A dark-haired beauty? Scots using old-time fabric dyes might call such a child Permelia.
PARENT UPDATE
2022-09 WARNING--Cindy Walcott, a family historian says Permelia was " almost certainly not the child of William Robblee and Keturah Baker. "
The process of elimination leaves Reuben Rublee as her father, but a will or other proof is lacking.
Permelia was #27 in Walcott's old list of 2010.
Permelia's ten verifiable children (so excluding Milo) were #163 to #173.
Living near Keturah's burial spot in Vermont, Wolcott revises her "Presumed Descendants of William Rublier and Abigail Brush", as needed. Find the last version and the family's other historians at: RobleesOnline.org/resources/
KEY RELATIONSHIPS. Causing confusion, two related families, Reuben's and William's' were in Lanesborough, MA, together. Permelia's birth year put her between two of her cousins, William and Keturah's sons called William and Hiram, born 1765 and 1767. Mothers of big families often asked same-aged children to play together at family gatherings. Marriages might follow later, as favorite siblings and cousins then introduced each other to favorite friends from school and church. The cousin who was a junior Keturah thus married a Seth Hoyt related to Permelia's spouse, Uriah Hoyt.
*****PART ONE********
HER STRANGE NAME
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PERMELIA. Old-time parents might call a healthy pink-cheeked or red-haired daughter Roseanna or Rosetta. A dark-haired beauty? They might call her Permelia. Originally spelled Parmelia, the phrase once meant a plant useful for dying things, having a black or brown color when the plant dried. (Par = "useful for". Melia = "darkening". The name Melanie is related, reminding us that the modern word "melanin" means the cancer-avoiding pigment produced by tanning.)
In particular, the old-time Scots used certain lichens for home-dying of wool. Some say they plucked dead lichen scraps off the ground after a rain, to avoid destroying the rocks and trees on which a species grew. Some useful ones were called Parmelia Saxatilis and Parmelia Sulcata. Parmelia dyes are still used for so-called "Harris tweeds". These are made in an island chain off the west coast of Scotland, sometimes known as the Outer Hebrides.
With that Scottish dyers' name, was an ancestor Scottish?
Some using the Robblee name in Canada said yes. British dialects turned the Latin/Greek "par" into "per". Parmelia and Permelia thus both became accepted spellings for daughters' names.
She is hard to find in records, with names easily mis-written. Say "car" with a Boston accent, listeners may think they've heard cah"? "Pamelia", instead of Parmelia or Permelia? Modern viewers can't believe what they see, substitute "Pamela".
RUBLE. A "lea" or "ley" was some type of meadow, a meadow with the plant "rue"? belonging to a Ruben? About her maiden name, big families sometimes used variations the way French-Canadians used "dit names", to avoid confusion. "We're the Ruble/Roblea set, not the Rublee/Robblee ones. We like each other, but our mothers chose different churches".
That's just a sample. An R always starts the name. There's always at least one B. The final ending always sounds like "ee", not silent as in English.
Recall that early European NY was limited to "New Amsterdam", with early clerks using the proprietors' spelling rules, not English one.s There are dialects that make B and P sound interchangeable. The Dutch/Walloon name of Rapalje with a P seems to be unrelated, used by giant landowners early to New Amsterdam, their name having to do with skill at rappelling up cliff-sides. Some were slaveholders off to a Spanish-held early version of Mississippi.
*****PART TWO********
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The Eleven to Twelve Children
of Permelia and Uriah Hoyt
(by birthplace & birth order)
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Born Lanesborough, MA, 1787
** Ezra (buried in next county north, Chittenden, known to die of "consumption", that is, TB, dying in his 70s, he must have contracted the slow killer late in life. He thus was not impoverished by its reducing his work hours for two decades, and killing his young children, as seen for other victims, so had a stone. )
Born New Haven, VT, 1789-1791
** Seymour (unmarried, died youngish in Monkton, 1813)
** Abigail (unmarried, buried in New Haven, VT, 1821)
** Orrin (West Addison cemetery, 1884)
Born Bristol, VT, 1793-1810
** Henry (West Addison, lived with George S., 1850)
** Phebe (marr. Hines/Hinds/Hindes, West Addison)
** Uriah (to Canada briefly, died Chagrin Falls, OH, 1870, wife a Dayton)
** Orville (to NY and Hinesburg, VT, buried Adams County, Wisc.)
** Thomas (died at age 10, buried in Monkton, 1813)
** "Milo"(?)
** George S. (NY? West Addison by 1850)
** Sophia Maria (marr. Erastmus Meach Partch of Bristol, VT, to Durand, Winnebago Cty, Illinois by 1870, widowed, so lived with daughter Jenett/Jennette Toal.)
Permelia saw at least three children die before her:
Seymour and Thomas, then Abigail. Maybe "Milo"?
Sons Uriah and George S. named daughters for her.
Daughter Sophia Maria named a son Orville Hoyt, for Permelia's spouse . [2022 update: Found as Orville H Partch, Civil War Veteran, buried in Winnebago County, Illinois. One mis-spelling seen is Patch. If it began as Partsch, it might have been Germanic.]
VERIFIED--Most of her children have been cited by at least two sources, their names not changed by any decision about her parents, as the unusual ones were borrowed heavily from her spouse's Hoyts.
UNVERIFIED--"Milo" --just one source, a brief mention, a biography of Uriah Hoyt (seen in "Genealogical and Family History of the State of Vermont", by Hiram Carleton, 1903). Was Milo an infant who died soon after birth?
*****PART THREE******
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THE BIGGER STORY,
BRINGING IN THE HOYTS
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THEIR TOWNS AND MOVES. The Rubles/Robblees and Hoyts/Haights were people who found new opportunity for each new generation by moving with the frontier. Their towns thus truly changed, due to moves, not due to name changes by politicians.
The two families ran into each other in Lanesborough, Mass., ahead of the American Revolution. The elder Hoyts hailed from the main Connecticut colonial towns, allowing them to migrate up the Connecticut River, to Lanesborough MA, then to VT. The elder Rubles/Robblees were instead NY-born (in the Philipse Patent?). The Robblees were last of a strangely spelled old Dutchess County. Four answered to debt charges in county court involving unpaid fines after someone from a future in-law family (Bundy) had reported them for disturbing the peace. We are curious. Was the cause too-loud fiddling at a lovely barn dance? Or more like siblings screaming at each other in a loud fight? (or...?).
The last NY place mentioned for the Robblees/Rubblees was Nine Partners, maybe the last place they were assessed for property taxes? Also seen for distant Haight cousins who perhaps went to Monkton earlier, Nine Partners turned into Crum Elbow precinct for some records left by the Quaker side's Haights. (It then turned into Charlotte precinct after the distant Haight cousins left, to be subdivided further later.)
Their places were turning from colonies to states. It would take time to resolve boundaries.
The young of the two families attended school and church together, allowing Permelia and Uriah to meet and marry in the late 1700s. A century later, in 1871, David W. Hoyt published his final version of "The History of the Hoyts", relying on survivors. Which ones? Permelia's youngest brother-in-law, the one named Seymour? Or her own son, Uriah the Jr., dying in 1870, input possible earlier, but missing the final deadline? Or, the literate Hoyt who wrote beautifully of his mother, cousin Keturah, the one who married Seth? That Gould R. Hoyt died in 1866 in this writer's southeastern Minnesota, his absence and failure to reply noted by the Hoyt book's author/editor (with, it turns out, Gould's death preceding publication by five years)
D.W. noted that two young women he called "Roblea" and "Ruble" married two young Hoyt men while in Lanesborough, before both couples moved on to Vermont. Permelia married Uriah. Her presumed cousin, Keturah aka Catherine Roblea/Robblee/Ruble, daughter of Keturah Baker, married Uriah's brother, Seth.
As a young couple needing land of their own, Permelia and spouse Uriah then moved with many others, including Seth and Keturah, going northward, out of Mass., up-river. One could go into NY and up the Hudson River, to Lake Champlain. One could go north more directly, head a bit east, to go up the closer Connecticut River, into Vermont, if far enough north, to have some contact with the French-Canadians.
Their moves were not "all at once", but staggered. It took ten-plus years for all to re-locate to Vermont, their first choice to be Addison County.
(FICKLE GEOGRAPHIES. Lanesborough had been in Berkshire County, on a fickle state boundary to be contested by NY and Mass. Not everyone who went to the Lanesborough frontier stayed. Some from NY forfeited their land when the final decision favored MA. Others moved by choice.)
REUBEN AND PHILIP. A relative named Reuben Robblee, whose other dates made him right to be her father? He returned to NY. His original buying of the MA land occurred near the time his middle children were born. Earlier ones had been baptized back in NY, so their father was of better record there. When she and Uriah ventured off to Monkton VT and then Bristol, they would be in the same small rural places as Reuben's verified son, Philip.
In 1785, with Vermont still independent, not giving up its Republic status until 1790, officials "spun-off" Addison County from a portion of Rutland County, Vermont. Permelia and Uriah arrived after the spinning off. Vermont was able to negotiate for free trade with Quebec, as Vermont was untied to the new Union which preferred to reject waht was seen as pro-British. With Quebec as a trading partner, however, Vermont offered more job possibilities than average, helping those tired of farming or shop-keeping.
Putting son Ezra's burial in a different county, Chittenden and then Franklin Counties would split from Addison later. Before all of that, they had been part of an ultra-large Bennington County. Bennington, in turn, on its north end, while still very large, once covered an old short-lived county of NY called Charlotte. Created by NY pre-Revolution ,out of old Albany County, NY intended it to be a new frontier for its large landowners. Some NY settlers moved in, attracting perhaps old neighbors of the Robblees, perhaps of the large landlord sort. This earlier NY frontier extended, all the way to the eastern banks of the CT River, so included and then went past future New Haven, Monkton and Bristol. How early was her brother Philip Robblee there, going by Rublee, near the end??
Just as mother Albany County had done, the now extinct Charlotte County overlapped with other provinces/colonies further east. NY's eastern frontier specifically overlapped with three newly settled western frontiers of OTHER future states, oceanfront CT to the south, rural Massachusetts in the middle, and wild Vermont at the north end, extending up to Canada, with trading opportunities with Quebec.
Why the overlap? At the beginning, the old Kings' officials defined centers of adjacent provinces carefully, so each port and city were assigned to just one colony. This worked in the first century, provinces not overlapping at their edges, there was no competition over frontiers, all conflict instead being ethnic, British warrings against the French, against the natives, against the Dutch.
Later, the same officials who nicely did the seaside centers had to guess where to put inner edges, maps of interiors not good yet, too much uncharted. OOPs-- edges overlapped. The latest young farmers looked for new frontiers, having found closer-in land already taken. They might settle on the edge then feel extreme surprise to see others enter, saying they owned the same land. Also common-- two sets of tax collectors might come through, asking that double taxes be paid.
Where the Penn. and Conn. edges overlapped, some Hoyts move out there found they had to leave. Land granted to both Connecticut and to William Penn wasresolved in favor of the "Pennites". The "Connecticut sufferers" were allowed to "make-up" for their Penn. loss with "Western Reserve" land granted in frontier Ohio, pre-War of 1812. Some would sell their grants, letting others move there. Ohio also had The Firelands, to make up for British ships firing on and burning of coastal cities at wartime. One resulting town in Ohio would be called Norwalk, named after the CT town co-founded by Uriah's immigrant ancestor, Simon Hoyt/Hoyte. Permelia and Uriah's son, Uriah the Jr., and his wife, Comfort Dayton, would end in the Connecticut Western Reserve, which was not in Connecticut, but in northeastern Ohio, uphill from Cleveland.
Hoyts who had gone temporarily to Penn., cited (in a will by their father?) in "Orphans' Court", as having land to sell, left for Ohio, headed by Stephen/Stephens Hoyt. The 1820 US Census found him located in Logan County, Ohio. Son Ransford C. Hoyt was named for his presumed uncle (the latter known more simply as Ransford Hoyt, mentioned with Stephen, as having been left property by Jedediah Hoyt in Orphan's Court, taxed/sold later.) Ransford C. was born in Logan County's seat, Bellefontaine, Ohio, in 1808 (said by family? no birth recordkeeping by early Ohio governments). Two daughters of Stephen were known via marriages in Logan County, Mary Hoyt (m. Calhoun/Calhoon) and Sylvy Hoyt (m. Waggoner).
Doing what was typical for the Hoyts, finding frontier land for the next generation, the orphan court pair went next to Michigan, with close relatives of Uriah from Addison County, VT, to follow.
Ransford C. filed for homestead land in Michigan first, in 1831, in Kalamazoo County, near Schoolcraft. His father, as Stephens Hoyt, filed a few years later, but had been the one taking the family and a group out to prospect it earlier, ahead of the Harrisons, who were given the credit. Uriah's brother, Seymour Hoyt, filed last. All three men clearly used some female ancestors' maiden name as their first name. They were all sufficiently north that they were not affected by a dispute that caused Michigan's southernmost territory to be moved into Indiana. This could split up families and land oddly. In one case, family's southerly farmhouse was put into Indiana, but their farmland was left in Michigan.
Of the Hoyts, brother Seymour could have followed brother Seth's children out to a different corner of Pennsylvania, with coal mining and lumbering. Their eldest brother, Judge Ezra Hoyt, aovided mining, raised sons to be ministers and a daughter to marry a minister. Thus, Uriah's nephew, the Rev. Ova Hoyt, would end his days as a minister in the Schoolcraft church in Michigan.)
New Englanders, such as the Hoyts, were often community people, not individualists. They often held offices as a public service, not for the prestige. They made many attachments and were fond of places left behind. As they moved, they re-used the old place names.
Calling their newly created Vermont town "New Haven" would remind some Hoyt in-laws of their Connecticut birth place that burned. Calling the road upon which they lived in VT by the name "Lanesboro Street" reminded them all of their last town in Massachusetts.
An old "History of Addison County, Vermont", by Henry Perry Smith was published in 1886. It says their street ran north out of New Haven, that families from Lanesboro, Mass. came to settle it. They arrived 1781 to 1792, said Smith. These, his book said, included at least three Hoyts that we recognize as closely related to her spouse Uriah. (They were Ezra Hoyt and Seth Hoyt, plus Seymour Hoyt, most likely all three brothers, with father Ezra Hoyt living in one of their houses.) Families recognizable, then or later, as Hoyt in-laws came to the same street. (They were William Seymour, Matthew Phelps, George Smith, and Andrew Squier.)
Uriah and Permelia would delay fully arriving in New Haven, VT, until some time after 1787, but came before 1789, judging from their children's births. Perhaps Uriah went first, by himself, to clear land? Did he or they, at first, double-up with someone already there, maybe with Seth and the junior Keturah?
Family historian Cindy Walcott said that Keturah's mother, Keturah/Catherine the elder, maiden name Baker, would follow later. (Keturah's father, William Robblee, died back in Lanesborough in 1792, freeing her mother to move.)
There would be reasons for moving again, going up Lanesboro Street to Monkton, then to Bristol. Wolcott noted that a Nathaniel/Nathaneal Robblee bought Permelia and Uriah's New Haven land. They left the security of the Hoyt family, clustered together back in New Haven, for an isolated place to the north.
Bristol was north, but furthest north was Monktown, both still in Addison County. Children's birth and death places indicate both were addresses for Permelia and Uriah.
Why were they in Monkton? The timing for the two son's Monkton deaths gives the answer, saying War of 1812. Monkton was said to need more workers, jobs gone when the war finished. Due to its superior water access, the area already had mills and shipping, so already had lots of non-agricultural jobs, unlike the adjacent, more rural townships. Unusual, Monkton also had bog iron, which could be gathered and used, especially to build ships defending the Great Lakes border with Canada at time of war.
This caused nine forges to be there by 1813 and a shipyard devoted to defending Lake Champlain. A 26-gunner called the Saratoga was completed in just 40 days. When the war ended, cheaper British-produced iron again replaced the local bog iron, so the new jobs added at wartime went away. Bristol would then seem more appealing. See Vergennes.org for more details.
Worth noting, there was a third Hoyt-Robblee marriage, with twists. Keturah Robblee Hoyt's mother had been Keturah Baker Robblee. Two husbands' names are noted on her gravestone in New Haven, says Walcott. After first spouse William Robblee died back in Lanesborough, Mass., the elder Keturah moved to Vermont and married the elder of two Stephen Haights. Widower Stephen's address was Monktown. Hoyt relatives that went south out of Connecticut, down toward Long Island, toward the Dutch and a smaller set of Quakers, began using the Haight spelling then. They are sometimes seen as Hait. The rest, who stayed in the Puritan region, shifted from using Hoyte to Hoyt, sometimes seen as Hoit. Stephen Haight is buried in a Quaker (Friends) cemetery in Monkton.
Uriah and Permelia moved to and then left Monktown, known to be there in 1813, presumed there until the war and job-dismantling ended, 1814-16. They moved permanently to Bristol, VT, where their last children were born and where on, if not both Permelia and Uriah died, proven with paperwork, stones that once existed and were used to "reconstrcut" the paperwork now gone.
Philip Ruble would be seen living in Bristol, near widowed Uriah in the 1840 Census, after Permelia had died. Philip was a documented son of Reuben, Permelia's brother. There were no other Hoyts (or Rubles?) buried there?
Was she already sick when they moved to Bristol, so she wanted to be near Philip? Son Ezra would die of consumption, aka TB/Tuberculosis. That could kill many in the same family.
Was TB Permelia's illness as well?
**** PART FOUR******
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DEATH & BURIAL RECORDS.
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Permelia is buried back in New Haven, perhaps near daughter Abigail, stones of both missing, so it's lovely that the town kept her cemetery record of the now missing stone as a death record. (Abigail's stone must have already disappeared, too late to reconstruct a paper record for it.)
Spouse Uriah was buried in Bristol, with the second wife. Is he the only Hoyt in the cemetery?
Deaths from "Vermont Vital Records, 1760-1954"
PERMELIA, 1827:
FamilySearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-1-16273-26522-10
URIAH, 1849:
FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:939V-S61S-P
SON EZRA, NAMING HIS PARENTS, 1859:
FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:939V-S64X-S
(1) Permelia's original death record was too early to show much, may simply have consisted of her stone. The paper copy, thus, merely cites her age and her burial as at Evergreen Cemetery in New Haven. Handwritten, the reconstruction was done in 1919, a century ago, signed by the clerk of New Haven. Again, the stone is now gone, but we know it once existed due to the reconstruction paperwork.
(2) Her age at death was 61 years, 1 month.
(3) Her husband was her survivor, so knew how to spell her name. The record says "Permelia".
(4) Uriah died considerably later. His record also appears to be gravestone information, as Varney Cemetery is listed on it. Its information matches his stone.
Son Ezra's record ten years later is modern, more thorough, a true death record, but done in a time when no survivors remained who called his mother something other than "mother" or "grandma". Someone clearly guessed "Permilia", based on hearing it said one or twice, not on seeing it correctly written.
****************
PART FIVE.
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PATTERNS & MYSTERIES:
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If a child's burial place seems a mystery, then the last known residence is cited, dated by the last census there, 1850 to 1870.
(1) Wartime death cluster--Two deaths in 1813, while in Monktown, could have been caused by the same contagion. Two sons died within weeks of each other (Mar. 22 for Seymour, Apr. 16 for Thomas).
War caused crowding into "safe houses", with germs quickly shared. War-time food shortages can weaken resistance to sickness.
For the War of 1812, with Monkton farmers' city of Vergennes a main shipping point, the area turned into a maker of US gunboats. Commodore MacDonough made Vergennes into a full winter camp by the end of 1813. They thus became targets, a persisting war zone. They were not simply attacked by the British. An embargo stopped all British-produced goods, including supplies from Canada, normally entering adjacent Lake Champlain via the Great Lakes.
(2) Children's Migrations and Spouses-- Names above were those last remembered by her children's survivors. If an earlier death, survivors to do reporting included herself.
Whether ordering stones or writing records, a survivor's recall of a parents' places may not match the actual (especially after widowing and re-marrying). Modern record searches let us double-check, verify.
For example, for Permelia's son Orville, the reporting survivor, maybe a sibling or nephew, recalled only that he perhaps went to NY. His true burial place was found by tracking his children's records as they migrated. The discovery--He maybe lived separately, surname mis-spelled, but repeatedly stayed in the same town as daughter Julia as she and her spouse moved.
The NY mistake for his final location seems due to the birthplaces of two of his children, where he lived only a short time granddaughters to Permelia. NY was "on the way" to somewhere else. The daughter most useful, Julia Hoyt Marshall, had married in Wisconsin, with the marriage clerk or minister writing her father's name as "Orvil". She then went to Hinesburg, VT, with Canadian-born spouse, George M. Marshall. Birth records for some children reported theiri mother Julia had been been born in 1834, saying Newark, NY , confirming Wayne County.
Two of Orville's other children, Ruth and Thomas, married in Hinesburg, VT. Thus, they also moved with the Marshalls.
For daughter Ruth Hoyt Baldwin, her marriage record named parents as Orville and Lorraine, seen elsewhere as Lorania Keith. Ruth's gravepage repeats Wayne County, NY as birthplace.
An 1860 Census in Hinesburg showed Julia Hoyt and spouse George Marshall, now with their own children, plus his Vermont-born brother, Charles Marshall, both men "wheelwrights". That would let them run a home business, so-called a "cottage industry" common back then, in the era pre-factories.
On the same handwritten form, a scribbled name was at the bottom of the household next-door, bottom being where boarders and employees might be. He was "Orvil Hoyt", day laborer, his landlord family named "La Pelle". Since his hosts sounded French, however, one transcriber read his name as "Orvil Hayett". That it was Orville Hoyt is confirmed by his daughter Julia's presence, next-door, and his Vermont birth, early, 1800-1801, judging from his age.
The Marshalls returned to Wisc. Permelia's son Orville again must have moved with his daughter Julia. In the 1870 Census, listed as a farmer, his name was so scrawled, it appeared to say "Ohel Hoyt", age 69.
(3) Fickle geography--Sometimes names of places (and thus an assigned courthouse) can change, without people moving. Note that Hinesburg, VT, was once at the north end of Addison County, but it is in Chittendon County, now. Son Ezra moved to Hinsburg when other siblings did so, but, unlike them, stayed and is buried there.
(4) Missing gravestones--
(A) Evergreen Cemetery in New Haven-- Many old stones are faded or missing, with stones sometimes swept away at flood times. A happy workaround? For daughter Abigail and for Permelia, information for their and other now missing stones was preserved on paper cards made in the early 1900s, by the county, in order to fulfill a state requirement that information be sent in. These were reconstructions based on a mix, walking the cemeteries, thus seeing the stones that would still have existed a century ago, maybe still readable, or if not, using paper records to decipher whatever weathering had worn away on soft stone. Death can be "off" a few days if a burial/funeral date was substituted.
Not fixable--Some stones were missing before that reconstruction. No paper record was made, or was too faded or too torn to be of use.
PART SIX. HER PARENTAGE. According to family historian Walcott, the most likely father for both Permelia and Philip was NY-born Reuben Robblee/Ruble, the side to return to NY state. Her exact birthdate, birthplace, and parentage are not spelled out in official records. They must be inferred from circumstances.
First, her birth year is calculated from her age of 60 years and 1 month at her death date. 1766 was the year of Permelia's birth, also the year Rueben bought land in Lanesborough.
Second, the circumstance of certain Robblees/Rubles being together in Lanesborough over the decades of her youth narrows her father to one of the Robblee men moving to Lanesborough. There were several, Reuben and two Williams. The William who married Keturah Baker had a will mentioning his children, but Permelia was not in it. The older William, who married Abigail Brush, was in the wrong generation, the known grandfather for Keturah "Roblea" Hoyt the likely grandfather for Prmilia "Roblea" Hoyt. That leaves Reuben. Reuben was present though her wedding and births of her first children. He returned to NY after selling his Lanesborough land as the younger generation began moving to Vermont so was in the 1790 Census for Granville heading a full house.
CORRECTING MISTAKES. Seth and Keturah's son was on the multi-family committee completing the final version of DW Hoyt's book. Gould R. Hoyt died in 1866, five years before publication in 1871, however, so was not around to catch two errors. One put Seth's death date far too late, in the 1850s. The other was that Permelia and Keturah had been sisters.
Robblee family historian Cindy Walcott found a notice of brother-in-law Seth's will in a newspaper. He died Jan. 6, 1831, explaining why Keturah left VT soon afterward, to live by 1833 with son Gould in Clearwater County, Penn., where she and some of her children are buried. Cindy Walcott also found a report of the will written by Keturah's father, William Robblee/Rublee/Ruble. It omitted Permelia, as did a listing of William's children kept by the town. Her presumed father was Rueben, that of William's brothers who bought land in town in the year of Permelia's birth. The birth/baptism of her and two siblings near her in birth order are missing from town/church records. A transfer of records between the old and new towns and churches may have caused them to be lost.
Reuben's known son, Philip, would be in Vermont later, in Bristol Twp. living very near to where Uriah and Permelia moved. Walcott thinks he left for NY and then returned to VT based on the 1790 Census count back in NY for their father's house. However, farmers in that era had "hired hands" living on-site, relatives visiting, and schoolteachers boarding, in addition to their own family living at home. Reuben's house thus could have had a full count without Philip being present. Relatives often moved together, to be each other's support system, so Philip had a reason to follow Permelia and Uriah to the new place, or perhaps they followed him.
Copyright by JBrown, Julia Brown, Austin, TX, 2016, Revd. Feb. 2017, Aug, 2020 (children updated),Sept 2022 (parents updated).
Permission given to Findagrave for use at this page.
Uriah and Permelia's IDs: 158778897 68965015
These next links were disabled when Findagrave remodeled its website:
List of Children, with Notes
Towns & Moves-- War Work in Monkton
Official Death & Cemetery Records
PARENT UPDATE
2022-09 WARNING--Cindy Walcott, a family historian says Permelia was " almost certainly not the child of William Robblee and Keturah Baker. "
The process of elimination leaves Reuben Rublee as her father, but a will or other proof is lacking.
Permelia was #27 in Walcott's old list of 2010.
Permelia's ten verifiable children (so excluding Milo) were #163 to #173.
Living near Keturah's burial spot in Vermont, Wolcott revises her "Presumed Descendants of William Rublier and Abigail Brush", as needed. Find the last version and the family's other historians at: RobleesOnline.org/resources/
KEY RELATIONSHIPS. Causing confusion, two related families, Reuben's and William's' were in Lanesborough, MA, together. Permelia's birth year put her between two of her cousins, William and Keturah's sons called William and Hiram, born 1765 and 1767. Mothers of big families often asked same-aged children to play together at family gatherings. Marriages might follow later, as favorite siblings and cousins then introduced each other to favorite friends from school and church. The cousin who was a junior Keturah thus married a Seth Hoyt related to Permelia's spouse, Uriah Hoyt.
*****PART ONE********
HER STRANGE NAME
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PERMELIA. Old-time parents might call a healthy pink-cheeked or red-haired daughter Roseanna or Rosetta. A dark-haired beauty? They might call her Permelia. Originally spelled Parmelia, the phrase once meant a plant useful for dying things, having a black or brown color when the plant dried. (Par = "useful for". Melia = "darkening". The name Melanie is related, reminding us that the modern word "melanin" means the cancer-avoiding pigment produced by tanning.)
In particular, the old-time Scots used certain lichens for home-dying of wool. Some say they plucked dead lichen scraps off the ground after a rain, to avoid destroying the rocks and trees on which a species grew. Some useful ones were called Parmelia Saxatilis and Parmelia Sulcata. Parmelia dyes are still used for so-called "Harris tweeds". These are made in an island chain off the west coast of Scotland, sometimes known as the Outer Hebrides.
With that Scottish dyers' name, was an ancestor Scottish?
Some using the Robblee name in Canada said yes. British dialects turned the Latin/Greek "par" into "per". Parmelia and Permelia thus both became accepted spellings for daughters' names.
She is hard to find in records, with names easily mis-written. Say "car" with a Boston accent, listeners may think they've heard cah"? "Pamelia", instead of Parmelia or Permelia? Modern viewers can't believe what they see, substitute "Pamela".
RUBLE. A "lea" or "ley" was some type of meadow, a meadow with the plant "rue"? belonging to a Ruben? About her maiden name, big families sometimes used variations the way French-Canadians used "dit names", to avoid confusion. "We're the Ruble/Roblea set, not the Rublee/Robblee ones. We like each other, but our mothers chose different churches".
That's just a sample. An R always starts the name. There's always at least one B. The final ending always sounds like "ee", not silent as in English.
Recall that early European NY was limited to "New Amsterdam", with early clerks using the proprietors' spelling rules, not English one.s There are dialects that make B and P sound interchangeable. The Dutch/Walloon name of Rapalje with a P seems to be unrelated, used by giant landowners early to New Amsterdam, their name having to do with skill at rappelling up cliff-sides. Some were slaveholders off to a Spanish-held early version of Mississippi.
*****PART TWO********
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The Eleven to Twelve Children
of Permelia and Uriah Hoyt
(by birthplace & birth order)
**********************************
Born Lanesborough, MA, 1787
** Ezra (buried in next county north, Chittenden, known to die of "consumption", that is, TB, dying in his 70s, he must have contracted the slow killer late in life. He thus was not impoverished by its reducing his work hours for two decades, and killing his young children, as seen for other victims, so had a stone. )
Born New Haven, VT, 1789-1791
** Seymour (unmarried, died youngish in Monkton, 1813)
** Abigail (unmarried, buried in New Haven, VT, 1821)
** Orrin (West Addison cemetery, 1884)
Born Bristol, VT, 1793-1810
** Henry (West Addison, lived with George S., 1850)
** Phebe (marr. Hines/Hinds/Hindes, West Addison)
** Uriah (to Canada briefly, died Chagrin Falls, OH, 1870, wife a Dayton)
** Orville (to NY and Hinesburg, VT, buried Adams County, Wisc.)
** Thomas (died at age 10, buried in Monkton, 1813)
** "Milo"(?)
** George S. (NY? West Addison by 1850)
** Sophia Maria (marr. Erastmus Meach Partch of Bristol, VT, to Durand, Winnebago Cty, Illinois by 1870, widowed, so lived with daughter Jenett/Jennette Toal.)
Permelia saw at least three children die before her:
Seymour and Thomas, then Abigail. Maybe "Milo"?
Sons Uriah and George S. named daughters for her.
Daughter Sophia Maria named a son Orville Hoyt, for Permelia's spouse . [2022 update: Found as Orville H Partch, Civil War Veteran, buried in Winnebago County, Illinois. One mis-spelling seen is Patch. If it began as Partsch, it might have been Germanic.]
VERIFIED--Most of her children have been cited by at least two sources, their names not changed by any decision about her parents, as the unusual ones were borrowed heavily from her spouse's Hoyts.
UNVERIFIED--"Milo" --just one source, a brief mention, a biography of Uriah Hoyt (seen in "Genealogical and Family History of the State of Vermont", by Hiram Carleton, 1903). Was Milo an infant who died soon after birth?
*****PART THREE******
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THE BIGGER STORY,
BRINGING IN THE HOYTS
**********************************
THEIR TOWNS AND MOVES. The Rubles/Robblees and Hoyts/Haights were people who found new opportunity for each new generation by moving with the frontier. Their towns thus truly changed, due to moves, not due to name changes by politicians.
The two families ran into each other in Lanesborough, Mass., ahead of the American Revolution. The elder Hoyts hailed from the main Connecticut colonial towns, allowing them to migrate up the Connecticut River, to Lanesborough MA, then to VT. The elder Rubles/Robblees were instead NY-born (in the Philipse Patent?). The Robblees were last of a strangely spelled old Dutchess County. Four answered to debt charges in county court involving unpaid fines after someone from a future in-law family (Bundy) had reported them for disturbing the peace. We are curious. Was the cause too-loud fiddling at a lovely barn dance? Or more like siblings screaming at each other in a loud fight? (or...?).
The last NY place mentioned for the Robblees/Rubblees was Nine Partners, maybe the last place they were assessed for property taxes? Also seen for distant Haight cousins who perhaps went to Monkton earlier, Nine Partners turned into Crum Elbow precinct for some records left by the Quaker side's Haights. (It then turned into Charlotte precinct after the distant Haight cousins left, to be subdivided further later.)
Their places were turning from colonies to states. It would take time to resolve boundaries.
The young of the two families attended school and church together, allowing Permelia and Uriah to meet and marry in the late 1700s. A century later, in 1871, David W. Hoyt published his final version of "The History of the Hoyts", relying on survivors. Which ones? Permelia's youngest brother-in-law, the one named Seymour? Or her own son, Uriah the Jr., dying in 1870, input possible earlier, but missing the final deadline? Or, the literate Hoyt who wrote beautifully of his mother, cousin Keturah, the one who married Seth? That Gould R. Hoyt died in 1866 in this writer's southeastern Minnesota, his absence and failure to reply noted by the Hoyt book's author/editor (with, it turns out, Gould's death preceding publication by five years)
D.W. noted that two young women he called "Roblea" and "Ruble" married two young Hoyt men while in Lanesborough, before both couples moved on to Vermont. Permelia married Uriah. Her presumed cousin, Keturah aka Catherine Roblea/Robblee/Ruble, daughter of Keturah Baker, married Uriah's brother, Seth.
As a young couple needing land of their own, Permelia and spouse Uriah then moved with many others, including Seth and Keturah, going northward, out of Mass., up-river. One could go into NY and up the Hudson River, to Lake Champlain. One could go north more directly, head a bit east, to go up the closer Connecticut River, into Vermont, if far enough north, to have some contact with the French-Canadians.
Their moves were not "all at once", but staggered. It took ten-plus years for all to re-locate to Vermont, their first choice to be Addison County.
(FICKLE GEOGRAPHIES. Lanesborough had been in Berkshire County, on a fickle state boundary to be contested by NY and Mass. Not everyone who went to the Lanesborough frontier stayed. Some from NY forfeited their land when the final decision favored MA. Others moved by choice.)
REUBEN AND PHILIP. A relative named Reuben Robblee, whose other dates made him right to be her father? He returned to NY. His original buying of the MA land occurred near the time his middle children were born. Earlier ones had been baptized back in NY, so their father was of better record there. When she and Uriah ventured off to Monkton VT and then Bristol, they would be in the same small rural places as Reuben's verified son, Philip.
In 1785, with Vermont still independent, not giving up its Republic status until 1790, officials "spun-off" Addison County from a portion of Rutland County, Vermont. Permelia and Uriah arrived after the spinning off. Vermont was able to negotiate for free trade with Quebec, as Vermont was untied to the new Union which preferred to reject waht was seen as pro-British. With Quebec as a trading partner, however, Vermont offered more job possibilities than average, helping those tired of farming or shop-keeping.
Putting son Ezra's burial in a different county, Chittenden and then Franklin Counties would split from Addison later. Before all of that, they had been part of an ultra-large Bennington County. Bennington, in turn, on its north end, while still very large, once covered an old short-lived county of NY called Charlotte. Created by NY pre-Revolution ,out of old Albany County, NY intended it to be a new frontier for its large landowners. Some NY settlers moved in, attracting perhaps old neighbors of the Robblees, perhaps of the large landlord sort. This earlier NY frontier extended, all the way to the eastern banks of the CT River, so included and then went past future New Haven, Monkton and Bristol. How early was her brother Philip Robblee there, going by Rublee, near the end??
Just as mother Albany County had done, the now extinct Charlotte County overlapped with other provinces/colonies further east. NY's eastern frontier specifically overlapped with three newly settled western frontiers of OTHER future states, oceanfront CT to the south, rural Massachusetts in the middle, and wild Vermont at the north end, extending up to Canada, with trading opportunities with Quebec.
Why the overlap? At the beginning, the old Kings' officials defined centers of adjacent provinces carefully, so each port and city were assigned to just one colony. This worked in the first century, provinces not overlapping at their edges, there was no competition over frontiers, all conflict instead being ethnic, British warrings against the French, against the natives, against the Dutch.
Later, the same officials who nicely did the seaside centers had to guess where to put inner edges, maps of interiors not good yet, too much uncharted. OOPs-- edges overlapped. The latest young farmers looked for new frontiers, having found closer-in land already taken. They might settle on the edge then feel extreme surprise to see others enter, saying they owned the same land. Also common-- two sets of tax collectors might come through, asking that double taxes be paid.
Where the Penn. and Conn. edges overlapped, some Hoyts move out there found they had to leave. Land granted to both Connecticut and to William Penn wasresolved in favor of the "Pennites". The "Connecticut sufferers" were allowed to "make-up" for their Penn. loss with "Western Reserve" land granted in frontier Ohio, pre-War of 1812. Some would sell their grants, letting others move there. Ohio also had The Firelands, to make up for British ships firing on and burning of coastal cities at wartime. One resulting town in Ohio would be called Norwalk, named after the CT town co-founded by Uriah's immigrant ancestor, Simon Hoyt/Hoyte. Permelia and Uriah's son, Uriah the Jr., and his wife, Comfort Dayton, would end in the Connecticut Western Reserve, which was not in Connecticut, but in northeastern Ohio, uphill from Cleveland.
Hoyts who had gone temporarily to Penn., cited (in a will by their father?) in "Orphans' Court", as having land to sell, left for Ohio, headed by Stephen/Stephens Hoyt. The 1820 US Census found him located in Logan County, Ohio. Son Ransford C. Hoyt was named for his presumed uncle (the latter known more simply as Ransford Hoyt, mentioned with Stephen, as having been left property by Jedediah Hoyt in Orphan's Court, taxed/sold later.) Ransford C. was born in Logan County's seat, Bellefontaine, Ohio, in 1808 (said by family? no birth recordkeeping by early Ohio governments). Two daughters of Stephen were known via marriages in Logan County, Mary Hoyt (m. Calhoun/Calhoon) and Sylvy Hoyt (m. Waggoner).
Doing what was typical for the Hoyts, finding frontier land for the next generation, the orphan court pair went next to Michigan, with close relatives of Uriah from Addison County, VT, to follow.
Ransford C. filed for homestead land in Michigan first, in 1831, in Kalamazoo County, near Schoolcraft. His father, as Stephens Hoyt, filed a few years later, but had been the one taking the family and a group out to prospect it earlier, ahead of the Harrisons, who were given the credit. Uriah's brother, Seymour Hoyt, filed last. All three men clearly used some female ancestors' maiden name as their first name. They were all sufficiently north that they were not affected by a dispute that caused Michigan's southernmost territory to be moved into Indiana. This could split up families and land oddly. In one case, family's southerly farmhouse was put into Indiana, but their farmland was left in Michigan.
Of the Hoyts, brother Seymour could have followed brother Seth's children out to a different corner of Pennsylvania, with coal mining and lumbering. Their eldest brother, Judge Ezra Hoyt, aovided mining, raised sons to be ministers and a daughter to marry a minister. Thus, Uriah's nephew, the Rev. Ova Hoyt, would end his days as a minister in the Schoolcraft church in Michigan.)
New Englanders, such as the Hoyts, were often community people, not individualists. They often held offices as a public service, not for the prestige. They made many attachments and were fond of places left behind. As they moved, they re-used the old place names.
Calling their newly created Vermont town "New Haven" would remind some Hoyt in-laws of their Connecticut birth place that burned. Calling the road upon which they lived in VT by the name "Lanesboro Street" reminded them all of their last town in Massachusetts.
An old "History of Addison County, Vermont", by Henry Perry Smith was published in 1886. It says their street ran north out of New Haven, that families from Lanesboro, Mass. came to settle it. They arrived 1781 to 1792, said Smith. These, his book said, included at least three Hoyts that we recognize as closely related to her spouse Uriah. (They were Ezra Hoyt and Seth Hoyt, plus Seymour Hoyt, most likely all three brothers, with father Ezra Hoyt living in one of their houses.) Families recognizable, then or later, as Hoyt in-laws came to the same street. (They were William Seymour, Matthew Phelps, George Smith, and Andrew Squier.)
Uriah and Permelia would delay fully arriving in New Haven, VT, until some time after 1787, but came before 1789, judging from their children's births. Perhaps Uriah went first, by himself, to clear land? Did he or they, at first, double-up with someone already there, maybe with Seth and the junior Keturah?
Family historian Cindy Walcott said that Keturah's mother, Keturah/Catherine the elder, maiden name Baker, would follow later. (Keturah's father, William Robblee, died back in Lanesborough in 1792, freeing her mother to move.)
There would be reasons for moving again, going up Lanesboro Street to Monkton, then to Bristol. Wolcott noted that a Nathaniel/Nathaneal Robblee bought Permelia and Uriah's New Haven land. They left the security of the Hoyt family, clustered together back in New Haven, for an isolated place to the north.
Bristol was north, but furthest north was Monktown, both still in Addison County. Children's birth and death places indicate both were addresses for Permelia and Uriah.
Why were they in Monkton? The timing for the two son's Monkton deaths gives the answer, saying War of 1812. Monkton was said to need more workers, jobs gone when the war finished. Due to its superior water access, the area already had mills and shipping, so already had lots of non-agricultural jobs, unlike the adjacent, more rural townships. Unusual, Monkton also had bog iron, which could be gathered and used, especially to build ships defending the Great Lakes border with Canada at time of war.
This caused nine forges to be there by 1813 and a shipyard devoted to defending Lake Champlain. A 26-gunner called the Saratoga was completed in just 40 days. When the war ended, cheaper British-produced iron again replaced the local bog iron, so the new jobs added at wartime went away. Bristol would then seem more appealing. See Vergennes.org for more details.
Worth noting, there was a third Hoyt-Robblee marriage, with twists. Keturah Robblee Hoyt's mother had been Keturah Baker Robblee. Two husbands' names are noted on her gravestone in New Haven, says Walcott. After first spouse William Robblee died back in Lanesborough, Mass., the elder Keturah moved to Vermont and married the elder of two Stephen Haights. Widower Stephen's address was Monktown. Hoyt relatives that went south out of Connecticut, down toward Long Island, toward the Dutch and a smaller set of Quakers, began using the Haight spelling then. They are sometimes seen as Hait. The rest, who stayed in the Puritan region, shifted from using Hoyte to Hoyt, sometimes seen as Hoit. Stephen Haight is buried in a Quaker (Friends) cemetery in Monkton.
Uriah and Permelia moved to and then left Monktown, known to be there in 1813, presumed there until the war and job-dismantling ended, 1814-16. They moved permanently to Bristol, VT, where their last children were born and where on, if not both Permelia and Uriah died, proven with paperwork, stones that once existed and were used to "reconstrcut" the paperwork now gone.
Philip Ruble would be seen living in Bristol, near widowed Uriah in the 1840 Census, after Permelia had died. Philip was a documented son of Reuben, Permelia's brother. There were no other Hoyts (or Rubles?) buried there?
Was she already sick when they moved to Bristol, so she wanted to be near Philip? Son Ezra would die of consumption, aka TB/Tuberculosis. That could kill many in the same family.
Was TB Permelia's illness as well?
**** PART FOUR******
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DEATH & BURIAL RECORDS.
*****************************
Permelia is buried back in New Haven, perhaps near daughter Abigail, stones of both missing, so it's lovely that the town kept her cemetery record of the now missing stone as a death record. (Abigail's stone must have already disappeared, too late to reconstruct a paper record for it.)
Spouse Uriah was buried in Bristol, with the second wife. Is he the only Hoyt in the cemetery?
Deaths from "Vermont Vital Records, 1760-1954"
PERMELIA, 1827:
FamilySearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-1-16273-26522-10
URIAH, 1849:
FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:939V-S61S-P
SON EZRA, NAMING HIS PARENTS, 1859:
FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:939V-S64X-S
(1) Permelia's original death record was too early to show much, may simply have consisted of her stone. The paper copy, thus, merely cites her age and her burial as at Evergreen Cemetery in New Haven. Handwritten, the reconstruction was done in 1919, a century ago, signed by the clerk of New Haven. Again, the stone is now gone, but we know it once existed due to the reconstruction paperwork.
(2) Her age at death was 61 years, 1 month.
(3) Her husband was her survivor, so knew how to spell her name. The record says "Permelia".
(4) Uriah died considerably later. His record also appears to be gravestone information, as Varney Cemetery is listed on it. Its information matches his stone.
Son Ezra's record ten years later is modern, more thorough, a true death record, but done in a time when no survivors remained who called his mother something other than "mother" or "grandma". Someone clearly guessed "Permilia", based on hearing it said one or twice, not on seeing it correctly written.
****************
PART FIVE.
****************
PATTERNS & MYSTERIES:
*************************
If a child's burial place seems a mystery, then the last known residence is cited, dated by the last census there, 1850 to 1870.
(1) Wartime death cluster--Two deaths in 1813, while in Monktown, could have been caused by the same contagion. Two sons died within weeks of each other (Mar. 22 for Seymour, Apr. 16 for Thomas).
War caused crowding into "safe houses", with germs quickly shared. War-time food shortages can weaken resistance to sickness.
For the War of 1812, with Monkton farmers' city of Vergennes a main shipping point, the area turned into a maker of US gunboats. Commodore MacDonough made Vergennes into a full winter camp by the end of 1813. They thus became targets, a persisting war zone. They were not simply attacked by the British. An embargo stopped all British-produced goods, including supplies from Canada, normally entering adjacent Lake Champlain via the Great Lakes.
(2) Children's Migrations and Spouses-- Names above were those last remembered by her children's survivors. If an earlier death, survivors to do reporting included herself.
Whether ordering stones or writing records, a survivor's recall of a parents' places may not match the actual (especially after widowing and re-marrying). Modern record searches let us double-check, verify.
For example, for Permelia's son Orville, the reporting survivor, maybe a sibling or nephew, recalled only that he perhaps went to NY. His true burial place was found by tracking his children's records as they migrated. The discovery--He maybe lived separately, surname mis-spelled, but repeatedly stayed in the same town as daughter Julia as she and her spouse moved.
The NY mistake for his final location seems due to the birthplaces of two of his children, where he lived only a short time granddaughters to Permelia. NY was "on the way" to somewhere else. The daughter most useful, Julia Hoyt Marshall, had married in Wisconsin, with the marriage clerk or minister writing her father's name as "Orvil". She then went to Hinesburg, VT, with Canadian-born spouse, George M. Marshall. Birth records for some children reported theiri mother Julia had been been born in 1834, saying Newark, NY , confirming Wayne County.
Two of Orville's other children, Ruth and Thomas, married in Hinesburg, VT. Thus, they also moved with the Marshalls.
For daughter Ruth Hoyt Baldwin, her marriage record named parents as Orville and Lorraine, seen elsewhere as Lorania Keith. Ruth's gravepage repeats Wayne County, NY as birthplace.
An 1860 Census in Hinesburg showed Julia Hoyt and spouse George Marshall, now with their own children, plus his Vermont-born brother, Charles Marshall, both men "wheelwrights". That would let them run a home business, so-called a "cottage industry" common back then, in the era pre-factories.
On the same handwritten form, a scribbled name was at the bottom of the household next-door, bottom being where boarders and employees might be. He was "Orvil Hoyt", day laborer, his landlord family named "La Pelle". Since his hosts sounded French, however, one transcriber read his name as "Orvil Hayett". That it was Orville Hoyt is confirmed by his daughter Julia's presence, next-door, and his Vermont birth, early, 1800-1801, judging from his age.
The Marshalls returned to Wisc. Permelia's son Orville again must have moved with his daughter Julia. In the 1870 Census, listed as a farmer, his name was so scrawled, it appeared to say "Ohel Hoyt", age 69.
(3) Fickle geography--Sometimes names of places (and thus an assigned courthouse) can change, without people moving. Note that Hinesburg, VT, was once at the north end of Addison County, but it is in Chittendon County, now. Son Ezra moved to Hinsburg when other siblings did so, but, unlike them, stayed and is buried there.
(4) Missing gravestones--
(A) Evergreen Cemetery in New Haven-- Many old stones are faded or missing, with stones sometimes swept away at flood times. A happy workaround? For daughter Abigail and for Permelia, information for their and other now missing stones was preserved on paper cards made in the early 1900s, by the county, in order to fulfill a state requirement that information be sent in. These were reconstructions based on a mix, walking the cemeteries, thus seeing the stones that would still have existed a century ago, maybe still readable, or if not, using paper records to decipher whatever weathering had worn away on soft stone. Death can be "off" a few days if a burial/funeral date was substituted.
Not fixable--Some stones were missing before that reconstruction. No paper record was made, or was too faded or too torn to be of use.
PART SIX. HER PARENTAGE. According to family historian Walcott, the most likely father for both Permelia and Philip was NY-born Reuben Robblee/Ruble, the side to return to NY state. Her exact birthdate, birthplace, and parentage are not spelled out in official records. They must be inferred from circumstances.
First, her birth year is calculated from her age of 60 years and 1 month at her death date. 1766 was the year of Permelia's birth, also the year Rueben bought land in Lanesborough.
Second, the circumstance of certain Robblees/Rubles being together in Lanesborough over the decades of her youth narrows her father to one of the Robblee men moving to Lanesborough. There were several, Reuben and two Williams. The William who married Keturah Baker had a will mentioning his children, but Permelia was not in it. The older William, who married Abigail Brush, was in the wrong generation, the known grandfather for Keturah "Roblea" Hoyt the likely grandfather for Prmilia "Roblea" Hoyt. That leaves Reuben. Reuben was present though her wedding and births of her first children. He returned to NY after selling his Lanesborough land as the younger generation began moving to Vermont so was in the 1790 Census for Granville heading a full house.
CORRECTING MISTAKES. Seth and Keturah's son was on the multi-family committee completing the final version of DW Hoyt's book. Gould R. Hoyt died in 1866, five years before publication in 1871, however, so was not around to catch two errors. One put Seth's death date far too late, in the 1850s. The other was that Permelia and Keturah had been sisters.
Robblee family historian Cindy Walcott found a notice of brother-in-law Seth's will in a newspaper. He died Jan. 6, 1831, explaining why Keturah left VT soon afterward, to live by 1833 with son Gould in Clearwater County, Penn., where she and some of her children are buried. Cindy Walcott also found a report of the will written by Keturah's father, William Robblee/Rublee/Ruble. It omitted Permelia, as did a listing of William's children kept by the town. Her presumed father was Rueben, that of William's brothers who bought land in town in the year of Permelia's birth. The birth/baptism of her and two siblings near her in birth order are missing from town/church records. A transfer of records between the old and new towns and churches may have caused them to be lost.
Reuben's known son, Philip, would be in Vermont later, in Bristol Twp. living very near to where Uriah and Permelia moved. Walcott thinks he left for NY and then returned to VT based on the 1790 Census count back in NY for their father's house. However, farmers in that era had "hired hands" living on-site, relatives visiting, and schoolteachers boarding, in addition to their own family living at home. Reuben's house thus could have had a full count without Philip being present. Relatives often moved together, to be each other's support system, so Philip had a reason to follow Permelia and Uriah to the new place, or perhaps they followed him.
Copyright by JBrown, Julia Brown, Austin, TX, 2016, Revd. Feb. 2017, Aug, 2020 (children updated),Sept 2022 (parents updated).
Permission given to Findagrave for use at this page.
Uriah and Permelia's IDs: 158778897 68965015
These next links were disabled when Findagrave remodeled its website:
List of Children, with Notes
Towns & Moves-- War Work in Monkton
Official Death & Cemetery Records
A dark-haired beauty? Scots using old-time fabric dyes might call such a child Permelia.
PARENT UPDATE
2022-09 WARNING--Cindy Walcott, a family historian says Permelia was " almost certainly not the child of William Robblee and Keturah Baker. "
The process of elimination leaves Reuben Rublee as her father, but a will or other proof is lacking.
Permelia was #27 in Walcott's old list of 2010.
Permelia's ten verifiable children (so excluding Milo) were #163 to #173.
Living near Keturah's burial spot in Vermont, Wolcott revises her "Presumed Descendants of William Rublier and Abigail Brush", as needed. Find the last version and the family's other historians at: RobleesOnline.org/resources/
KEY RELATIONSHIPS. Causing confusion, two related families, Reuben's and William's' were in Lanesborough, MA, together. Permelia's birth year put her between two of her cousins, William and Keturah's sons called William and Hiram, born 1765 and 1767. Mothers of big families often asked same-aged children to play together at family gatherings. Marriages might follow later, as favorite siblings and cousins then introduced each other to favorite friends from school and church. The cousin who was a junior Keturah thus married a Seth Hoyt related to Permelia's spouse, Uriah Hoyt.
*****PART ONE********
HER STRANGE NAME
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PERMELIA. Old-time parents might call a healthy pink-cheeked or red-haired daughter Roseanna or Rosetta. A dark-haired beauty? They might call her Permelia. Originally spelled Parmelia, the phrase once meant a plant useful for dying things, having a black or brown color when the plant dried. (Par = "useful for". Melia = "darkening". The name Melanie is related, reminding us that the modern word "melanin" means the cancer-avoiding pigment produced by tanning.)
In particular, the old-time Scots used certain lichens for home-dying of wool. Some say they plucked dead lichen scraps off the ground after a rain, to avoid destroying the rocks and trees on which a species grew. Some useful ones were called Parmelia Saxatilis and Parmelia Sulcata. Parmelia dyes are still used for so-called "Harris tweeds". These are made in an island chain off the west coast of Scotland, sometimes known as the Outer Hebrides.
With that Scottish dyers' name, was an ancestor Scottish?
Some using the Robblee name in Canada said yes. British dialects turned the Latin/Greek "par" into "per". Parmelia and Permelia thus both became accepted spellings for daughters' names.
She is hard to find in records, with names easily mis-written. Say "car" with a Boston accent, listeners may think they've heard cah"? "Pamelia", instead of Parmelia or Permelia? Modern viewers can't believe what they see, substitute "Pamela".
RUBLE. A "lea" or "ley" was some type of meadow, a meadow with the plant "rue"? belonging to a Ruben? About her maiden name, big families sometimes used variations the way French-Canadians used "dit names", to avoid confusion. "We're the Ruble/Roblea set, not the Rublee/Robblee ones. We like each other, but our mothers chose different churches".
That's just a sample. An R always starts the name. There's always at least one B. The final ending always sounds like "ee", not silent as in English.
Recall that early European NY was limited to "New Amsterdam", with early clerks using the proprietors' spelling rules, not English one.s There are dialects that make B and P sound interchangeable. The Dutch/Walloon name of Rapalje with a P seems to be unrelated, used by giant landowners early to New Amsterdam, their name having to do with skill at rappelling up cliff-sides. Some were slaveholders off to a Spanish-held early version of Mississippi.
*****PART TWO********
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The Eleven to Twelve Children
of Permelia and Uriah Hoyt
(by birthplace & birth order)
**********************************
Born Lanesborough, MA, 1787
** Ezra (buried in next county north, Chittenden, known to die of "consumption", that is, TB, dying in his 70s, he must have contracted the slow killer late in life. He thus was not impoverished by its reducing his work hours for two decades, and killing his young children, as seen for other victims, so had a stone. )
Born New Haven, VT, 1789-1791
** Seymour (unmarried, died youngish in Monkton, 1813)
** Abigail (unmarried, buried in New Haven, VT, 1821)
** Orrin (West Addison cemetery, 1884)
Born Bristol, VT, 1793-1810
** Henry (West Addison, lived with George S., 1850)
** Phebe (marr. Hines/Hinds/Hindes, West Addison)
** Uriah (to Canada briefly, died Chagrin Falls, OH, 1870, wife a Dayton)
** Orville (to NY and Hinesburg, VT, buried Adams County, Wisc.)
** Thomas (died at age 10, buried in Monkton, 1813)
** "Milo"(?)
** George S. (NY? West Addison by 1850)
** Sophia Maria (marr. Erastmus Meach Partch of Bristol, VT, to Durand, Winnebago Cty, Illinois by 1870, widowed, so lived with daughter Jenett/Jennette Toal.)
Permelia saw at least three children die before her:
Seymour and Thomas, then Abigail. Maybe "Milo"?
Sons Uriah and George S. named daughters for her.
Daughter Sophia Maria named a son Orville Hoyt, for Permelia's spouse . [2022 update: Found as Orville H Partch, Civil War Veteran, buried in Winnebago County, Illinois. One mis-spelling seen is Patch. If it began as Partsch, it might have been Germanic.]
VERIFIED--Most of her children have been cited by at least two sources, their names not changed by any decision about her parents, as the unusual ones were borrowed heavily from her spouse's Hoyts.
UNVERIFIED--"Milo" --just one source, a brief mention, a biography of Uriah Hoyt (seen in "Genealogical and Family History of the State of Vermont", by Hiram Carleton, 1903). Was Milo an infant who died soon after birth?
*****PART THREE******
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THE BIGGER STORY,
BRINGING IN THE HOYTS
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THEIR TOWNS AND MOVES. The Rubles/Robblees and Hoyts/Haights were people who found new opportunity for each new generation by moving with the frontier. Their towns thus truly changed, due to moves, not due to name changes by politicians.
The two families ran into each other in Lanesborough, Mass., ahead of the American Revolution. The elder Hoyts hailed from the main Connecticut colonial towns, allowing them to migrate up the Connecticut River, to Lanesborough MA, then to VT. The elder Rubles/Robblees were instead NY-born (in the Philipse Patent?). The Robblees were last of a strangely spelled old Dutchess County. Four answered to debt charges in county court involving unpaid fines after someone from a future in-law family (Bundy) had reported them for disturbing the peace. We are curious. Was the cause too-loud fiddling at a lovely barn dance? Or more like siblings screaming at each other in a loud fight? (or...?).
The last NY place mentioned for the Robblees/Rubblees was Nine Partners, maybe the last place they were assessed for property taxes? Also seen for distant Haight cousins who perhaps went to Monkton earlier, Nine Partners turned into Crum Elbow precinct for some records left by the Quaker side's Haights. (It then turned into Charlotte precinct after the distant Haight cousins left, to be subdivided further later.)
Their places were turning from colonies to states. It would take time to resolve boundaries.
The young of the two families attended school and church together, allowing Permelia and Uriah to meet and marry in the late 1700s. A century later, in 1871, David W. Hoyt published his final version of "The History of the Hoyts", relying on survivors. Which ones? Permelia's youngest brother-in-law, the one named Seymour? Or her own son, Uriah the Jr., dying in 1870, input possible earlier, but missing the final deadline? Or, the literate Hoyt who wrote beautifully of his mother, cousin Keturah, the one who married Seth? That Gould R. Hoyt died in 1866 in this writer's southeastern Minnesota, his absence and failure to reply noted by the Hoyt book's author/editor (with, it turns out, Gould's death preceding publication by five years)
D.W. noted that two young women he called "Roblea" and "Ruble" married two young Hoyt men while in Lanesborough, before both couples moved on to Vermont. Permelia married Uriah. Her presumed cousin, Keturah aka Catherine Roblea/Robblee/Ruble, daughter of Keturah Baker, married Uriah's brother, Seth.
As a young couple needing land of their own, Permelia and spouse Uriah then moved with many others, including Seth and Keturah, going northward, out of Mass., up-river. One could go into NY and up the Hudson River, to Lake Champlain. One could go north more directly, head a bit east, to go up the closer Connecticut River, into Vermont, if far enough north, to have some contact with the French-Canadians.
Their moves were not "all at once", but staggered. It took ten-plus years for all to re-locate to Vermont, their first choice to be Addison County.
(FICKLE GEOGRAPHIES. Lanesborough had been in Berkshire County, on a fickle state boundary to be contested by NY and Mass. Not everyone who went to the Lanesborough frontier stayed. Some from NY forfeited their land when the final decision favored MA. Others moved by choice.)
REUBEN AND PHILIP. A relative named Reuben Robblee, whose other dates made him right to be her father? He returned to NY. His original buying of the MA land occurred near the time his middle children were born. Earlier ones had been baptized back in NY, so their father was of better record there. When she and Uriah ventured off to Monkton VT and then Bristol, they would be in the same small rural places as Reuben's verified son, Philip.
In 1785, with Vermont still independent, not giving up its Republic status until 1790, officials "spun-off" Addison County from a portion of Rutland County, Vermont. Permelia and Uriah arrived after the spinning off. Vermont was able to negotiate for free trade with Quebec, as Vermont was untied to the new Union which preferred to reject waht was seen as pro-British. With Quebec as a trading partner, however, Vermont offered more job possibilities than average, helping those tired of farming or shop-keeping.
Putting son Ezra's burial in a different county, Chittenden and then Franklin Counties would split from Addison later. Before all of that, they had been part of an ultra-large Bennington County. Bennington, in turn, on its north end, while still very large, once covered an old short-lived county of NY called Charlotte. Created by NY pre-Revolution ,out of old Albany County, NY intended it to be a new frontier for its large landowners. Some NY settlers moved in, attracting perhaps old neighbors of the Robblees, perhaps of the large landlord sort. This earlier NY frontier extended, all the way to the eastern banks of the CT River, so included and then went past future New Haven, Monkton and Bristol. How early was her brother Philip Robblee there, going by Rublee, near the end??
Just as mother Albany County had done, the now extinct Charlotte County overlapped with other provinces/colonies further east. NY's eastern frontier specifically overlapped with three newly settled western frontiers of OTHER future states, oceanfront CT to the south, rural Massachusetts in the middle, and wild Vermont at the north end, extending up to Canada, with trading opportunities with Quebec.
Why the overlap? At the beginning, the old Kings' officials defined centers of adjacent provinces carefully, so each port and city were assigned to just one colony. This worked in the first century, provinces not overlapping at their edges, there was no competition over frontiers, all conflict instead being ethnic, British warrings against the French, against the natives, against the Dutch.
Later, the same officials who nicely did the seaside centers had to guess where to put inner edges, maps of interiors not good yet, too much uncharted. OOPs-- edges overlapped. The latest young farmers looked for new frontiers, having found closer-in land already taken. They might settle on the edge then feel extreme surprise to see others enter, saying they owned the same land. Also common-- two sets of tax collectors might come through, asking that double taxes be paid.
Where the Penn. and Conn. edges overlapped, some Hoyts move out there found they had to leave. Land granted to both Connecticut and to William Penn wasresolved in favor of the "Pennites". The "Connecticut sufferers" were allowed to "make-up" for their Penn. loss with "Western Reserve" land granted in frontier Ohio, pre-War of 1812. Some would sell their grants, letting others move there. Ohio also had The Firelands, to make up for British ships firing on and burning of coastal cities at wartime. One resulting town in Ohio would be called Norwalk, named after the CT town co-founded by Uriah's immigrant ancestor, Simon Hoyt/Hoyte. Permelia and Uriah's son, Uriah the Jr., and his wife, Comfort Dayton, would end in the Connecticut Western Reserve, which was not in Connecticut, but in northeastern Ohio, uphill from Cleveland.
Hoyts who had gone temporarily to Penn., cited (in a will by their father?) in "Orphans' Court", as having land to sell, left for Ohio, headed by Stephen/Stephens Hoyt. The 1820 US Census found him located in Logan County, Ohio. Son Ransford C. Hoyt was named for his presumed uncle (the latter known more simply as Ransford Hoyt, mentioned with Stephen, as having been left property by Jedediah Hoyt in Orphan's Court, taxed/sold later.) Ransford C. was born in Logan County's seat, Bellefontaine, Ohio, in 1808 (said by family? no birth recordkeeping by early Ohio governments). Two daughters of Stephen were known via marriages in Logan County, Mary Hoyt (m. Calhoun/Calhoon) and Sylvy Hoyt (m. Waggoner).
Doing what was typical for the Hoyts, finding frontier land for the next generation, the orphan court pair went next to Michigan, with close relatives of Uriah from Addison County, VT, to follow.
Ransford C. filed for homestead land in Michigan first, in 1831, in Kalamazoo County, near Schoolcraft. His father, as Stephens Hoyt, filed a few years later, but had been the one taking the family and a group out to prospect it earlier, ahead of the Harrisons, who were given the credit. Uriah's brother, Seymour Hoyt, filed last. All three men clearly used some female ancestors' maiden name as their first name. They were all sufficiently north that they were not affected by a dispute that caused Michigan's southernmost territory to be moved into Indiana. This could split up families and land oddly. In one case, family's southerly farmhouse was put into Indiana, but their farmland was left in Michigan.
Of the Hoyts, brother Seymour could have followed brother Seth's children out to a different corner of Pennsylvania, with coal mining and lumbering. Their eldest brother, Judge Ezra Hoyt, aovided mining, raised sons to be ministers and a daughter to marry a minister. Thus, Uriah's nephew, the Rev. Ova Hoyt, would end his days as a minister in the Schoolcraft church in Michigan.)
New Englanders, such as the Hoyts, were often community people, not individualists. They often held offices as a public service, not for the prestige. They made many attachments and were fond of places left behind. As they moved, they re-used the old place names.
Calling their newly created Vermont town "New Haven" would remind some Hoyt in-laws of their Connecticut birth place that burned. Calling the road upon which they lived in VT by the name "Lanesboro Street" reminded them all of their last town in Massachusetts.
An old "History of Addison County, Vermont", by Henry Perry Smith was published in 1886. It says their street ran north out of New Haven, that families from Lanesboro, Mass. came to settle it. They arrived 1781 to 1792, said Smith. These, his book said, included at least three Hoyts that we recognize as closely related to her spouse Uriah. (They were Ezra Hoyt and Seth Hoyt, plus Seymour Hoyt, most likely all three brothers, with father Ezra Hoyt living in one of their houses.) Families recognizable, then or later, as Hoyt in-laws came to the same street. (They were William Seymour, Matthew Phelps, George Smith, and Andrew Squier.)
Uriah and Permelia would delay fully arriving in New Haven, VT, until some time after 1787, but came before 1789, judging from their children's births. Perhaps Uriah went first, by himself, to clear land? Did he or they, at first, double-up with someone already there, maybe with Seth and the junior Keturah?
Family historian Cindy Walcott said that Keturah's mother, Keturah/Catherine the elder, maiden name Baker, would follow later. (Keturah's father, William Robblee, died back in Lanesborough in 1792, freeing her mother to move.)
There would be reasons for moving again, going up Lanesboro Street to Monkton, then to Bristol. Wolcott noted that a Nathaniel/Nathaneal Robblee bought Permelia and Uriah's New Haven land. They left the security of the Hoyt family, clustered together back in New Haven, for an isolated place to the north.
Bristol was north, but furthest north was Monktown, both still in Addison County. Children's birth and death places indicate both were addresses for Permelia and Uriah.
Why were they in Monkton? The timing for the two son's Monkton deaths gives the answer, saying War of 1812. Monkton was said to need more workers, jobs gone when the war finished. Due to its superior water access, the area already had mills and shipping, so already had lots of non-agricultural jobs, unlike the adjacent, more rural townships. Unusual, Monkton also had bog iron, which could be gathered and used, especially to build ships defending the Great Lakes border with Canada at time of war.
This caused nine forges to be there by 1813 and a shipyard devoted to defending Lake Champlain. A 26-gunner called the Saratoga was completed in just 40 days. When the war ended, cheaper British-produced iron again replaced the local bog iron, so the new jobs added at wartime went away. Bristol would then seem more appealing. See Vergennes.org for more details.
Worth noting, there was a third Hoyt-Robblee marriage, with twists. Keturah Robblee Hoyt's mother had been Keturah Baker Robblee. Two husbands' names are noted on her gravestone in New Haven, says Walcott. After first spouse William Robblee died back in Lanesborough, Mass., the elder Keturah moved to Vermont and married the elder of two Stephen Haights. Widower Stephen's address was Monktown. Hoyt relatives that went south out of Connecticut, down toward Long Island, toward the Dutch and a smaller set of Quakers, began using the Haight spelling then. They are sometimes seen as Hait. The rest, who stayed in the Puritan region, shifted from using Hoyte to Hoyt, sometimes seen as Hoit. Stephen Haight is buried in a Quaker (Friends) cemetery in Monkton.
Uriah and Permelia moved to and then left Monktown, known to be there in 1813, presumed there until the war and job-dismantling ended, 1814-16. They moved permanently to Bristol, VT, where their last children were born and where on, if not both Permelia and Uriah died, proven with paperwork, stones that once existed and were used to "reconstrcut" the paperwork now gone.
Philip Ruble would be seen living in Bristol, near widowed Uriah in the 1840 Census, after Permelia had died. Philip was a documented son of Reuben, Permelia's brother. There were no other Hoyts (or Rubles?) buried there?
Was she already sick when they moved to Bristol, so she wanted to be near Philip? Son Ezra would die of consumption, aka TB/Tuberculosis. That could kill many in the same family.
Was TB Permelia's illness as well?
**** PART FOUR******
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DEATH & BURIAL RECORDS.
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Permelia is buried back in New Haven, perhaps near daughter Abigail, stones of both missing, so it's lovely that the town kept her cemetery record of the now missing stone as a death record. (Abigail's stone must have already disappeared, too late to reconstruct a paper record for it.)
Spouse Uriah was buried in Bristol, with the second wife. Is he the only Hoyt in the cemetery?
Deaths from "Vermont Vital Records, 1760-1954"
PERMELIA, 1827:
FamilySearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-1-16273-26522-10
URIAH, 1849:
FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:939V-S61S-P
SON EZRA, NAMING HIS PARENTS, 1859:
FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:939V-S64X-S
(1) Permelia's original death record was too early to show much, may simply have consisted of her stone. The paper copy, thus, merely cites her age and her burial as at Evergreen Cemetery in New Haven. Handwritten, the reconstruction was done in 1919, a century ago, signed by the clerk of New Haven. Again, the stone is now gone, but we know it once existed due to the reconstruction paperwork.
(2) Her age at death was 61 years, 1 month.
(3) Her husband was her survivor, so knew how to spell her name. The record says "Permelia".
(4) Uriah died considerably later. His record also appears to be gravestone information, as Varney Cemetery is listed on it. Its information matches his stone.
Son Ezra's record ten years later is modern, more thorough, a true death record, but done in a time when no survivors remained who called his mother something other than "mother" or "grandma". Someone clearly guessed "Permilia", based on hearing it said one or twice, not on seeing it correctly written.
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PART FIVE.
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PATTERNS & MYSTERIES:
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If a child's burial place seems a mystery, then the last known residence is cited, dated by the last census there, 1850 to 1870.
(1) Wartime death cluster--Two deaths in 1813, while in Monktown, could have been caused by the same contagion. Two sons died within weeks of each other (Mar. 22 for Seymour, Apr. 16 for Thomas).
War caused crowding into "safe houses", with germs quickly shared. War-time food shortages can weaken resistance to sickness.
For the War of 1812, with Monkton farmers' city of Vergennes a main shipping point, the area turned into a maker of US gunboats. Commodore MacDonough made Vergennes into a full winter camp by the end of 1813. They thus became targets, a persisting war zone. They were not simply attacked by the British. An embargo stopped all British-produced goods, including supplies from Canada, normally entering adjacent Lake Champlain via the Great Lakes.
(2) Children's Migrations and Spouses-- Names above were those last remembered by her children's survivors. If an earlier death, survivors to do reporting included herself.
Whether ordering stones or writing records, a survivor's recall of a parents' places may not match the actual (especially after widowing and re-marrying). Modern record searches let us double-check, verify.
For example, for Permelia's son Orville, the reporting survivor, maybe a sibling or nephew, recalled only that he perhaps went to NY. His true burial place was found by tracking his children's records as they migrated. The discovery--He maybe lived separately, surname mis-spelled, but repeatedly stayed in the same town as daughter Julia as she and her spouse moved.
The NY mistake for his final location seems due to the birthplaces of two of his children, where he lived only a short time granddaughters to Permelia. NY was "on the way" to somewhere else. The daughter most useful, Julia Hoyt Marshall, had married in Wisconsin, with the marriage clerk or minister writing her father's name as "Orvil". She then went to Hinesburg, VT, with Canadian-born spouse, George M. Marshall. Birth records for some children reported theiri mother Julia had been been born in 1834, saying Newark, NY , confirming Wayne County.
Two of Orville's other children, Ruth and Thomas, married in Hinesburg, VT. Thus, they also moved with the Marshalls.
For daughter Ruth Hoyt Baldwin, her marriage record named parents as Orville and Lorraine, seen elsewhere as Lorania Keith. Ruth's gravepage repeats Wayne County, NY as birthplace.
An 1860 Census in Hinesburg showed Julia Hoyt and spouse George Marshall, now with their own children, plus his Vermont-born brother, Charles Marshall, both men "wheelwrights". That would let them run a home business, so-called a "cottage industry" common back then, in the era pre-factories.
On the same handwritten form, a scribbled name was at the bottom of the household next-door, bottom being where boarders and employees might be. He was "Orvil Hoyt", day laborer, his landlord family named "La Pelle". Since his hosts sounded French, however, one transcriber read his name as "Orvil Hayett". That it was Orville Hoyt is confirmed by his daughter Julia's presence, next-door, and his Vermont birth, early, 1800-1801, judging from his age.
The Marshalls returned to Wisc. Permelia's son Orville again must have moved with his daughter Julia. In the 1870 Census, listed as a farmer, his name was so scrawled, it appeared to say "Ohel Hoyt", age 69.
(3) Fickle geography--Sometimes names of places (and thus an assigned courthouse) can change, without people moving. Note that Hinesburg, VT, was once at the north end of Addison County, but it is in Chittendon County, now. Son Ezra moved to Hinsburg when other siblings did so, but, unlike them, stayed and is buried there.
(4) Missing gravestones--
(A) Evergreen Cemetery in New Haven-- Many old stones are faded or missing, with stones sometimes swept away at flood times. A happy workaround? For daughter Abigail and for Permelia, information for their and other now missing stones was preserved on paper cards made in the early 1900s, by the county, in order to fulfill a state requirement that information be sent in. These were reconstructions based on a mix, walking the cemeteries, thus seeing the stones that would still have existed a century ago, maybe still readable, or if not, using paper records to decipher whatever weathering had worn away on soft stone. Death can be "off" a few days if a burial/funeral date was substituted.
Not fixable--Some stones were missing before that reconstruction. No paper record was made, or was too faded or too torn to be of use.
PART SIX. HER PARENTAGE. According to family historian Walcott, the most likely father for both Permelia and Philip was NY-born Reuben Robblee/Ruble, the side to return to NY state. Her exact birthdate, birthplace, and parentage are not spelled out in official records. They must be inferred from circumstances.
First, her birth year is calculated from her age of 60 years and 1 month at her death date. 1766 was the year of Permelia's birth, also the year Rueben bought land in Lanesborough.
Second, the circumstance of certain Robblees/Rubles being together in Lanesborough over the decades of her youth narrows her father to one of the Robblee men moving to Lanesborough. There were several, Reuben and two Williams. The William who married Keturah Baker had a will mentioning his children, but Permelia was not in it. The older William, who married Abigail Brush, was in the wrong generation, the known grandfather for Keturah "Roblea" Hoyt the likely grandfather for Prmilia "Roblea" Hoyt. That leaves Reuben. Reuben was present though her wedding and births of her first children. He returned to NY after selling his Lanesborough land as the younger generation began moving to Vermont so was in the 1790 Census for Granville heading a full house.
CORRECTING MISTAKES. Seth and Keturah's son was on the multi-family committee completing the final version of DW Hoyt's book. Gould R. Hoyt died in 1866, five years before publication in 1871, however, so was not around to catch two errors. One put Seth's death date far too late, in the 1850s. The other was that Permelia and Keturah had been sisters.
Robblee family historian Cindy Walcott found a notice of brother-in-law Seth's will in a newspaper. He died Jan. 6, 1831, explaining why Keturah left VT soon afterward, to live by 1833 with son Gould in Clearwater County, Penn., where she and some of her children are buried. Cindy Walcott also found a report of the will written by Keturah's father, William Robblee/Rublee/Ruble. It omitted Permelia, as did a listing of William's children kept by the town. Her presumed father was Rueben, that of William's brothers who bought land in town in the year of Permelia's birth. The birth/baptism of her and two siblings near her in birth order are missing from town/church records. A transfer of records between the old and new towns and churches may have caused them to be lost.
Reuben's known son, Philip, would be in Vermont later, in Bristol Twp. living very near to where Uriah and Permelia moved. Walcott thinks he left for NY and then returned to VT based on the 1790 Census count back in NY for their father's house. However, farmers in that era had "hired hands" living on-site, relatives visiting, and schoolteachers boarding, in addition to their own family living at home. Reuben's house thus could have had a full count without Philip being present. Relatives often moved together, to be each other's support system, so Philip had a reason to follow Permelia and Uriah to the new place, or perhaps they followed him.
Copyright by JBrown, Julia Brown, Austin, TX, 2016, Revd. Feb. 2017, Aug, 2020 (children updated),Sept 2022 (parents updated).
Permission given to Findagrave for use at this page.
Uriah and Permelia's IDs: 158778897 68965015
These next links were disabled when Findagrave remodeled its website:
List of Children, with Notes
Towns & Moves-- War Work in Monkton
Official Death & Cemetery Records
PARENT UPDATE
2022-09 WARNING--Cindy Walcott, a family historian says Permelia was " almost certainly not the child of William Robblee and Keturah Baker. "
The process of elimination leaves Reuben Rublee as her father, but a will or other proof is lacking.
Permelia was #27 in Walcott's old list of 2010.
Permelia's ten verifiable children (so excluding Milo) were #163 to #173.
Living near Keturah's burial spot in Vermont, Wolcott revises her "Presumed Descendants of William Rublier and Abigail Brush", as needed. Find the last version and the family's other historians at: RobleesOnline.org/resources/
KEY RELATIONSHIPS. Causing confusion, two related families, Reuben's and William's' were in Lanesborough, MA, together. Permelia's birth year put her between two of her cousins, William and Keturah's sons called William and Hiram, born 1765 and 1767. Mothers of big families often asked same-aged children to play together at family gatherings. Marriages might follow later, as favorite siblings and cousins then introduced each other to favorite friends from school and church. The cousin who was a junior Keturah thus married a Seth Hoyt related to Permelia's spouse, Uriah Hoyt.
*****PART ONE********
HER STRANGE NAME
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PERMELIA. Old-time parents might call a healthy pink-cheeked or red-haired daughter Roseanna or Rosetta. A dark-haired beauty? They might call her Permelia. Originally spelled Parmelia, the phrase once meant a plant useful for dying things, having a black or brown color when the plant dried. (Par = "useful for". Melia = "darkening". The name Melanie is related, reminding us that the modern word "melanin" means the cancer-avoiding pigment produced by tanning.)
In particular, the old-time Scots used certain lichens for home-dying of wool. Some say they plucked dead lichen scraps off the ground after a rain, to avoid destroying the rocks and trees on which a species grew. Some useful ones were called Parmelia Saxatilis and Parmelia Sulcata. Parmelia dyes are still used for so-called "Harris tweeds". These are made in an island chain off the west coast of Scotland, sometimes known as the Outer Hebrides.
With that Scottish dyers' name, was an ancestor Scottish?
Some using the Robblee name in Canada said yes. British dialects turned the Latin/Greek "par" into "per". Parmelia and Permelia thus both became accepted spellings for daughters' names.
She is hard to find in records, with names easily mis-written. Say "car" with a Boston accent, listeners may think they've heard cah"? "Pamelia", instead of Parmelia or Permelia? Modern viewers can't believe what they see, substitute "Pamela".
RUBLE. A "lea" or "ley" was some type of meadow, a meadow with the plant "rue"? belonging to a Ruben? About her maiden name, big families sometimes used variations the way French-Canadians used "dit names", to avoid confusion. "We're the Ruble/Roblea set, not the Rublee/Robblee ones. We like each other, but our mothers chose different churches".
That's just a sample. An R always starts the name. There's always at least one B. The final ending always sounds like "ee", not silent as in English.
Recall that early European NY was limited to "New Amsterdam", with early clerks using the proprietors' spelling rules, not English one.s There are dialects that make B and P sound interchangeable. The Dutch/Walloon name of Rapalje with a P seems to be unrelated, used by giant landowners early to New Amsterdam, their name having to do with skill at rappelling up cliff-sides. Some were slaveholders off to a Spanish-held early version of Mississippi.
*****PART TWO********
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The Eleven to Twelve Children
of Permelia and Uriah Hoyt
(by birthplace & birth order)
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Born Lanesborough, MA, 1787
** Ezra (buried in next county north, Chittenden, known to die of "consumption", that is, TB, dying in his 70s, he must have contracted the slow killer late in life. He thus was not impoverished by its reducing his work hours for two decades, and killing his young children, as seen for other victims, so had a stone. )
Born New Haven, VT, 1789-1791
** Seymour (unmarried, died youngish in Monkton, 1813)
** Abigail (unmarried, buried in New Haven, VT, 1821)
** Orrin (West Addison cemetery, 1884)
Born Bristol, VT, 1793-1810
** Henry (West Addison, lived with George S., 1850)
** Phebe (marr. Hines/Hinds/Hindes, West Addison)
** Uriah (to Canada briefly, died Chagrin Falls, OH, 1870, wife a Dayton)
** Orville (to NY and Hinesburg, VT, buried Adams County, Wisc.)
** Thomas (died at age 10, buried in Monkton, 1813)
** "Milo"(?)
** George S. (NY? West Addison by 1850)
** Sophia Maria (marr. Erastmus Meach Partch of Bristol, VT, to Durand, Winnebago Cty, Illinois by 1870, widowed, so lived with daughter Jenett/Jennette Toal.)
Permelia saw at least three children die before her:
Seymour and Thomas, then Abigail. Maybe "Milo"?
Sons Uriah and George S. named daughters for her.
Daughter Sophia Maria named a son Orville Hoyt, for Permelia's spouse . [2022 update: Found as Orville H Partch, Civil War Veteran, buried in Winnebago County, Illinois. One mis-spelling seen is Patch. If it began as Partsch, it might have been Germanic.]
VERIFIED--Most of her children have been cited by at least two sources, their names not changed by any decision about her parents, as the unusual ones were borrowed heavily from her spouse's Hoyts.
UNVERIFIED--"Milo" --just one source, a brief mention, a biography of Uriah Hoyt (seen in "Genealogical and Family History of the State of Vermont", by Hiram Carleton, 1903). Was Milo an infant who died soon after birth?
*****PART THREE******
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THE BIGGER STORY,
BRINGING IN THE HOYTS
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THEIR TOWNS AND MOVES. The Rubles/Robblees and Hoyts/Haights were people who found new opportunity for each new generation by moving with the frontier. Their towns thus truly changed, due to moves, not due to name changes by politicians.
The two families ran into each other in Lanesborough, Mass., ahead of the American Revolution. The elder Hoyts hailed from the main Connecticut colonial towns, allowing them to migrate up the Connecticut River, to Lanesborough MA, then to VT. The elder Rubles/Robblees were instead NY-born (in the Philipse Patent?). The Robblees were last of a strangely spelled old Dutchess County. Four answered to debt charges in county court involving unpaid fines after someone from a future in-law family (Bundy) had reported them for disturbing the peace. We are curious. Was the cause too-loud fiddling at a lovely barn dance? Or more like siblings screaming at each other in a loud fight? (or...?).
The last NY place mentioned for the Robblees/Rubblees was Nine Partners, maybe the last place they were assessed for property taxes? Also seen for distant Haight cousins who perhaps went to Monkton earlier, Nine Partners turned into Crum Elbow precinct for some records left by the Quaker side's Haights. (It then turned into Charlotte precinct after the distant Haight cousins left, to be subdivided further later.)
Their places were turning from colonies to states. It would take time to resolve boundaries.
The young of the two families attended school and church together, allowing Permelia and Uriah to meet and marry in the late 1700s. A century later, in 1871, David W. Hoyt published his final version of "The History of the Hoyts", relying on survivors. Which ones? Permelia's youngest brother-in-law, the one named Seymour? Or her own son, Uriah the Jr., dying in 1870, input possible earlier, but missing the final deadline? Or, the literate Hoyt who wrote beautifully of his mother, cousin Keturah, the one who married Seth? That Gould R. Hoyt died in 1866 in this writer's southeastern Minnesota, his absence and failure to reply noted by the Hoyt book's author/editor (with, it turns out, Gould's death preceding publication by five years)
D.W. noted that two young women he called "Roblea" and "Ruble" married two young Hoyt men while in Lanesborough, before both couples moved on to Vermont. Permelia married Uriah. Her presumed cousin, Keturah aka Catherine Roblea/Robblee/Ruble, daughter of Keturah Baker, married Uriah's brother, Seth.
As a young couple needing land of their own, Permelia and spouse Uriah then moved with many others, including Seth and Keturah, going northward, out of Mass., up-river. One could go into NY and up the Hudson River, to Lake Champlain. One could go north more directly, head a bit east, to go up the closer Connecticut River, into Vermont, if far enough north, to have some contact with the French-Canadians.
Their moves were not "all at once", but staggered. It took ten-plus years for all to re-locate to Vermont, their first choice to be Addison County.
(FICKLE GEOGRAPHIES. Lanesborough had been in Berkshire County, on a fickle state boundary to be contested by NY and Mass. Not everyone who went to the Lanesborough frontier stayed. Some from NY forfeited their land when the final decision favored MA. Others moved by choice.)
REUBEN AND PHILIP. A relative named Reuben Robblee, whose other dates made him right to be her father? He returned to NY. His original buying of the MA land occurred near the time his middle children were born. Earlier ones had been baptized back in NY, so their father was of better record there. When she and Uriah ventured off to Monkton VT and then Bristol, they would be in the same small rural places as Reuben's verified son, Philip.
In 1785, with Vermont still independent, not giving up its Republic status until 1790, officials "spun-off" Addison County from a portion of Rutland County, Vermont. Permelia and Uriah arrived after the spinning off. Vermont was able to negotiate for free trade with Quebec, as Vermont was untied to the new Union which preferred to reject waht was seen as pro-British. With Quebec as a trading partner, however, Vermont offered more job possibilities than average, helping those tired of farming or shop-keeping.
Putting son Ezra's burial in a different county, Chittenden and then Franklin Counties would split from Addison later. Before all of that, they had been part of an ultra-large Bennington County. Bennington, in turn, on its north end, while still very large, once covered an old short-lived county of NY called Charlotte. Created by NY pre-Revolution ,out of old Albany County, NY intended it to be a new frontier for its large landowners. Some NY settlers moved in, attracting perhaps old neighbors of the Robblees, perhaps of the large landlord sort. This earlier NY frontier extended, all the way to the eastern banks of the CT River, so included and then went past future New Haven, Monkton and Bristol. How early was her brother Philip Robblee there, going by Rublee, near the end??
Just as mother Albany County had done, the now extinct Charlotte County overlapped with other provinces/colonies further east. NY's eastern frontier specifically overlapped with three newly settled western frontiers of OTHER future states, oceanfront CT to the south, rural Massachusetts in the middle, and wild Vermont at the north end, extending up to Canada, with trading opportunities with Quebec.
Why the overlap? At the beginning, the old Kings' officials defined centers of adjacent provinces carefully, so each port and city were assigned to just one colony. This worked in the first century, provinces not overlapping at their edges, there was no competition over frontiers, all conflict instead being ethnic, British warrings against the French, against the natives, against the Dutch.
Later, the same officials who nicely did the seaside centers had to guess where to put inner edges, maps of interiors not good yet, too much uncharted. OOPs-- edges overlapped. The latest young farmers looked for new frontiers, having found closer-in land already taken. They might settle on the edge then feel extreme surprise to see others enter, saying they owned the same land. Also common-- two sets of tax collectors might come through, asking that double taxes be paid.
Where the Penn. and Conn. edges overlapped, some Hoyts move out there found they had to leave. Land granted to both Connecticut and to William Penn wasresolved in favor of the "Pennites". The "Connecticut sufferers" were allowed to "make-up" for their Penn. loss with "Western Reserve" land granted in frontier Ohio, pre-War of 1812. Some would sell their grants, letting others move there. Ohio also had The Firelands, to make up for British ships firing on and burning of coastal cities at wartime. One resulting town in Ohio would be called Norwalk, named after the CT town co-founded by Uriah's immigrant ancestor, Simon Hoyt/Hoyte. Permelia and Uriah's son, Uriah the Jr., and his wife, Comfort Dayton, would end in the Connecticut Western Reserve, which was not in Connecticut, but in northeastern Ohio, uphill from Cleveland.
Hoyts who had gone temporarily to Penn., cited (in a will by their father?) in "Orphans' Court", as having land to sell, left for Ohio, headed by Stephen/Stephens Hoyt. The 1820 US Census found him located in Logan County, Ohio. Son Ransford C. Hoyt was named for his presumed uncle (the latter known more simply as Ransford Hoyt, mentioned with Stephen, as having been left property by Jedediah Hoyt in Orphan's Court, taxed/sold later.) Ransford C. was born in Logan County's seat, Bellefontaine, Ohio, in 1808 (said by family? no birth recordkeeping by early Ohio governments). Two daughters of Stephen were known via marriages in Logan County, Mary Hoyt (m. Calhoun/Calhoon) and Sylvy Hoyt (m. Waggoner).
Doing what was typical for the Hoyts, finding frontier land for the next generation, the orphan court pair went next to Michigan, with close relatives of Uriah from Addison County, VT, to follow.
Ransford C. filed for homestead land in Michigan first, in 1831, in Kalamazoo County, near Schoolcraft. His father, as Stephens Hoyt, filed a few years later, but had been the one taking the family and a group out to prospect it earlier, ahead of the Harrisons, who were given the credit. Uriah's brother, Seymour Hoyt, filed last. All three men clearly used some female ancestors' maiden name as their first name. They were all sufficiently north that they were not affected by a dispute that caused Michigan's southernmost territory to be moved into Indiana. This could split up families and land oddly. In one case, family's southerly farmhouse was put into Indiana, but their farmland was left in Michigan.
Of the Hoyts, brother Seymour could have followed brother Seth's children out to a different corner of Pennsylvania, with coal mining and lumbering. Their eldest brother, Judge Ezra Hoyt, aovided mining, raised sons to be ministers and a daughter to marry a minister. Thus, Uriah's nephew, the Rev. Ova Hoyt, would end his days as a minister in the Schoolcraft church in Michigan.)
New Englanders, such as the Hoyts, were often community people, not individualists. They often held offices as a public service, not for the prestige. They made many attachments and were fond of places left behind. As they moved, they re-used the old place names.
Calling their newly created Vermont town "New Haven" would remind some Hoyt in-laws of their Connecticut birth place that burned. Calling the road upon which they lived in VT by the name "Lanesboro Street" reminded them all of their last town in Massachusetts.
An old "History of Addison County, Vermont", by Henry Perry Smith was published in 1886. It says their street ran north out of New Haven, that families from Lanesboro, Mass. came to settle it. They arrived 1781 to 1792, said Smith. These, his book said, included at least three Hoyts that we recognize as closely related to her spouse Uriah. (They were Ezra Hoyt and Seth Hoyt, plus Seymour Hoyt, most likely all three brothers, with father Ezra Hoyt living in one of their houses.) Families recognizable, then or later, as Hoyt in-laws came to the same street. (They were William Seymour, Matthew Phelps, George Smith, and Andrew Squier.)
Uriah and Permelia would delay fully arriving in New Haven, VT, until some time after 1787, but came before 1789, judging from their children's births. Perhaps Uriah went first, by himself, to clear land? Did he or they, at first, double-up with someone already there, maybe with Seth and the junior Keturah?
Family historian Cindy Walcott said that Keturah's mother, Keturah/Catherine the elder, maiden name Baker, would follow later. (Keturah's father, William Robblee, died back in Lanesborough in 1792, freeing her mother to move.)
There would be reasons for moving again, going up Lanesboro Street to Monkton, then to Bristol. Wolcott noted that a Nathaniel/Nathaneal Robblee bought Permelia and Uriah's New Haven land. They left the security of the Hoyt family, clustered together back in New Haven, for an isolated place to the north.
Bristol was north, but furthest north was Monktown, both still in Addison County. Children's birth and death places indicate both were addresses for Permelia and Uriah.
Why were they in Monkton? The timing for the two son's Monkton deaths gives the answer, saying War of 1812. Monkton was said to need more workers, jobs gone when the war finished. Due to its superior water access, the area already had mills and shipping, so already had lots of non-agricultural jobs, unlike the adjacent, more rural townships. Unusual, Monkton also had bog iron, which could be gathered and used, especially to build ships defending the Great Lakes border with Canada at time of war.
This caused nine forges to be there by 1813 and a shipyard devoted to defending Lake Champlain. A 26-gunner called the Saratoga was completed in just 40 days. When the war ended, cheaper British-produced iron again replaced the local bog iron, so the new jobs added at wartime went away. Bristol would then seem more appealing. See Vergennes.org for more details.
Worth noting, there was a third Hoyt-Robblee marriage, with twists. Keturah Robblee Hoyt's mother had been Keturah Baker Robblee. Two husbands' names are noted on her gravestone in New Haven, says Walcott. After first spouse William Robblee died back in Lanesborough, Mass., the elder Keturah moved to Vermont and married the elder of two Stephen Haights. Widower Stephen's address was Monktown. Hoyt relatives that went south out of Connecticut, down toward Long Island, toward the Dutch and a smaller set of Quakers, began using the Haight spelling then. They are sometimes seen as Hait. The rest, who stayed in the Puritan region, shifted from using Hoyte to Hoyt, sometimes seen as Hoit. Stephen Haight is buried in a Quaker (Friends) cemetery in Monkton.
Uriah and Permelia moved to and then left Monktown, known to be there in 1813, presumed there until the war and job-dismantling ended, 1814-16. They moved permanently to Bristol, VT, where their last children were born and where on, if not both Permelia and Uriah died, proven with paperwork, stones that once existed and were used to "reconstrcut" the paperwork now gone.
Philip Ruble would be seen living in Bristol, near widowed Uriah in the 1840 Census, after Permelia had died. Philip was a documented son of Reuben, Permelia's brother. There were no other Hoyts (or Rubles?) buried there?
Was she already sick when they moved to Bristol, so she wanted to be near Philip? Son Ezra would die of consumption, aka TB/Tuberculosis. That could kill many in the same family.
Was TB Permelia's illness as well?
**** PART FOUR******
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DEATH & BURIAL RECORDS.
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Permelia is buried back in New Haven, perhaps near daughter Abigail, stones of both missing, so it's lovely that the town kept her cemetery record of the now missing stone as a death record. (Abigail's stone must have already disappeared, too late to reconstruct a paper record for it.)
Spouse Uriah was buried in Bristol, with the second wife. Is he the only Hoyt in the cemetery?
Deaths from "Vermont Vital Records, 1760-1954"
PERMELIA, 1827:
FamilySearch.org/pal:/MM9.3.1/TH-1-16273-26522-10
URIAH, 1849:
FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:939V-S61S-P
SON EZRA, NAMING HIS PARENTS, 1859:
FamilySearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:939V-S64X-S
(1) Permelia's original death record was too early to show much, may simply have consisted of her stone. The paper copy, thus, merely cites her age and her burial as at Evergreen Cemetery in New Haven. Handwritten, the reconstruction was done in 1919, a century ago, signed by the clerk of New Haven. Again, the stone is now gone, but we know it once existed due to the reconstruction paperwork.
(2) Her age at death was 61 years, 1 month.
(3) Her husband was her survivor, so knew how to spell her name. The record says "Permelia".
(4) Uriah died considerably later. His record also appears to be gravestone information, as Varney Cemetery is listed on it. Its information matches his stone.
Son Ezra's record ten years later is modern, more thorough, a true death record, but done in a time when no survivors remained who called his mother something other than "mother" or "grandma". Someone clearly guessed "Permilia", based on hearing it said one or twice, not on seeing it correctly written.
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PART FIVE.
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PATTERNS & MYSTERIES:
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If a child's burial place seems a mystery, then the last known residence is cited, dated by the last census there, 1850 to 1870.
(1) Wartime death cluster--Two deaths in 1813, while in Monktown, could have been caused by the same contagion. Two sons died within weeks of each other (Mar. 22 for Seymour, Apr. 16 for Thomas).
War caused crowding into "safe houses", with germs quickly shared. War-time food shortages can weaken resistance to sickness.
For the War of 1812, with Monkton farmers' city of Vergennes a main shipping point, the area turned into a maker of US gunboats. Commodore MacDonough made Vergennes into a full winter camp by the end of 1813. They thus became targets, a persisting war zone. They were not simply attacked by the British. An embargo stopped all British-produced goods, including supplies from Canada, normally entering adjacent Lake Champlain via the Great Lakes.
(2) Children's Migrations and Spouses-- Names above were those last remembered by her children's survivors. If an earlier death, survivors to do reporting included herself.
Whether ordering stones or writing records, a survivor's recall of a parents' places may not match the actual (especially after widowing and re-marrying). Modern record searches let us double-check, verify.
For example, for Permelia's son Orville, the reporting survivor, maybe a sibling or nephew, recalled only that he perhaps went to NY. His true burial place was found by tracking his children's records as they migrated. The discovery--He maybe lived separately, surname mis-spelled, but repeatedly stayed in the same town as daughter Julia as she and her spouse moved.
The NY mistake for his final location seems due to the birthplaces of two of his children, where he lived only a short time granddaughters to Permelia. NY was "on the way" to somewhere else. The daughter most useful, Julia Hoyt Marshall, had married in Wisconsin, with the marriage clerk or minister writing her father's name as "Orvil". She then went to Hinesburg, VT, with Canadian-born spouse, George M. Marshall. Birth records for some children reported theiri mother Julia had been been born in 1834, saying Newark, NY , confirming Wayne County.
Two of Orville's other children, Ruth and Thomas, married in Hinesburg, VT. Thus, they also moved with the Marshalls.
For daughter Ruth Hoyt Baldwin, her marriage record named parents as Orville and Lorraine, seen elsewhere as Lorania Keith. Ruth's gravepage repeats Wayne County, NY as birthplace.
An 1860 Census in Hinesburg showed Julia Hoyt and spouse George Marshall, now with their own children, plus his Vermont-born brother, Charles Marshall, both men "wheelwrights". That would let them run a home business, so-called a "cottage industry" common back then, in the era pre-factories.
On the same handwritten form, a scribbled name was at the bottom of the household next-door, bottom being where boarders and employees might be. He was "Orvil Hoyt", day laborer, his landlord family named "La Pelle". Since his hosts sounded French, however, one transcriber read his name as "Orvil Hayett". That it was Orville Hoyt is confirmed by his daughter Julia's presence, next-door, and his Vermont birth, early, 1800-1801, judging from his age.
The Marshalls returned to Wisc. Permelia's son Orville again must have moved with his daughter Julia. In the 1870 Census, listed as a farmer, his name was so scrawled, it appeared to say "Ohel Hoyt", age 69.
(3) Fickle geography--Sometimes names of places (and thus an assigned courthouse) can change, without people moving. Note that Hinesburg, VT, was once at the north end of Addison County, but it is in Chittendon County, now. Son Ezra moved to Hinsburg when other siblings did so, but, unlike them, stayed and is buried there.
(4) Missing gravestones--
(A) Evergreen Cemetery in New Haven-- Many old stones are faded or missing, with stones sometimes swept away at flood times. A happy workaround? For daughter Abigail and for Permelia, information for their and other now missing stones was preserved on paper cards made in the early 1900s, by the county, in order to fulfill a state requirement that information be sent in. These were reconstructions based on a mix, walking the cemeteries, thus seeing the stones that would still have existed a century ago, maybe still readable, or if not, using paper records to decipher whatever weathering had worn away on soft stone. Death can be "off" a few days if a burial/funeral date was substituted.
Not fixable--Some stones were missing before that reconstruction. No paper record was made, or was too faded or too torn to be of use.
PART SIX. HER PARENTAGE. According to family historian Walcott, the most likely father for both Permelia and Philip was NY-born Reuben Robblee/Ruble, the side to return to NY state. Her exact birthdate, birthplace, and parentage are not spelled out in official records. They must be inferred from circumstances.
First, her birth year is calculated from her age of 60 years and 1 month at her death date. 1766 was the year of Permelia's birth, also the year Rueben bought land in Lanesborough.
Second, the circumstance of certain Robblees/Rubles being together in Lanesborough over the decades of her youth narrows her father to one of the Robblee men moving to Lanesborough. There were several, Reuben and two Williams. The William who married Keturah Baker had a will mentioning his children, but Permelia was not in it. The older William, who married Abigail Brush, was in the wrong generation, the known grandfather for Keturah "Roblea" Hoyt the likely grandfather for Prmilia "Roblea" Hoyt. That leaves Reuben. Reuben was present though her wedding and births of her first children. He returned to NY after selling his Lanesborough land as the younger generation began moving to Vermont so was in the 1790 Census for Granville heading a full house.
CORRECTING MISTAKES. Seth and Keturah's son was on the multi-family committee completing the final version of DW Hoyt's book. Gould R. Hoyt died in 1866, five years before publication in 1871, however, so was not around to catch two errors. One put Seth's death date far too late, in the 1850s. The other was that Permelia and Keturah had been sisters.
Robblee family historian Cindy Walcott found a notice of brother-in-law Seth's will in a newspaper. He died Jan. 6, 1831, explaining why Keturah left VT soon afterward, to live by 1833 with son Gould in Clearwater County, Penn., where she and some of her children are buried. Cindy Walcott also found a report of the will written by Keturah's father, William Robblee/Rublee/Ruble. It omitted Permelia, as did a listing of William's children kept by the town. Her presumed father was Rueben, that of William's brothers who bought land in town in the year of Permelia's birth. The birth/baptism of her and two siblings near her in birth order are missing from town/church records. A transfer of records between the old and new towns and churches may have caused them to be lost.
Reuben's known son, Philip, would be in Vermont later, in Bristol Twp. living very near to where Uriah and Permelia moved. Walcott thinks he left for NY and then returned to VT based on the 1790 Census count back in NY for their father's house. However, farmers in that era had "hired hands" living on-site, relatives visiting, and schoolteachers boarding, in addition to their own family living at home. Reuben's house thus could have had a full count without Philip being present. Relatives often moved together, to be each other's support system, so Philip had a reason to follow Permelia and Uriah to the new place, or perhaps they followed him.
Copyright by JBrown, Julia Brown, Austin, TX, 2016, Revd. Feb. 2017, Aug, 2020 (children updated),Sept 2022 (parents updated).
Permission given to Findagrave for use at this page.
Uriah and Permelia's IDs: 158778897 68965015
These next links were disabled when Findagrave remodeled its website:
List of Children, with Notes
Towns & Moves-- War Work in Monkton
Official Death & Cemetery Records
Inscription
Age 62 yrs, 1 mo
Gravesite Details
Stone was still viewable when cemetery record was made in 1919 (image upper left), already 90 years old then
Family Members
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