Noyes LADD's wife was Harriet Z. WILLIAMS. She was the mother of the young boys who drowned in the Empire Steamship Disaster. She is buried in IL and I hope that someday my new friends who have been corresponding with me about this disaster will be able to find her grave and her son Noyes LADD, Jr. (and her unmarried sister too). Then, I can bring these gravestones together in my blog.
I have had a lot of interest in my blog posts about this family and it is great to be able to share data and photos with those who found my blog by doing a search for their ancestors.
I am going to focus on Harriet's family that she left behind for a few blog posts. This gravestone posted here is compliments of my cousin Fred Burdick who took several photos of people who are related to the family of Thomas Stanton for the Stanton Society.
Wheeler's History of Stonington, states that this gravestone marks the resting place of Harriet Z. Williams Ladd's parents. Capt' Elias WILLIAMS (#279 p. 672, 675) and his wife Thankful Stanton. Notice that her name, based on naming women with the names of virtues, is spelled with two LL's on this gravestone. [It is not spelled that way in the genealogies.]
Elias was born 3 Sept 1773 and died 31 Jan 1809. I think he must have been a sea captain because he died in North Carolina. He was only 34 years old at the time of his death leaving his wife a widow with young children (Harriet was 11 years old). This makes it all the more ironic that someday Harriet would marry a man who died young, leaving her with children to raise.
Thankfull was an only child and lived to be 87 years old, dying 8 Sept 1861. This means that she was alive in 1849 when her grandsons drowned. She may have been a witness to the burial of these boys at Elm Grove Cemetery.
Note: update! Please read the comments left by one of my readers. Capt Elias Williams, was a master of the schooner "Fair Trader" and sailed regularly into the Caribbean and along the Carolinas. My reader spent a lot of time researching this master mariner for me. There are sources for you to follow to learn more about this interesting couple.
3 comments:
Midge, on page 115 in the book, Men of Mark in Connecticut, Volume III (N.G. Osborn, 1907) it states: "Captain Elias Williams, grandfather of the late Elias Williams was a master mariner and seafarer." so you were absolutely correct. Lots of shipwrecks along the southern Atlantic coast due to hurricanes and storms. Now it would be interesting to find details of his death.
Midge, I did a little digging and found quite a bit of information on Capt. Elias Williams. He was master of the schooner Fair Trader and sailed regularly into the Caribbean and along the Carolinas. There is quite a detailed account of his business, and documentation of his death during 1809 in the book Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Judicial Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (Volume VII, pp. 268-273) available at Google Books. It seems he spent quite a bit of time in the seaports along the Carolinas, as well as in Cuba and the Caribbean.
I have an original ship's registry of one of Elias Williams's ships. I'm not at home right now but will post a picture of it when I return.
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