Wavetops: Too Hart to Handle
On the precipice of a nine generation breakthrough
If you’ve been following along the past few weeks, you know that I’ve been climbing the Hart branch of my family tree. Last week, I showed the documentary evidence connecting Alexander C Hart (1817-1871) to his father, Martin:
Now we will look at Martin Hart (1792 - 1879).
From Connecticut to Oneida County
Martin Hart was the second son of Stephen Hart and Eunice Seymour. He was born in Torrington, Litchfield County, Connecticut, on 30 Oct 1792. Not counting twin boys who died in infancy in 1796, Martin had six siblings, including his next youngest brother, Seymour.
The Hart family moved to Stillwater, New York, and from there to a newly settled town called Pinckney in Lewis County, New York, around 1805. Stephen Hart figured in the early history of Pinckney. The first town meeting was held at his house, and he served as town supervisor in 1815. He served additional terms in 1817, 1821, 1827-28, and 1830-31.1
Martin was involved in business and the local community, too. He was a clerk for the Town of Leyden (about 25 miles southeast of Pinckney) in the 1818-19 term and was named a Lewis County Clerk in 1822. When the Town of West Turin was formed from Turin on 25 Mar 1830, Martin was the first of the new town's Supervisors.
Martin’s wife was Sarah (Sally) Collins (1795-1873), the daughter of Jonathan Collins, a notable early settler of Lewis County. According to Hough’s History of Lewis County:2
Jonathan Collins was a descendant of Lewis Collins, who emigrated to America in 1630, and was born at Wallingford, Ct., May 3, 1755. He enlisted December 10, 1775, in Captain John Crouch's company. Colonel Wadsworth's regiment, and went to Dorchester, where he helped to build the fort there. He was discharged in 1776, went to New York, in Captain John Hough's company. Colonel Baldwin's regiment, and enlisted again to go on the lines at Horse Neck, April 1, 1778. He married Sarah Crouch [sic: should be “Couch”], January 10, 1775, and emigrated from Meriden to this town [Turin] in 1797. …He was early selected as a magistrate and Judge, and from 1809 to 1815 he served as the First Judge of the county court. In 1820 he was chosen a Presidential Elector.
The U.S. Census shows the family of Martin Hart in Turin and West Turin in 1820 and 1830. Young Alexander, born in 1817, appears in the first as “Male, Under 10;” and both he and his sister, Sarah Elizabeth, born in 1822, appear in the 1830. That was the year that Martin Hart partnered with Alfred Munson in his manufacturing firm in Utica.
The Harts of Utica
By 1840, the Hart family was living in Utica. In addition to Alexander and Sarah, the household included two more girls. One is listed in the same age range as Sarah (15 thru 19) which would put her birthdate between 1821 and 1825; the other was age 5 thru 9 (thus, born between 1831 and 1835). The most likely explanation is that these two girls were domestic servants.3 The Harts were well-off, and in all of the census records that list the relationships of household members, they almost always have a teenage domestic servant —never the same person in two successive census years. (In 1850, the family employed Augusta J Waters, age 16, born in Alabama, and Cathrine Hinkins, 20, born in Ireland.)
Sarah Elizabeth Hart married John P Bush in 1843, but in 1850, she lived with her parents again. In 1853, she married Andrew A Chapin (1829-1854), and after his death, she and her five-year-old son, Alexander Hart Chapin (1855-1825), moved in with her parents again. Young Alexander was born on 27 May 1855, 9 months 26 days after his father’s death on 1 Nov 1854. There must be a story there, though I’m sure it is a sad one.
As we saw last week, the 1870 Census shows Sarah’s brother, Alexander, living in his parent’s household, along with Sarah and his namesake nephew. Uncle Alexander died on 25 Jul 1871. A FindAGrave contributor gives his cause of death as “disease of the brain,” but in 1871 that phrase could have meant any number of unrelated mental or physical illnesses.
Riding the Wavetop
As I hinted in my subtitle, establishing the connection between Alexander and Martin means that I have connected my research to nearly nine additional generations documented in the Genealogical and family history of northern New York, compiled by William Richard Cutter, A.M. and published in 1910.
My job now is to confirm the information documented there as best I can and make sure the profiles in WikiTree that appear to come from this source have been adequately cited and fleshed out. If you don’t want to wait for me to work my way through all of that, you should be able to see the Ancestry digitization here: (VI) Stephen, son of Captain Nathaniel Hart… begins at the bottom of the page.
Hough, Franklin Benjamin, (1822-1885), History of Lewis County, New York; with...biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers; page 497-499.
Hough, Page 555-556.
These domestic servants would not have been slaves, though they were likely not paid well and probably spent most of their time doing laundry. See “Troubled and Unhappy: The Dreaded Task of Doing Laundry in the Mid-Nineteenth Century”