Monday, January 12, 2009

I spent the weekend working on the records found in a Bible originally owned by Henry C. Craig and his wife Leann (Coburn). The Records pages are full, and there are even some bonuses, including a ten page letter from Gilbert Olney Coburn detailing his years of research into the family history and a scrap of paper with the muster in and muster out dates of Adin Phineas Coburn into the Ohio Volunteers, 8 Jun 1861 to 25 Oct 1865.

Gilbert's letter was to his nephew W. L. Craig and was written despite a dislocated or sprained shoulder, which was causing him great pain. Gilbert mentioned how difficult his research had been, owing to a lack of enthusiam on the part of most of his relatives, and he worried that few would appreciate his work, other than the nephew and "Lilly".

Gilbert mentions "Sim", who has been traveling and prospecting and is "a great fellow for mules, since he has been working mules of winters." Sim is probably Simeon Craig, brother to the nephew William L. Craig.

The Coburn family in America originated with Edward Colborne, who made a 54 day passage to Boston in 1635 to join the "Defense Capt. Bostwick". Leann's branch descended from Edward to Robert to Daniel to Andrew to Asa to Phineas to Theodore, her father. Leann's mother was Rebecca or Rebekah Waterman.

Asa and sons migrated west to Ohio in the late 1700s. There's an interesting account of the family online at http://www.ohgen.net/ohwashin/coburn-asa.html.

In 1838 four little girls drowned in Meigs Creek. One of them was Leann and Gilbert's sister Patience Olney Coburn, who would have been 4 years old by the Bible and Gilbert's records, and 2 years old by a citation online of someone who documented the gravestone - possibly that person made a typo in the birthdate.

At some point, a family member married a son of Joseph Frye, doctor, from Fryeburg, Oxford, Maine, so I get to delve into some Maine genealogy after all.

I didn't mean to spend the whole weekend on just one family, but it was certainly an interesting one!

2 comments:

  1. My ancestor was Adrian Frye and his wife Sara Hannah White of Kittery, Maine. I'm wondering if these two men are related.

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