Mark Scott (bef. 1763 - 1834)

Born before 11 Jun 1763 in Scarborough, Cumberland, Massachusetts Bay Colony

Ancestors

Husband of Mehetabel Scott — married 5 Nov 1786 in Machias, Washington, District of Maine, United States

Descendants

Died 8 Aug 1834 after age 71 in Aurelius Township, Washington, Ohio, United States

Biography

Mark Scott was baptized, 17 Jul 1763, at Scarborough's Second Church, the son of Samuel Scott and Susannah Perry, ^[1] died at Aurelius Township, Washington, Ohio, 8 Aug 1834, ae 69y 2m 29d [sic], ^[1] and is buried in the Atkinson Cemetery, Macksburg, Ohio; ^[2] married at Machias, 5 Nov 1786, his first cousin, Mehitable Scott, ^{[3] [4]} born Machias, 20 Nov 1767, the daughter of Sylvanus Scott and Sarah Andrews. ^[1]

Excerpt from Tom Moffat and Violetta Trudeau, "History of Mark Scott of Tower Hill (New Brunswick) and his nephew, Samuel Scott":

Mark is not an ancestor of mine but is a relative and played an important part in the establishment of the family in Tower Hill, NB, Canada. He was also an interesting and remarkable individual that deserves special mention.

On July 8, 1797, Mark bought from Joseph Connick Lot No. 5, Block O, Wentworth Division, St. David, N.B., for £50 (this is the property later occupied by Wallace Hyslop). This is not the first record of one of our Scott family being in New Brunswick, as Mark’s nephew, William Perry Scott, son of Mark’s brother Lt. John Scott, had settled in Honeydale, N.B. Canada a few years before. William Perry, who would also be my great great grand-father Samuel’s first cousin, was the founder of the Scott line in Honeydale.

On November 11, 1801, Mark bought from Archibald McLaughlin Lots 1 and 2, each 100 acres, block O, Fanning Division, St. David, for £25 (this is the property on Upper Tower Hill later occupied by Bert Johnston (Lot No. 1) and the lot immediately to the North across Fowler’s Lane from the Irving place (Lot No. 2)). He had until June 1, 1804 to pay for it.

On January 7, 1802, Mark bought from Robert Towers (who Tower Hill was probably named after) for £62/10, Lot 4, Block O and Lot 6, Block L, Wentworth Division, 200 acres in total. The first of these lots was originally granted to Daniel McAllister and takes in the present John Giddins place, the lower end of the Bagley field, and the blueberry fields on the south side of the Tower Hill road, and west to the road into Gallop Lake. The second, lot 6, Block L, is immediately to the south, originally granted to Allan Moore, and would take in the rest of the blueberry fields down to and including Brown’s.

On January 8, 1802, Mark bought from Daniel McAllister Lot No. 2, Block R, Wentworth Division, 100 acres, and originally granted to John Beaton, for £12/10 (this is the Douglas and Evelyn Hyslop property).

In 1807 Mark petitioned the Province of New Brunswick for a grant of land in Saint David. The petition is hand written and difficult to read but states in part as follows: “To his excellency Thomas Carleton........five years ago your memorialist came into this part of the country from the States and brought his family with him that he purchased a farm 8 miles from the landing upon which he made considerable improvements and brought a large family.......prays for a grant of 300 acres of land described as follows- Lots No. 4, 5, and 6 in letter F of the Fanning Division which have been laid out but never drawn for by any person.” It is mentioned that Mark had bought a quit title to Lot No. 4 already from someone who had made improvements on it, and that Mark had made considerably more improvements.....and goes on to say that he was one of the first settlers in the County and at a devil of an expense and inconvenience....ect. ect....signed Mark Scott, Saint David, 15th August, 1807.” A note on the bottom of the petition is written “I hereby certify that I am acquainted with the Memorialist and know him to be a respectable and decent man and a valuable settler with a numerous and increasing family. Intends if his influence will settle it, to get all his children to settle in this country....with which this promising man will be no small acquisition to the same.......That considering the bad quality of the land he asks for.....that he be accommodated with the three lots for a settlement...signed Hugh Mackay.”

On November 27, 1810, several grants were approved at once in Charlotte County totalling 6131 acres, including the grant of lots 4, 5, and 6, Block F Fanning Division, St. David to Mark Scott. These three Lots contained a total of 270 acres. The three lots described are shown on crown grant plans and take in the area from Thompson Corner where the Upper Tower Hill school house was, down Fowler Lane to about where the Fowler house was, and west one half way to the Woodstock Road, and so would include the Thompson place, the Irving place, the Scott place and the block to the north of the Scott place. There were many conditions placed on the grants..they must have three cattle for each 50 acres, there were exceptions for “rocky and stony ground”, and if conditions were not met in five years the land would revert to the crown. He did not get a government grant of 1000 acres as family folklore has suggested. The records also indicate that Mark had moved to Canada in 1802, but we know that he started buying land on Tower Hill in 1797. Perhaps he wasn’t fully relocated with his family until 1802.

On April 1, 1817, Mark sold to Daniel Whitman, for £60, Lot No. 4, Block F, of the grant he was given. This is the Thompson fields on Upper Tower Hill.

On July 25, 1817, Mark sold to his nephew, Samuel Scott, and my great-great-grandfather, Lot No. 5, Block F, Fanning Division, St. David, being 100 acres, for £100. This takes in all the land on the north side of the Scott lane from the Fowler lane to about mid way across the most south westerly blueberry field. This is the start of the old Scott homestead and the first official mention of Samuel Scott. He would have been 22 years old at this time.

On April 3, 1818, Mark sold to James Brown the eastern half of Lot No.6, Block L, and the eastern half of Lot 4, Block O in Wentworth Division containing 100 acres in total, for £100. This is the present John Giddins place and including half of the lot immediately south of it, and is one half of the land bought from Robert Towers in 1802.

On July 11, 1825, Mark sold to William McAllister Lot 2 of block O, Fanning Division, St. David, for £56. This is one of the lots he bought from Archibald McLaughlin in 1801 and is located across the Fowler Lane from the Irving place and adjacent to the Bert Johnston place.

On October 25, 1825, Mark sold to Alexander Alexander Lot 6, Block F, Fanning Division, for £24. The document states that this lot was then bounded north and east by John McAllister, and on the south by Samuel Scott, and was originally granted to Mark Scott.

On April 13, 1830, Mark sold to James Murphy, for 75 pounds, the western half of Lot No.4, Block O, and the western half of Lot No. 6, Block L, Wentworth Division. This is the south end of the Bagley field and the blueberry field south of the road at the top of big Tower Hill and is the rest of the lots bought from Robert Towers in 1802. The document mentions that the north boundary is by the old Tower Hill School, which was then located on Bagley Hill. This transaction was not registered until January 10, 1837. In January, 1837 James Murphy resold the same land to William Gillispie for £200.

On June 2, 1832 Mark sold to Albert Foster for £150 Lot No. 1, Block O, Fanning Division containing 100 acres. This is what most recently has been occupied by Bert Johnston.

On July 17, 1832, Mark Scott sold to Theodore and Leonard Scott (his sons) ,for £200, Lot 5, Block O and Lot 2 in Block R, Wentworth Division. These are the two Hyslop places that had been Mark’s home for 30 years. The next spring, on May 10, 1833, Theodore and Leonard sold these properties to William Douglas for 500 pounds. The document mentions that the properties are bounded on the south by a line running close by the front of the Tower Hill School House which indicates that the school was then located on Bagley Hill. On November 28, 1834, William Douglas, and his wife Agnes, sold both of these properties to William Hyslop for £350.

This seems to end Mark Scott’s involvement in Tower Hill affairs and would indicate that he left for Ohio in about 1832. He was a remarkable man, an adventurer, a wheeler - dealer in land and probably a successful lumber man, farmer and business man. He was born in 1763, the year his parents were married, and he and Mehitable were married in 1786. He lived on Tower Hill for over 30 years and during that time acquired about 870 acres of land in total for £150 and sold them all for about £760. I suppose this is a reasonable rate of return for those times and the time span involved. He would have been near 70 when he left the country with most of his family and went by horse and wagon to what was then the American western frontier. Unfriendly Indians then ruled Ohio and points west, considering that this was 30 years before the American civil war and the wild west era was in the 1860’s and 70’s. It is recorded that “when remonstrated with for taking so long a journey and great burden upon himself so late in life, declared he would have the satisfaction of meeting the resurrection in a fertile land.” He must have been tired of picking rocks. He died in Ohio in 1834.

On April 26, 2000 Janette and I visited the Macksburg, Ohio cemetery where Mark was buried. The stone we believe to be his is no longer readable, but on each side of it was a Mark E. Scott and his daughter Delia. These would be Mark’s son Eliphalet’s son and granddaughter. The land around Macksburg is very rough and hilly, and not suitable for any large scale farming. One must think that Mark questioned his decision to leave Tower Hill.

• Editor: This tall monument is for 4 civil war solders that were POW's and buried in Louisiana. That monument sits between Mark E and his daughter Delila. The correct gravestone photo in Atkinson Cemetery on route 821 south of Macksburg has been added to this profile.
  
  

Mark’s first cousin, George Foster, a son of Col Benjamin Foster and Elizabeth Scott, settled on Central Tower Hill at about the same time as Mark and was Mark’s neighbor, having taken a grant adjacent to Mark’s place and where the Experimental Farm was in the 1950s and 60s.

There are many familiar names on the land grant maps, including Jordan on the Dunham Road, and many Scotts in the Honeydale area, who were probably William Perry’s brother’s and their descendants, and George Thompson who could be the son of George Thompson and Ruth Scott, Samuel’s aunt. It is possible that several of Mark’s brothers and cousins came to the Honeydale area with their children, and were my great, great Grand-Father Samuel’s uncles and cousins. There is no indication that any of Samuels bothers and sisters came to New Brunswick. Another point of interest is that a John Irons lived at the corner in Honeydale where MacRae’s store is now; I had been told that Irons corner was at the end of the Upper Tower Hill Road (Meridiths Corner). Irons ran the post office. Levi Richardson (my Great Great Grandfather) had two grants on the Richardson Road. A Jacob Young had a large grant in Baillie, probably the one who is my Great Great Great Grandfather, whose daughter Hannah married Levi Richardson, and also Alexander McAllister who had the large grant to the west of Mark Scott and also one on the Bay Road, and who we know is related through marriage to the Young family.

Research Note

Mark's age at death (69y 2m 29d) calculates to a birth date of 9 May 1765, which suggests that either his age was understated by two years, or that the Mark baptized in 1763 died young and a second Mark was born at Machias in 1765.^[1]

Sources

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3} Joseph Crook Anderson II, CG, FASG, editor, Maine Families in 1790, Volume 9 (Maine Genealogical Society Special Publication No. 58, Picton Press, Rockport, Maine, 2005, 670 pages), p. 449. Cit. Date: 22 Nov 2021.
2. ↑ Find a Grave, database and images (accessed 22 November 2021), memorial page for Mark Scott (11 Jun 1763–8 Aug 1834), Find A Grave: Memorial #33574157, citing Atkinson Cemetery, Macksburg, Washington County, Ohio, USA ; Maintained by Patricia Huston Giovacchini (contributor 48471572).
3. ↑ Jackman, Mrs. Beulah G., Earliest Records of Machias, Maine (1767-1827) (Concord, NH, 1937?, 55 pages), p. 37. Cit. Date: 22 Nov 2021.
4. ↑ Memorial of the Centennial Anniversary of the Settlement of Machias (C. O. Furbush, Machias, 1863, 179 pages), p. 175. Cit. Date: 22 Nov 2021.