Margaret Stephenson Scott

Margaret Stephenson Scott is my nine times great grandmother. She is known for being hanged to death as part of the Salem witch trials.

According to various records and documents, Margaret was born in England somewhere around the year 1615.  In 1642 she married Benjamin Scott. Nine years later, the Scott family emigrated to Rowley, Massachussets, a small town north of Salem. 

The Scotts were not wealthy and never appeared in any positions suggesting importance or prominence. The Scotts lacked the money to purchase their own land. Instead, in 1664, the town donated land to Benjamin Scott. 

Benjamin died when Margaret was 56 years old, leaving an estate worth only 67 pounds, not much by the standards of that time. She lived on this meager estate for the next twenty-one years until her death, and must have been very poor.

Certain aspects of Margaret's character made her a likely candidate as a witch suspect. One such aspect was the high infant mortality rate among her children. Women in New England who had trouble raising their children were very vulnerable to witchcraft charges. Of Margaret's seven children, only three made it to adulthood. The residents of Salem would have been aware of this.

Also, Margaret was a widow for twenty-one years. The most dangerous aspect of being a widow was the lack of a husband for legal support and influence. She was forced to live off her husband's small estate for twenty-one years. Often poor widows were reduced to poverty and begging. By begging, Margaret would have been exposed to witchcraft suspicions according to what historians called the "refusal guilt syndrome". This phenomenon occurred when a beggar's needs were refused, causing feelings of guilt and aggression on the refuser's part. The refuser often projected this aggression onto the begger and grew suspicious of her. It appears that Margaret's accusations occurred at the hands of her town's most wealthy and distinguished citizens who had accused others of witchcraft as well.  

Margaret Scott was a victim of bad luck and bad timing. These two aspects, more than any supernatural forces, led to her demise. She must have suffered extremely from the time of her arrest until her death three weeks later. She was unjustly accused, tried, convicted, incarcerated and hanged on Gallows Hill on Sept 22,1692. Margaret was 75 years old at the time of her death, possibly the oldest woman tried and hung in the Salem witch trials.

In 1711, all those accused were exonerated and their relatives offered retribution; but none of Margaret's family turned up. Whether out of fear or shame, not all the families came forward to accept the apology. 

In 1993 the town of Rowley erected a monument to Margaret, calling the witch trials a "delusion". They dedicated this grassy area to her memory. 

Margaret’s name was finally cleared on Oct 31, 2001, 309 yrs after her death. 

Ancestral Line:  Janeal Kindred Smith...Kent Lewis Kindred...Chloris Hill...Jasper Hill...Lurancy Chase...Sisson Chase...Amy Scott...Amos Scott...William Scott...William Scott...William Scott...Margaret Kinsey Stephenson 

William Bradford

William Bradford--the governor of the Plymouth colony in New England at the time of the first Thanksgiving--is my 10 times great grandfather.  

 

He was born in 1590 in the small farming community of Austerfield, Yorkshire, England. His father William died when young Bradford was just one year old. He lived with his grandfather William, until his grandfather died when Bradford was six. His mother Alice then died when he was seven. Orphaned both from parents and grandparents, he and his older sister Alice were raised by their uncle.

William was a sickly boy, and by the age of 12 had taken to reading the Bible.  As he began to come of age he became acquainted with the ministry around which the Separatist churches of the region would eventually form. His family was not supportive of his moves, and by 1607 the Church of England were applying pressure to extinguish these religious sects. Bradford, at the age of 18, joined with the group of Separatists that fled from England in fear of persecution, arriving in Amsterdam in 1608. A year later he migrated with the rest of the church to the town of Leiden, Holland, where they remained for eleven years.

Bradford returned to Amsterdam temporarily in 1613 to marry his bride, Dorothy May. He then took up the trade of a silk weaver to make ends meet, and also was able to recover some of the estate in England that had been left by his father, to support himself and his new wife. They had a son, John, born about 1615-1617 in Leiden.

By 1620, when a segment of the church had decided to set off for America on the Mayflower, Bradford, now 30 years old, sold off his house in Leiden, and he and his wife Dorothy joined; however, they left their young son John behind, presumably so he would not have to endure the hardships of colony-building. While the Mayflower was anchored at the tip of Cape Cod, and while many of the Pilgrim men were out exploring and looking for a place to settle, Dorothy Bradford accidentally fell overboard and drowned.

In 1623, he was married to the widowed Alice Carpenter Southworth. With his second wife, he had three more children, all of whom survived to adulthood. 

Successful colonies required successful leadership. The man to step forward in the Plymouth colony was William Bradford. After the first elected governor perished from the harsh winter, Bradford was elected and was then reelected for the next thirty years.  Under Governor Bradford's guidance, relations with the local natives remained relatively smooth in Plymouth and the food supply grew with each passing year.
 
By autumn of 1621, the Pilgrims had much for which to be thankful. After the harvest, about ninety Indians joined the Pilgrims for a feast. The participants celebrated for several days, dining on venison, goose, duck, turkey, fish, and cornbread, the result of a bountiful harvest. This tradition was repeated at harvest time in the following years.

It was President Lincoln who declared Thanksgiving a national celebration in 1863. Governor Bradford and the Plymouth pilgrims were simply celebrating survival, as well as the hopes of good fortune in the years that lay ahead.

Beginning in 1630, Governor Bradford started writing a history of the Plymouth Colony, which is now published under the title Of Plymouth Plantation. He continued writing his history of Plymouth through about 1651. Bradford's writings are now one of the primary sources used by historians, and is the only thorough history of Plymouth Colony that was written by a Mayflower passenger.  It is required reading in a number of collegiate American History courses.  Many letters, poems and other writings of William Bradford, have also survived.

William Bradford was generally sick all through the winter of 1656-1657; on May 8, Bradford predicted to his friends and family that he would die, and he did the next day, May 9th, 1657, at the age of 68.

Ancestral Line:  Janeal Kindred Smith...Kent Lewis Kindred...Chloris Hill...Jasper Franklin Hill...Heamon Alison Hill...Leonard Hill...Ruth Rumrill...Alice Parsons...Alice Olive Collins...Alice Adams...Alice Bradford...William Bradford...William Bradford

Sally Forbush Hill

Sally Forbush Hill was my great, great, great grandmother. Leonard and Sally Hill left Nauvoo in the spring of 1846 headed for Utah. When the members of the church were driven by mobs out of Nauvoo, the family headed west in a handcart company. After crossing the Des Moines River, the sanitary conditions were so bad that the family took sick. During this time, Leonard and his baby son, Jasper died. The family was so poor that they did not have enough money to bury them. A man seeing their plight took the family to his farm, gave them one room in his home to live in, put their cattle in his pasture and buried Leonard and baby Jasper in his family burying ground. The family stayed there a long time because Sally and her oldest son, Charles, were so ill. In early February 1847 the remaining family members reached the east side of the Missouri river. From lack of food and exposure to the cold, Sally again took sick and died on February 17, 1847 in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Her children pulled her body on a hand sled across the Missouri river to bury her on a hill on the west side of the river in the Winter Quarters Cemetery, grave #140. Then tragedy struck again when their oldest brother, Charles, died on May 6, 1847. He is also buried in the Winter Quarters Cemetery – grave #146.
Ancestral Line:  Janeal Kindred Smith... Kent Lewis Kindred... Chloris Hill... Jasper Franklin Hill... Heaman Alison Hill... Sally Forbush

George Lee

George Lee was my great, great, great grandfather.

He was born September 27, 1824 in Kegby, Nottinghamshire, England, son of John Shallcross Lee and Mary Olivant Lee. 

As a young man, George moved from Nottingham to Sheffield, Yorkshire, and worked as an apprentice as a table knife grinder. He married Sarah Peaker in Sheffield on August 10, 1845. While in Sheffield, they accepted the gospel and immigrated with their three children to America with the Saints in 1853. Their oldest daughter, Mary Ann, was my great, great grandmother. They moved to Hanover, Connecticut in 1853 where he worked at his trade as knife grinder. Eventually, they joined the Saints in 1859 in Florence, Nebraska (now Omaha) and immigrated to Utah as part of Captain Edward Stevenson’s wagon company, leaving on June 26 and arriving in the Salt Lake Valley in September of 1859. One child was born to them while crossing the plains. Captain Stevenson asked permission to name this little one and he called the child Moroni. The baby died two days later and was buried on the plains, at a designated place on Elm Creek. George covered the grave with large rocks for protection from the elements and wolves. 

After arriving in Utah September 16, 1859, they went to live near Neff Mill on Mill Creek. They also lived in Little Cottonwood where he worked as a farm laborer and gardener. While there he had a plow made from wagon tires of Johnson’s army wagons. The plow has been kept over the years in the Pioneer Relic Hall in Franklin, Idaho. 

They moved to Farmington in the fall of 1860, living there and farming for two years. Then in 1862 the family moved to Franklin, which was considered part of Utah at the time, where they lived in the Old Fort. George Lee lived on the south side of the fort. It was a rectangular shape with 92 houses covering about 17 acres with public corrals and a log school house inside the Fort. This school house was the first in Idaho.

In December of 1863 a baby girl, Fanny Emma, was born to them while living at the Fort. George Lee and his wife, Sarah, had 12 children; however, only 5 daughters lived to adulthood. 

Goerge was a member of the choir in Franklin, Idaho. His occupation was identified as Indian fighter. Those days were treacherous times for the settlers as they were the most northern settlers at that time. The settlers were always alert to Indian difficulties. Their stock was guarded constantly, but they lost many horses and cattle. To avert trouble many times they gave the Indians some of their food supply, flour and even cattle. There were no open hostilities until January 1863 when the battle known to historians as the Battle Creek Massacre was fought at the junction of Battle Creek and Bear River, which is about 12 miles north of Franklin. Over 300 Indian men, women, and children were killed. After the fighting was over, the men of Franklin took teams and sleighs and helped remove the wounded soldiers and Indians and also the Indian women and children. Because of the snow and cold, many had frozen feet. They were all brought to Franklin and cared for until they could be taken elsewhere. The settlers felt sorrow to think that peace had to come in such a tragic way, for many peaceful Indians including women and children had been killed in the bloody battle. It did, however, make it possible for the pioneers to move and begin to take up locations that had been unsafe until now. 

The last major Indian trouble occurred on Sept. 1, 1864. Hundreds of Indians were camped north of town and some obtained liquor from two settlers. A drunken Indian tried to ride his horse over a white woman and one of the settlers shot him to save her life. Then, fearful of the consequences, the man escaped by horse. The Indians took another man captive, threatening to kill him if the offending white man was not delivered to them. Throughout the night, Bishop Hatch pleaded with the Indians, and messengers rode to other towns for help. The next morning 300 Minute Men arrived from Logan who held a conference with Chief Washakie. The settlers gave two yoke of oxen as peace offerings, and the Indians began to disperse. The Indians were stubborn about giving up their extensive lands, and so remained rather troublesome for many years. But their strength was primarily crushed with these two incidents. 

Now that the Indian trouble had diminished to the point that they felt they were safe, the residents began moving to their newly surveyed lots. So the spring and summer of 1864 were spent building homes—this time on their community lots. As soon as they could, they moved from the fort to their homes. Thus began a new life for these people…out of the protections of the fort. 

George Lee died October 29, 1868 in Franklin, 
Utah, where he was buried. Under the Territorial Act of Utah in 1869, Franklin became incorporated and considered itself part of Utah until 1872 when it was determined that it was in Idaho, thus it turned out to be the oldest town in the State of Idaho. 

 

Ancestral Line: Janeal Kindred Smith... Janice Gregory... Otto James Gregory... Lillie May Albiston... Mary Ann Lee... George Lee

Abigail Mindwell Jackson Lamb

Abigail Mindwell Jackson Lamb was my great, great, great grandmother. 

She was born July 26, 1808 in Seneca, New York to James Jackson and Deborah Hendricks. Abigail’s paternal and maternal forbears arrived in America from England in the middle of the 17th century searching for religious freedom. She was described by her children as a large, strong woman and was a good Latter-day Saint and taught her children to be righteous and honest and to obey the principles of the gospel.

She married Erastus Lamb in about 1829. He was the son of Daniel Lamb and Prudence Fox born in Connecticut, but grew up in New York. After their marriage they made their home in Huron, New York. She had five children: Harriet Laura, Suel, James, infant son, and then a daughter Polly Emaline. 

They accepted the gospel in New York and were baptized in 1841. She was the only one of her family that joined the church. She and Erastus and their young family gathered with the Saints in Nauvoo soon after. They lived in the north part of Nauvoo, close to the banks of the Mississippi River and shared in the trials and persecutions through which the early members of the church passed. Her husband worked on the Nauvoo Temple and her son, Suel worked there also as a water boy. 

Abigail was a hardworking woman and did many things to make life pleasant for her young family. She saw a great deal of the Prophet Joseph Smith, and always retained a vivid recollection of the stirring events that were experienced by the church members and leaders in that city. She remembered the martyrdom of the Prophet Joseph and his brother, Hyrum Smith, and of the claim of Sidney Rigdon to the Presidency of the church and the wonderful manifestation that was given to prove that Brigham Young was the man to lead the church. 

Through faith and courage, Abigail saved the life of her son, Suel, when he was bitten by a rattlesnake. It was the fall of the year when snakes are the most poisonous. The bite was between the thumb and forefinger. Suel ran all the way home which was more than a mile. His blood was heated up and the poison went all through him and it looked as if he would surely die. Through the prayers of his mother, Abigail, and her work with him, his life was saved. She cut open live chickens and laid his hand right on the inside of them. The whole chicken soon became green with the poison. As the poison was drawn from him, he started to get better.  Suel always had the testimony that his life was saved through the faith of his mother.

They were acquainted with the expulsion of the Saints from Nauvoo. Following the exodus from Nauvoo in 1846 the family settled for a time at Garden Grove, Iowa. While there she saw her oldest daughter, Harriet, married to John Zimmerman. The Zimmerman family were also on their way west. On June 1, 1852 they were finally prepared to make the trek to join the Saints in the Valley. They were assigned to go in the James Snow wagon train of 250 people. Their wagon consisted of Erastus age 48 and Abigail age 43, two sons Suel--19, and James--17, and daughter Polly--age 10. 

The plains in Iowa were very hot in July and water was scarce. One day when they finally reached a stream which provided them with much needed water, they all drank their fill. However Erastus drank too much of the cold water, and suffered severe cramps. Abigail did all that she could to relieve his pain, but it was not to be. He died during the night. With sobs she awoke her family to tell them. The people in the wagon train were afraid that he had died of cholera and moved on leaving his family behind to bury their husband and father. He was buried somewhere on the plains of Iowa. The family were forced to follow behind the wagon train and were not allowed to mingle with the people until they were certain that whatever had killed Erastus was not contagious. Abigail bravely gathered up her little family and fought the trail, sand, and hardship as they journeyed to Utah. They reached Salt Lake City on October 9, 1852, and went first to Pleasant Grove and then to Lehi, Utah where they settled with the first settlers, and made it their permanent home. 

They lived in log houses with dirt floors and mud roofs. They gathered pig weeds for greens to cook for their families. Their vegetables were grown in the fields where they had to go to pick them because their city lots were not fenced and they could not keep the pigs, sheep and cattle out of their lots. They made molasses out of red beets by boiling the juice down. They gathered grease wood and burned it and put the ashes in a large barrel and stirred it well and when it settled they used it for lye to soften water and to make soap. Abigail made her own candles from tallow, sometimes dipping them and sometimes using a mold. She washed wool from the sheep and spun it into yarn and had it made into cloth for clothes for her family. 

She lived to see her children all married and having good families. Abigail was a stalwart member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. She received her endowment in the Endowment House in 1856, and was sealed to her husband in 1868. 

She was compassionate and loving and always willing to help others in need. After being a widow for 30 years, she died at the age of 75 on January 2, 1882 in Lehi, Utah. There is a lovely headstone erected by her descendants in the Lehi Cemetery in remembrance of her. 

The following item appeared in the Deseret News on January 6,1882: “At Lehi,Utah, January 2nd, 1882 ABIGAIL MINDWELL LAMB wife of Erastus Lamb and daughter of James Jackson and Deborah Hendrix. Deceased was born at Obed, Seneca County, New York. Sister Lamb obeyed the gospel at an early day. She lost her husband in crossing the plains in 1852 while on their way to Utah. She came with her family to this place and settled with the first settlers. She lived the life of a true Latter-Day Saint, and was much beloved by all who knew her. She passed away in the full hope of a glorious resurrection."
Ancestral Line:  Janeal Kindred Smith... Janice Gregory... Elizabeth Sharp... Margaret Elsie Lamb... Suel Lamb... Abigail Mindwell Jackson