Family Ties

Friday we went to Dexter, ME to see what records were available there for Bruce's family. I arranged to meet Linda Leavitt at the Abbott Museum when it opened at 10. I've been corresponding with Linda for quite a few years by email and Facebook. She and Bruce have their 5 X great-grandparents in common. Most of Linda's family stayed in the area and raised their families here. We were hoping to find out where Bruce's side lived in the 1840s, 50s and 60s since we know from the U.S. census records that they were here.

 If the name Dexter sounds familiar, it's because that's where Dexter walking shoes originated and were made till the company was sold and production moved overseas.  About ten miles north is the home of the Stanley brothers of Stanley Steam fame.  We were told they still have two original Steamers in their museum.   

The historical society record keeper was quite helpful in looking things up, but we never did find any conclusive evidence of a family of 14 living for 30 years in Dexter or Corinna. We did find a tax record that proved Charles T. Heselton (the spelling common in those days) had property but it didn't say where that was. We next went to the Town Office and asked to see birth records for around 1828, which was when Bruce's direct 4th GGrandfather John Ruel. Heselton, was born in Dexter. The clerk brought out a book that listed all Charles' children's births and a couple of deaths which was all the proof we needed that they were indeed born in Dexter.

We next went to the Mt. Pleasant Cemetery to see if there were any graves or records of deaths for this family. The person we needed to see told us there weren't any records because of a flood that destroyed early records and what records he did have on little 3x5 cards didn't have what we were looking for either. He pointed us to the 'old' section of the cemetery and we set off searching row by row.

The old sections.

One of the family names.

 Linda went with us so that made the job much easier as we split up in three directions. We found a few with names we recognized as in-laws of the family and some of Linda's ancestors but no Heseltons. All Linda's family spell their name 'Haseltine' but they pronounce it the same way we do ours.

Linda's ancestors

All in all not a very productive day. We decided that we will probably have to look at the Maine Historical Society Library in Portland for anything else. Linda told us about a family reunion their family was having on Sunday so we arranged to attend.

Saturday we drove to New Vineyard (NV) in a quest to find more information about the Bryant family (Peg's ancestors) who reportedly moved to Maine from Massachusetts and named this place after Martha’s Vineyard in the late 1790s. We had records that say a few were born and died here and we were looking for some proof.

We started at the New Vineyard Historical Society office where we met Suzee and Richard Woods. Suzee is originally from New Zealand and Richard is from England and they have lived in NV for only 5 years. But they are in charge of the historical society and pretty much know everyone in town, population about 790. Suzee and I had agreed to meet there at 1 pm and she offered to take us on a little tour of the town and show us some of the cemeteries and records they had. They opened the office just for us and made the day super special with their generous hospitality.

After looking through some of the record books, Suzee showed me a book written by Fred O. Smith (they call him FredO) who is a distant cousin of mine and whom we were to meet with later in the day. He is pretty much the expert on Bryant genealogy in the area. His ancestors were among the first settlers here and he literally knows where most of the bodies are buried.

Daggett Cemetery

Richard and Suzee took us in their car around to several very old cemeteries in places we never would have found had they not been driving us. Some were on private land, some up dirt roads, some on the other side of cow pastures that we had to walk through. 

Micah and Mary Bryant

Joseph and Sarah Bryant

After touring several and taking lots of photos, they took us to their lovely home where we met up with FredO before showing us the piece de resistance, the Bryant-Look Cemetery which was literally just discovered last year by FredO when he was following a compass heading in the woods looking for where an original road ran. 

This part of the road goes back up the hill towards Suzee and Richard's house.

It's not passable.

We could only drive so far then hike through the brush about 1/4 mile.

A rock wall that surrounds the old cemetery.

A headstone poking up out of the ground.

The cemetery was over-grown with trees 40’ tall and brush. The road up to the cemetery was rough dirt and gravel and we were glad to be driving our jeep.  The ‘Friends of the New Vineyard Cemeteries’ got to work clearing brush and removing trees and digging up old tombstones and righting them. The stones date back to the early 1800s and are barely legible unless, as FredO showed us, you rub them with chalk to bring out the letters. 

Bathsheba Bryant 1798-1816

The group has been at work on this cemetery since last year and clearly have tons of work left to do. There are stones they have discovered leaning up against trees and shallow indentations in the ground where (at some earlier time) the graves were dug up and bodies removed and reburied in another cemetery. A lot of the headstones had fallen over as the ground sunk away and were grown over with moss and dirt.

Had to cross a cow pasture to get to this one.

Talcott Corner cemetery - renovated.

They took us to Talcott Corner cemetery to show us what it looks like when they have completed a renovation. It is clearly a work of love for these folks but with the harsh winters of Maine, it can only be accomplished in the late spring and summer…early spring brings out the black flies and mosquitoes and everyone covers up with long sleeves and pants. There is also the risk of deer ticks. We were fortunate that these bugs were not around to ‘bug’ us.

Peg with Elaine Wells and Fred O. Smith

Richard, Suzee, Peg, and FredO

After the tour of cemeteries, we were invited to a ‘Bean Hole Supper’ at Porter Lake nearby. A Bean Hole Supper is a tradition that has been held yearly for decades. FredO has published the recipe for the beans in his book. It involves someone preparing the beans in soaking water starting about 3 am and another someone builds a fire in a pre-dug ‘hole’ near the lake and gets a good bed of coals going. At about 7 am the bean pots are brought out to the lake and placed over the coals, covered with tin and dirt and then left to ‘cook’ until about 5 pm when the Porter Lake Association putting on the event bring additional side dishes and desserts out for a community supper. The whole meal goes for $6 and the proceeds go to maintain the lake and property surrounding it. There were probably 100-125 people there and had there not been a wedding going on in the neighborhood, more would have attended.

In addition to the meal, there was a ukulele band of women who played and sang for entertainment. We were meeting one of those women, Elaine Wells, at the supper who I had been in contact with concerning the cemetery projects. Elaine has been instrumental in the restoration of several cemeteries in New Vineyard.

Dinner was served at long picnic tables from 5-6:30 PM. Then everyone just goes home. FredO led us out to the highway we needed to take to get back to our RV park and along the way pointed out a house that his grandfather had occupied many years ago in Farmington, just about 10 miles south of New Vineyard.

Sunday we went to a ‘Haseltine’ reunion in Corinna, ME. These Heseltines/Haseltines are remnants of the original Haselton families that came to Penobscot County, ME back in the early 1800s. Our direct ancestor, Charles T. Haselton, was found in the 1840, 1850, and 1860 U.S. census records in this area. The Haseltine family descend from Charles’ brother, William W. Haselton and somewhere along the way the name got changed to Haseltine. Funny thing is, some of them pronounce it the same way we pronounce Heseltine.

103rd Annual Haseltine Reunion in Corinna, ME

The reunion was held at Dennis and Mindy Carr’s home in Corinna where they proclaimed it to be the 103^rd Haseltine reunion held every year. One of the elder attendees brought her genealogy records for us to look at, and copy, and I shared some of our information that they didn’t have concerning our common ancestors, Charles and William’s father, Joseph, who was a Revolutionary War soldier from New Hampshire where they were born. My interest in the Heseltine family led me to Linda Leavitt whose mother was a Haseltine and directly a descendant. We have corresponded over the years and she had been instrumental in helping us find cemeteries and records in Dexter and further in Portland about Bruce’s line. We had a good time learning what everyone knew and teasing each other about the pronouncement and spelling of the name. Though everyone at the reunion was a descendant of Joseph Haselton, only one family actually had the last name of Haseltine…the rest have moved on and we were informed of the possibility of some having moved out to the Napa area of CA. Wouldn’t that be a hoot! Charles had 12 children in Dexter but we haven’t found any of them still in the area.