So when I recently took up this research I never expected to know anything more until, that is, I stumbled upon familytree.org and was delightfully dumbfounded to discover so much more.  My research didn’t reveal anything more about Emmaline (so thankfully we have her daughter Estelle’s letters to help us there) but as you’ve seen from my pages about the Salem Witch Trials and the Mayflower, we now know that Albert’s ancestry includes, through his father, the Cummings family’s complex ties to the Towne family and consequently to the Trials themselves, AND, through his mother, our mind-blowing connections to 12 of the Mayflower passengers.  And then, remarkably these two stories come together in Maine, where Albert was born, and which up until recently would have gotten no further mention other than “that is where he was born”.  But now that we know how these two extraordinary lines come together in four small towns in Maine in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, well, these stories are just too good NOT to be told, and so I give you  

THE STORY OF MAINE

Maine had never registered for me as being significant to our family stories.  It was merely the birthplace of Albert Webster Cummings, who left his rural community as a young man.  Because he was both physically and psychologically unsuited to farm life, he focused first on medicine and then on the ministry – careers he would pursue throughout his life in Minnesota.  And so that’s what Mom and I focused on as well.  But through more recent research I’ve discovered that Maine is every bit as significant to our Family Stories as Salem and Plymouth, not only because their stories converge there, but because of the significance of Maine in U.S. history.  

Maine did not become a state until 1820 – more than fifty years after our first Cummings ancestors moved there sometime in the mid 1760’s. And these ancestors were among some of the earliest colonial settlers in Maine.  For many reasons British settlement had been sparse in this northern territory. Between its brutal climate and densely wooded terrain it held even more daunting hardships for settlers than those faced by early settlers to Massachusetts. Moreover the French had powerful interests in this territory and had the wisdom and good sense to become powerful allies of indigenous tribes – focusing on the fur and coastal fishing trades, and sensibly leaving the interior hunting grounds of natives tribes relatively untouched – a wisdom sadly missing among most British colonists.

However as the populations of the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies exploded, an increasing need for farmland drove colonists into the interior stripping away large swaths of native forest lands, both for farming and to sell the timber.  Plymouth had long been profiting from their fur trade and fishing industries in Maine – with little pushback from native tribes, who benefited from the former and tolerated the latter.  And so – for a good many relatively peaceful years – both of these pursuits in Maine enabled the Plymouth as well as the Massachusetts Bay Colonies to pay off huge debts they owed to their investors for their initial passage to America and the establishments of the earliest settlements.

Another significant impact on the development of Maine was the Revolutionary War.  In the late 1780’s soldiers, who’d been promised land in Maine in exchange for fighting, began flooding into the territory – only to find that the new government had sold off vast quantities of some of the very lands which the soldiers were settling on, to speculators in order to pay their war debts.  And these speculators wanted to be paid.

I cannot find concrete evidence that any of our ancestors, who moved to Maine, served in the war and were thus entitled to land.  Nor can I find any evidence of the struggles that ensued between settling soldiers and the new proprietors.  So my guess is that either they had the means to purchase their properties or that they settled lands that were free for the taking without any ownership issues.

All I know for certain is that several of our ancestors from both the Plymouth and the Massachusetts Bay Colonies settled in four small towns in Southern Maine – between the mid 18th and mid 19th century and it is to their stories we will now turn.

Our Ancestors Begin Settling in Maine

We’ll begin these stories with the town of Gray where the earliest Cummings ancestors migrated sometime before 1766.  Then we’ll shift to Hebron, where our first Plymouth ancestors settled.  We’ll then travel to Paris where our Plymouth and Salem lineages came together in the 1819 marriage of Isaac Jennings Cummings and Lovina Caldwell, one year before Maine became a state.  And finally we’ll travel to Minot where most of their children were born, and most significantly – our great great grandfather, Albert Webster Cummings – in 1829.  

We left Topsfield with the sad story of Joseph Cummings and his wife Abigail Easty dying before the age of 40 from smallpox.  Remember that Abigail was the granddaughter (and Joseph – the great nephew) of Mary Towne Easty – one of the last victims of the Salem Witch Trails.  Dying within days of each other they left behind five orphaned children between the ages of 4 and 17.  And our ancestor was their 4th child, Daniel – only six when they died.

Tragic as it was to loose their parents so young, these children were nonetheless blessed to have a cadre of aunts and uncles to care for them. For, not uncommonly, two of Abigail’s sisters were married to Cummings men – one to Joseph’s brother and the other to his cousin.  Daniel would most certainly have grown up in one of these families before he married Mary Williams, a widow with two children.  (Mary, was born in Gloucester, Massachusetts – a point that will be significant later in our story.)  Daniel and Mary would go on to have 13 more children and their third child, born in 1751, was our next ancestor, Joseph, named for his grandfather. 

And then, not only did my fantasy come to life, it was greatly improved!  Further research told me that even when Joseph’s sons with Dolly had established their own farms in far off communities, not only did they visit, they often stayed long enough for many of his grandchildren to be born there.  Records show that three of Joe Jr’s children and five of Isaac and Lovina’s were born in Gray.  So our Joseph was indeed never alone – surrounded by his own children and grandchildren – as well as the children and grandchildren of his siblings.  😊 My wishes come true.

Both of Joseph and Dolly’s sons – Joe Jr and Isaac Jennings – would go on to marry women from Hebron, the next town of significance for our ancestors.  But before we leave Dolly a debt of gratitude must be paid to her, for the simple reason that no matter how disturbing her actions seem to us today – no matter how reckless, unstable or merely desperate they may have been, without her our ancestor, Isaac Jennings Cummings, would never have existed, and so would never have married our Mayflower ancestor, Lovina Caldwell, which means that none of us would be here now to marvel at this astonishing heritage.  So, thank you, Dolly.

In 1781 the last of our Mayflower ancestors, Suzanna Perkins, was born in Plymouth to Joseph Perkins and Sarah Cushman – bringing together the bloodlines of all 12 of our Mayflower ancestors.  But within months of Suzanna’s birth they moved from Plymouth to Hebron, Maine where she was christened and raised, becoming – after six generations – our first Mayflower ancestor to grow up and marry outside of the Plymouth colony.

Suzanna would go on to marry Phillip Caldwell, whose parents had migrated to Hebron sometime in the 1790s.  It’s unclear still if any of these families – the Perkins, the Cushmans or the Caldwell’s purchased lands or were granted them for military service.  It’s also unclear whether they were farmers, tradesmen or government officials.  Only when Philip and Suzanna’s second child – our ancestor, Lovina – marries our Salem ancestor, Isaac Jennings Cummings, and settles in nearby Minot, can we be certain that they were farmers.

But this excerpt below, which focuses on the establishment of the Hebron Academy in 1804, suggests that the community was far more than a simple farming one.  It also suggests that the Caldwells, the Perkins and the Cushmans were Revolutionary War Veterans and that many of their children might have attended this Academy. 

“Poor in goods” however, I’m less and less convinced.  It appears that all of these families were doing very well, but their still strong Puritanical beliefs insisted that they claim humility, with little outward expression of wealth.

But the clearest evidence that all three of these families lived in Hebron comes from this Census report below which lists the earliest families who lived in Hebron between 1790 and 1850. It includes our Perkins and Cushman ancestors from the Plymouth Colony and the Caldwell family from the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Additionally this Caldwell family gravestone brings all of these family names together: Phillip Caldwell, followed by his wife “Susan P” (Suzanna Perkins), then at the bottom their daughter, Lovina and above her, Isaac Cummings, her husband and our ancestor – the son of our mysterious Dolly Ingersoll.

Our next stop is Paris, Maine where Phillip and Suzanna married and gave birth to their enormous brood of children.  But before we move on to Paris, Phillip Caldwell’s ancestry deserves some attention – both for its remarkable lineage which dates back to 12th century Italy and for the fascinating evolution of the Caldwell name.

PARIS, MAINE

Phillip Caldwell and Suzanna Perkins married in Paris, Maine in 1798 and almost all of their 16 children were born there.   Moreover, almost all of them would survive into middle or old age – an unusually robust statistic.  Their hearty well-being might suggest that Caldwell was anything but a struggling farmer, and more likely a successful merchant, with significant political power.  The town of Paris had been incorporated in 1793 and by 1804 had become the Oxford County Seat, with a fast growing population.  Between the birth of our ancestor Lovina in 1801 and her marriage to Isaac Cummings in 1819, the population more than doubled from 800 to 1800 residents.  And so the success of this town may further help to explain why so many of Phillip and Suzanna’s children survived so well and for so long – including Lovina, who lived to be 84.

This antique post card above of Paris depicts the town long after Lovina and Isaac would have met there and married – notice the electric poles. But it may well have been recognisable to Lovina in her later years – living as she did until 1883.  

Historical records tell us that Paris, after becoming the Oxford County seat, developed into a thriving community.  It is still noted today for its scenic beauty and excellent pasturage, including some of the state’s best apple orchards, livestock and dairy farms.  In 1973, Paris was added to the National Register of Historic Places for its fine examples of Federal and Greek Revival architecture.  And Paris is also noted for being the home of Hannibal Hamlin who served as Abraham Lincoln’s vice president during his first term.

But how did Lovina Caldwell – our Mayflower descendant – and Isaac Jennings Cummings – our Salem descendant – meet?  

Paris, Maine by 1819 had been the vibrant county seat for 15 years when the young sons of Dolly Ingersoll and Joseph Cummings – Joe Jr and Isaac – were coming into adulthood.  And even though it was a good day’s ride from Gray to Paris, these young men would certainly have made the trip for both practical concerns as well as social curiosity.  

But if city life had bode well for the survival of the Caldwell children, farm life for Lovina and her husband, Isaac Jennings Cummings, was not so fortunate.  Isaac would die in his sixties, leaving Lovina – who survived to 83 – to run their farm while raising their 10 children – half of whom met untimely deaths in childhood or young adulthood.  Her granddaughter Estelle described Lovina in her letters as a powerful, no-nonsense woman and a well-loved nurse-made to many in her community – tending with care to the needs of so many despite her own heartbreaks.

But before we leave Maine and move on to Estelle’s marvellous letters, I want to share the following wonderfully descriptive account of 19th Century Farm Life in Maine, precisely during the years that Lovina Caldwell and Isaac Jennings Cummings would have been raising their children and running both their own farm in Minot and Isaac’s father’s farm in Gray.  Well worth the read so I hope you give it a go 🤓.