I am trying to find a link to the
Chase family that takes me somewhere else in the Upper Valley. Bethel
is an outlying town, and much of the Chase family were either early
proprietors or settlers in Bethel. I wasn't going to continue posting
about Bethel, because I ended up in Bethel with the Akins family, and
here I am again with the Chases. However, as I read the stories,
they are so interesting, I feel compelled to share them. There are
some interesting stories in Bethel's past. Part of the reason there
are so many stories available on the internet is the book “Two
Vermont Hollows, a History of Gilead and Little Hollows, published in
Randolph in 1976. This book is often quoted on various genealogical
sites, and would be a gem of a book to read over the winter, for
anyone interested in the history of Bethel.
Dudley and Alice's oldest child,
Mercy,, born in Sutton, Massachusetts, moved to Cornish when she was
10 years old. She was one of the kids who traveled up from Fort
Number 4 in the canoe when Alice demanded to be taken to Dudley. She
married Stephen Child in 1778 when she was 23. Stephen had served in
the Revolutionary War under Jonathan, and was with him during the
aborted trip to Ticonderoga. He was a corporal under Jonathan, and
returned to New York State with Jonathan as they marched to the
Battle of Saratoga, and witnessed the surrender of Burgoyne.
Along with Dudley, Stephen was one of
the early proprietors of Bethel, although he never lived there. He
and Mercy lived to be old in Cornish. Stephen died at age 82 and
Mercy died at age 80.
Two of their sons, Daniel and Enos, did
move to Bethel.
Daniel married Apama Lyman, from
Lebanon, in 1804, when he was 25 and she was 19. They moved to
Rochester as newlyweds. Apparently Dudley Chase was one of the
proprietors of Rochester,and he sold his grandson Daniel a hundred
acre lot. Daniel and Apama cleared their land and built a house.
Daniel had settled in Rochester because the road from southern
Vermont to Montpelier was supposed to go through Rochester Hollow
near his land. The road was never built, and in the summer of 1818
the Childs moved to Bethel. By this time they had six children:
Emily, Abel, Philander, Eliza, Elijah and Lucy.
Daniel relocated in Bethel by trading
his farm in an even trade with Charles Morse. Morse took possession
of Daniel's farm in Rochester, and Daniel moved to Morse's farm in
Bethel. When they moved to Bethel, the Childs were not satisfied
with the house there so they hired Chester and Cyrus Chapman to build
another. The 1820 census lists a Charles Morse living in Rochester,
and he had a wife and two children. It is entirely possible that the
Morse house was not big enough for six children.
Leyland Wood, in his book “Two
Vermont Hollows”, published in Randolph in 1976, says that the
Chapman brothers built the house for an unspecified amount of money
and all the rum they could drink. He goes on to say that “The
builders must have been able to carry their liquor well. It is
doubtful if present day builders would be able to construct a house
that was true and plumb if they were to consume a gallon of liquor
daily.” I have lived in old houses all my life, and have always
wondered if carpenters from that era had even ever heard of a plumb
line or a level. Now I know that there may have been other reasons
for the uneven floors and slanted molding in the houses that were
built back then.
The story was that Daniel's two sons,
Abel and Philander, carried the rum from Bethel every day. The rum
was contained in a gallon jug, and the two boys carried it between
them strung on a stick.
In 1818 Abel was 8 years old and
Philander was 6. It's hard to imagine such young boys doing such a
huge job, but it certainly wasn't uncommon in that day and age.
The “Two Hollows” book describes
the location of the house as being “in the short cross road from
the Camp Brook Road to the present Route 12, the first place on the
right going south.” From this description, it is a fair estimate
that the boys walked a little more than two miles every day to
deliver the rum. The question is, did they walk from the farm to
Bethel, get the rum, and bring it all the way back? If so, it would
have been a four mile walk. Did they get a ride to Bethel in the
farm wagon, and then walk back? Were they living in town in Bethel
while the house was being built? If so, they walked from town to the
building site and then back to town again.
At one point, Daniel thought he might
want to move to Ohio. Several of his Chase relatives had moved there
and he thought he would check it out, so he walked there, didn't like
it, and walked back.
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He was very involved in town and
church affairs. He was one of the organizers of the Old Christ
Church. He was also the clerk of the Episcopal district of the area.
Wood, in “Two Vermont Hollows”, tells that the local paper was
the “Woodstock Mercury”, and Daniel would stop in at the
post
office on Friday and gather up all the papers belonging to the
subscribers that were church members, and hold them hostage until
Sunday, when he would scatter them on the pews of the church, making
it necessary for those people to come to church to get their papers.
Old Christ Church in Bethel
Daniel was a surveyor and was well
known for keeping meticulous records and being very focused on
details. His surveying work was accurate and well documented, and
even in the 1970's, landowners used his old documents to ascertain
property lines. He was also the town clerk for many years. He was
famous for his beautiful handwriting, and in 1829 the town hired him
to recopy the records of the early proprietors, as well as the early
vital statistics. His work is still in the town vault.
Daniel and Apama had nine children and
lived to their early seventies. Daniel dropped dead in the streets
of downtown Bethel when he was 73. Just to keep things in
perspective, Dudley and Alice Chase were Daniel's grandparents.
Jonathan was Daniel's great-uncle. Allace and Bibye Cotton were his
Aunt and Uncle, as were Lois and Benjamin Smith. There is every
indication that the various branches of the Chase extended family in
Bethel got along, so Daniel and his children probably spent a lot of
time with many of these relatives, all of whom had large families of
their own.
Note to readers:Looking at google
maps, I can see where the end of Camp Brook Road makes a fork into
Route 12. Using the street view, there is a house that appears quite
old that would be the first right headed south. I hesitate to
definitively say this is the house, but if you are reading this, and
you have some extra time, and are interested, head to google maps,
give it a look, and email your comments, or comment on this blog. If
I have time in the next few weeks, I'll head up to the Bethel town
clerk's office and do a title search on this house to see if it is
Daniel and Apama's house.
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