Email #5 From: David A. Macdonald To: John E Hoyt Cc: James Gibbs ; Terry Colegrove Sent: Monday, January 30, 2006 7:03 PM Subject: Colegrove-Corwin This is essentially a reply to your message of 29 January, John. Considering that I am tracing only the male Corwin lines down from the immigrant, it is remarkable how far Martha Corwin? Colegrove is leading me astray. That may account for some of my own poor research concerning her. I realize in following what you have written that I have been confusing the town of Norwich, Connecticut, which I do not know, with the town of Norwalk, Coinnecticut, which I do know, and hence placing far more distance between the Corwins in Norwich, Lisbon, and Franklin, and the Colegroves in Coventry, Rhode Island, than there really is. Assuming that it takes a while for a young man to woo and marry a girl, and assuming that Phoebe Colegrove would not travel alone, and repeatedly, over to the area in which she presumably met and certainly married Phineas Corwin, I found it difficult to see how they could ever have seen enough of one another to marry unless the Colegroves themselves had lived for a while in or near Norwich, where Phineas lived. I still see some difficulty, but not insuperable difficulty. You have nicely put paid to the notion that the Colegroves might have fled down into Corwin territory because of the British occupation. I was aware that the British had only invaded Newport but had forgotten that Newport was not on the mainland. It is also helpful to know that Oneco, Connecticut, and Coventry, Rhode Island, are only a mile or so apart. You asked if I had any sources for Nancy H. Corwin's middle name being Hannah. She was baptized on 29 July 1764 as Hannah Corwin, daughter of the widow Hannah, by the Rev. Benjamin Goldsmith at Aquebogue or Mattituck, Suffolk County, Long Island. (Charles E. Craven, A History of Mattituck, Long Island, N. Y. (Mattituck?, NY, [the author], 1906), 269.) I am strongly inclined to believe that "Nancy" was simply a nickname for Hannah, perhaps used to distinguish her from her mother, and that the middle H was for Horton, since it carried on as Horton in the name of her son Bela. It seems unlikely that her gravestone would use both her familiar name, Nancy, and her baptismal name, Hannah. Unless Horton was a known name in Rhode Island, as it was on Long Island, it seems to me that Bela Corwin would not have been given that as a middle name unless it was also being used as a middle name for his mother. But that is all speculation. As much a mystery for me is why Bela was named Bela, unless the spurious reports that the Corwins were of Hungarian origin were already extant in 1797. Without knowing the texture of Bela Corwin's diary, there is little that I can say to your "Surely, if Martha were a sister or even cousin to Nancy H. Corwin, wouldn't he [viz. Bela] have made note of that in is diary?" I think "surely" a little strong unless the diary was a genealogical treatise. I can think of many contexts, though, in which he might be inclined to name his parents and the siblings and half-siblings with whom he grew up without saying anything about the half-siblings' mother who died before his own birth. If, on the other hand, he mentioned that his father's first wife was named Martha but failed to mention that she was his second wife's sister, then I'd be strongly inclined to believe that she wasn't. Edward Corwin and Hannah Horton, his wife, had their two first children, Phineas and Ellizabeth, baptized 22 February 1756. The next known baptisms were of Hannah, Edward, and Sarah, all baptized on 29 July 1764 and named in that sequence in the baptismal register. Edward is known to have been born on 13 February 1759, and Hannah (Nancy)'s gravestone indicates (if people counted correctly) that she was born in early 1758. It is almost certain that no Martha would have been born between the 1756 baptisms and the birth of Hannah in 1758, leaving no baptismal record. But despite all of that, the possibility remains that the daughter Elizabeth, Elizabeth followed her older brother Phineas in marrying a Colegrove, for reasons unknown becoming known as Martha just as Hannah became known as Nancy. (In that regard, the statement contained in the standard Corwin genealogy that Elizabeth married Nathaniel Penny is not correct. He married a different Elizabeth.) I can't entirely dismiss the possibility that Martha (____) Corwin was Phineas Corwin's younger sister and Hannah Corwin's older sister Elizabeth, but the answer is of far less concern to me than it would be to a Colegrove descendant. Many thanks for your help. I have a message of yesterday from James Gibbs that requires a reply, and unless you should want to say more about the way in which Bela Corwin dealt with the family relations in his diary, or unless someone discovers new evidence, I think that I shall leave the question of Martha (___) Colegrove just where it stands. David