REVOLUTIONARY ANCESTORS
Because this is the week of July 4, following my introduction of Samuel Stone, Fifer, I want to introduce one more Revolutionary War soldier from my line, a Minuteman.
Today begins a marathon of New England Ancestors, particularly Stones and Howes, leading up to a family history trek to Massachusetts and New Hampshire in September. After this week, I will be working my way back from the most recent grandparents to the colonial family who founded the Wayside Inn in Sudbury Massachusetts. That Inn and the many small towns our ancestors lived in will be our family’s destination in September.
But I am skipping some generations to start with a 4x great-grandfather who was a Minuteman.
Jeduthan Stone 1748-1829
I do love the name Jeduthan. You just know that this is an early American, meant to be a Minuteman. And wasn’t a Minuteman one of the most exciting things to learn about in our history lessons on the American Revolution?
In the early 1700’s, part of the Stone family had migrated to Rutland Massachusetts from Lexington, Massachusetts, led by Jeduthan’s great- uncle Capt. Samuel Stone. Capt. Stone was one of the men to receive a land grant in Rutland as a result of his service in the French and Indian war. Most of the new settlers were from Sudbury , with some from Lexington and other towns.
Jeduthan’s father Nathan, nephew of Capt. Samuel, moved to Rutland from Lexington with his wife new wife in 1740. Coming from the far away (by their standards of distance) Sudbury (35 miles) or Lexington (50 miles)–close to Boston and close to the seacoast–a move to inland Rutland was quite the adventure. The author of a history of Sudbury, written in 1889 said:
“It was as the great west to a place near the seaboard settlements as Sudbury; and the romance and adventure of pioneer life very likely took hold of the inhabitants…”
Just 17 years before Jeduthan’s family arrived, Indians had attacked settlers working in their fields and killed two boys and kidnapped two others from the same family. And perhaps knowledge of that attack was part of the reason that Jeduthan’s father, Nathan, enlisted with the troops fighting against the Indians in the French and Indian Wars.
Because there is apparently no record of Nathan Stone’s death or burial in Rutland, it is assumed that he died fighting. He was 36 years old when he died in 1758. Jeduthan was just ten years old when his father died and left his mother with six children to care for.
The bare bones account of Jeduthan Stone’s service in the Revolution is as follows.
- Jeduthan first was chosen as a private in Capt. Thomas Eustis’ company of Rutland Minutemen, when he was 27 years old. When the alarm was raised about General Gage’s Redcoats marching on Concord and Lexington, the Minutemen of Rutland Massachusetts marched toward Cambridge, Massachusetts, just as Samuel Bassett was marching with the men of Sudbury. It was April 19, 1775–the Battle of Bunker Hill.
- He next appears in Capt. Adam Wheeler’s company, Col. Ephraim Doolittle’s regiment, on a roll dated at Winter Hill, 6 Oct. 1775.
- Jeduthan also served in Capt. David Bent’s company, Col. Nathan Sparhawk’s regiment, which traveled 226 miles on a march from Rutland, Massachusetts on 20 Aug. 1777, to Bennington, Vt., on an alarm.
To put a more human face on this military record, Jeduthan married Elizabeth How of the nearby town of Paxton in January, 1773. Elizabeth was born in Sudbury Massachusetts at the Wayside Inn–and therein hangs a tale which I will tell in due time.
Jeduthan and Elizabeth’s first child was born in July 1773–just 7 months after the marriage–which indicates they might have been under some pressure to get married.That “premature” child was Elizabeth, my great-great-great grandmother.
Their next child, Willard, was not born until 1776, when Jeduthan apparently was taking a slight break from his military duty. Augustus, the third child, born in 1777, was nearly blind at birth but nevertheless lived a long and full life as a farmer, husband and father. Four more children were born to Jeduthan and Elizabeth between 1780 and 1786, when he had returned home from active duty, and the countryside was recovering from the Revolutionary War.
Jeduthan’s life was quiet after the Revolution–the life of a farmer in the fast-growing community of Rutland, not showing up in the elected officials or church leaders.
His early career as a Minuteman enabled his family and his neighbors to live peaceful lives. He lived until 1829, when he was eighty years old, never leaving Rutland. Elizabeth How Stone lived to 1837 when she was eighty-five.
This has been my weekly ancestor story as part of the 52 Ancestors Challenge. To see other people’s fascinating stories, go to No Story Too Small.
How I am Related
- Vera Marie Badertscher is the daughter of
- Harriette Anderson Kaser, the daughter of
- Vera Stout Anderson, the daughter of
- Hattie Morgan Stout, the daughter of
- Mary Bassett Morgan, the daughter of
- Elizabeth Stone Basset, the daughter of
- Jeduthan Stone and Elizabeth How Stone.
Notes on Research:
- HISTORY OF RUTLAND: Worchester County MASS, by Jonas Reed, (Worchester, Miriet & Bartlett (1836), reprinted 1879 by Tyler and Seagrave), contains a muster roll for April 1775 and a list of the Soldiers of the Revolution from Rutland on pages 176 and 182. The book also presents a picture of life in early Rutland when it was a wild frontier, as well as names of prominent citizens.
- Cemeteries of Ohio, Genealogical Publishing Com pg. 116 reproduces the words from the gravestones of several members of Stone families.
- History of Sudbury 1638-1889 by Alfred Serno Hudson (1889;1968), gives history of the settlement of Rutland, mostly by citizens from Sudbury and Lexington.
- Other details of relationships, birth and death dates come from records found through Ancestry.com
- Research notes from Daughters of the American Revolution, prepared for my grandmother, Vera Stout Anderson probably in the 1930s or 1940s.
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The British Army in Concord, April 19, 1775. “Plate II. A view of the town of Concord.” In: “The Doolittle engravings of the battles of Lexington and Concord in 1775.” New York Public Library Collection Guide: Picturing America, 1497-1899: Prints, Maps, and Drawings bearing on the New World Discoveries and on the Development of the Territory that is now the United States. Humanities and Social Sciences Library / Print Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs.