Erastus Goldthwait (1772 - 1848)

Ancestors

Descendants

Died 19 May 1848 at age 75 in Massachusetts, United States

Biography

173 + Erastus, b. June 6, 1772 ; m. Rhoda Burt and Hannah Colton. 173. Lieut. Erastus Goldthwaite of Longrneadow, Mass., was born in Springfield June 6, 1772. After the death of his mother when he was three and a half years old, and the enlistment of his father in the Revolutionary army, he was brought up in the family of Col. Jonathan Hale* of Longmeadow. [* The Hale family was an influential one in Longmeadow; some of them were merchants there. Col. Jonathan Hale, b. Jan. 24, 1738, son of Jonathan and Lydia (Ely) Hale, married, June 13, 1765, Mary, dau. of Samuel and Mary (Colton) Keep. They had no children. Col. Hale was Lieutenant of the company that marched at the Lexington Alarm; was justice of the peace, selectman, town clerk, and treasurer. He died March 9, 1806, and his widow July 22, 1816.] He married, Apr. 26, 1798, Rhoda Burt of Longmeadow, born May 3, 1776, the sixth of fourteen children of Elijah and Deborah (Colton) Burt. On her father’s side she was a descendant, in the sixth generation, from Henry Burt of Springfield, the first of the name there, and on her mother’s, from Quartermaster George Colton (m. Deborah Gardner), a first settler of that part of Springfield called Longmeadow. Capt. Thomas Colton, son of Quartermaster George, was her greatgrandfather. Of him it is said, in the old Longmeadow record, that the Rev. Dr. Williams, pastor of the church, preached a sermon after his death, “ in which he gave Capt. Colton a very extraordinary character, as having been a man eminently useful in his day, especially in the Indian wars, and as a man of eminent piety.” Among Mrs. Goldthwaite’s other New England ancestors were William Markham, Thomas Hale, Luke Hitchcock, Thomas Bliss, William Chandler, George Abbott. She was a woman of gentle character and modest piety, as is evidenced by her letters still preserved. She died in early married life, Apr. 24, 1804, in her 28th year, leaving three children, the eldest not yet five and the youngest an infant of one month. Of these, the second died in less than a month after the mother, and the third less than a year later, leaving the father with one little son, Flavel. The depth of his bereavement is shown by his own words in a letter to this son many years after, when, in giving an account of the death, in 1819, of his beloved pastor. Rev. Richard Salter Storrs, with whom he had spent the last night of his life, he says :

“ I feel constrained to drop a tear at the recollection of his kindness and tenderness to me in days that are past, when the waves of affliction were rolling over me. How did he try to assuage my grief by the consolation that the Bible affords ! With what earnestness did he besiege the throne of grace in my behalf !”

After an interval of nearly four years, during which one or another of his wife’s unmarried sisters cared for his family, he married, Jan. 14, 1808, Hannah Colton, born Feb. 7, 1782, daughter of Dea. William and Hannah (Colton) Colton. She was a cousin of his first wife, their mothers having been sisters, while her father was a great-grandson of the same Captain Thomas Colton, before spoken of. The son Flavel was not yet nine when his father married, and it was his often repeated testimony, in after years, that he was never for a moment made to realize that the new mother was not his own, while the warm affection felt for him by his brothers and sisters, as they grew up, which made any mention of him, by others, as a half-brother, very distasteful, testified further to the unity existing in the family. As the eldest grandchild, spending, from earliest recollection, a portion of every summer in my grandfather’s home, the writer can warmly testify to the excellence of this grandmother. I well remember her gentleness and kindness ; she was always a peacemaker, and never did I hear from her lips an impatient word — all this too, one could not doubt, was the outshining of the light of the Christian life within. She was always bright and cheerful, and beautifully blended with her piety was a large fund of native humor. One of her distinguishing traits was her great love of music, which she had an ear to hear as well in the sounds of nature as of art. Her last sickness was a long-continued one, resulting from heart disease, during which she had periods of great distress. When recovering from such an attack, nothing soothed her more than music. To hear her son Jonathan play for her on the piano, with his fine touch, some of the good old tunes she loved, seemed an inexpressible comfort and alleviation of pain. She died Aug. 19, 1847, in her 65th year. Mr. Goldthwaite was a man of superior intelligence, and had well improved such opportunities as he had had for study, to which advantages were added those of an environment of more than usual cultivation for a country town. Longmeadow, from the attractiveness of its situation, the beauty of its town street, and its nearness to the city, has always drawn to itself a superior class of residents. The character of its people was also largely influenced by the two ministers of rare quality who, up to 1819, were pastors of the Longmeadow church, their united pastorates covering a period of exactly 100 years. The first was Dr. Stephen Williams, “of a famous family, eminent in all professions,” who, during his sixty-six years’ ministry, “ laid the deep impress of his rare social culture and wide acquaintance on the parish.” He was followed by a man of equal excellence. Rev. Richard Salter Storrs, the first of three successive generations of ministers of that name now famous in the history of the American pulpit. Of Mr. Goldthwaite’s character, formed under influences like these acting upon his native qualities of mind and heart, glimpses may be obtained, through his letters to his oldest son in Hartford, such as one written on the latter’s coming of age, beginning, “ Has the long thought of and wished-for day arrrived ! — a day which I have looked forward to, from the day of your birth, with mixed emotions of hope and fear,” and filled with wise fatherly counsel appropriate to that period of his life ; or another, in reply to one in which his son, then twenty years old, had consulted him on the advisability of entering on a course of study in preparation for the ministry, showing the father’s wisdom and sound sense, in such sentences as these : “ It is a subject which ought to be very seriously and prayerfully attended to. . . . In my opinion, many undertake to preach who would probably be much more useful in some other employment. . . . Many seem to think, on becoming serious, they have a call to enter on this sacred employment, without considering that there are other ways in which they can promote the good of that cause which lies near their hearts,” and ending, ‘‘ I say not these things to dissuade you from study, if it is thought best, but for your consideration, hoping soon to have an opportunity to converse with you on this and other subjects.” He was earnest in his Christian life, and had deeply at heart a desire for the prosperity and advancement of the kingdom of God. His letters are full of this concern, now rejoicing over the encouraging signs of interest in religion, and again lamenting a prevailing indifference in regard to it. Morning and evening the Bible was read and prayer offered in his family, and at the weekly gatherings of the church his voice was often heard ; yet he was of an exceedingly modest and humble spirit, far from wishing to put himself forward. He had thought much on the doctrines of the Gospel as they were understood in his day, and had his firm beliefs in regard to them. He was a man of the warmest family affection, and, while firm in enforcing parental authority, treated his children with a loving indulgence and was never happier than in making sacrifices for their good. He was through life a farmer, in earlier days varying the occupation by keeping school during the winter months. His home and the birthplace of his children was in the part of the town street near its center, but he later purchased the old homestead of his wife’s father, with the adjoining farm, land laid out to Capt. Thomas Colton in the early settlement of the town, and situated a mile south of the church on the main road, there called Green street. Its situation was one of uncommon beauty on the brow of a hill with a grove of fine trees on the declivity next the road, and in the deep front yard behind the grove a noble elm, whose wide-reaching, drooping branches overhung the house, which was painted red in its earlier days and had its roof sloping down behind to the first story. “Erastus Goldthwait, Gentleman,” was commissioned “Lieutenant of a company in the First Regiment of Infantry, in the First Brigade, Fourth Division of the Militia of this Commonwealth,” June 7, 1806, by Gov. Caleb Strong. He died May 18, 1848, at the age of 76, less than a year after the death of his wife. His health had for some time been failing, and with it the mind, too, had gradually given way. Children : ^[1]

Death

Erastus, the son of Thomas and Lois Goldthwait, of Springfield, died 19 May 1848 in Massachusetts. He was 78 years of age; DOB estimated 1778. ^[2][3]
Married (1) Rhoda Burt, daughter of Elijah Burt and Deborah Colton. Children: Flavel, Rhoda, Jonathan Hale (the latter two died in early childhood) and (2) Hannah Colton, 14 January 1808. Children: Rhoda #2, Jonathan Hale #2, William Colton. Date of death also seen as 18 May

Sources

1. ↑ Goldthwaite genealogy : descendants of Thomas Goldthwaite, an early settler of Salem, Mass., with some account of the Goldwaite Family in England. Goldthwaite, Charlotte, b. 1832 Publication date 1899 Publisher Hartford : Hartford Press https://archive.org/details/goldthwaitegenea00gold/page/52/mode/2up p. 106, 155-159
2. ↑ "Massachusetts Deaths and Burials, 1795-1910," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:FH61-ZQ1 : 10 February 2018), Thomas Goldthwait in entry for Erastus Goldthwait, 19 May 1848; citing , reference p129; FHL microfilm 2,046,829.
3. ↑ "Massachusetts Deaths and Burials, 1795-1910," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:FH61-ZQ1 : 10 February 2018), Thomas Goldthwait in entry for Erastus Goldthwait, 19 May 1848; citing , reference p129; FHL microfilm 2,046,829.

• Colton, George Woolworth. A Genealogical Record of the Descendants of Quartermaster George Colton. Wickersham Print. Company, 1912. pg 26, 114.
• Find A Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com : accessed 06 December 2018), memorial page for Erastus Goldthwait (6 Jun 1772–1847), Find A Grave Memorial no. 42412993, citing Longmeadow Cemetery, Longmeadow, Hampden County, Massachusetts, USA ; Maintained by Mark Maxwell (contributor 46819259) .