Top of Form 1 Notes - Colliers of Cohasset, GS Tower Posted by: Wade Collier Date: February 04, 2001 at 08:58:55 of 2043 Bottom of Form 1 I offer these notes, which give a little scattered information on some of the "Colliers of Massachusetts" as I continue to work on the final family history. Genealogy of the Collier Family of Cohasset, Mass., compiled by Gilbert S. Tower, July, 1949. Comments and notes by Wade Collier, February 3, 2001 Even at this late date, my hat is off to Edmund Pomeroy Collier and Gilbert Tower for their groundbreaking work on the family. E. P. Collier wrote articles on the Briggs -Collier House in North Scituate, and Cohasset’s Deep Sea Captains, and Mr. Tower the work that we are looking at here. I am not aware of any earlier work on the Collier Family, or any significant portion of it - and I have looked everywhere ! Five decades after Mr. Tower prepared his genealogy, we have the great advantage of being able to use the Internet and Email. Although we continue to use the wonderful library facilities we have here in eastern Massachusetts, we can now instantly exchange information from family records with a cousin in Washington state, or Maine. We still seek confirmation, of course, but we have a much wider net to work with these days. In the last two or three years, we have rapidly expanded our Collier horizons beyond Cohasset and the South Shore, although the center will always be there. The following comments are not 10 pages of "mistakes" in Mr. Tower’s work, but are more in the nature of corrections, additions and elaborations that we can now make, 50 years later. I offer them, honoring his efforts, while wanting to update them where there are revisions to be made, or gaps that can now be filled. I like to think that Gilbert Tower and all of our other fathers and mothers would applaud our current efforts. As always, I welcome corrections or additions that can be substantiated. We are never going to get this project 100% perfect, but we want to keep working in that direction. Mrs. Alice Williams, of Hingham, Mass. allowed me to make a copy of Mr. Tower’s work at the time of the Collier-Lincoln Reunion in August, 2000. I believe the entire package consisted of 28 hand-printed pages -- that is the number shown in the Library of Congress listing. I imagine the original was a mimeograph master, which was reproduced and distributed to family members. I have 29 pages, which are NOT consecutively numbered. There are two different versions of page 20, "Collier-Pinkham-Williams," the one I have marked "20A" having less detail than the other. There are 4 other duplicate or near-duplicate pages. I do not know how long Mr. Tower worked on the "Colliers of Cohasset." Roughly ½ of the pages have a date of "1948" at the bottom, 2 of the pages of Vital Records indicate that he copied the information on January 7, 1949, and the date on the title page is July, 1949. Although there are some sections in which a narrative flows from one page to the next (primarily the pages numbered 1 through 9, without the "1948" date), many of the rest are 1 or 2 page essays or family lists which could stand alone. For purposes of my commentary, I have arranged the pages of my copy in the following manner: Pages 1 through 4, marked "G. S. Tower, 1948" at the bottom. These are no doubt the first pages of a first draft. Most of Page 1 was reworked and included in the final version, a lot of it on Page 2 there –in the section of Pages 1-9 without a date at the bottom. Page 2 of the "1948 draft," very slightly changed, becomes Page 12 of the final version, although that also bears the date "1948." Pages 3 and 4 with the "1948" date, with very few changes, became Pages 13 and 14 of the final version, also marked "1948." Pages 1 through 11 (without date marking) were presumably prepared in 1949. There is a numbered genealogy on Pages 1 - 9, with Thomas (1) being #1, of course, and Marcy Vinal Collier, born in Scituate, 1811, being #79. Most, if not quite all, of the known "Colliers" who lived in Boston or on the South Shore up to the early 19th Century are listed. This numbering system is not continued on to more recent generations. Pages 10 and 11 contain biographical notes on William Collier, of Plymouth and Duxbury. Pages 12, 13 and 14 - as noted above - are slightly reworked versions of the original "1948" pages 2, 3 and 4, and cover the William Collier - Judith Briggs family from that couple’s marriage and life in North Scituate down to the children of Capt. James Collier (1813 - 1891) in Cohasset -- Edmund Pomeroy and George Washington Collier and their siblings. There is a small note at the bottom of Page 14, "Next comes sheet 20. No sheets 15-19." Each of the pages numbered 20 through 24 is concerned with one particular family line of the more recent "Colliers of Cohasset." 20A (my number) is an earlier and less complete version of 20, and there are two pages with the original number 23, both marked "Gilbert S. Tower, 1948." One concerns the Collier-McAllister line, and the other the Collier-Schoenfeldt. Finally, there are 4 pages copying the "Collier" entries in the published Vital Records of Hull and Scituate, numbered 1.A through 4.A. (With a few exceptions, I omit comments on the original pages 1-4, from 1948, as Mr. Tower incorporated most of that information in the 1949 version, adding new data and correcting some problems that he saw himself in his first draft.) (If you can follow me through page 3, the rest will be a breeze --) Page 1 -- titled Genealogy of the Collier Family of Cohasset, Mass., compiled by Gilbert S. Tower, July, 1949. Mr. Tower gives a brief overview of the Thomas Collier line, with particular emphasis on the Cohasset line, of course. In his original Page 1, he had quoted from Samuel Deane’s History of Scituate, 1831, in which Deane had confused Bridget Southworth (1714-1798), wife of Thomas Collier (1706-1784), with her mother, Bridget Bosworth. Mr. Tower noted a problem with dates, etc., and had corrected his information in the final version. Page 2 -- Regarding Thomas (1) Collier: Mr. Tower (hereafter abbreviated GST) gives his date of death as either June 2, 1646 or April 16, 1647. The actual date was April 6, 1647, and he was aged about 71, as recorded by Rev. Peter Hobart (NEHGR, 121:19). This was the same day that he signed his will. GST gives the date of the will as April 16, 1647, but the transcription in NEHGR, April 1853, pages 173 - 174 says, the "sext of April 1647." GST omits mention of Thomas and Susannah’s daughter, called "Susan" in the will. The wife is named "Susan" by Thomas (although, being illiterate, he did not actually write the document himself) but the name was given as "Susannah" when she was given power of administration. GST gives no date of birth for son Moses (2), but we know it was about 1625, from a later legal deposition by Moses. The date of birth of "about " 1622 is correct for Thomas (2). Regarding Jane, the wife of Thomas (2): Some records give her surname as Jones, and some as Curtis, the explanation being that she and her sister, Elizabeth, who was Moses (2) Collier’s first wife, were step-daughters of Robert Jones. Their father was surnamed Curtis (I do not have a certain first name), and seems to have been from the area of Reading, Berkshire. Robert Jones and the Widow Curtis were married by1636, and were in Hingham in 1637. GST has a subtraction error at the name of Elizabeth (3) Collier, born (or at least baptized) Dec. 17, 1648, in Hingham. She could not have been the individual who married Gershom Collier Copeland in 1764, of course. That person was a daughter of Deacon Jonathan Collier, one of the sons of Lt. Gershom and Elizabeth Poole, and his first wife, Judith Gould. Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas (2), seems to have died before her father made his will in 1690, and is not named therein. James (3) baptized April 6, 1651, in Hingham, also probably had died by 1690. (Hang in there -- we are almost finished with page 2 !) Thomas (3) -- May 28, 1654 was date of baptism in Hingham. Thomas seems not to have married, and died in Hull Feb. 25, 1719 (a. 67 [??] from gravestone record). (Mrs. Smith, in her NEHGR article on 17th Century Hull, transcribes the date incorrectly as "25 July 1719.") Benjamin (3) – date of birth of 1661 is possibly correct, although the only record I have is of his baptism on Nov. 19, 1665, by Rev. Hobart (not indicated whether in Hull or Hingham - family was living in Hull by that time). Mrs. Smith, in the "Collier" section of "Seventeenth Century Hull…" (NEHGR, Vol. 142, Oct, 1988, page 358) indicates correctly that Benjamin died at Hull, August 18, 1730, but adds, without source, that he was aged about 69, which would put his date of birth at about 1661, not 1665. Benjamin probably did not marry, and was "weak in intellect." GST indicates that John (3) was born "about 1666-70 ?" (no source given), but he was actually baptized by Rev. Hobart on August 1, 1662. (NEHGR, Vol. 142, Oct, 1988, page 358). John married Mary/Marcy UNKNOWN and had 3 daughters who married 3 Loring brothers. GST omits the remaining known child of Thomas (2) and Jane, Experience Collier (3), baptized by Rev. Hobart on August 1, 1662, the same day as her brother, John, above. This omission is no doubt due to the fact that George Lincoln’s History of the Town of Hingham, 1893, lists her as the daughter of Moses (2) and his 2d wife, Elizabeth Bullard. Page 3 (FINALLY) -- The main item here is the listing of the family of Moses (2) Collier. GST has taken the information from Lincoln’s History of the Town of Hingham, Vol. II, III, pages 135-136 and transcribed it nearly verbatim. Unfortunately, there are some errors in the original. I have myself spent many hours trying to get a clear picture of the Moses Collier family fixed in my mind, and I needed some information from Charlestown, Dedham, and New Jersey sources to get as far as I have. Briefly, his first wife, Elizabeth Curtis/Jones, was the sister of Jane, wife of Thomas (2), as I indicated above. They married, probably in Hingham, Nov. 26, 1655 (although the date is erroneously given as "1665" in Lincoln’s book). They had one son, Benoni, meaning approximately "born of sorrow," so named because Elizabeth died 5 days after giving birth to him. Moses married a second time, to Elizabeth Bullard, of Dedham/Charlestown, in 1657. Between that year and about 1683, Moses and Elizabeth had 7 known children (6 listed in Lincoln’s Hingham). In 1682, Moses appeared in Boston records, and about 1683 he and most - if not all, save Benoni - of the family moved to Woodbridge, Middlesex County, New Jersey. Now, of Moses’ children, as listed on page 3 by GST: # 14, # 15, and #17 should be deleted, as they are actually children of Thomas (2) and Jane Curtis/Jones (see comments for Page 2, above). # 13, a daughter born February 10, 1660/61, was named Mary. # 19 was a daughter, named Jemima. The final known child, birthplace unknown, was Susannah Collier, born about 1670. The known children of Moses (2) Collier, then, were: Benoni, b. Apr. 5, 1657 (by Elizabeth Curtis/Jones) Probably stayed in Mass. Moses, b. Nov. 8, 1658 (Moses, and all other children, by 2d wife, Eliz. Bullard.) Elizabeth, b. Oct. 14, 1659. Mary, b. Feb 10, 1660/61. Thomas, bt. June 5, 1664. Deborah, b. June 20, 1666. Jemima, [? b. or bt.] Mar. 16, 1667/68 Susannah, b. ca. 1670, probably NOT in Hingham. My source for confirming the existence and the parentage of these individuals is, in most cases: Monnette, Orra Eugene. First Settlers of Ye Plantations of Piscataway and Woodbridge Olde East New Jersey part 5. The Leroy Carman Press. California. 1931, pages 808-809, and other pages. This is available on the Internet. GST didn’t have that advantage. Moses, the son, went to eastern New Jersey, "but soon rem. elsewhere," Thomas stayed, and it is largely his line in New Jersey that I have followed to date. I see nothing after her birth on Elizabeth, born 1659, but the sisters Mary, Deborah, Jemima, and Susannah all went to New Jersey and married there. The first son, Benoni, was in Boston in 1678, at age 21, but I have nothing on him after that time. In short, I have at least some additional information on all of the children of Moses (2), except Elizabeth (3). Dropping down further on Page 3 -- John (3) Collier and his wife Mercy/Marcy/Mary ??? had a 3d daughter, Elizabeth, born about 1690. She is not listed in the Hull VRs, but is identified in John’s will, and her marriage to Deacon John Loring is shown on page 44 of the Hull VRs. (See NEHGR, Vol. 143, page 139, April 1989.) Page 4 -- Date of death for Elizabeth Pool (more commonly spelled "Poole") Collier, May 18, 1723, is obviously in error, as has been pointed out by many people. There are two children listed as born to "Gershom and Elizabeth" after this date, the last being Moses, born June 2, 1729. I imagine the correct date might have been "1733," but it hasn’t been checked. Note the 2 sons of Gershom and Elizabeth named Gershom (# 26 and # 28). The first, born Apr. 5, 1708 no doubt died at an early age -- there is no death record in Hull VRs. The birth date for the 2d was Nov. 1, 1713 - not 1715 - and the entry on Page 15, Hull VRs, is for "Garshom COYLOR, s. of Garshon and Elizabeth." This is the young man who had the brief but interesting stay at Harvard College. (Although I strongly suspect that Gershom (4), born 1713, mentioned above, had died by 1749 -- he is not mentioned as an heir of Lt. Gershom in that year - I do note that GST has a reference at the bottom of the page to a Weymouth source I have not seen, and the remark "Collier, Gershom, of Hull & Weymouth, Mass. 1715 - 1790." Possible he was wondering whether this could be the same individual who went to Farmington, Maine in 1790. We know now that they were two distinct individuals.) GST omits John Collier (4), son of Gershom and Elizabeth, born Mar. 9, 1716. He should be inserted between the 2d Gershom and Deacon Jonathan on the list. The omission no doubt occurred because of the erroneous entry for him, on Page 15, Hull VRs, where he is listed as "John, s. of Garshon [COLYER] and Jude." Judith Poole was Elizabeth’s mother, John’s grandmother. We don’t know much about this John, except that he was alive and living in Boston in 1758. Finally, on Page 4, regarding Moses Collier (4 - born June 2, 1729, Hull), GST gives some of the few details known about this individual. His source for the statement that Moses was a "Boat Builder of Boston" is a manuscript by Charles Binney held at the NEHGS. Mr. Binney was an active genealogist who worked on various Hull families in the later 19th Century. I have seen some of his published material, which has given information not found elsewhere, but he is somewhat lacking in giving sources. I will try to look at his manuscripts on my next visit to the NEHGS. Moses and Susannah Foster Collier had five children born in Boston. I believe these are the only "Collier" births recorded in the official Boston Vital Records for the 18th Century -- an example of how incomplete those records are. One of the children may have been the Susanna Collier James, of Chesterfield, Hampshire County, whose husband was born in Cohasset . On January 18, 1788, this Thomas James was appointed guardian of Anna and Rebecca Collier, orphaned children of Bosworth Collier. Page 5 -- A mercifully easy page to check – few comments. GST lists the 7 children of Thomas (4) Collier and Bridget Southworth who were born in Scituate. I do note in Hull VRs, page 15, however, the birth of "Jane COLLER, d. of Thomas and Brigget, Nov. 27, 1734." This can only be our couple, and that birth would be about 7 months after their marriage. I do not see a death record for this baby, and they had another "Jane" in Scituate, Apr. 9, 1744, so it is likely this child died very young. #36, William Collier -- I have recently found some information on this individual. Although he died in Hull, and seems to have been there in 1771, I think it likely that he lived in Boston for some of the period 1771 - 1790. He married Sarah Binney, of Hull. The couple had children, possibly born in Boston, about whom I have nothing except names. # 37, Jane Collier -- The daughter of Thomas and Bridget was NOT the individual who married Charles Jenkins, and I cannot identify that individual. Our Jane (5) married Lt. John House of Hanover, and they had moved to Chesterfield, Hampshire County, almost certainly with the parents Thomas and Bridget, by about 1784. # 38, Mary Collier -- Married Lazarus Bowker, Jr. The Bowkers were related to the House family of Hanover. # 39, Ephraim Bosworth Collier -- My ancestor (99 % certainty). He married, in Hanover, Ann or Anna House, sister of Lt. John House (see above, # 37). Page 6 -- The biography of Jonathan Collier (4) is correct as far as it goes, and I will not elaborate too much now. # 40, Elizabeth Collier, is the individual who married Gershom Collier Copeland, a first cousin, in Hull, 1764. (See notes for Page 2, above.) # 41, Luce, or Lucy, Collier, married Benjamin Farwell in Groton, Mass. in 1780, and I have found records on that family down to about 1920 in Rutland County, Vermont. The name of his 2d wife, Mrs. Ruth Briggs, presumably a widow of Scituate, leads to speculation about her relationship to Judith Briggs, of North Scituate, wife of William Collier (4). I have not pursued that question yet. Ruth Briggs Collier died, in Scituate, July 22, 1763, only about 2 years after their marriage, and they probably had no surviving children. Deacon Jonathan married, for a third time, the widow Tabitha Pratt Porter, of Weymouth, on April 26, 1764. By 1775 they were in Groton, Middlesex County, Mass, perhaps to withdraw from the war just begun. Jonathan died before February, 1779, and Tabitha after the date of the 1790 Census. I suspect both died in Groton or vicinity, but have found a record for neither. Of the children of this third marriage; Gershom (5).was the individual who went to Farmington, later Avon, Maine; Ruth (5) married Joel Lawrence of the well known Groton family; and Hannah (5) married Daniel Hemmenway, of Groton. I have records of some of Gershom’s descendants down to the present day, and several generations for Ruth and Hannah. Now, on the William Collier (4) and Judith Briggs family -- the start of the Cohasset line -- the only problem I see in the lineage of Judith, as given by GST, is that she must have been the daughter of Joseph (3) Briggs and his 2d wife, Judith Litchfield, rather than his first wife, Mary Garrett. Mary died February 8, 1714, and Joseph married for a second time Judith Litchfield, on February 20, 1717. Since Joseph did not marry his 3d wife, Sarah Ewell, until 1730, and Judith, wife of William Collier, was born in either 1724 or 1725, Judith Litchfield must have been her mother. GST gives Judith’s date of birth as May 20, 1724, but the other secondary sources I have seen say May 20, 1725. If her birth record is in the Scituate VRs, this should be easy to check, but I have neglected to do so yet. On Page 1 of the "1948" version, Mr. Tower quotes Deane’s History of Scituate, in giving the marriage of William Collier and Judith Briggs as 1748. He here corrects that date to March,1748-49, but says that the date was March 24. The printed Scituate VRs clearly say March 23, 1749, with the marriage intention posted Dec. 30, 1748, in Scituate, and Jan. 5, 1748 [but almost certainly 1748/49], in Boston, where William seems to have been living. GST correctly copies the March 23, 1749 marriage date on page 1.A, the record of Collier marriages from the Scituate VRs. I agree with GST in his records of marriages of the children of William and Judith Briggs Collier (#s 44 to 48). I do have a few scattered records of descendants of the youngest 4, and the descendants of #44, Isaac (5) are the well recorded Colliers of Cohassset line. The only thing I would add is that the 2d wife of # 48 Jonathan (5), Hannah Nash of Isleboro, Maine, was the sister of Abigail Nash, wife of # 34 Gershom (5) Collier. The Nash sisters had been born in Scituate. Gershom and Abigail, and several of the Nash family, had moved from Scituate to Isleboro sometime between, say, 1794 and 1798. A year or two later the Collier family moved to Northport, Maine, on the mainland. Page 7 -- As GST indicates, there is no record of # 31 Isaac after his birth in 1726. He probably had died by 1749, as he is not mentioned as an heir of Lt. Gershom Collier in a document of that year. Of the children of Isaac (5) and Tamsen Hayden Collier, most have descendants listed by GST in his work. I will just add, regarding # 49 Rev. William (6) Collier, that I gave some later information in my November, 2000, research letter, and I have a little more to add in my next letter. We have still located no living descendants. On # 58 Elisha (6) [middle initial "H.," for Hayden ??] Collier, GST’s child "x" -- I will have some material in my next letter. He seems to have moved to Boston, and was a gunmaker and inventor of note. GST omits child "xi." As GST indicates, there is some doubt about the parentage of a few of the children of "Isaac Collier" of Scituate in the 1790s. Both Isaac [Sr., 1750 - 1813) and Isaac, Jr. (1773 - 1840) had children during this period, and in a few cases we can’t be certain which was intended in the records. There were also deaths of some children of "Isaac" during the same period, with no name of the child given. I doubt that we can sort this out with absolute certainty. I would favor listing # 66 Alben Collier, "s. Isaac, bp. Sept 25, 1793" as the son of Isaac [Sr.] rather than Isaac, Jr., as GST does. This would make a total of 13 children for Isaac [Sr.] and Tamsen Hayden Collier, the last being Cynthia, b. June 3, 1794. Page 8 -- See previous remarks concerning #48 Jonathan (5) Collier, with Page 6 above. See previous remarks concerning # 49 Rev. William (6) Collier, with Page 7 above. # 50 is Isaac (6) Collier, Jr., mentioned just above in remarks for Page 7. Deleting Alben (7 - baptized Sept. 25, 1793, probably died 1794) from the list of children here, and adding him to the list of the children of Isaac {Sr.] would be the only change I would suggest. Of the seven children of Isaac, Jr. and Betty/Betsey Hayden Collier, at least two died while teenagers, and on only one - Joseph Hayden Collier - do I even find a marriage record. Page 9 -- Captain Peleg (7) Collier and his wife, Mary Mann, must have lived in the vicinity of Scituate Harbor, not in North Scituate. Their first three children, the first Mary and two sons named Peleg, are all buried in the Union Cemetery at Scituate Harbor. Source: Old Cemeteries of Southeastern Mass., Middleborough Public Library, 1995 (reprint of book compiled by Charles M. Thatcher, late 1880s.), page 231. Pages 10 and 11 -- A very good summary of what is known about William Collier, of London, Plymouth and Duxbury. William, through his daughter Elizabeth, who married Constant Southworth, stepson of Gov. William Bradford, in 1637, was an ancestor of Bridget Southworth, wife of Thomas (4) Collier. (See Page 5 of GST and my notes, above.) James Lincoln Collier informs me that there are other connections from William Collier to the Sewall or Osgood lines, but I do not have that lineage at present Pages 12 through 24 --. I do not offer any comments on this final section. These pages give greater detail on the descendants of William (4) Collier and Judith Briggs, and specifically on the later generations of the "Colliers of Cohasset," down to the present. GST used the same sources as I have access to, plus private family records, and I defer to him and other members of the family for these generations. Some of sources for the "Cohasset" information: Genealogies of the Families of Cohasset, Davenport and Davenport, Comm. of Town History, 1909, pages 109 - 111, and others pages. Elizabeth Davenport, co-author with her husband, George, was sister of Frances Osgood Collier. Vital Records of Cohasset, Massachusetts to the Year 1850, compiled by Thomas W. Baldwin, Boston, 1916. Old Scituate, Chief Justice Cushing Chapter, DAR, 1921, pages 86-92. (Article on the Briggs - Collier House by E. P. Collier, also published in other places, I believe.) "Cohasset’s Deep Sea Captains," by Edmund Pomeroy Collier, from Genealogies of the Families of Cohasset, above, pages 532 - 589. This is also published by the Cohasset Historical Society as a separate booklet. Wade Collier, 218 Leominster Road, Lunenburg, Mass. 01462 wcollier@massed.net February 3, 2001