March 29, 2024
FAMILY TIES

Census, town records track family movements

For any family you might be researching, keep in mind that they may have lived in many more locales than you realize.

We decided last week that Jeremiah Colburn – an early settler of Orono with Joshua Eayres and John Marsh – was born in 1731 in Nottingham West, N.H.

Colburn came to what is now Orono about 1774, and died in Orono in 1811. And what else?

Gloucester, Mass., marriage and birth records lead us to believe that Jeremiah and wife Frances Hopkins married there and had children between 1754 and 1758. Bangor Public Library has birth, marriage and death records for Gloucester through 1850 in three volumes.

Birth records of later children lead us to believe that Jeremiah and family lived in Pownalborough – now Wiscasset – between 1762 and 1765. Some of the Colburns also lived in Pittston in Kennebec County before coming to Orono.

So we’ve got at least part of the family from New Hampshire in 1731 to Orono in 1774. And of course, we already said that Jeremiah Colburn was in Orono for the 1790 census. He also was listed in the 1800 census as Colburn, and in 1810 as Coburn. The next year he died in Orono.

Through 1840, we know, census records listed only the head of household by name. Everyone else was counted only by category, according to gender and age.

Come 1850, the first census in which every person was listed by name, there were seven Colburn households in Orono: Abram, Edmund, George M., James J., Jeremiah, Susan, William.

Jeremiah, a later generation, not the one who died in 1811, was head of household No. 243 in town, and family No. 355. There were more families than households because more than one family could live in the same building.

Enumerated in this household were: Jeremiah, 58; Susan, 52; Charles H., 27; Perez, 24; Susan, 22; Hannah, 20; Lucretia, 17; Augusta, 15; Pheba, 13; Henry, 10; William, 60; Frances, 54; Abram, 26; John, 21; Penelope, 19; Rebecca, 16; Edward, 13.

Keep in mind that the 1850 census doesn’t give the relationship of household members to one another. But it’s certainly a good guess that Jeremiah and William are brothers, and that the women their ages are their wives. Jeremiah, Perez, William and John were farmers, while Charles H. was a hosteler.

What we also can find in the census is information about the neighborhood – the people living near the family of our interest. Census takers were directed to go from house to house enumerating the town’s residences.

On one side of Jeremiah Colburn in 1850, we find the household of Isiah Gould, then Nathaniel Lunt, Alexander Willet from Canada, a family from Ireland, and Josiah S. Bennoch, born in Massachusetts.

On the other side of Colburn are the households of Albert G. Brown, then John Riches.

In the 1880 census, we find three Colburn households: William, Abram and Charles H.

The wonderful thing about the 1880 census is that you can find anyone in the United States by name, free, on the database of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at www.familysearch.org.

For instance, you could look up entries for William Colburn in Maine, pick the one from Orono, and then click on “household” and you’ll get the list of everyone in the family, their relationship to the head of household, age, occupation, state or country of birth, and state or country of birth for both parents.

Good news from Constance Graves in Carmel. “The History of Carmel” has been printed, 419 pages with photos.

“This was a first-time endeavor for me and one that has taken many hours of concentration and involvement by members of the Carmel Historical Society, especially in regard to the town cemeteries being physically documented and mapped,” Graves wrote.

The history is on sale for $35 a copy. Mailing is per book $2.99 for regular postage, or $4.10 priority mail on the East Coast, $8.10 priority mail on the West Coast.

Checks should be made out to Carmel Historical Society, sent to P.O. Box 214, Carmel, ME 04419-0214.

The Aroostook County Genealogical Society will meet at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 9, in the Caribou Room at Caribou Public Library. The topic will be “Helping the Thomases Organize Their Family Genalogical Material.”

Send genealogy queries to Family Ties, Bangor Daily News, P.O. Box 1329, Bangor, ME 04402; or e-mail familyti@bangordailynews.net


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