Thank you for your response to Loyalist versus Tory

Question

"Tory was the term used for Loyalists during the Revolution"

".......It was NOT a term of endearment" LOL

I appreciate your response and wry writing style. You gave me a chuckle :-).

I'm trying to track down the parentage of my 4th great grandmother Anar Buel Harvey. b. 1775. She married and lived in upstate New York (Ft Ann, near the Canadian border). Not only does she have a bazaar given name (unused elsewhere in the family), but 30 miles down the road Ft Edward NY was filled with Buells who were Tories. After the 1783 Paris Peace, William and Timothy Buell and families relocated to Ontario Canada. Ft Ann and Ft Edward are in Washington County, a border County where the battles swept back and forth. I have not found any solid evidence of her birth or parents. Her name is not found elsewhere so it doesnt give a clue to her family branch. In short, her pedigree is SO conspicuously silent, that i am forced to suspect that Anar purposely his her parentage. She marriued Medad Harvey b. 1771 and the couple settled on a Veteran's allotment 1801 Marcellus NY. Did the couple blur Anar's parentage so they could take possession of Medad's Veteran's allotment?

PS- I suspect the Veterans allotment may have been Medad Harvey elder b. 1739. who gave it to his son. Medad the elder may have been the veteran.

Answer 1

Hi Christine,

I checked American Ancestors, using several spellings.  I found one source for her, a cemetery listing, which I added to her profile.

Good luck in your search.

Answer 2

Maybe finding out all you can about her siblings and children would yield some clues. There were quite a few Buell in Central NY and a couple Harvey. Fort Ann is quite some distance from the Canadian border, south of Lake Champlain near the Vermont border. The town of Marcellus, formed in 1794 later split off other towns. Spafford is in the southwest part of the town, sitting between Skaneateles and Otisco, the easternmost Finger Lakes. The hamlet of Borodino is in that area.

I do remember reading that many/most who were awarded a military tract did not actually settle there, but rather sold it. Onondaga’s Centennial: Gleanings of a Century by Dwight Bruce mentions Mark Harvey as one of the first business owners in Borodino (a tavern) and lists among early Borodino settlers Medad Harvey. History of Onondaga County by WW Clayton lists several Harvey living near Thorn Hill including Mark, Paul, Adeline with birth dates and places and when they settled in the area.

Comments

Thanks so much for the input. Yes, the Anar Buell I mentioned married Medad Harvey Jr. and settled on a 160 acre veteran's allotment Marcellus  NY about 1801.  My 3rd great grandfather Medad Harvey was born in Ft. Anne NY during the Revolution. His parents Medad Harvey and Annah Sanderson moved across the border from Massachsetts. The Washington Historical Society told me that Medad Harvey Sr. was commissioned Captain of the Militia 1788 - 5 yrs after the Revolutionary War officially ended. I suspect that Medad Harvey Sr was a member of a Massachusetts Militia and had experience in the military prior to being commissioned Capt. I also read that many Massachsetts Militia volunteered to help New York defend against the British and Indians attacking south from Canada. New York was a border Colony.. The raiding war parties came down lake Champlain.Ft Anne and Fort Edward were on the road connecting Lake Champlain and the Hudson River

I am trying to learn where Medad Harvey Jr. met his bride Anar Buell. Family tradition says that Anar Buell was from the Samuel Buells of Palmer,  Massachusetts and Killingsworth Connecticut.. If so the Harveys and Buells could have lived in the same towns and the two teens met there.

Another theory is that Anar Buell was really the daughter of Timmothy Buell a Loyalist Colonel at Fort Edward NY but born in Connecticut.

I have never found satisfactory proof of my 3rd great grandmother's parentage. Anar was born in 1774. Most genealogy sites give Lydia Wilcox as her mother, but Lydia was too old to be Anar Buell's mother.  Lydia Wilcox Buell had a son samuel Buell who married Clarinda hoadley. Clarinda Hoadley is better age for giving birth in 1774. However, i have not found a birth certificate for Anar (not Hannah) Buell documenting her parents.. 

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Once my Ancestors left Connecticut to settle in Marcellus, I wasn't able to find much in the way of birth or marriage records. I think part of that is due to the fact that it was really the wilderness in the early 1800s. I did read an article about Joel Cornish moving to a log cabin in the wilderness of Marcellus in 1803. Both my ggg grandparents families moved from CT to NY when they were young, and I found a reference that infers they were married near Elbridge. The only other thing I've found that links them are articles about their children and nieces/nephews, which I found in newspapers by searching fultonhistory.com.

Answer 3

One possibility to consider is that actually her name was Anna or Hannah, and when it is recorded as Anar it is because people with different accents approached the intrusive 'r' or the linking 'r' differently.

I can't put my finger on any examples right now, but i know i have seen censuses where it appears the enumerator struggled with this.

Comments

That was my first thought too, it is just Anna.  I am in Vermont and in fact a descendant of the same group of Harveys.  The first example I can think of is the word "idea".   I know people who always say "idear". This is a time when many people had little schooling.  They spoke as they heard things, and they would replicate that sound.  It was often the census taker's job to transliterate what he heard.  Anar.

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yes!  I think from now on i'm going to start collecting examples of this phenomenon.  I think i once saw something like Looezer for Louisa.  As you can imagine, the indexing didn't pick that as a match on a search.

It also got me thinking about becoming conscious about something i had  been doing a little intuitively--making a judgement of the general spelling ability of the enumerator and factoring that into the weight given to his version of the spelling of my research subject's name.  If 'Marey' has a brother 'Clumpus', there is actually a more of a chance he is Columbus rather than Clumpus.