists if they had enough members. Such splits were often ethnic, with the Scotch-descended and perhaps northern English being Presbyterian, many English often calling themselves Congregational, while those who were Welsh preferring adult baptism, but who had not split away as Baptists earlier as they were tolerant of other practices, did so now.
For her obituary, son Gould said she had been Presbyterian, but grew to think God wanted the whole world saved, and not just a preordained elect so changed faiths. Her cemetery was Centre, set aside for the old Methodist Episcopalian church once called Centre, but turning into Trinity United Methodist once they joined into the larger denomination. Her son Orris was active at Centre Church when it first formed.
Keturah/Catharine Hoyt first gave birth in that town, Lanesborough, judging from the Hoyts' dates of arrival in the next place of Vermont.
Her and Seth's son, Gould R. Hoyt, was the family biographer. His name was noted several times by David W. Hoyt (of a different male DNA), compiler of a broad history of multiple Hoyts and Haights as well as Hoits. Holes in his book regarding the records for Keturah's children probably were due to Gould contributing from a distance, no longer living in New England or NY where early ancestors had been born and with no one left who could tell him. At first unsure of his own birth state, he gave VT the first time he was asked, in his 1850 Census. He ended by saying MA (more logical, as his date of birth preceded his parents' move from MA to VT). He stopped collecting other of their records too soon, due to his death. Published in 1871, D.W. Hoyt's book noted her son Gould's ability to write wittily and poetically, well-known for letters earning a post office for a Penn. town where he had lived. D.W. lamented his death, saying Gould had died in 1866, in Wabasha County, Minnesota. Lake City was also named, the nearest large town to where Gould lived in 1865. (Gpild was on the farm of son Ezra Jennings Hoyt, Gillford Township, Wabasha County, about 10 miles from Lake City.)
Gould was thus not around to proofread his family's material, nor to make last additions to the final version when it came out 5 years later, in 1871. D.W. Hoyt was careful, though, a well-reasoned recorder. His history is the best old-time source for the Hoyt side of these families. The best modern source for the Robblee/Rublea side, for the same reasons, is Cynthia Walcott, a Robblee descendant (on her mother's side?). She included Keturah's and her cousin Permelia's grandchildren, the two mothers born as Ruble/Roblea, the two fathers named Hoyt (Seth and Uriah). To learn more about their ancestry, she checked records, wills, newspaper articles, and made graveyard visits, much as D.W. Hoyt had done, or asked others to do, for the more varied Hoyts earlier. We applaud their work.
==========================================================
Copyright by JBrown, Julia Brown, Austin, TX, 2017, minor edits to clarify, in 2020. Permission given to Findagrave for use at this page. Descendants of people named here may use whole paragraphs in private materials for family.
"She spread the cloth before the chieftains and champions of our country's rights and liberty--and day after day, and week after week prepared the table for the soldiers of our republic while recruiting under Col. Barns, of Lanesborough, Mass., for the purpose of watching the motions and arresting the progress of Gen. Burgoyne, who was advancing from the north with an army which darkened the air, and spread terror and consternation thro the country. Her compensation, she informed me, for six weeks service, brought her just one paper of pins."
Source: From her obituary, written by son G.R. Hoyt, while in Clearfield County.
...Notes below list Nine Children, the first, born in Massachusetts, where Keturah Roblea had married Seth Hoyt, the rest ,in Vermont, where spouse Seth had left her a widow.
Her obituary was printed on Oct 20, 1845, in the Raftsman Journal, transcribed by Cindy Walcott. The full obituary is in a large document of 2010 by Ms. Walcott, archived, for now, at RobleesOnline.org.
=====================================================
Nine Children of Seth Hoyt and Keturah/Catharine, ages in 1850
=====================================================
1) Sarah Betsy (maybe went by Sally or Betsy), lived with youngest sibling, Patty, for 1850 US Census, age 68 then. (Counting backwards, 1850-68 =1782, makes 1781-1782 her calculated time of birth)
2) Patty, the first of two Patties (this one died young),
3) Seth Jr. (to Ill.) One of his grandsons, William Melancton Hoyt, built a wholesale grocery business after the Great Fire in Chicago. Grandson William's success was outweighed by multiple tragedies. Statued stones commissioned by him at Chicago's Graceland give an idea of the grief he felt. (A daughter and several of her children died in a theater fire. A son went to Yale, became a professional golfer, then died in an early car accident.)
4) Gould R. Hoyt with biography. Age 63 for his 1850 US Census, still in Huston Twp, 3 children still at home. For notes on all of Gould's seven children, see bio of their sibling Albert Jesse Hoyt. When Albert Jesse went to Wisconsin, Gould would follow, then moved again, with more land-ready children, barely across the state line, to Wabasha, Minn.
5) Dr. William H. Hoyt, with biography , age 62 in 1850,
6) Aurelia, Seen as Orelia Lamb, in Huston Twp, 1850, age 54 in 1850.
Her sons Ezra G., Orletus H., Julius F. Lamb, all went to Wabasha County, MN, with her spouse Freeman Lamb, and her brother Gould R.
7) Orris (tannery owner in PA, active in the ME church, died before the 1850 Census?),
8) Sophia (a mystery? maybe died by 1815?) Not in mother's pension application of Mar, 1836, so some thus believe she died before 1839, which makes sense. Others put her birth at about 1791, death in 1843, which raises the possibility she was adopted in some way. (Beware, the Sophia A. Hoyt who married William F. Green, in Huston Twp., 1850, was a namesake niece),
9) Patty (namesake for the first. Married Erasmus D. Patterson, still in Huston Twp. for 1850 Census, age 50, eldest sister Sally B. present).
(Sources: Name list from C. Walcott. Details from US Censuses, graveyard lists, and local histories. Especially helpful for daughters and granddaughters, was the 1850 Census list for Huston Twp, now in Clearfield County, archived at PAgenWeb.org/~elk/k/1850HustonCensus.htm)
WARNING: The 1871 book of D.W. Hoyt is used, but carefully. Good for ancestors and some siblings, it was weak for Hoyts close to Keturah. This weakness is presumed due to the death of Keturah's son Gould, a contributor/ proofreader for the book before he died. Gould R. Hoyt's death was in 1866, five years before the book was published in its last version. Example of an error--DW's book showed her spouse Seth Hoyt's death date as 1857, so after hers. In reality, he died before Keturah. The true date let her collect a Widow's Pension from Mar., 1836 through her death in 1845, which meant he died before Mar., 1836:
Source: FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-89WB-78FS
The criteria for collecting a pension back, then, went beyond the ex-soldier's death. The widow had to also be in financial need. After his death, she thus would not apply until her savings or income ran low. The actual date of his death was found to be 1831 by Cindy Walcott, when researching the pension files.
====================================================
In progress....
I. Namesake
II. Their Key Migrations
III. Life Before Pennsylvania
I. NAMESAKE. Married to Seth Hoyt, her maiden name would be spelled and re-spelled many ways in her and her parents' lifetimes, ranging from Robblee to Rublee to Roblea to Ruble, the "ending e" spoken, not silent. Named for her mother, both were given the Old Testament name of Keturah by their NY-born families. Both women preferred Catharine once in adulthood (sometimes seen as Catherine or Katharine).
If either Keturah was buried as Catharine, it would be this one. Why? She died, not in Vermont, like her mother, but in Pennsylvania, a place with more German speakers. Her new neighbors would recognize Catharine as similar to Katarine/Katarina, but would wrinkle their foreheads if hearing Keturah.
Both Keturahs lived their last days surrounded by grandchildren. Mother Keturah's obituary told of her having lived to see five generations, with "hundreds of descendants" by her death.
Her own mother was born a Baker. Her mother's known relatives included some brothers, Eleasor Baker and two more, Bethuel and Francis Baker, names seen as co-executors with her mother, on their father's will. Brother Francis was a junior to the Bakers' father.
This Keturah's father was William Robblee/Rublee. His beginnings were with his brother Reuben and others, in easternmost NY, between the well-settled Hudson River and the still-wild Connecticut. Early NY deemed the closer banks of the Connecticut River (currently in other states) as its easternmost boundary. The emerging adjacent states put their disagreement into action by sending settlers. Both sides, in fact, sent settlers into overlapping territory that each regarded as their own frontier. Moving south to north, the future states competing with NY for new land were CT, MA and VT. This helps explain how someone from a NY family, herself, married someone from a CT family, her spouse Seth. Their two families would meet each other in Massachusetts, with her uncle Reuben bringing his family there, too.
Her own generation would venture further north into Vermont, with their elders making varied choices. Her father William must have found good farm land in MA, as he stayed there, left a will naming everyone in her immediate family. Her uncle Reuben returned to NY, leaving her presumed cousin Permelia Ruble/Rublee Hoyt behind, with known cousin Philip Rublee later joining Permilia's spouse in Bristol Twp., VT, seen as neighbors in the same census, taken there after Permelia's death. Keturah's own mother, Keturah the senior, once widowed by William, would follow Keturah into the next place, Vermont.
Keturah's mother, once in Vermont, would marry a fellow widower and distant Hoyt cousin who spelled his name as Stephen Haight/Hait. Haight's family had long ago become Quaker, after moving down the Atlantic shoreline, from CT, to lower NY (above Long Island) and meeting Quaker neighbors. The Robblees were instead seen with their early baptisms in NY's Reformed Churches. (These Dutch and German churches were similar to Presbyterian, except that non-English parents followed the old European custom of selecting two godparents per child, often from the parents' siblings. Godparents were viewed as necessary, as they committed in public, in front of witnesses, to raising the new child well, religiously and otherwise, should the parents not be able. Godparents might volunteer to be guardians should the parents die. This tended to prevent "indenture", a temporary enslavement of an orphaned child until of a certain age. Everyone knew the godparents' names, the church had a record, there would be no argument, no grabbing of fatherless children off the streets as the Virginia Land Company was said to have done in London, in order to send cheap labor to its colonies. The different attitudes persist today, one of protecting children so they will have a good future versus the other, of victimizing the unprotected so adults can live extra-well. This produces different average outcomes in different parts of the United States, seen over decades of school, library and health statistics involving children.)
The Roblees probably knew the Haight subset of Hoyts back in NY, when both were in old Dutchess County. All three family surnames were found later in Addison County, Vermont. (Just the Hoyts and Robblees made it at an earlier date to Massachusetts, where Keturah was raised and married.)
Her uncle Reuben was less well documented as to children born near the time of buying his land in MA. It's known that he sold his MA land and would return to NY after his presumed daughter, Permelia Ruble Hoyt, married Seth Hoyt's brother, Uriah. Keturah and Permelia's children were thus extra-related, but we've not yet found signs of their many children being better buddies than average. None, for example, moved with cousins to the same new counties as they matured. They moved only with siblings. Was there some sad estrangement? Or, did the usual "accidents of life" separate them, someone "lucky in an old place", not needing to move to find a better life?
Seth and Keturah would finish raising their children on Lanesboro Street in New Haven, VT, where other Hoyt brothers and certain in-laws lived. Her brother-in-law, the Ezra Hoyt to be called both Judge and Hon., was becoming politically important, supporting Middlebury College, and raising his sons to be well-educated ministers (who would, thus, leave, to find churches to pastor). That Ezra would donate his own land on that street for a new church, bringing together two congregations into one building. Uriah and Permelia would name a child Ezra. That honored Uriah's father, not just his brother. Keturah and Seth did the opposite, would name no surviving child Ezra, so perhaps any estrangement involved a conflict with an earlier Ezra?
A local history of Addison County later remembered the other Hoyt brothers as living on Lanesborough Street. Uriah and Permelia would not be mentioned, as they had instead continued north out of town. At first, they went to Monkton. That was where Keturah's stepfather, Stephen Haight, had gone, to live with his son Stephen the Jr. The younger Stephen, like Judge Ezra, was becoming politically important. The War of 1812, against the British, over the US-Canadian boundary, had created a temporary job spurt in Monkton's direction. New work involved forging local bog iron to make gun boats for defending the nearby shipping channels on the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain. The workers supported new "corner stores" while their new jobs lasted. That job spurt ended. Cousin Permelia lost two children buried in Monkton, while Keturah saw one child lost back in New Haven.
Keturah's first Patty died young. The child's name was unusual by Puritan standards, a dancing kind of name, instead of the usual praying-and-preaching kind. Keturah would re-give that name to a later daughter. Naming a new child for a lost one was a common practice by old standards (British Isles and Puritan only? No, have since found this true back in Norway for ancestors of this writer's spouse.).
That habit of re-using a dead child's name would fade away after the Civil War, as large families would become rare. Son Gould R. would have many children, however. He would name a daughter Patty Mehitable (who called herself P.M. or Mehitable)and a son Ezra Jennings (who called himself E.J.). If there were hurts involving any early Ezra, they had been healed. Both namesake children were seen pre-marriage in the 1860 Census, starting new lives on new farms, out in Wabasha County, Minnesota. This big move happened after Keturah was gone from everyone's lives. She would die in 1845, well before Gould's death "out west", meaning past the Mississippi R., in 1865.
The signs are that, while spouse Seth still lived, Seth and Keturah stayed always in New Haven, Vermont, after leaving Lanesborough/Lanesboro, Massachusetts. With the Monkton location no longer working for them, cousin Permelia and Uriah would see Bristol as a better place. They drew a bit closer to New Haven by moving there. Did they perhaps own or co-own a store there with uncle Reuben Roblee's known son, Philip? Early US censuses named only the household head, nor the children or retirees present, nor the wife, unless widowed, so named as household head. These old censuses named Uriah as in Monkton in 1810, then in Bristol in 1820, before Permelia died. By the 1840 census, Uriah's in-laws were still his neighbors in Bristol, but using Rublee more often than Robblee. Two spellings would allow ministers and neighbors and any business people owed a debt to keep their records separate for two sub-branches of the same large family.
Each couple lost a key member around 1830. Permelia died a few years before 1830, and Seth, "just after". Permelia's unmarried daughter, Abigail, also died "too early". Stones for all three are missing. At least two should be in Evergreen Cemetery. That's the same graveyard used to bury this Keturah's mother, who remarried, so the mother's stone says "Keturah Haight", Evergreen is near her own church in VT, not near her first husband and their church back in Mass., nor in the mother's second husband's burying ground (Quaker) in Monkton.
Also at Evergreen: That part of Judge Ezra's family staying local. Ezra's in-laws. Parents to the four Hoyt brothers.
Not at Evergreen: Permelia's Uriah Hoyt, buried decades later, in Bristol, with his second wife. His brother, Seymour Hoyt, initially locating with brothers Seth and Ezra in houses/farmsteads on Lanesborough Street, so listed in the old Addison County history book. Seymour showed a new trend, being given a mother's surname as a first name. Seymour would be buried out in southwestern Michigan, an early settler on a later frontier, with other migrating Hoyts present, including Seth's nephew, a ministering son of Judge Ezra.
Seth's stone back in New Haven must have been lost before a round of recording stone inscriptions and locations began in the early 1900s in order to create county and state records of what previously had been town records. Washing rains or tossed grave dirt obliterated Seth's name and date. A paper record was made of Permelia's stone around 1910-1920, with its carved record still visible.
Multiple missing/illegible stones are signs that the rest of the family left the region early, were not around to re-carve a faded stone or pick-up a fallen one. For example, Keturah's grandson reported his father William's family was in their Penn. location by 1819. (William ended in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania, after becoming a teacher and doctor, made possible by attending uncle Ezra Hoyts's Middlebury College? There may have been an interval in NY state, first.)
II. THEIR KEY MIGRATIONS. The geography of the family was such that the Hoyts came from Connecticut; the Robblees/Rubblees, from eastern NY. They most clearly crossed paths in Lanesborough, Mass., pre-Revolution. This Keturah and spouse Seth Hoyt were raised and married in Lanesborough. Post-Revolution (a war in which husband Seth had served, not just her father William), the young couple would later move with Hoyt siblings and in-laws to New Haven, Vermont.
For the two Keturahs, both her and her mother, their spouse owned land or a business in an old place, so stayed and died there. The widows then followed their adult children, out to the next place, newly settled, wilder. This caused husband and wife to be buried in different states two generations in a row. Her father was buried first in Mass., her mother, some decades later, in Vermont. Her Seth died in Vermont, stone lost to time, while she was buried in Pennsylvania. Family records collected by C. Walcott say this Keturah is buried in Centre Cemetery. It's an old cemetery used by several of her children, in the town of Hyde, in Clearfield County.
Younger generations settling on the next new frontier as it moved away from the old. Her son Gould R. Hoyt's sons instead ended in the upper Midwest, buried in Wisconsin and Minnesota, c
their counties near/on the majestic Mississippi and its long tributary, the Wisconsin River. They moved to places with steamboats and logs set floating down the rivers, the timber on its way to mills, to be cut. The logging would not last, so there were further moves, mainly to find better farmland than whatever had been good for pineries (felled pines grew on sandy stuff? boggy? good for cranberries and pasture, once cleared, but not corn?). Some perhaps settled for a bit sandy land but extra-good scenery, plentiful in the "bluff country", along its rapidly descending rivers and "coulees".
Clearfield County in Pennsylvania settled first, before Wisconsin and then Minnesota opened to frontier settlers. Again, many of this Keturah's adult children moved to Pennyslvania's less Puritan-influenced, more Germanic places. Widowed Keturah Hoyt may have lived with son Gould R., who saw two sons born back in NY, first, then would be associated with different towns in Penn., especially Penfield, before he left with his maturing sons to go further west. (Gould and wife went first to Wisconsin, to help settle their older children there, seen in the 1850 Census. Their younger sons and daughters were there seen in the 1860 Census on the Minnesota side of the big Miss. river. Gould's last census would be Minnesota's state one, in 1865, seen widowed, living with son Ezra, the family of sister Aurellia Hoyt Lamb nearby, using the same cemetery.)
Son Orris remained in Pennsylvania. This Keturah was buried as "Catharine" in his Methodist cemetery. Gould's obituary for her indicated she had converted from Presbyterianism to a new faith, in the notion that God wanted all people to be saved. Was that perhaps his way of saying she became Methodist, had gone beyond a Methodist burial? (Reasons for changing varied. Some wanted total alcoholic abstinence to be a requirement. Other former Puritans had become disenchanted with the "New Light" extremism that emerged pre-Revolution. Extreme New Lights preached that God judged only a tiny few as worthy of favor at birth, with suicidal thoughts or depression an outward sign that God had already given up on the person and that the devil resided permanently within.)
The early walkers of Centre Cemetery found a lot there that had been bought by grandson Adam. No stones have his name. Is he buried there? Did he stay, or go further west? Some questions are slow to be answered.
Others were buried in other cemeteries nearby--For example, son William the Jr.
III. LIFE BEFORE PENNSYLVANIA. Her own father, William Robblee the senior, had owned a farm in Lanesborough, Mass. His will named both mother and daughter Keturah by their legal names, not by their nicknames of Catharine, according to their modern historian, C. Walcott.
The farm families of old were very large. Her father's will also named many surviving siblings, twelve in number, many (all?)linked to her parents at Findagrave. Their first names, Keturah's and her siblings', were also found by Walcott in one list made by the town/church back in Lanesborough.
"Town and church" were generally not yet separate under Puritanism, pre-Revolution. The one church authorized by the town received tax money and co-operated on record-keeping. Infant baptisms meant the names of all children could be gathered in one swoop out of church records, then put into town records at the same time, in a list, as if a census had been done. Tax collectors could also collect names, but that seemed less common. Those churched early, from infancy, baptized soon after birth in the authorized Puritan church, were better counted, making them easier to follow genealogically than would be either the children of adult baptizers or those baptized as infants inside chapels of the so-called King's Church. The records of the last were often burned or carried away in a Revolution that rejected praying for the king as "inimical".)
William Robblee wrote his will in the months preceding his death. C. Walcott researched its reaching Probate Court and the Court's appointment of guardians for his younger children.
====================================================
12 Siblings Named in Father's Will
====================================================
Brothers to this Keturah:
William, Hiram, Andrew^^, Francis^^, John Brush*, Erastus*
Sisters:
Lucy^, the Katura studied here, Rebekah, Susannah, Mary^, Sarah^^
Will Notes
^ Described as still single, so different provisions for their survival.
^^Minors, but over 14, given court-assigned a male guardian outside the family (allowing for indenture contracts?).
* Minors under 14, their mother, Keturah Sr., allowed to be guardian.
====================================================
Mother Keturah later followed daughter Keturah up into Vermont. Four migrating Hoyt brothers had taken their families there, that Ezra to become a judge and go to the state legislature, Seth, Seymour, and cousin Permelia's Uriah, plus their Hoyt parents, the Ezra Hoyt and Sarah Seymour who had married back in CT .
Now freed of British rule, the Hoyts and in-laws migrating to one place were free to call their new town as they wished. They named it for the New Haven back in Connecticut, from whence Seth's mother, Sarah Seymour Hoyt, had come.
Daughter Keturah and her siblings buried their mother Keturah in the same Vermont cemetery holding their presumed cousin, Permelia Ruble Hoyt (double-check this).
Themselves immigrants to America in the Puritan era, the Hoyts found their new location in Vermont overlapping with old homes of former enemies of the British, the Canadian-French people and perhaps Metis and First Nation peoples. When cousin Permelia left her spouse Uriah Hoyt a widow, he re-married a Pettibone (Pettitbon in French).
After father William died in Mass. in 1792, mother Keturah's second spouse, once in Vermont, was Stephen Haight. They married when both were past their child-raising years and ignored religious differences to do so. He was Quaker. According to Walcott, she joined the Congregational Church in New Haven, VT, in 1806, giving her name as "Mrs. Katherine Hait".
He must have come to Vermont with his son, Stephen Haight the junior. They came from the Nine Partners section of old Dutchess County in eastern NY, a county much larger then, than now, as it split into parts. Their family may have long known the Robblees. (The Robblees' part of Dutchess County, known as Philipse Patent, largely split off as Putnam County in 1812, well after they lef.t) Stephen the junior was among the first to settle in Monkton, Vermont, just north of the Hoyt's town of New Haven. He was among those "taking the freeman's oath" between the end of the Revolutionary War and 1787, according to an old book of 1886, History of Addison County, p.514, H. Perry Smith. "Freemen" had other meanings as well, but, in founding new towns, it usually meant they were free of indenture and mortgage, so owed work and money to no one, could afford to take on whatever new mortgage was needed.
Stephen was buried near the other two of his children, in the Quaker/Friends cemetery. The older Stephen can be confused with son Stephen the junior, who would become a judge, then a sheriff in Monkton, plus represent Monkton in the state legislature, then go onto Washington D.C. where he died.
(Haights vs. Hoyts. The first arriving Hoyt to America, Simon, was well-documented. This was partly due to land dealings including with adult children and being involved in several church/town foundings, until his last in CT. His family was probably of those who went by Hoyte back in England. Sounding out names, instead of seeing names written, those moving closer to Long Island changed theirs to the Haight spelling, while those staying in CT shifted to Hoyt. The Haights had located in a place populated mainly by Quakers. Many of the NY Quakers owned a few slaves, but ultimately came to see slave-owning as wrong. They freed their own slaves early, by the time Britain abolished slavery, maybe before 1820.)
The Roblea/Rubblee/Robblee name was spelled many ways by family members. The Robblee's family historian C. Walcott first saw it as Rublier when NY clergymen in one church kept records for William Robblee's father, another William, under Dutch-influenced spelling rules. Ruble was another common variation, used for her, along with Roblea, in the multi-family Hoyt history published by D.W. Hoyt in 1871.
A legal clerk for Dutch-influenced Phillipse Patent (Phillips Patent in English) spelled their surname as Rappelyea for two lots owned by William and Reuben in 1754, and for taxes owed by William through the 1760s, before moving elsewhere in NY. Due to just that one set of records, even though never used for them again, elsewhere, some have nevertheless speculated the Robblees/Robleas were related to the "silver spoon" family named Rapalje. That much more privileged family arrived in Fort Orange/New Amsterdam with the Dutch, then quickly received generous land grants from the Dutch. They were ethnically Walloon, not Dutch, not British. Their Fort Orange arrival was over 100 years before Keturah's family was of record. In addition to the far greater wealth of the Walloon Rapaljes, there were other differences. Through the American Revolution, so in Keturah's era, they were still using men's names that were Dutch (Cornelius, Garrett) or Walloon.
Like other Walloons and Dutch they did not always not use a permanent last name shared across family members, but substituted a father's first name as the last name. Once stable surnames became expected, then people agreed what to use, perhaps a place (farm? landed estate?) from whence recent ancestors came, giving honor to many in the source community, and not just one ancestor. In their case, this produced Rapalje, meaning a family originally from a place that sounded like Rapal. The "silver spoon" family was different from the Robblees/Robleas in more ways, giving some children first names that were not just Dutch, but Walloon (old French, meaning one of the so-called vulgar Latin dialects that together later led to the Romance languages). They continued to benefit from their high social status by being given more large grants of land for around one hundred and fifty years after immigration. The last grantees included one Rapalje family who, with associates, requested the grant and were given it in 1773. Loyal to the British king, but likely to be judged "inimical" to the American colonists, Garrett Rapalje fled. The Garrett who went to the Natchez area in Spanish territory (in to what became western Mississippi) had been given 25,000 acres. A Garrett Rapalje was still alive in 1791, but seems to have been Garrett II, the importer's son, doing business on the Big Black River. He had been listed in NY history as being in a family portrait as a child, with brothers George and Jacques Rapalje included, their names also seen along the Black River around that time. An older Garrett had been given 25,000 acres in west Florida by the British in 1774. He had left NY for NJ at first, where he owned the Brooklyn/Brookland forge in Sussex County in 1777, importing iron for its use, perhaps explaining his allegiance to the British if he needed their iron. He was incarcerated in 1778 and 1779 by the American forces, suspected of being inimical (aiding the British). He subdivided and sold the Florida land granted earlier to buy a plantation in Louisiana, near Baton Rouge, still under Spanish control. However, he did not move there until after the Revolution ended. Unsuccessful with his plantation, he wrote a letter to George Washington in 1794 asking to be appointed an intermediary between traders moving goods down the Mississippi River and the Spanish, a position he called a consulate. He was almost begging as he said he had a large family to support and had "suffered greatly" in the war, so would appreciate a small salary for his services and experience in commerce. Writing in Jan., he was denied in April, not by GW, but by an assistant (source: founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-15-02-0027, associated with the University of Virginia). Stories vary, as perhaps multiple Garretts were confused. Some say the Garrett born in 1830 returned to NY where he died.
Prior to those men receiving huge grants, William and his brother Reuben Robblee did not feel entitled by their heritage to huge grants of land. They were scrambling for small bits in Massachusetts. According to C. Walcott's court search, William bought two parcels, not all at once, so not expensively, but in different years, affordably. Not many years before moving to MA, both William and brother Reuben admitted to unpaid fines in 1765 in NY, a debt owed to the King, their names written as Rubeley when accused. It turned into Robblee for their later appearance in court, a spelling which then would be used frequently. He was in Massachusetts by 1768, just three years after his debt problem after being fined for disturbing the peace, complaints filed by a Simeon Bundy, according to Walcott. William ended with land and most likely a happier family than did Rappalje.
Some named Robblee, seen in Canada, said their name was Scottish. That fits cousin Permelia's name, taken from old-time Scottish wool-dying plants, and Reuben, a name popular among Scottish Protestants after the Reformation period. We might look for signs of Presbyterianism.
Keturah and presumed cousin Permelia Ruble/Roblea Hoyt married brothers, Seth and Uriah Hoyt, respectively. This was at the Lanesborough church, while still in Massachusetts. Once denominations were declared, it called itself Congregational. Presbyterians and some adult baptizers might split apart from the Congregationalists if they had enough members. Such splits were often ethnic, with the Scotch-descended and perhaps northern English being Presbyterian, many English often calling themselves Congregational, while those who were Welsh preferring adult baptism, but who had not split away as Baptists earlier as they were tolerant of other practices, did so now.
For her obituary, son Gould said she had been Presbyterian, but grew to think God wanted the whole world saved, and not just a preordained elect so changed faiths. Her cemetery was Centre, set aside for the old Methodist Episcopalian church once called Centre, but turning into Trinity United Methodist once they joined into the larger denomination. Her son Orris was active at Centre Church when it first formed.
Keturah/Catharine Hoyt first gave birth in that town, Lanesborough, judging from the Hoyts' dates of arrival in the next place of Vermont.
Her and Seth's son, Gould R. Hoyt, was the family biographer. His name was noted several times by David W. Hoyt (of a different male DNA), compiler of a broad history of multiple Hoyts and Haights as well as Hoits. Holes in his book regarding the records for Keturah's children probably were due to Gould contributing from a distance, no longer living in New England or NY where early ancestors had been born and with no one left who could tell him. At first unsure of his own birth state, he gave VT the first time he was asked, in his 1850 Census. He ended by saying MA (more logical, as his date of birth preceded his parents' move from MA to VT). He stopped collecting other of their records too soon, due to his death. Published in 1871, D.W. Hoyt's book noted her son Gould's ability to write wittily and poetically, well-known for letters earning a post office for a Penn. town where he had lived. D.W. lamented his death, saying Gould had died in 1866, in Wabasha County, Minnesota. Lake City was also named, the nearest large town to where Gould lived in 1865. (Gpild was on the farm of son Ezra Jennings Hoyt, Gillford Township, Wabasha County, about 10 miles from Lake City.)
Gould was thus not around to proofread his family's material, nor to make last additions to the final version when it came out 5 years later, in 1871. D.W. Hoyt was careful, though, a well-reasoned recorder. His history is the best old-time source for the Hoyt side of these families. The best modern source for the Robblee/Rublea side, for the same reasons, is Cynthia Walcott, a Robblee descendant (on her mother's side?). She included Keturah's and her cousin Permelia's grandchildren, the two mothers born as Ruble/Roblea, the two fathers named Hoyt (Seth and Uriah). To learn more about their ancestry, she checked records, wills, newspaper articles, and made graveyard visits, much as D.W. Hoyt had done, or asked others to do, for the more varied Hoyts earlier. We applaud their work.
==========================================================
Copyright by JBrown, Julia Brown, Austin, TX, 2017, minor edits to clarify, in 2020. Permission given to Findagrave for use at this page. Descendants of people named here may use whole paragraphs in private materials for family.
"She was a mother of the Revolution."
"She spread the cloth before the chieftains and champions of our country's rights and liberty--and day after day, and week after week prepared the table for the soldiers of our republic while recruiting under Col. Barns, of Lanesborough, Mass., for the purpose of watching the motions and arresting the progress of Gen. Burgoyne, who was advancing from the north with an army which darkened the air, and spread terror and consternation thro the country. Her compensation, she informed me, for six weeks service, brought her just one paper of pins."
Source: From her obituary, written by son G.R. Hoyt, while in Clearfield County.
...Notes below list Nine Children, the first, born in Massachusetts, where Keturah Roblea had married Seth Hoyt, the rest ,in Vermont, where spouse Seth had left her a widow.
Her obituary was printed on Oct 20, 1845, in the Raftsman Journal, transcribed by Cindy Walcott. The full obituary is in a large document of 2010 by Ms. Walcott, archived, for now, at RobleesOnline.org.
=====================================================
Nine Children of Seth Hoyt and Keturah/Catharine, ages in 1850
=====================================================
1) Sarah Betsy (maybe went by Sally or Betsy), lived with youngest sibling, Patty, for 1850 US Census, age 68 then. (Counting backwards, 1850-68 =1782, makes 1781-1782 her calculated time of birth)
2) Patty, the first of two Patties (this one died young),
3) Seth Jr. (to Ill.) One of his grandsons, William Melancton Hoyt, built a wholesale grocery business after the Great Fire in Chicago. Grandson William's success was outweighed by multiple tragedies. Statued stones commissioned by him at Chicago's Graceland give an idea of the grief he felt. (A daughter and several of her children died in a theater fire. A son went to Yale, became a professional golfer, then died in an early car accident.)
4) Gould R. Hoyt with biography. Age 63 for his 1850 US Census, still in Huston Twp, 3 children still at home. For notes on all of Gould's seven children, see bio of their sibling Albert Jesse Hoyt. When Albert Jesse went to Wisconsin, Gould would follow, then moved again, with more land-ready children, barely across the state line, to Wabasha, Minn.
5) Dr. William H. Hoyt, with biography , age 62 in 1850,
6) Aurelia, Seen as Orelia Lamb, in Huston Twp, 1850, age 54 in 1850.
Her sons Ezra G., Orletus H., Julius F. Lamb, all went to Wabasha County, MN, with her spouse Freeman Lamb, and her brother Gould R.
7) Orris (tannery owner in PA, active in the ME church, died before the 1850 Census?),
8) Sophia (a mystery? maybe died by 1815?) Not in mother's pension application of Mar, 1836, so some thus believe she died before 1839, which makes sense. Others put her birth at about 1791, death in 1843, which raises the possibility she was adopted in some way. (Beware, the Sophia A. Hoyt who married William F. Green, in Huston Twp., 1850, was a namesake niece),
9) Patty (namesake for the first. Married Erasmus D. Patterson, still in Huston Twp. for 1850 Census, age 50, eldest sister Sally B. present).
(Sources: Name list from C. Walcott. Details from US Censuses, graveyard lists, and local histories. Especially helpful for daughters and granddaughters, was the 1850 Census list for Huston Twp, now in Clearfield County, archived at PAgenWeb.org/~elk/k/1850HustonCensus.htm)
WARNING: The 1871 book of D.W. Hoyt is used, but carefully. Good for ancestors and some siblings, it was weak for Hoyts close to Keturah. This weakness is presumed due to the death of Keturah's son Gould, a contributor/ proofreader for the book before he died. Gould R. Hoyt's death was in 1866, five years before the book was published in its last version. Example of an error--DW's book showed her spouse Seth Hoyt's death date as 1857, so after hers. In reality, he died before Keturah. The true date let her collect a Widow's Pension from Mar., 1836 through her death in 1845, which meant he died before Mar., 1836:
Source: FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-89WB-78FS
The criteria for collecting a pension back, then, went beyond the ex-soldier's death. The widow had to also be in financial need. After his death, she thus would not apply until her savings or income ran low. The actual date of his death was found to be 1831 by Cindy Walcott, when researching the pension files.
====================================================
In progress....
I. Namesake
II. Their Key Migrations
III. Life Before Pennsylvania
I. NAMESAKE. Married to Seth Hoyt, her maiden name would be spelled and re-spelled many ways in her and her parents' lifetimes, ranging from Robblee to Rublee to Roblea to Ruble, the "ending e" spoken, not silent. Named for her mother, both were given the Old Testament name of Keturah by their NY-born families. Both women preferred Catharine once in adulthood (sometimes seen as Catherine or Katharine).
If either Keturah was buried as Catharine, it would be this one. Why? She died, not in Vermont, like her mother, but in Pennsylvania, a place with more German speakers. Her new neighbors would recognize Catharine as similar to Katarine/Katarina, but would wrinkle their foreheads if hearing Keturah.
Both Keturahs lived their last days surrounded by grandchildren. Mother Keturah's obituary told of her having lived to see five generations, with "hundreds of descendants" by her death.
Her own mother was born a Baker. Her mother's known relatives included some brothers, Eleasor Baker and two more, Bethuel and Francis Baker, names seen as co-executors with her mother, on their father's will. Brother Francis was a junior to the Bakers' father.
This Keturah's father was William Robblee/Rublee. His beginnings were with his brother Reuben and others, in easternmost NY, between the well-settled Hudson River and the still-wild Connecticut. Early NY deemed the closer banks of the Connecticut River (currently in other states) as its easternmost boundary. The emerging adjacent states put their disagreement into action by sending settlers. Both sides, in fact, sent settlers into overlapping territory that each regarded as their own frontier. Moving south to north, the future states competing with NY for new land were CT, MA and VT. This helps explain how someone from a NY family, herself, married someone from a CT family, her spouse Seth. Their two families would meet each other in Massachusetts, with her uncle Reuben bringing his family there, too.
Her own generation would venture further north into Vermont, with their elders making varied choices. Her father William must have found good farm land in MA, as he stayed there, left a will naming everyone in her immediate family. Her uncle Reuben returned to NY, leaving her presumed cousin Permelia Ruble/Rublee Hoyt behind, with known cousin Philip Rublee later joining Permilia's spouse in Bristol Twp., VT, seen as neighbors in the same census, taken there after Permelia's death. Keturah's own mother, Keturah the senior, once widowed by William, would follow Keturah into the next place, Vermont.
Keturah's mother, once in Vermont, would marry a fellow widower and distant Hoyt cousin who spelled his name as Stephen Haight/Hait. Haight's family had long ago become Quaker, after moving down the Atlantic shoreline, from CT, to lower NY (above Long Island) and meeting Quaker neighbors. The Robblees were instead seen with their early baptisms in NY's Reformed Churches. (These Dutch and German churches were similar to Presbyterian, except that non-English parents followed the old European custom of selecting two godparents per child, often from the parents' siblings. Godparents were viewed as necessary, as they committed in public, in front of witnesses, to raising the new child well, religiously and otherwise, should the parents not be able. Godparents might volunteer to be guardians should the parents die. This tended to prevent "indenture", a temporary enslavement of an orphaned child until of a certain age. Everyone knew the godparents' names, the church had a record, there would be no argument, no grabbing of fatherless children off the streets as the Virginia Land Company was said to have done in London, in order to send cheap labor to its colonies. The different attitudes persist today, one of protecting children so they will have a good future versus the other, of victimizing the unprotected so adults can live extra-well. This produces different average outcomes in different parts of the United States, seen over decades of school, library and health statistics involving children.)
The Roblees probably knew the Haight subset of Hoyts back in NY, when both were in old Dutchess County. All three family surnames were found later in Addison County, Vermont. (Just the Hoyts and Robblees made it at an earlier date to Massachusetts, where Keturah was raised and married.)
Her uncle Reuben was less well documented as to children born near the time of buying his land in MA. It's known that he sold his MA land and would return to NY after his presumed daughter, Permelia Ruble Hoyt, married Seth Hoyt's brother, Uriah. Keturah and Permelia's children were thus extra-related, but we've not yet found signs of their many children being better buddies than average. None, for example, moved with cousins to the same new counties as they matured. They moved only with siblings. Was there some sad estrangement? Or, did the usual "accidents of life" separate them, someone "lucky in an old place", not needing to move to find a better life?
Seth and Keturah would finish raising their children on Lanesboro Street in New Haven, VT, where other Hoyt brothers and certain in-laws lived. Her brother-in-law, the Ezra Hoyt to be called both Judge and Hon., was becoming politically important, supporting Middlebury College, and raising his sons to be well-educated ministers (who would, thus, leave, to find churches to pastor). That Ezra would donate his own land on that street for a new church, bringing together two congregations into one building. Uriah and Permelia would name a child Ezra. That honored Uriah's father, not just his brother. Keturah and Seth did the opposite, would name no surviving child Ezra, so perhaps any estrangement involved a conflict with an earlier Ezra?
A local history of Addison County later remembered the other Hoyt brothers as living on Lanesborough Street. Uriah and Permelia would not be mentioned, as they had instead continued north out of town. At first, they went to Monkton. That was where Keturah's stepfather, Stephen Haight, had gone, to live with his son Stephen the Jr. The younger Stephen, like Judge Ezra, was becoming politically important. The War of 1812, against the British, over the US-Canadian boundary, had created a temporary job spurt in Monkton's direction. New work involved forging local bog iron to make gun boats for defending the nearby shipping channels on the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain. The workers supported new "corner stores" while their new jobs lasted. That job spurt ended. Cousin Permelia lost two children buried in Monkton, while Keturah saw one child lost back in New Haven.
Keturah's first Patty died young. The child's name was unusual by Puritan standards, a dancing kind of name, instead of the usual praying-and-preaching kind. Keturah would re-give that name to a later daughter. Naming a new child for a lost one was a common practice by old standards (British Isles and Puritan only? No, have since found this true back in Norway for ancestors of this writer's spouse.).
That habit of re-using a dead child's name would fade away after the Civil War, as large families would become rare. Son Gould R. would have many children, however. He would name a daughter Patty Mehitable (who called herself P.M. or Mehitable)and a son Ezra Jennings (who called himself E.J.). If there were hurts involving any early Ezra, they had been healed. Both namesake children were seen pre-marriage in the 1860 Census, starting new lives on new farms, out in Wabasha County, Minnesota. This big move happened after Keturah was gone from everyone's lives. She would die in 1845, well before Gould's death "out west", meaning past the Mississippi R., in 1865.
The signs are that, while spouse Seth still lived, Seth and Keturah stayed always in New Haven, Vermont, after leaving Lanesborough/Lanesboro, Massachusetts. With the Monkton location no longer working for them, cousin Permelia and Uriah would see Bristol as a better place. They drew a bit closer to New Haven by moving there. Did they perhaps own or co-own a store there with uncle Reuben Roblee's known son, Philip? Early US censuses named only the household head, nor the children or retirees present, nor the wife, unless widowed, so named as household head. These old censuses named Uriah as in Monkton in 1810, then in Bristol in 1820, before Permelia died. By the 1840 census, Uriah's in-laws were still his neighbors in Bristol, but using Rublee more often than Robblee. Two spellings would allow ministers and neighbors and any business people owed a debt to keep their records separate for two sub-branches of the same large family.
Each couple lost a key member around 1830. Permelia died a few years before 1830, and Seth, "just after". Permelia's unmarried daughter, Abigail, also died "too early". Stones for all three are missing. At least two should be in Evergreen Cemetery. That's the same graveyard used to bury this Keturah's mother, who remarried, so the mother's stone says "Keturah Haight", Evergreen is near her own church in VT, not near her first husband and their church back in Mass., nor in the mother's second husband's burying ground (Quaker) in Monkton.
Also at Evergreen: That part of Judge Ezra's family staying local. Ezra's in-laws. Parents to the four Hoyt brothers.
Not at Evergreen: Permelia's Uriah Hoyt, buried decades later, in Bristol, with his second wife. His brother, Seymour Hoyt, initially locating with brothers Seth and Ezra in houses/farmsteads on Lanesborough Street, so listed in the old Addison County history book. Seymour showed a new trend, being given a mother's surname as a first name. Seymour would be buried out in southwestern Michigan, an early settler on a later frontier, with other migrating Hoyts present, including Seth's nephew, a ministering son of Judge Ezra.
Seth's stone back in New Haven must have been lost before a round of recording stone inscriptions and locations began in the early 1900s in order to create county and state records of what previously had been town records. Washing rains or tossed grave dirt obliterated Seth's name and date. A paper record was made of Permelia's stone around 1910-1920, with its carved record still visible.
Multiple missing/illegible stones are signs that the rest of the family left the region early, were not around to re-carve a faded stone or pick-up a fallen one. For example, Keturah's grandson reported his father William's family was in their Penn. location by 1819. (William ended in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania, after becoming a teacher and doctor, made possible by attending uncle Ezra Hoyts's Middlebury College? There may have been an interval in NY state, first.)
II. THEIR KEY MIGRATIONS. The geography of the family was such that the Hoyts came from Connecticut; the Robblees/Rubblees, from eastern NY. They most clearly crossed paths in Lanesborough, Mass., pre-Revolution. This Keturah and spouse Seth Hoyt were raised and married in Lanesborough. Post-Revolution (a war in which husband Seth had served, not just her father William), the young couple would later move with Hoyt siblings and in-laws to New Haven, Vermont.
For the two Keturahs, both her and her mother, their spouse owned land or a business in an old place, so stayed and died there. The widows then followed their adult children, out to the next place, newly settled, wilder. This caused husband and wife to be buried in different states two generations in a row. Her father was buried first in Mass., her mother, some decades later, in Vermont. Her Seth died in Vermont, stone lost to time, while she was buried in Pennsylvania. Family records collected by C. Walcott say this Keturah is buried in Centre Cemetery. It's an old cemetery used by several of her children, in the town of Hyde, in Clearfield County.
Younger generations settling on the next new frontier as it moved away from the old. Her son Gould R. Hoyt's sons instead ended in the upper Midwest, buried in Wisconsin and Minnesota, c
their counties near/on the majestic Mississippi and its long tributary, the Wisconsin River. They moved to places with steamboats and logs set floating down the rivers, the timber on its way to mills, to be cut. The logging would not last, so there were further moves, mainly to find better farmland than whatever had been good for pineries (felled pines grew on sandy stuff? boggy? good for cranberries and pasture, once cleared, but not corn?). Some perhaps settled for a bit sandy land but extra-good scenery, plentiful in the "bluff country", along its rapidly descending rivers and "coulees".
Clearfield County in Pennsylvania settled first, before Wisconsin and then Minnesota opened to frontier settlers. Again, many of this Keturah's adult children moved to Pennyslvania's less Puritan-influenced, more Germanic places. Widowed Keturah Hoyt may have lived with son Gould R., who saw two sons born back in NY, first, then would be associated with different towns in Penn., especially Penfield, before he left with his maturing sons to go further west. (Gould and wife went first to Wisconsin, to help settle their older children there, seen in the 1850 Census. Their younger sons and daughters were there seen in the 1860 Census on the Minnesota side of the big Miss. river. Gould's last census would be Minnesota's state one, in 1865, seen widowed, living with son Ezra, the family of sister Aurellia Hoyt Lamb nearby, using the same cemetery.)
Son Orris remained in Pennsylvania. This Keturah was buried as "Catharine" in his Methodist cemetery. Gould's obituary for her indicated she had converted from Presbyterianism to a new faith, in the notion that God wanted all people to be saved. Was that perhaps his way of saying she became Methodist, had gone beyond a Methodist burial? (Reasons for changing varied. Some wanted total alcoholic abstinence to be a requirement. Other former Puritans had become disenchanted with the "New Light" extremism that emerged pre-Revolution. Extreme New Lights preached that God judged only a tiny few as worthy of favor at birth, with suicidal thoughts or depression an outward sign that God had already given up on the person and that the devil resided permanently within.)
The early walkers of Centre Cemetery found a lot there that had been bought by grandson Adam. No stones have his name. Is he buried there? Did he stay, or go further west? Some questions are slow to be answered.
Others were buried in other cemeteries nearby--For example, son William the Jr.
III. LIFE BEFORE PENNSYLVANIA. Her own father, William Robblee the senior, had owned a farm in Lanesborough, Mass. His will named both mother and daughter Keturah by their legal names, not by their nicknames of Catharine, according to their modern historian, C. Walcott.
The farm families of old were very large. Her father's will also named many surviving siblings, twelve in number, many (all?)linked to her parents at Findagrave. Their first names, Keturah's and her siblings', were also found by Walcott in one list made by the town/church back in Lanesborough.
"Town and church" were generally not yet separate under Puritanism, pre-Revolution. The one church authorized by the town received tax money and co-operated on record-keeping. Infant baptisms meant the names of all children could be gathered in one swoop out of church records, then put into town records at the same time, in a list, as if a census had been done. Tax collectors could also collect names, but that seemed less common. Those churched early, from infancy, baptized soon after birth in the authorized Puritan church, were better counted, making them easier to follow genealogically than would be either the children of adult baptizers or those baptized as infants inside chapels of the so-called King's Church. The records of the last were often burned or carried away in a Revolution that rejected praying for the king as "inimical".)
William Robblee wrote his will in the months preceding his death. C. Walcott researched its reaching Probate Court and the Court's appointment of guardians for his younger children.
====================================================
12 Siblings Named in Father's Will
====================================================
Brothers to this Keturah:
William, Hiram, Andrew^^, Francis^^, John Brush*, Erastus*
Sisters:
Lucy^, the Katura studied here, Rebekah, Susannah, Mary^, Sarah^^
Will Notes
^ Described as still single, so different provisions for their survival.
^^Minors, but over 14, given court-assigned a male guardian outside the family (allowing for indenture contracts?).
* Minors under 14, their mother, Keturah Sr., allowed to be guardian.
====================================================
Mother Keturah later followed daughter Keturah up into Vermont. Four migrating Hoyt brothers had taken their families there, that Ezra to become a judge and go to the state legislature, Seth, Seymour, and cousin Permelia's Uriah, plus their Hoyt parents, the Ezra Hoyt and Sarah Seymour who had married back in CT .
Now freed of British rule, the Hoyts and in-laws migrating to one place were free to call their new town as they wished. They named it for the New Haven back in Connecticut, from whence Seth's mother, Sarah Seymour Hoyt, had come.
Daughter Keturah and her siblings buried their mother Keturah in the same Vermont cemetery holding their presumed cousin, Permelia Ruble Hoyt (double-check this).
Themselves immigrants to America in the Puritan era, the Hoyts found their new location in Vermont overlapping with old homes of former enemies of the British, the Canadian-French people and perhaps Metis and First Nation peoples. When cousin Permelia left her spouse Uriah Hoyt a widow, he re-married a Pettibone (Pettitbon in French).
After father William died in Mass. in 1792, mother Keturah's second spouse, once in Vermont, was Stephen Haight. They married when both were past their child-raising years and ignored religious differences to do so. He was Quaker. According to Walcott, she joined the Congregational Church in New Haven, VT, in 1806, giving her name as "Mrs. Katherine Hait".
He must have come to Vermont with his son, Stephen Haight the junior. They came from the Nine Partners section of old Dutchess County in eastern NY, a county much larger then, than now, as it split into parts. Their family may have long known the Robblees. (The Robblees' part of Dutchess County, known as Philipse Patent, largely split off as Putnam County in 1812, well after they lef.t) Stephen the junior was among the first to settle in Monkton, Vermont, just north of the Hoyt's town of New Haven. He was among those "taking the freeman's oath" between the end of the Revolutionary War and 1787, according to an old book of 1886, History of Addison County, p.514, H. Perry Smith. "Freemen" had other meanings as well, but, in founding new towns, it usually meant they were free of indenture and mortgage, so owed work and money to no one, could afford to take on whatever new mortgage was needed.
Stephen was buried near the other two of his children, in the Quaker/Friends cemetery. The older Stephen can be confused with son Stephen the junior, who would become a judge, then a sheriff in Monkton, plus represent Monkton in the state legislature, then go onto Washington D.C. where he died.
(Haights vs. Hoyts. The first arriving Hoyt to America, Simon, was well-documented. This was partly due to land dealings including with adult children and being involved in several church/town foundings, until his last in CT. His family was probably of those who went by Hoyte back in England. Sounding out names, instead of seeing names written, those moving closer to Long Island changed theirs to the Haight spelling, while those staying in CT shifted to Hoyt. The Haights had located in a place populated mainly by Quakers. Many of the NY Quakers owned a few slaves, but ultimately came to see slave-owning as wrong. They freed their own slaves early, by the time Britain abolished slavery, maybe before 1820.)
The Roblea/Rubblee/Robblee name was spelled many ways by family members. The Robblee's family historian C. Walcott first saw it as Rublier when NY clergymen in one church kept records for William Robblee's father, another William, under Dutch-influenced spelling rules. Ruble was another common variation, used for her, along with Roblea, in the multi-family Hoyt history published by D.W. Hoyt in 1871.
A legal clerk for Dutch-influenced Phillipse Patent (Phillips Patent in English) spelled their surname as Rappelyea for two lots owned by William and Reuben in 1754, and for taxes owed by William through the 1760s, before moving elsewhere in NY. Due to just that one set of records, even though never used for them again, elsewhere, some have nevertheless speculated the Robblees/Robleas were related to the "silver spoon" family named Rapalje. That much more privileged family arrived in Fort Orange/New Amsterdam with the Dutch, then quickly received generous land grants from the Dutch. They were ethnically Walloon, not Dutch, not British. Their Fort Orange arrival was over 100 years before Keturah's family was of record. In addition to the far greater wealth of the Walloon Rapaljes, there were other differences. Through the American Revolution, so in Keturah's era, they were still using men's names that were Dutch (Cornelius, Garrett) or Walloon.
Like other Walloons and Dutch they did not always not use a permanent last name shared across family members, but substituted a father's first name as the last name. Once stable surnames became expected, then people agreed what to use, perhaps a place (farm? landed estate?) from whence recent ancestors came, giving honor to many in the source community, and not just one ancestor. In their case, this produced Rapalje, meaning a family originally from a place that sounded like Rapal. The "silver spoon" family was different from the Robblees/Robleas in more ways, giving some children first names that were not just Dutch, but Walloon (old French, meaning one of the so-called vulgar Latin dialects that together later led to the Romance languages). They continued to benefit from their high social status by being given more large grants of land for around one hundred and fifty years after immigration. The last grantees included one Rapalje family who, with associates, requested the grant and were given it in 1773. Loyal to the British king, but likely to be judged "inimical" to the American colonists, Garrett Rapalje fled. The Garrett who went to the Natchez area in Spanish territory (in to what became western Mississippi) had been given 25,000 acres. A Garrett Rapalje was still alive in 1791, but seems to have been Garrett II, the importer's son, doing business on the Big Black River. He had been listed in NY history as being in a family portrait as a child, with brothers George and Jacques Rapalje included, their names also seen along the Black River around that time. An older Garrett had been given 25,000 acres in west Florida by the British in 1774. He had left NY for NJ at first, where he owned the Brooklyn/Brookland forge in Sussex County in 1777, importing iron for its use, perhaps explaining his allegiance to the British if he needed their iron. He was incarcerated in 1778 and 1779 by the American forces, suspected of being inimical (aiding the British). He subdivided and sold the Florida land granted earlier to buy a plantation in Louisiana, near Baton Rouge, still under Spanish control. However, he did not move there until after the Revolution ended. Unsuccessful with his plantation, he wrote a letter to George Washington in 1794 asking to be appointed an intermediary between traders moving goods down the Mississippi River and the Spanish, a position he called a consulate. He was almost begging as he said he had a large family to support and had "suffered greatly" in the war, so would appreciate a small salary for his services and experience in commerce. Writing in Jan., he was denied in April, not by GW, but by an assistant (source: founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-15-02-0027, associated with the University of Virginia). Stories vary, as perhaps multiple Garretts were confused. Some say the Garrett born in 1830 returned to NY where he died.
Prior to those men receiving huge grants, William and his brother Reuben Robblee did not feel entitled by their heritage to huge grants of land. They were scrambling for small bits in Massachusetts. According to C. Walcott's court search, William bought two parcels, not all at once, so not expensively, but in different years, affordably. Not many years before moving to MA, both William and brother Reuben admitted to unpaid fines in 1765 in NY, a debt owed to the King, their names written as Rubeley when accused. It turned into Robblee for their later appearance in court, a spelling which then would be used frequently. He was in Massachusetts by 1768, just three years after his debt problem after being fined for disturbing the peace, complaints filed by a Simeon Bundy, according to Walcott. William ended with land and most likely a happier family than did Rappalje.
Some named Robblee, seen in Canada, said their name was Scottish. That fits cousin Permelia's name, taken from old-time Scottish wool-dying plants, and Reuben, a name popular among Scottish Protestants after the Reformation period. We might look for signs of Presbyterianism.
Keturah and presumed cousin Permelia Ruble/Roblea Hoyt married brothers, Seth and Uriah Hoyt, respectively. This was at the Lanesborough church, while still in Massachusetts. Once denominations were declared, it called itself Congregational. Presbyterians and some adult baptizers might split apart from the Congregationalists if they had enough members. Such splits were often ethnic, with the Scotch-descended and perhaps northern English being Presbyterian, many English often calling themselves Congregational, while those who were Welsh preferring adult baptism, but who had not split away as Baptists earlier as they were tolerant of other practices, did so now.
For her obituary, son Gould said she had been Presbyterian, but grew to think God wanted the whole world saved, and not just a preordained elect so changed faiths. Her cemetery was Centre, set aside for the old Methodist Episcopalian church once called Centre, but turning into Trinity United Methodist once they joined into the larger denomination. Her son Orris was active at Centre Church when it first formed.
Keturah/Catharine Hoyt first gave birth in that town, Lanesborough, judging from the Hoyts' dates of arrival in the next place of Vermont.
Her and Seth's son, Gould R. Hoyt, was the family biographer. His name was noted several times by David W. Hoyt (of a different male DNA), compiler of a broad history of multiple Hoyts and Haights as well as Hoits. Holes in his book regarding the records for Keturah's children probably were due to Gould contributing from a distance, no longer living in New England or NY where early ancestors had been born and with no one left who could tell him. At first unsure of his own birth state, he gave VT the first time he was asked, in his 1850 Census. He ended by saying MA (more logical, as his date of birth preceded his parents' move from MA to VT). He stopped collecting other of their records too soon, due to his death. Published in 1871, D.W. Hoyt's book noted her son Gould's ability to write wittily and poetically, well-known for letters earning a post office for a Penn. town where he had lived. D.W. lamented his death, saying Gould had died in 1866, in Wabasha County, Minnesota. Lake City was also named, the nearest large town to where Gould lived in 1865. (Gpild was on the farm of son Ezra Jennings Hoyt, Gillford Township, Wabasha County, about 10 miles from Lake City.)
Gould was thus not around to proofread his family's material, nor to make last additions to the final version when it came out 5 years later, in 1871. D.W. Hoyt was careful, though, a well-reasoned recorder. His history is the best old-time source for the Hoyt side of these families. The best modern source for the Robblee/Rublea side, for the same reasons, is Cynthia Walcott, a Robblee descendant (on her mother's side?). She included Keturah's and her cousin Permelia's grandchildren, the two mothers born as Ruble/Roblea, the two fathers named Hoyt (Seth and Uriah). To learn more about their ancestry, she checked records, wills, newspaper articles, and made graveyard visits, much as D.W. Hoyt had done, or asked others to do, for the more varied Hoyts earlier. We applaud their work.
==========================================================
Copyright by JBrown, Julia Brown, Austin, TX, 2017, minor edits to clarify, in 2020. Permission given to Findagrave for use at this page. Descendants of people named here may use whole paragraphs in private materials for family.
"She spread the cloth before the chieftains and champions of our country's rights and liberty--and day after day, and week after week prepared the table for the soldiers of our republic while recruiting under Col. Barns, of Lanesborough, Mass., for the purpose of watching the motions and arresting the progress of Gen. Burgoyne, who was advancing from the north with an army which darkened the air, and spread terror and consternation thro the country. Her compensation, she informed me, for six weeks service, brought her just one paper of pins."
Source: From her obituary, written by son G.R. Hoyt, while in Clearfield County.
...Notes below list Nine Children, the first, born in Massachusetts, where Keturah Roblea had married Seth Hoyt, the rest ,in Vermont, where spouse Seth had left her a widow.
Her obituary was printed on Oct 20, 1845, in the Raftsman Journal, transcribed by Cindy Walcott. The full obituary is in a large document of 2010 by Ms. Walcott, archived, for now, at RobleesOnline.org.
=====================================================
Nine Children of Seth Hoyt and Keturah/Catharine, ages in 1850
=====================================================
1) Sarah Betsy (maybe went by Sally or Betsy), lived with youngest sibling, Patty, for 1850 US Census, age 68 then. (Counting backwards, 1850-68 =1782, makes 1781-1782 her calculated time of birth)
2) Patty, the first of two Patties (this one died young),
3) Seth Jr. (to Ill.) One of his grandsons, William Melancton Hoyt, built a wholesale grocery business after the Great Fire in Chicago. Grandson William's success was outweighed by multiple tragedies. Statued stones commissioned by him at Chicago's Graceland give an idea of the grief he felt. (A daughter and several of her children died in a theater fire. A son went to Yale, became a professional golfer, then died in an early car accident.)
4) Gould R. Hoyt with biography. Age 63 for his 1850 US Census, still in Huston Twp, 3 children still at home. For notes on all of Gould's seven children, see bio of their sibling Albert Jesse Hoyt. When Albert Jesse went to Wisconsin, Gould would follow, then moved again, with more land-ready children, barely across the state line, to Wabasha, Minn.
5) Dr. William H. Hoyt, with biography , age 62 in 1850,
6) Aurelia, Seen as Orelia Lamb, in Huston Twp, 1850, age 54 in 1850.
Her sons Ezra G., Orletus H., Julius F. Lamb, all went to Wabasha County, MN, with her spouse Freeman Lamb, and her brother Gould R.
7) Orris (tannery owner in PA, active in the ME church, died before the 1850 Census?),
8) Sophia (a mystery? maybe died by 1815?) Not in mother's pension application of Mar, 1836, so some thus believe she died before 1839, which makes sense. Others put her birth at about 1791, death in 1843, which raises the possibility she was adopted in some way. (Beware, the Sophia A. Hoyt who married William F. Green, in Huston Twp., 1850, was a namesake niece),
9) Patty (namesake for the first. Married Erasmus D. Patterson, still in Huston Twp. for 1850 Census, age 50, eldest sister Sally B. present).
(Sources: Name list from C. Walcott. Details from US Censuses, graveyard lists, and local histories. Especially helpful for daughters and granddaughters, was the 1850 Census list for Huston Twp, now in Clearfield County, archived at PAgenWeb.org/~elk/k/1850HustonCensus.htm)
WARNING: The 1871 book of D.W. Hoyt is used, but carefully. Good for ancestors and some siblings, it was weak for Hoyts close to Keturah. This weakness is presumed due to the death of Keturah's son Gould, a contributor/ proofreader for the book before he died. Gould R. Hoyt's death was in 1866, five years before the book was published in its last version. Example of an error--DW's book showed her spouse Seth Hoyt's death date as 1857, so after hers. In reality, he died before Keturah. The true date let her collect a Widow's Pension from Mar., 1836 through her death in 1845, which meant he died before Mar., 1836:
Source: FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-89WB-78FS
The criteria for collecting a pension back, then, went beyond the ex-soldier's death. The widow had to also be in financial need. After his death, she thus would not apply until her savings or income ran low. The actual date of his death was found to be 1831 by Cindy Walcott, when researching the pension files.
====================================================
In progress....
I. Namesake
II. Their Key Migrations
III. Life Before Pennsylvania
I. NAMESAKE. Married to Seth Hoyt, her maiden name would be spelled and re-spelled many ways in her and her parents' lifetimes, ranging from Robblee to Rublee to Roblea to Ruble, the "ending e" spoken, not silent. Named for her mother, both were given the Old Testament name of Keturah by their NY-born families. Both women preferred Catharine once in adulthood (sometimes seen as Catherine or Katharine).
If either Keturah was buried as Catharine, it would be this one. Why? She died, not in Vermont, like her mother, but in Pennsylvania, a place with more German speakers. Her new neighbors would recognize Catharine as similar to Katarine/Katarina, but would wrinkle their foreheads if hearing Keturah.
Both Keturahs lived their last days surrounded by grandchildren. Mother Keturah's obituary told of her having lived to see five generations, with "hundreds of descendants" by her death.
Her own mother was born a Baker. Her mother's known relatives included some brothers, Eleasor Baker and two more, Bethuel and Francis Baker, names seen as co-executors with her mother, on their father's will. Brother Francis was a junior to the Bakers' father.
This Keturah's father was William Robblee/Rublee. His beginnings were with his brother Reuben and others, in easternmost NY, between the well-settled Hudson River and the still-wild Connecticut. Early NY deemed the closer banks of the Connecticut River (currently in other states) as its easternmost boundary. The emerging adjacent states put their disagreement into action by sending settlers. Both sides, in fact, sent settlers into overlapping territory that each regarded as their own frontier. Moving south to north, the future states competing with NY for new land were CT, MA and VT. This helps explain how someone from a NY family, herself, married someone from a CT family, her spouse Seth. Their two families would meet each other in Massachusetts, with her uncle Reuben bringing his family there, too.
Her own generation would venture further north into Vermont, with their elders making varied choices. Her father William must have found good farm land in MA, as he stayed there, left a will naming everyone in her immediate family. Her uncle Reuben returned to NY, leaving her presumed cousin Permelia Ruble/Rublee Hoyt behind, with known cousin Philip Rublee later joining Permilia's spouse in Bristol Twp., VT, seen as neighbors in the same census, taken there after Permelia's death. Keturah's own mother, Keturah the senior, once widowed by William, would follow Keturah into the next place, Vermont.
Keturah's mother, once in Vermont, would marry a fellow widower and distant Hoyt cousin who spelled his name as Stephen Haight/Hait. Haight's family had long ago become Quaker, after moving down the Atlantic shoreline, from CT, to lower NY (above Long Island) and meeting Quaker neighbors. The Robblees were instead seen with their early baptisms in NY's Reformed Churches. (These Dutch and German churches were similar to Presbyterian, except that non-English parents followed the old European custom of selecting two godparents per child, often from the parents' siblings. Godparents were viewed as necessary, as they committed in public, in front of witnesses, to raising the new child well, religiously and otherwise, should the parents not be able. Godparents might volunteer to be guardians should the parents die. This tended to prevent "indenture", a temporary enslavement of an orphaned child until of a certain age. Everyone knew the godparents' names, the church had a record, there would be no argument, no grabbing of fatherless children off the streets as the Virginia Land Company was said to have done in London, in order to send cheap labor to its colonies. The different attitudes persist today, one of protecting children so they will have a good future versus the other, of victimizing the unprotected so adults can live extra-well. This produces different average outcomes in different parts of the United States, seen over decades of school, library and health statistics involving children.)
The Roblees probably knew the Haight subset of Hoyts back in NY, when both were in old Dutchess County. All three family surnames were found later in Addison County, Vermont. (Just the Hoyts and Robblees made it at an earlier date to Massachusetts, where Keturah was raised and married.)
Her uncle Reuben was less well documented as to children born near the time of buying his land in MA. It's known that he sold his MA land and would return to NY after his presumed daughter, Permelia Ruble Hoyt, married Seth Hoyt's brother, Uriah. Keturah and Permelia's children were thus extra-related, but we've not yet found signs of their many children being better buddies than average. None, for example, moved with cousins to the same new counties as they matured. They moved only with siblings. Was there some sad estrangement? Or, did the usual "accidents of life" separate them, someone "lucky in an old place", not needing to move to find a better life?
Seth and Keturah would finish raising their children on Lanesboro Street in New Haven, VT, where other Hoyt brothers and certain in-laws lived. Her brother-in-law, the Ezra Hoyt to be called both Judge and Hon., was becoming politically important, supporting Middlebury College, and raising his sons to be well-educated ministers (who would, thus, leave, to find churches to pastor). That Ezra would donate his own land on that street for a new church, bringing together two congregations into one building. Uriah and Permelia would name a child Ezra. That honored Uriah's father, not just his brother. Keturah and Seth did the opposite, would name no surviving child Ezra, so perhaps any estrangement involved a conflict with an earlier Ezra?
A local history of Addison County later remembered the other Hoyt brothers as living on Lanesborough Street. Uriah and Permelia would not be mentioned, as they had instead continued north out of town. At first, they went to Monkton. That was where Keturah's stepfather, Stephen Haight, had gone, to live with his son Stephen the Jr. The younger Stephen, like Judge Ezra, was becoming politically important. The War of 1812, against the British, over the US-Canadian boundary, had created a temporary job spurt in Monkton's direction. New work involved forging local bog iron to make gun boats for defending the nearby shipping channels on the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain. The workers supported new "corner stores" while their new jobs lasted. That job spurt ended. Cousin Permelia lost two children buried in Monkton, while Keturah saw one child lost back in New Haven.
Keturah's first Patty died young. The child's name was unusual by Puritan standards, a dancing kind of name, instead of the usual praying-and-preaching kind. Keturah would re-give that name to a later daughter. Naming a new child for a lost one was a common practice by old standards (British Isles and Puritan only? No, have since found this true back in Norway for ancestors of this writer's spouse.).
That habit of re-using a dead child's name would fade away after the Civil War, as large families would become rare. Son Gould R. would have many children, however. He would name a daughter Patty Mehitable (who called herself P.M. or Mehitable)and a son Ezra Jennings (who called himself E.J.). If there were hurts involving any early Ezra, they had been healed. Both namesake children were seen pre-marriage in the 1860 Census, starting new lives on new farms, out in Wabasha County, Minnesota. This big move happened after Keturah was gone from everyone's lives. She would die in 1845, well before Gould's death "out west", meaning past the Mississippi R., in 1865.
The signs are that, while spouse Seth still lived, Seth and Keturah stayed always in New Haven, Vermont, after leaving Lanesborough/Lanesboro, Massachusetts. With the Monkton location no longer working for them, cousin Permelia and Uriah would see Bristol as a better place. They drew a bit closer to New Haven by moving there. Did they perhaps own or co-own a store there with uncle Reuben Roblee's known son, Philip? Early US censuses named only the household head, nor the children or retirees present, nor the wife, unless widowed, so named as household head. These old censuses named Uriah as in Monkton in 1810, then in Bristol in 1820, before Permelia died. By the 1840 census, Uriah's in-laws were still his neighbors in Bristol, but using Rublee more often than Robblee. Two spellings would allow ministers and neighbors and any business people owed a debt to keep their records separate for two sub-branches of the same large family.
Each couple lost a key member around 1830. Permelia died a few years before 1830, and Seth, "just after". Permelia's unmarried daughter, Abigail, also died "too early". Stones for all three are missing. At least two should be in Evergreen Cemetery. That's the same graveyard used to bury this Keturah's mother, who remarried, so the mother's stone says "Keturah Haight", Evergreen is near her own church in VT, not near her first husband and their church back in Mass., nor in the mother's second husband's burying ground (Quaker) in Monkton.
Also at Evergreen: That part of Judge Ezra's family staying local. Ezra's in-laws. Parents to the four Hoyt brothers.
Not at Evergreen: Permelia's Uriah Hoyt, buried decades later, in Bristol, with his second wife. His brother, Seymour Hoyt, initially locating with brothers Seth and Ezra in houses/farmsteads on Lanesborough Street, so listed in the old Addison County history book. Seymour showed a new trend, being given a mother's surname as a first name. Seymour would be buried out in southwestern Michigan, an early settler on a later frontier, with other migrating Hoyts present, including Seth's nephew, a ministering son of Judge Ezra.
Seth's stone back in New Haven must have been lost before a round of recording stone inscriptions and locations began in the early 1900s in order to create county and state records of what previously had been town records. Washing rains or tossed grave dirt obliterated Seth's name and date. A paper record was made of Permelia's stone around 1910-1920, with its carved record still visible.
Multiple missing/illegible stones are signs that the rest of the family left the region early, were not around to re-carve a faded stone or pick-up a fallen one. For example, Keturah's grandson reported his father William's family was in their Penn. location by 1819. (William ended in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania, after becoming a teacher and doctor, made possible by attending uncle Ezra Hoyts's Middlebury College? There may have been an interval in NY state, first.)
II. THEIR KEY MIGRATIONS. The geography of the family was such that the Hoyts came from Connecticut; the Robblees/Rubblees, from eastern NY. They most clearly crossed paths in Lanesborough, Mass., pre-Revolution. This Keturah and spouse Seth Hoyt were raised and married in Lanesborough. Post-Revolution (a war in which husband Seth had served, not just her father William), the young couple would later move with Hoyt siblings and in-laws to New Haven, Vermont.
For the two Keturahs, both her and her mother, their spouse owned land or a business in an old place, so stayed and died there. The widows then followed their adult children, out to the next place, newly settled, wilder. This caused husband and wife to be buried in different states two generations in a row. Her father was buried first in Mass., her mother, some decades later, in Vermont. Her Seth died in Vermont, stone lost to time, while she was buried in Pennsylvania. Family records collected by C. Walcott say this Keturah is buried in Centre Cemetery. It's an old cemetery used by several of her children, in the town of Hyde, in Clearfield County.
Younger generations settling on the next new frontier as it moved away from the old. Her son Gould R. Hoyt's sons instead ended in the upper Midwest, buried in Wisconsin and Minnesota, c
their counties near/on the majestic Mississippi and its long tributary, the Wisconsin River. They moved to places with steamboats and logs set floating down the rivers, the timber on its way to mills, to be cut. The logging would not last, so there were further moves, mainly to find better farmland than whatever had been good for pineries (felled pines grew on sandy stuff? boggy? good for cranberries and pasture, once cleared, but not corn?). Some perhaps settled for a bit sandy land but extra-good scenery, plentiful in the "bluff country", along its rapidly descending rivers and "coulees".
Clearfield County in Pennsylvania settled first, before Wisconsin and then Minnesota opened to frontier settlers. Again, many of this Keturah's adult children moved to Pennyslvania's less Puritan-influenced, more Germanic places. Widowed Keturah Hoyt may have lived with son Gould R., who saw two sons born back in NY, first, then would be associated with different towns in Penn., especially Penfield, before he left with his maturing sons to go further west. (Gould and wife went first to Wisconsin, to help settle their older children there, seen in the 1850 Census. Their younger sons and daughters were there seen in the 1860 Census on the Minnesota side of the big Miss. river. Gould's last census would be Minnesota's state one, in 1865, seen widowed, living with son Ezra, the family of sister Aurellia Hoyt Lamb nearby, using the same cemetery.)
Son Orris remained in Pennsylvania. This Keturah was buried as "Catharine" in his Methodist cemetery. Gould's obituary for her indicated she had converted from Presbyterianism to a new faith, in the notion that God wanted all people to be saved. Was that perhaps his way of saying she became Methodist, had gone beyond a Methodist burial? (Reasons for changing varied. Some wanted total alcoholic abstinence to be a requirement. Other former Puritans had become disenchanted with the "New Light" extremism that emerged pre-Revolution. Extreme New Lights preached that God judged only a tiny few as worthy of favor at birth, with suicidal thoughts or depression an outward sign that God had already given up on the person and that the devil resided permanently within.)
The early walkers of Centre Cemetery found a lot there that had been bought by grandson Adam. No stones have his name. Is he buried there? Did he stay, or go further west? Some questions are slow to be answered.
Others were buried in other cemeteries nearby--For example, son William the Jr.
III. LIFE BEFORE PENNSYLVANIA. Her own father, William Robblee the senior, had owned a farm in Lanesborough, Mass. His will named both mother and daughter Keturah by their legal names, not by their nicknames of Catharine, according to their modern historian, C. Walcott.
The farm families of old were very large. Her father's will also named many surviving siblings, twelve in number, many (all?)linked to her parents at Findagrave. Their first names, Keturah's and her siblings', were also found by Walcott in one list made by the town/church back in Lanesborough.
"Town and church" were generally not yet separate under Puritanism, pre-Revolution. The one church authorized by the town received tax money and co-operated on record-keeping. Infant baptisms meant the names of all children could be gathered in one swoop out of church records, then put into town records at the same time, in a list, as if a census had been done. Tax collectors could also collect names, but that seemed less common. Those churched early, from infancy, baptized soon after birth in the authorized Puritan church, were better counted, making them easier to follow genealogically than would be either the children of adult baptizers or those baptized as infants inside chapels of the so-called King's Church. The records of the last were often burned or carried away in a Revolution that rejected praying for the king as "inimical".)
William Robblee wrote his will in the months preceding his death. C. Walcott researched its reaching Probate Court and the Court's appointment of guardians for his younger children.
====================================================
12 Siblings Named in Father's Will
====================================================
Brothers to this Keturah:
William, Hiram, Andrew^^, Francis^^, John Brush*, Erastus*
Sisters:
Lucy^, the Katura studied here, Rebekah, Susannah, Mary^, Sarah^^
Will Notes
^ Described as still single, so different provisions for their survival.
^^Minors, but over 14, given court-assigned a male guardian outside the family (allowing for indenture contracts?).
* Minors under 14, their mother, Keturah Sr., allowed to be guardian.
====================================================
Mother Keturah later followed daughter Keturah up into Vermont. Four migrating Hoyt brothers had taken their families there, that Ezra to become a judge and go to the state legislature, Seth, Seymour, and cousin Permelia's Uriah, plus their Hoyt parents, the Ezra Hoyt and Sarah Seymour who had married back in CT .
Now freed of British rule, the Hoyts and in-laws migrating to one place were free to call their new town as they wished. They named it for the New Haven back in Connecticut, from whence Seth's mother, Sarah Seymour Hoyt, had come.
Daughter Keturah and her siblings buried their mother Keturah in the same Vermont cemetery holding their presumed cousin, Permelia Ruble Hoyt (double-check this).
Themselves immigrants to America in the Puritan era, the Hoyts found their new location in Vermont overlapping with old homes of former enemies of the British, the Canadian-French people and perhaps Metis and First Nation peoples. When cousin Permelia left her spouse Uriah Hoyt a widow, he re-married a Pettibone (Pettitbon in French).
After father William died in Mass. in 1792, mother Keturah's second spouse, once in Vermont, was Stephen Haight. They married when both were past their child-raising years and ignored religious differences to do so. He was Quaker. According to Walcott, she joined the Congregational Church in New Haven, VT, in 1806, giving her name as "Mrs. Katherine Hait".
He must have come to Vermont with his son, Stephen Haight the junior. They came from the Nine Partners section of old Dutchess County in eastern NY, a county much larger then, than now, as it split into parts. Their family may have long known the Robblees. (The Robblees' part of Dutchess County, known as Philipse Patent, largely split off as Putnam County in 1812, well after they lef.t) Stephen the junior was among the first to settle in Monkton, Vermont, just north of the Hoyt's town of New Haven. He was among those "taking the freeman's oath" between the end of the Revolutionary War and 1787, according to an old book of 1886, History of Addison County, p.514, H. Perry Smith. "Freemen" had other meanings as well, but, in founding new towns, it usually meant they were free of indenture and mortgage, so owed work and money to no one, could afford to take on whatever new mortgage was needed.
Stephen was buried near the other two of his children, in the Quaker/Friends cemetery. The older Stephen can be confused with son Stephen the junior, who would become a judge, then a sheriff in Monkton, plus represent Monkton in the state legislature, then go onto Washington D.C. where he died.
(Haights vs. Hoyts. The first arriving Hoyt to America, Simon, was well-documented. This was partly due to land dealings including with adult children and being involved in several church/town foundings, until his last in CT. His family was probably of those who went by Hoyte back in England. Sounding out names, instead of seeing names written, those moving closer to Long Island changed theirs to the Haight spelling, while those staying in CT shifted to Hoyt. The Haights had located in a place populated mainly by Quakers. Many of the NY Quakers owned a few slaves, but ultimately came to see slave-owning as wrong. They freed their own slaves early, by the time Britain abolished slavery, maybe before 1820.)
The Roblea/Rubblee/Robblee name was spelled many ways by family members. The Robblee's family historian C. Walcott first saw it as Rublier when NY clergymen in one church kept records for William Robblee's father, another William, under Dutch-influenced spelling rules. Ruble was another common variation, used for her, along with Roblea, in the multi-family Hoyt history published by D.W. Hoyt in 1871.
A legal clerk for Dutch-influenced Phillipse Patent (Phillips Patent in English) spelled their surname as Rappelyea for two lots owned by William and Reuben in 1754, and for taxes owed by William through the 1760s, before moving elsewhere in NY. Due to just that one set of records, even though never used for them again, elsewhere, some have nevertheless speculated the Robblees/Robleas were related to the "silver spoon" family named Rapalje. That much more privileged family arrived in Fort Orange/New Amsterdam with the Dutch, then quickly received generous land grants from the Dutch. They were ethnically Walloon, not Dutch, not British. Their Fort Orange arrival was over 100 years before Keturah's family was of record. In addition to the far greater wealth of the Walloon Rapaljes, there were other differences. Through the American Revolution, so in Keturah's era, they were still using men's names that were Dutch (Cornelius, Garrett) or Walloon.
Like other Walloons and Dutch they did not always not use a permanent last name shared across family members, but substituted a father's first name as the last name. Once stable surnames became expected, then people agreed what to use, perhaps a place (farm? landed estate?) from whence recent ancestors came, giving honor to many in the source community, and not just one ancestor. In their case, this produced Rapalje, meaning a family originally from a place that sounded like Rapal. The "silver spoon" family was different from the Robblees/Robleas in more ways, giving some children first names that were not just Dutch, but Walloon (old French, meaning one of the so-called vulgar Latin dialects that together later led to the Romance languages). They continued to benefit from their high social status by being given more large grants of land for around one hundred and fifty years after immigration. The last grantees included one Rapalje family who, with associates, requested the grant and were given it in 1773. Loyal to the British king, but likely to be judged "inimical" to the American colonists, Garrett Rapalje fled. The Garrett who went to the Natchez area in Spanish territory (in to what became western Mississippi) had been given 25,000 acres. A Garrett Rapalje was still alive in 1791, but seems to have been Garrett II, the importer's son, doing business on the Big Black River. He had been listed in NY history as being in a family portrait as a child, with brothers George and Jacques Rapalje included, their names also seen along the Black River around that time. An older Garrett had been given 25,000 acres in west Florida by the British in 1774. He had left NY for NJ at first, where he owned the Brooklyn/Brookland forge in Sussex County in 1777, importing iron for its use, perhaps explaining his allegiance to the British if he needed their iron. He was incarcerated in 1778 and 1779 by the American forces, suspected of being inimical (aiding the British). He subdivided and sold the Florida land granted earlier to buy a plantation in Louisiana, near Baton Rouge, still under Spanish control. However, he did not move there until after the Revolution ended. Unsuccessful with his plantation, he wrote a letter to George Washington in 1794 asking to be appointed an intermediary between traders moving goods down the Mississippi River and the Spanish, a position he called a consulate. He was almost begging as he said he had a large family to support and had "suffered greatly" in the war, so would appreciate a small salary for his services and experience in commerce. Writing in Jan., he was denied in April, not by GW, but by an assistant (source: founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-15-02-0027, associated with the University of Virginia). Stories vary, as perhaps multiple Garretts were confused. Some say the Garrett born in 1830 returned to NY where he died.
Prior to those men receiving huge grants, William and his brother Reuben Robblee did not feel entitled by their heritage to huge grants of land. They were scrambling for small bits in Massachusetts. According to C. Walcott's court search, William bought two parcels, not all at once, so not expensively, but in different years, affordably. Not many years before moving to MA, both William and brother Reuben admitted to unpaid fines in 1765 in NY, a debt owed to the King, their names written as Rubeley when accused. It turned into Robblee for their later appearance in court, a spelling which then would be used frequently. He was in Massachusetts by 1768, just three years after his debt problem after being fined for disturbing the peace, complaints filed by a Simeon Bundy, according to Walcott. William ended with land and most likely a happier family than did Rappalje.
Some named Robblee, seen in Canada, said their name was Scottish. That fits cousin Permelia's name, taken from old-time Scottish wool-dying plants, and Reuben, a name popular among Scottish Protestants after the Reformation period. We might look for signs of Presbyterianism.
Keturah and presumed cousin Permelia Ruble/Roblea Hoyt married brothers, Seth and Uriah Hoyt, respectively. This was at the Lanesborough church, while still in Massachusetts. Once denominations were declared, it called itself Congregational. Presbyterians and some adult baptizers might split apart from the Congregationalists if they had enough members. Such splits were often ethnic, with the Scotch-descended and perhaps northern English being Presbyterian, many English often calling themselves Congregational, while those who were Welsh preferring adult baptism, but who had not split away as Baptists earlier as they were tolerant of other practices, did so now.
For her obituary, son Gould said she had been Presbyterian, but grew to think God wanted the whole world saved, and not just a preordained elect so changed faiths. Her cemetery was Centre, set aside for the old Methodist Episcopalian church once called Centre, but turning into Trinity United Methodist once they joined into the larger denomination. Her son Orris was active at Centre Church when it first formed.
Keturah/Catharine Hoyt first gave birth in that town, Lanesborough, judging from the Hoyts' dates of arrival in the next place of Vermont.
Her and Seth's son, Gould R. Hoyt, was the family biographer. His name was noted several times by David W. Hoyt (of a different male DNA), compiler of a broad history of multiple Hoyts and Haights as well as Hoits. Holes in his book regarding the records for Keturah's children probably were due to Gould contributing from a distance, no longer living in New England or NY where early ancestors had been born and with no one left who could tell him. At first unsure of his own birth state, he gave VT the first time he was asked, in his 1850 Census. He ended by saying MA (more logical, as his date of birth preceded his parents' move from MA to VT). He stopped collecting other of their records too soon, due to his death. Published in 1871, D.W. Hoyt's book noted her son Gould's ability to write wittily and poetically, well-known for letters earning a post office for a Penn. town where he had lived. D.W. lamented his death, saying Gould had died in 1866, in Wabasha County, Minnesota. Lake City was also named, the nearest large town to where Gould lived in 1865. (Gpild was on the farm of son Ezra Jennings Hoyt, Gillford Township, Wabasha County, about 10 miles from Lake City.)
Gould was thus not around to proofread his family's material, nor to make last additions to the final version when it came out 5 years later, in 1871. D.W. Hoyt was careful, though, a well-reasoned recorder. His history is the best old-time source for the Hoyt side of these families. The best modern source for the Robblee/Rublea side, for the same reasons, is Cynthia Walcott, a Robblee descendant (on her mother's side?). She included Keturah's and her cousin Permelia's grandchildren, the two mothers born as Ruble/Roblea, the two fathers named Hoyt (Seth and Uriah). To learn more about their ancestry, she checked records, wills, newspaper articles, and made graveyard visits, much as D.W. Hoyt had done, or asked others to do, for the more varied Hoyts earlier. We applaud their work.
==========================================================
Copyright by JBrown, Julia Brown, Austin, TX, 2017, minor edits to clarify, in 2020. Permission given to Findagrave for use at this page. Descendants of people named here may use whole paragraphs in private materials for family.
Family Members
Siblings
Advertisement
Records on Ancestry
Advertisement
