Full House; Genealogy Bingo!

When a British person is given the prompt "full house", the first thing that will come to mind is 'BINGO'! To that end, when I saw this coming up I knew that I would have to create a Genealogy Bingo card. In the course of this post, I'll show how I can call 'Full House!', or at least will in a week or two!

Since starting this #52Ancestors challenge in January this year I have written about many of my ancestors. In February I wrote about my 2x great grandfather, and his life as a collier, and later chip shop owner. The following week I turned my attention to the other side of my tree, and write about the Newells who left England in the early 1600s, to start a new life in the new world. Later their descendants emigrated back to the UK, and settled in Scotland.

In a post from March, I detailed the life of my great grandfather, who seems to have been a bigamist. He got away with it, and lived a happy life with my 2x great grandmother, whilst his first wife apparently remarried, so no big deal. I believe bigamy was far more common, when divorces were harder to come by. That same great grandfather was initially a cook in the Brighton workhouse, and later a cook in a mental hospital. During WWI, it seems he switched from being a cook, to being a nurse in the same mental hospital. 

I also wrote, in March, about the Bell family, the father of which was a publican, and he and his daughters formed the Victorian Music Hall stage act Les Trois Cloches. They even performed at the London Hippodrome; quite a distance from their home town in the north west! The same month, I wrote about our Gambier ancestors, and their seeking refuge in England, after the French king Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, basically making many French protestant Huguenots religious refugees.

I went from writing about one kind of religious persecution, to another, when I wrote about an 11x great grandfather, Richard Sherborn, and his family, who were Catholic recusants in Elizabethan England, and the family's subsequent downfall.

March was a busy month, because I also wrote about my husband's great grandfather, and his service in WWI. Later in June I wrote about my husband's grand uncle who was an airman in WWII, and who died, with the rest of his flight crew in the early hours of D Day. Whilst neither were soldiers (they were each a sailor and an airman respectively), they were both active participants in the war efforts, and I think that's good enough for my Bingo squares! Continuing on, with my husband's family, I recently wrote about his 2x great grandfather and his family of railway workers. In another post about my in-laws' family, I wrote about a story well told by the newspapers of the time, and the murder of two games keepers, the surviving third game keeper being my husband's 3x great granduncle, who was the star witness for the prosecution.

A  further murder was written about in August, when I wrote about the murder/suicide committed by my 2x great granduncle. In researching that ancestor and his story, I discovered that his first wife died of cancer in the Brighton workhouse. I also discovered that the child who was possibly his son, by the woman he murdered, and who was orphaned by his heinous crime, became a British Home Child, and was sent to Canada as a result.

Just last month I wrote about the slave trade, and the Gambier branch of our family were slave owners, and also played a key role in the abolition of slavery. And just the month before I shared some details of a book written by my 3x great grandfather, who was just one of many mariners in my family.

In early October I wrote about the wife and child of my husband's 3x great grandfather, who both died as a result of TB, or consumption as it was then known. And last month I wrote about how I discovered that I am descended from King Edward III, and his wife Queen Philippa of Hainault.

I plan to write about maids next week, in the 'Lost Contact' week, and the following week, 'Challenging', will be when I write about a particularly challenging ancestor, who was a doctor in New England, during the time of the Witch Trials.

So, as you can see.... I am left to find someone who fought in the American Revolutionary War, and that someone is my 5x great grandfather Jedediah Phipps.

Jedediah Phipps was born on the 11th March 1724, in Sherborn, MA. He was the son of John and Hannah Phipps. Jedediah Phipps was settled in  Douglas, MA prior to the start of the war. He was a committed revolutionary, and his name appeared on a list of officers commissioned in the first regiment of militia in Worcester, MA, dated 1st March 1763. It seems that at the close of the Seven Years War (known in the USA as the French and Indian War) some sort of a plan for a revolution against the British empire was being formed, and Jedediah Phipps was signing up at the start. He was in Captain Caleb Hill's company, based in Douglas, and in Colonel John Chandler's regiment.

The Second Congregational Church, Douglas, MA

With the rank of lieutenant, Jedediah and his family returned to Sherborn in May 1768, and sometime near the beginning of the war Jedediah Phipps was heard by the General Court. At this point in the history, the colonial army were almost out of ammunition. Jedediah had a solution.

".... Mr Jedediah Phips of Sherborn, has produced to this Court several pounds of salt petre, of his own manufacturing, and given full evidence of his knowledge in discovering earth impregnanted therewith, as well as of his abilities to manufacture said commodity; and has also consented to entre into the employment of the Government for improvnig the art and business aforesaid, and engaged to communicate his useful discoveries therein; Therefor resolved, that the said Jedediah Phips be taken into the service of this Colony, as aforesaid, until the 15th of December next, and he is hereby directed to repair to Newburyport as soon as he maybe, and use his utmost efforts with Dr Whiting, Mr Baker, and Capt John Peck, a committee of this Court for the purpose aforesaid, or either of them to make further improvements in the art of manufacturing said commodity and for every day which he shall be absent from his home and employed agreeable to this resolve he shall be allowed and paid out of the Public Treasury, the sum of 6s per day for his services, and 20s per week, to defray his expenses, as already provided for said committee."

Salt peter, an important ingredient in black gunpowder, is crucial to the manufacture of explosives and ammunition. There were not many manufacturers of ammunition and weapons in the 'colony', and whilst the French did support the weaponising of the Revolution eventually, this aid did not come until about 1778. The first 3 years or so were a struggle of cobbling together what the Continental Army could muster, against the well equipped British army. The ingenious method described by Jedediah Phipps was clearly one of the answers to this issue.

Salt Peter was referred to as Chinese Snow, by the ancient Arabian people.

Jedediah Phipps had a good estate in Sherborn, between Peter's Hill, and the Framingham Road which left the town of Sherborn travelling north towards Framingham and Mansfield. He and his wife, Sarah Learned, had at least 5 children; John (1757-1831), Jedediah Phipps (1760-1847), Jesse Phipps (born 1763), Sarah Phipps (1766-1838), Persis Phipps (born 1768), Mary Polly Phipps (1770-1851; my 4x great grandmother), and Anna Phipps (1778-1867). 

From an 1857 map of Sherborn, MA

Throughout the Revolutionary War Jedediah Phipps worked in various guises, including his work on developing salt peter. He was a selectman (1773 & 1780). A selectman was, and still is, a local political position. Selectmen during the colonial times of New England were generally responsible for licensing, the twon watch, and poor relief. He was moderator of Sherborn town meetings in 1778 & 1779, and was on the Sherborn committee of safety in 1780. The committee of safety, along with other committees (inspection, & correspondence), took control of the governance of a locality in  the Thirteen Colonies, which significantly reduced amount of power and authority held by the British overseers.  As a member of the committee of safety, Jedediah Phipps would have been party to passing laws, and regulations, and enacting statutes. 

Continental Soldiers

Jedediah Phipps lived to the grand old age of 94, and died in Sherborn on October 14th, 1818.  The book 'The Ancestors and Descendants of John Phipps, of Sherborn, 1757-1847' tells us that the genealogist Rev. Abner Morse visited Jedediah in his final months. He related the following description of him;

"He had never been sick in his life. At 94 he retained a great vigour in the faculties of his mind and had a rare sensibility to the beauties of nature, language and art. He could describe the constellations as clearly as the fields of his own farm; he could at that gerat age repeat quotations correctly from the classics, and he could give the names of his former acquaintances who had conversed with Peregrin White. He dwelt much on divine goodness. Though professedly a laboring mind, he had stored his mind by a habit of spending his minutes of relaxation in reading, and he had long been the oracle of the vicinity, and was well known in all the bordering towns."

He certainly sounds like he was an interesting man.

Now, my Bingo card looks almost full. By the end of the month I will be able to call 'HOUSE!!'

What is on your Genealogy Bingo card?

#Newell

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolutionary_War#Prelude_to_revolution

https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/united-states-history-primary-source-timeline/american-revolution-1763-1783/overview/

https://www.americanrevolutioninstitute.org/exhibition/a-revolution-in-arms/

https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/saltpetre-mining.htm#:~:text=The%20mining%20process%20involved%20extracting,blood%2C%20to%20create%20the%20saltpetre.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium_nitrate

http://famousamericans.net/abnermorse/

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0b/Sherborn_past_and_present%2C_1674-1924_%28IA_sherbornpastpres00sher%29.pdf