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November 2004 Colliers of Massachusetts Research Update November 24, 2004
Although a genealogist isn’t apt to go long without thinking of family in one way or another, as we enter the holiday season it seems even more appropriate to issue a brief newsletter about our family history project. As always, feel free to contact me with corrections to our joint work, new contributions, or anything else concerning the Collier family of Hingham, Boston and vicinity, or any of the related families.
INDEX:
1) Overview
2) The Colliers of Massachusetts, volume one
3) Progress on Volume Two
4) Recent Research Trips
1) Overview
For those coming to this “Colliers of Massachusetts” project for the first time, the family descends
from Thomas and Susannah (UNKNOWN) Collier, who settled in Hingham, Massachusetts in 1635. Thomas was the second of the surname to come to New England, William Collier of Duxbury having arrived in 1633. William and Thomas were almost certainly NOT related, but there was at least one marriage of a descendant of William to a descendant of Thomas, so some of us can claim descent from both families. (William had no sons who survived to adulthood – all of his descendants stem from the four daughters who came with him to Plymouth Colony.)
The number of known Thomas and Susannah Collier descendants and spouses is approaching
9,500. The numbers expand both quickly through contributions from new-found cousins and slowly and painfully through continuing research and review in published, online and microfilm and microfiche records by myself and others. Through the present generations the number of individuals bearing the “Collier” surname – originally settling in South Shore Massachusetts and Maine – is approximately 420. Another line which early went to northern New Jersey had adopted the spelling “Collyer” by the early 18th century. Through the present day the “Collyer” surname numbers about 120. Other surnames with significant numbers through the first five American generations include, in Massachusetts and Maine, Loring, Spear, Copeland, Pratt, Briggs, Damon, Doane, Gould, House, and White. In New Jersey, common related names were Doty and Sutton.
2) The Colliers of Massachusetts, Volume One
Volume one of the family genealogy, covering the first five American generations, was published
in August 2004, after nearly 6 years of steady work by many hands. A plastic “comb” bound edition of some 170 pages, plus 10 pages of color illustrations, is available from the compiler – myself - at $30 per copy. A CD edition is $ 10. A hard cover version can be provided at $ 50 for those who wish to pay the premium cost.
In addition to the sale of a modest number of books and CDs to interested family members and others, I have provided copies of the work to the NEHGS, the Cohasset library and Historical Society and the Chesterfield and Northampton, Mass. libraries and societies. I will continue to distribute copies to those towns and areas where the family lived.
3) Progress on Volume Two
Following a short break after ushering the initial order of books through the production and shipping process, I have started working seriously again on generations 6 – 8. Two of my sisters-in-law with a lovely sense of humor have given this the working title of the “New Testament.” I have chosen this division for the second volume primarily to keep the work down to a manageable size. Volume one had 76 primary family groups through generation five, using that term to mean a Collier descendant who had known children. As I noted above, this initial book came to 170 + pages and, speaking in very general terms, covered individuals born down to about 1780 – 1800. The biographical notes for some individuals were quite extensive, and I tried to find at least some reliable information on all.
I am slowly reviewing the information on the descendants in generations 6 – 8 and am filling in some gaps and locating lost individuals. This is slow work, even when making maximum use of online records and the generally good published records I have access to here in eastern Massachusetts. I can make fairly steady progress in checking on individuals who stayed in Massachusetts through the middle or latter part of the 19th century, using both online data and microfiche copies of town records. New Jersey records, in general, are not as bountiful as those in Massachusetts, or at least not as easily available here. And, when Rev. Amasa Loring of the Maine Loring-Collier lines says, for example, that “-------Loring married and had children,” he doesn’t really give much information to start with.
At this moment, the draft of generation 6 has 135 family groups, generation 7 has 314 and generation 8 has 420, for a total of 870 families with known descendants. The bare bones of the genealogy – with no personal biographies or references – come to 200 pages. Ezekiel6 Loring (# 77), the first numbered individual in generation 6, lived from 1731 to about 1800-1802; Dr. Jedidiah Tingle8 French (# 947), presently the last individual in draft generation 8, lived from 1823 to 1903. In between those two men are all of our grandfathers and grandmothers.
The sheer numbers are staggering to me, as is the thought of the work required to do justice to the family members the numbers represent, no matter how much help the computer and the Internet provide. On the positive side, I know the craft a good deal better than I did six years ago, and a great portion of the work is gathered in my database already. I need only to do the re-writing of crude notes into something semi-interesting and logical, check those notes for accuracy as much as possible, and tell the printer to spit out the results. I foresee that the biographies of most individuals will be much shorter than those in volume one, as the raw information is sparser. Often we will find little personal data on an individual beyond his occupation as given in a census or other record.
Finally, if a single volume containing generations 6 – 8 proves to be too unwieldy, or too time-consuming, I can invoke the “constant variable fudge factor” and reduce the scope of volume two. I anticipate that a minimum of a year and a half will be needed to produce the next installment.
4) Recent Research Trips
Although most of my genealogy time this past year was spent in work on volume one of the book,
I did occasionally get away from the library and the computer. In the spring I made a daytrip to Boston’s Beacon Hill and Back Bay, just revisiting some of the areas where ancestors lived or worked. As I have said in the past, 30 + years ago I attended college on Beacon Hill only a block from where “Gershom Collier of Boston and Chesterfield” lived and worked circa 1793-1805. If I had only known !! Even at my glacial pace in preparing the Collier genealogy, I could have produced a heck of a work in 30 years. In early September, after releasing the genealogy to an unsuspecting world, I spent a day in Hingham and Cohasset, briefly visiting Alice and Ware Williams and being treated to an in-depth tour of Cohasset by Joel Pratt. Later in the fall I was able to spend half a day at the genealogy library of the Bennington Museum, checking on some of the family members who passed through that state. Even more recently, son Ed and I spent an afternoon in the Northampton, Mass. area. Along with our other business I coerced him into visiting a “Collier” cemetery and the site of the Mill River Flood of 1874. (He is just returned from a sojourn in the Midwest, and I felt it my duty to re-introduce him to the wonders of “Collier Country.”)
Wade Collier
“Colliers of Massachusetts” Project
218 Leominster Road
Lunenburg, Mass. 01462
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