Today's family surname is YOUNG. This name is undoubtedly of English or Scottish origin. It probably referred to the younger member of a family to distinguish the father from the son. My 5th great grandmother was Mehitable YOUNG.
Mehitable is one of my brick walls (that's genealogy parlance for dead end). She is mentioned in
"Thomas Sanford, the emigrant to New England: ancestry, life and descendants, 1632-4: sketches of four other pioneer Sanfords" written by Carlton Elisha Sanford published by The Tuttle Company in Rutland, Vermont in 1911. She is listed as the wife of CAPT. JOSEPH SANFORD.
Mehitable was born in Long Island and married Joseph Sanford 07 Mar 1769. The Sanford genealogy lists her death date as Mar. 11, 1835, aged 88 years. that would place her birth about 1744. That calculation would indicate that she was approximately the same age as her husband who was born
28 Jul 1745 in Milford, Connecticut.
Joseph and Mehitable were the parents of eight children, the six of whom lived to become adults are as follows:
Joseph, b. Mar. 15, 1773, m. Temperance Ives
Olive, b. Nov. 3, 1774; d. Mar. 6, 1817; m. Capt. Erastus Goodwin
Stephen, b. Sept., 6, 1776; d. 1843; m. Olive Woodruff
Edmund, b. Oct. 25, 1781; d. Jan. 9, 1860; m. (1) Sarah Lynde; m. (2) Betsey Sheldon
Ozias, b. Aug. 24, 1784; d. Sept. 7, 1856; m. (1) Lydia Brown; m. (2) Mrs. Eunice Hand
Clarissa, b. Jan. 19, 1786; d. Apr. 12, 1860; m. Maj. William Beebe.
The five year gap between Stephen and Edmund is probably due to Capt. Sanford's service in the
13th Regiment of Connecticut during the Revolutionary War.
Our descent from Mehitable is: Charles Newton Cone, son of Helen Brown Newton, daughter of Charles Shepard Newton, son of Caroline Beckworth Sanford, son of Stephen Sanford, son of Capt. Joseph Sanford and his wife Mehitable Young.
I have not been able to locate Mehitable's burial place. I imagine that she is buried in the Morris Burying Ground near Litchfield, CT. There is a Joseph Sanford buried there with the same death date as our Joseph.
This photograph from http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSln=Sanford&GSfn=JOseph&GSbyrel=all&GSdyrel=before&GSst=8&GScntry=4&GSob=n&GRid=78577429&df=all&
is of the tombstone I think may be Joseph's. A transcription from rootsweb lists information taken from "A Record of Inscriptions upon the tombstones in the towns of Litchfield & Morris Connecticut by Charles Thomas Payne published in 1996 by Heritage Books of Bowie, Md. Page 220 lists the inscription as "In / Memory of/ Mr. Joseph Sanford/ who died Dec 13, 1813/ Aged 68 years.
Mehitable, I am still looking for your parents. For the genealogist there is always more to explore and to find.
Cecily
What a unique name! I don't think I've ever come across a Mehitable before. Now I'm curious of its origin.
ReplyDeleteThis post is interesting to me in more than one way. My husband is also a descendant of Thomas Sanford (the immigrant). Now I'm hoping to find Joseph and Mehitable on his tree. By the way, I have a blog entry about Edwards S. Sanford, who distinguished himself by helping to prevent an assassination of President Lincoln that was being plotted in Baltimore as Lincoln moved from Illinois to Washington, D.C. for his inauguration. It's a December 2012 entry in http://kithandkinchronicles.blogspot.com .
ReplyDeleteThanks,
Eileen