John Adams Scriven (1751 - 1830)

Born 28 Aug 1751 in Westerly, Washington, Rhode Island [uncertain]

Ancestors

Husband of Alice Elsie (Crandall) Scriven — married [date unknown] in Grafton, NY [uncertain]

Husband of Eunice (Worden) Scriven — married 1790 in Grafton, NY [uncertain]

Descendants

Died 25 Jul 1830 at age 78 in U, Cocle, Panama [uncertain]

Problems/Questions Profile manager: Bob Scrivens [send private message]

Biography

John Adams Scriven, was born in 1751, twin of James, in Westerly, RI (where his family originally came from) and possibly in Petersburg, NY (where they settled). He was the son of William Scriven and Mercy Lewis Scriven, and a twin named James. According to The History of Grafton, "many of the pioneers fought in that war and afterwards made their homes in Grafton. Abel Owen, John Barnhart, Abel Ford, James Scriven, Zebulon Scriven and John Scriven were among these." He was probably named after the first vice-president of the United States, John Adams.

The Scriven Record 1899 says "John, son of William and Mercy Lewis Scriven, married Elsie Crandall. This John is the father of Mercy Scriven mentioned above, who wrote this information for her cousin, Mrs. Bigelow. They had 6 children: John, Thomas, Sally, Elsie, Susan, and Electa. John married a second wife, Eunice Worden or Wardon. They had 5 children: George, Fanny, Polly, Eunice, and Mercy. (This Mercy was over 80 years old when she wrote up this information in 1899. She married her cousin so her name was still Scriven.)

But the real mystery to me is that he died on July 25, 1830 in a place called U, Cocle, Panama. (This, according to Geni.com Smart Matches on MyHeritage sites of Earle Peckham and Marynella Kinnard). At that point, virtually the whole family seems not to have ventured any further than central NY. Was he a soldier? Doing government work? Was he a missionary?

What Was John Doing in Panama?

What was John Adams Scriven doing in Panama when he died in 1830? See[Panama in the 1800's] Even more interesting, his wife Alice "Elsie" Crandall-633 has the same place of death. After the Spanish American War, many Central and South American states worked for their independence against Spain. Panama was under control of Columbia near the end of John's life, and had an almost successful attempt to win their independence in 1829. Was John involved in this? What were Americans doing in Panama at that point? Was he in the military or perhaps a businessman trying to develop a market (although that seems a stretch)? Or were he and his wife missionaries who got caught up in the violence?

Missionary Work?

The last possibility is tantalizing. Did the Seventh Day Baptists do missionary work in Panama around 1830? (I Googled Panama+missionaries, and I found that a number of Christian groups are still active there. Most of them, however, went there in earnest after US occupation in the 1900's.) That church was a big part of the life of those who immigrated from Rhode Island like the Scrivens. They brought their religion with them when they migrated to NY, and there are records, according to my cousin Jack Swift, of many marriages and baptisms being performed in the Scriven family at the Seventh Day Baptist Church in Berlin, NY. Even more interesting, John's wife Alice Elsie Crandall has the same place of death. (DOB and place of death: Ames Family Tree, Ancestry.com; Rhode Island, Births, 1636-1930) Because John's wife died in Panama, too, that seems to eliminate military explanations and reinforces missionary ones, since husbands and wives often traveled together to do "God's work." Missionary work is the only reason I can think of that, in that era, they would be that far from home. Of course, one big flaw in this theory is John Adams Scriven's burial record.

Burial Record in Rensselaer Co.

Whatever happened to him, there is a record of his interment with exactly the same date of death listed in Interments in Rensselaer Co. Cemeteries (Scriven) in Grafton on Yerdon Road: "Scriven, John d. 25 Jul, 1830/ 78y 10m 17d." Eunice Worden is listed as his wife. So, if he really did die in Panama, his body was brought back and buried in Rensselaer Co, NY--and with another wife, not Alice Elsie Crandall.

One more interesting sidebar to the Panama story is a speculative piece of information from another WikiTree member: "The possible Panama connection is really interesting! There's a [town] named Panama in Chautauqua County, New York, on the other side of the state from Rensselaer Co., but since the other [ancestry] trees give a province in Panama, the country, that does lend a little weight to its really being Panama." And it should also be pointed out that Chautaugua was a destination for other members of the Scriven clan--although not his immediate descendants. Most of the children of John Adams Scriven have no known place of death, the ones that do are all in Rensselaer Co. The Chautaugua Scrivens found so farseem to be descendants of William Scriven III.

An autofill mistake?

Another WikiTree member raised this possibility in conjunction with yet another explanation for U Cocle as John Adams Scriven's death place. She [Ekeblad-7] had found others who died in U Cocle Panama. She said in an email (responding to my post on G2G), that "This is probably another of those bogus locations for birth and/or death that are caused by an autofill in the location fields in some genealogy software." [1] Further skepticism was reflected by another person who wrote, " A Fowle family ha[s] people dying in U, Cocle, though they seem to have hailed from Sussex, [England]. One intrepid gentleman from this family, managed to be born there before Columbus even set sail[!]" Point well taken. However, I did point out in reply that "There are enough posts looking for ancestors with U Cocle connections to suggest you're wrong about it being a bogus location generated by auto-fill programs. The name is hardly random, and it keeps turning up. Plus, it is even listed with a map location and as a tourist site." One such post was I came across on an Ancestry.com bulletin board: "I have a death in U Cocle Panama from anywhere between 1870 and 1920. I was wondering why an American would of been in U Cocle Panama between the dates of 1870 to 1910. . . . The person I am searching for is name Louisa Ann Parent Sabin b. 1820 or 1821 in Ohio or New York." (from Brandy Lakey [2]) So maybe this is another "autofill mistake."

Response from Seventh Day Baptists

After I explained my theory about John and his wife dying during missionary work to Garfield Miller, SDB Missions Coordinator, I got a response from Nick Kersten of the SDB Historical Society. Nick said the following on Thursday, August 14, 2014 : "I did additional searching today looking for J. A. Scriven and SDB mission work to Panama around 1830. I think we can say with a pretty high level of confidence that there was no officially sanctioned mission to Panama in 1830 which was supported by SDBs. I checked all of the denominational publications previously (the Sabbath Recorder and Protestant Sentinel, as I related on Tuesday afternoon), and today I checked General Conference minutes. There was no reference to any missionary body of Seventh Day Baptists sanctioning or financially supporting a mission effort in Panama. As a result, we can answer Mr. Scriven's question on that score: SDBs did not send John Adams Scriven to Panama.

"I also wanted to be able to give proof, if I could, that J.A. Scriven was a Seventh Day Baptist. I went searching the records of the churches in Rensselaer county, but didn't find him in the church records that are in the collection here. I found plenty of members of the Scriven clan (especially Zebulon Scriven, who was a part of two churches in that area--Berlin and Petersburgh), but didn't find John Adams Scriven.

"One other interesting piece of history about this request: Panama didn't exist as an independent country in 1830--it was still part of Colombia. But around 1830, a larger state (including what is now Venezuela, Ecuador and Colombia) started by the revolutionary Simon Bolivar collapsed, leaving three smaller states--and Panama was still connected to Colombia from then until 1903. The area where Scriven and his wife died is on the Pacific side of the country, so either they hiked to the other side or they took a boat ride around the horn of South America and reached the other side that way. [This is misleading because, if you see the district of Cocle on a map, it is in central Panama where the isthmus is at its narrowest, and there is only a narrow strip of land that separates it from the Caribbean. ] In 1830, both journeys would've been perilous. The only reason to take that journey that I can think of, apart from a missionary impulse, would've been to try and reach the west coast of the United States by boat."

California or Bust?

But if it were true that John Adams Scriven's plan was, in fact, reaching the west coast, the time line is wrong. On first blush, you might guess he migrated as part of the settlement of California. If you do a search of "History of U Cocle Panama," it brings you to some discussion on ancestry.com message boards. One person there gave a short history of the U Cocle, Panama, pre-canal, and it sounded like The Wild West, Central American version. Panama may have been a sort of melting pot of speculators and their families in the mid-eighteen hundreds, stopping there on the way to California. [3] The big problem with that theory is gold was not discovered in California until 1848 (hence the name, The Forty-niners), well after John Adams Scriven's death. So if U Cocle was "on the way to California," it would have had to have been in pre-gold rush days, and California didn't even become a state until 1948.

Conclusions

John and his wife may have died in Panama, but without solid documentation of that, the easier conclusion is Rensselaer Co., NY, where he and his wife were interred. A good lesson to be learned here is how important it is to list sources. Had the U Cocle, Panama POD been listed with a source, there would be something to investigate other than hearsay. My best guess so far is that John and his family migrated west to Chautaugua Co., NY, died there, and his body was transported back to the Grafton, NY, where he grew up.

Other Notes:

Twin of James Scriven. Mentioned in Zebulon's will for a small annuity.

Lease of land in Pittstown, 77.5 acres. March 29, 1793. RRR to George W. Scriven. December 13, 1859. Rensselaerwyck Manor Papers, NYS Library [4]

Sources

Rhode Island, Vital Extracts, 1636-1899 Vol. 05: Washington County: Births, Marriages, Deaths (listing all siblings DOB)

Scriven family group, sent to Ralph Scriven, Alberta CA [http://www.petersburghpubliclibrary.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Scriven.pdf

Geni.com Matches:

Rensselaerwyck Manor Papers, NYS Library [5]

Rhode Island, Births, 1636-1930 about John Scriven

Web: RootsWeb Cemetery Index, 1800-2010 for John Scriven

Petersburgh Public Library notebooks [9]

Rhode Island, Compiled Census and Census Substitutes Index, 1740-1890, about John Scriven (1777, Military Census Inde for Washington Co., Westerly, RI)

"History of Grafton, NY" [6]

Daughters of the American Revolution, DAR Genealogical Research Databases, database online, (http://www.dar.org/ : accessed 4 February 2016), "Record of John Scrivens", Ancestor # A100793.

SCRIVEN RECORD 1899 [7]

Acknowledgments

Thank you to Robert Scrivens for creating WikiTree profile Scriven-82 through the import of 2293fi_608439562v2o181f2jw4c6.ged on Apr 19, 2013. Click to the Changes page for the details of edits by Robert and others.