Whaling History, Melville's Moby Dick, and Rhode Island Genealogy (March 31, 2022)

 

[I have been on a hiatus from blogging while I work on a genealogy of the Tew family of Rhode Island descended from Richard Tew and his wife, Mary (Clarke) Tew, who arrived in New England from England in 1640.  The following is from some recent discoveries about one of those descendants.]

Several years ago I read a fascinating book titled “LEVIATHAN” by Eric Jay Dolin who lives in Marblehead, Massachusetts.  The book is about the history of whaling in New England. On October 3, 2015, I did a “review/recommendation” about the book here,  https://filiopietismprism.blogspot.com/2015/10/saturday-serendipity-october-3-2015.html#comment-form  Mr. Dolin actually commented on that blog post and alerted me to his newest book at the time about the history of the American lighthouse “BRILLIANT BEACONS: A HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN LIGHTHOUSE"––another engaging read, especially since one of my great great uncles was a keeper at Beavertail lighthouse on Conanicut Island (Jamestown), Rhode Island.  Eric Jay Dolin is an excellent writer and the latest of his books that I have read is “BLACK FLAGS, BLUE WATERS: THE EPIC HISTORY OF AMERICA’S MOST NOTORIOUS PIRATES.”  Thomas Tew, who is often referred to as "Rhode Island's pirate," is mentioned on nine pages of the book and that book is in my small collection of pirate books that discuss Thomas Tew.

 

In reading LEVIATHAN, I learned for the first time about the ship Essex, which got stove by a sperm whale in the southern Pacific and sunk. See, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essex_(whaleship) The experience of the Essex in 1820 was an inspiration for Melville’s novel Moby Dick.  The fate of the Essex crew was horrific. After the attack by the whale and the sinking of their ship, their experience is summarized at Wikipedia as follows . . .

"Thousands of miles from the coast of South America with little food and water, the 20-man crew was forced to make for land in the ship's surviving whaleboats. The men suffered severe dehydration, starvation, and exposure on the open ocean, and the survivors eventually resorted to eating the bodies of the crewmen who had died. When that proved insufficient, members of the crew drew lots to determine whom they would sacrifice so that the others could live. A total of seven crew members were cannibalized before the last of the eight survivors were rescued, more than three months after the sinking of the Essex.”

The sinking of the Essex  by a ramming sperm whale in 1820 was the only recorded incident of the kind, that is until the Ann Alexander suffered a similar fate in the Pacific thirty-one years later in 1851.  When that whaling ship was rammed by a sperm whale that had been hunted and wounded by the whaling crew, the Master of the Ann Alexander was a captain by the name of John Scott Deblois.  The fate of the Ann Alexander crew was much different that that of the Essex because they were rescued by the passing ship Nantucket not very long after their ship was demolished.  The harrowing story of the Ann Alexander was told to the New York Daily Times by Capt. Deblois and was verified by multiple eye witnesses following the inevitable investigation into the loss of the ship. 

Capt. John Scott Deblois

While doing some genealogy research, I discovered the story as published in the November 5, 1851 edition of the N.Y. Daily Times.  Read the story in the four-part clipping of the article that follows.  Those with genealogy roots in Rhode Island, and those with a general interest in what might be called obscure events and persons in Rhode Island history, will also want to read the rest of the story that follows the New York Daily Times account immediately below.  

AND NOW THE REST OF THE STORY . . . 

 

Capt. Deblois sailed out of New Bedford, Massachusetts, but he was a Rhode Islander who lived for a time in Providence and later in Newport (where it appears he was born).  He is buried in the Common Burial Ground in Newport along with his wife.  His gravestone reads, “John S. Deblois Born Nov. 25, 1816 Died Nov. 29, 1885 Late Master of Ship Ann Alexander which was stove and sunk by a Sperm Whale in the Pacific Ocean 1851.” His wife, Henrietta M. Deblois is buried near him and she died in 1883, two years before he did.

 

There is an interesting thing about Henrietta.  She was born in 1808 in Newport.  She and her husband John apparently had no children, but they appear to have lived comfortably and employed live-in domestic servants.  They also had Henrietta’s mother live with them in her old age until she died sometime after age 79. This is all documented in the federal census records from 1850 - 1870.  Henrietta’s mother, the former Elizabeth “Betsey” Grimes outlived her husband by 32 years.  Betsey and her husband William had two sons and four daughters in addition to Henrietta. Before Henrietta married John Deblois, her maiden name was Henrietta M. Tew.  She was the daughter of William Clarke Tew (1770-1822) and Elizabeth “Betsey” Grimes (1772-1854).  According to the calculator on Ancestry.com, Henrietta is my 3rd cousin 5 times removed. 

Meet Henrietta M (Tew) Deblois of Rhode Island.

Henrietta M. (Tew) Deblois

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Photographs of John and Henrietta Deblois are from the Newport Historical Society collection.  For more about John Scott Deblois and his wife Henrietta, and to see some interesting artifacts including scrimshaw images on whale teeth of Capt. Deblois and Henrietta, go to https://newporthistory.org/history-bytes-deblois-whaling-captain/ and https://newporthistory.org/found-whaling-wifes-journal-entries/.

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Copyright 2022, John D. Tew

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What Is HathiTrust and Why Do Genealogists Need to Be Familiar With it?

In 2008 a group of a dozen universities and the eleven libraries in the University of California system founded what was called the HathiTrust.  The universities involved were those members of the former Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC), which was formed in 1958 by the presidents of the university members of the Big Ten athletic conference as the academic consortium counterpart to the athletic organization.  In 1958 the member universities were: the University of Chicago[1], University of Illinois, Indiana University,  University of Iowa, University of Michigan, Michigan State University, University of Minnesota, Northwestern University, Ohio State University, Purdue University, and the University of Wisconsin.  Pennsylvania State University was added to the consortium in 1990 when it was admitted to the Big Ten and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln was added in 2011 for the same reason. In 2013 both Rutgers University and the University of Maryland joined the consortium and in 2014 both also were admitted to the Big Ten athletic conference.  Following the growth in the membership of both the athletic conference and the academic consortium, the name of the consortium was changed to the Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA) on June 29, 2016.

"Hathi" is from the Hindi language and it is the word for "elephant."  The word is pronounced like "hah-tee."  The name choice makes sense when one learns about the programs and projects instituted by HathiTrust and then recalls the association that the elephant has come to have with possession of a good long-term memory.  The saying "memory like an elephant" is derived at least in part by the ability elephants are said to have to remember the person who trained them even when they have not seen the person for twenty years or more.  It is the contributions of the HathiTrust Shared Print Program and the HathiTrust Digital Library project to the preservation of the collective long-term memory of our science and culture that makes the trust name so appropriate.

The HathiTrust Shared Print Program is a commitment by the participating libraries to retain and preserve as a distributed "collective collection" for at least 25 years monograph volumes that number some 18 million volumes as of a few years ago.  The HathiTrust Digital Library is a huge repository of digital content obtained from research libraries and includes content from Google Books and the Internet Archive digitization initiatives.  Digital content is also contributed by local libraries.  The repository is administered by the University of Michigan.

According to Wikipedia, as of late 2015 HathiTrust comprised over 13.7 million volumes and some 5.3 million of them were in the public domain in the U.S.  [There are now some 17 million volumes in the collection.]  Importantly, HathiTrust provides full-text search across the entire repository and in 2016 alone more than 6.17 million users in the United States and 236 other nations used HathiTrust for more than 10.9 million research sessions.  A web application called PageTurner is available at HathiTrust for viewing publications in the repository.  The application allows versions of the publications to be downloaded as a .pdf file and viewing of pages can be accomplished using thumbnail views, flipping, scrolling, or one page at a time. Recent changes to the viewer application are explained in a short illustrated YouTube video embedded on the HathiTrust home page at https://www.hathitrust.org. 

The HathiTrust repository has not been without controversy.  In 2011 the Authors Guild sued HathiTrust over alleged massive violations of copyright.  The federal Courts ruled in 2012 that the use of digitized books by Google fell under the fair use doctrine based on the "transformativeness" involved -- meaning that while the works involved had been transformed into digital versions the process had not infringed on the copyright holders' rights.  The Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the lower court ruling in June 2014 finding that giving search and accessibility for the visually impaired provided grounds for regarding the service as a transformative and fair use.  The matter was remanded to the lower court to reconsider the matter of the Guild's standing to sue with respect to the HathiTrust library preservation copies.  As of 2021 the HathiTrust copyright policy has been published with the following language

            "[M]any works in our collection are protected by copyright law, so we cannot ordinarily publicly display large portions of those protected works unless we have permission from the copyright holder", and thus "if we cannot determine the copyright or permission status of a work, we restrict access to that work until we can establish its status. Because of differences in international copyright laws, access is also restricted for users outside the United States to works published outside the United States after and including 1896."

So what does this have to do with genealogy?  Why should genealogists be interested in the HathiTrust repository?

The answer is simple and has to do with what can be found in a collection of some 17 million digitized volumes being preserved in the repository and made available for easy viewing.  Many, if not most, of the works in the collection are long out of print, in the public domain, and not easily found and accessed elsewhere in the original published book form without great effort and possible expense of traveling to a physical library or making a time consuming inter-library request for temporary use of the book.  Two examples will suffice to illustrate what is out there and available to the genealogist with internet connection and basic computer research skills.

Suppose you are interested in learning more about the early history of Rhode Island and particularly about the settlement of Aquidneck Island in Narragansett Bay.  If you go to the HathiTrust home page and do a search for "early history of Rhode Island" you will find that there are over 925,000 results.  But if you have read that there is a book from 1920 titled "History of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations" and enter that in the search bar, Voila!  There it is. . . a 1920 book on that subject by Thomas William Bicknell along with thousands of other results for old books that delve into the history of Rhode Island at various levels.

Or suppose that you are interested in the genealogy of the Carpenter family in the United States that originated from colonial Rehoboth, Massachusetts.  You have heard of a late 19th century genealogy on that family that has often been cited to even though it is recognized to have a number of errors or inaccuracies.  You do not recall the author and you just want to be able to see it without going to the DAR Library in Washington, D.C. where you are told there is a rare physical copy of the massive book.  You want to be able to view it yourself for clues and possible leads for your research.  You go to the HathiTrust home page and enter "Carpenter family Rehoboth, Massachusetts."  You are almost instantly provided with 45,398 results for your search, but the sixth hit down is a thumbnail view of the title page of an 1898 genealogy by Amos B. Carpenter titled "A genealogical history of the Rehoboth branch of the Carpenter family in America, brought down from their English ancestor John Carpenter 1303, with many biographical notes of descendants and allied families."  You click on the "Full View" link and within seconds you can now view a digitized version of the entire 976 pages compliments of digitization of an original copy owned by Cornell University.

The HathiTrust Digital Library should clearly be an arrow in the quiver of every dedicated genealogist.  Just give it a try!

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[1]  The university of Chicago was a founding member of the Big Ten conference, but withdrew from the athletic conference in 1946. Nevertheless, an invitation to the University to join the academic consortium in 1958 was accepted.  The University of Chicago is not currently a member of the BTAA.

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Copyright 2021, John D. Tew

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Military Monday -- Arnold G. Tew, Jr.

Arnold G. Tew, Jr. at Kings Point 

Arnold G. Tew, Jr. with his parents, Arnold G. Tew, Sr. and Huldah Tew, at his graduation

from Kings Point, the United States Merchant Marine Academy at Great Neck, New York.

Arnold G. Tew, Jr.

My father grew up in Cranston and Woonsocket, Rhode Island and later lived for a time in Wallingford, Connecticut with his Aunt Edna (Tew) Tarr and his Uncle Clifford Tarr.

Just nine days before the attack on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent entry of the United States into World War II, my father turned nineteen years old.  In March 1944 he graduated from Kings Point, the United States Merchant Marine Academy in Great Neck, New York.  Almost immediately he was at sea supporting the war effort by moving tons of cargo in supply convoys to Europe and other locations.  He served with the Merchant Marine until October 1952.

While my father was at Kings Point, cadets also spent about six months at sea before graduation.  In 1942, his class was split alphabetically for their cadet sea service and training either in the Atlantic or the Pacific. Those whose last names were toward the end of the alphabet, like my father's, drew cadet service in the Pacific.  My father has said many times that he thinks he is alive only because he drew service in the Pacific. 

In the Atlantic, the so-called "Battle of the Atlantic" raged from 1939 until Germany was defeated in 1945 -- and the battle reached its greatest intensity during the period from mid-1940 through the end of 1943.  It included the period of my father's cadet service in the Pacific.

The Battle of the Atlantic has been called the longest continuous military campaign of World War II and as Winston Churchill later stated, "The Battle of the Atlantic was the dominating factor all through the war. Never for one moment could we forget that everything happening elsewhere, on land, at sea or in the air depended ultimately on its outcome."  During this period, the Allied naval forces attempted a blockade of Germany while at the same time the merchant ships were doing their utmost to move cargo across the Atlantic to keep military forces supplied with weapons and other materials needed to sustain Allied efforts.  Germany responded to the blockade and to the supply efforts with a concerted and continuous attack against Allied naval and merchant ships.  They used U-boats (submarines), surface vessels and Luftwaffe aircraft.  From 1942 onward, German forces were especially directed at preventing a build-up of equipment and supplies that would support any Allied attempt to invade mainland Europe.  While ultimately the blockade of Germany failed, the Allies were able to win the "war of tonnage" by keeping Allied forces supplied with what was needed to bring the war to Germany and the Axis powers.

Few people realize the terrible cost of winning the tonnage supply battle that raged in the Atlantic.  There were 3,500 merchant ships and 175 warships lost during the Battle of the Atlantic, while Germany suffered a loss of 783 U-boats.  Some 3.1 million tons of merchant ships were lost during World War II and 1 in 24 merchant mariners died -- making the fatality rate of the Merchant Marines the highest casualty rate of any service during the war!  My father served on merchant ships in all the recognized theaters of war during WWII beginning with his cadet service in November 1942 (when he was 20 years old) through VJ Day in August 1945.  Most of his service was as either 2nd or 3rd Mate on the merchant ships Mishmaha, Vernon L. Parrington, Samuel Ashe and Sea Phoenix.

My father survived the war and continued service with the Merchant Marine until Fall 1952.  He ultimately gained his Master Mariner papers, which allowed him to take any size ship anywhere in the world.  My father is 90 years old now and a proud member of what has been called, "The Greatest Generation!" 

My father holding his WWII Merchant Marine Service medals.
[The ring on his hand is his Kings Point Class ring.]

WWII Honor Roll in Wallingford, Connecticut outside the former Lyman Hall school

Close-up of the Wallingford, Connecticut WWII Honor Roll

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All photos from the collection of the author.

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Copyright 2013, John D. Tew

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Immortality -- Arnold G. Tew

"Immortality Lies in Being Remembered by Family and Friends."

                                                                                                                                                                -- John D. Tew

Arnold George Tew (1896 - 1958)

My paternal grandfather was born on October 15, 1896 in Central Falls, Rhode Island.  He died suddenly and unexpectedly on this day 55 years ago in Berlin, Connecticut while on a business trip.  He was the only one of the four sons of John Andrew Tew and Margaret "Maggie" (Conner) Tew to survive beyond age two.  Arnold was married to Huldah A. Hasselbaum of Providence, Rhode Island and together they had three children.  Arnold is the grandfather of ten grandchildren, the great grandfather of sixteen great grandchildren and the great great grandfather of at least three great great grandchildren.

Raise a glass in memory of Arnold!

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All photographs from the collection of the author.

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Copyright 2013, John D. Tew

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Military Monday -- Everett S. Carpenter

My January 20, 2013 post focused on the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 that killed millions of people world-wide just when the horrors of World War I were finally coming to a close.  My maternal grandfather, Everett Shearman Carpenter, survived the first wave of the 1918 flu in the spring of 1918. In my January 20th post, I provided a copy of the postcard he sent to his mother informing her he had been in the hospital with a fever of 103 degrees as a result of "the grippe."

Everett's WWI service continued a long line of Carpenter military service going back as far as Col. Thomas Carpenter who served in the Revolutionary War and continuing with Joseph Carpenter in the War of 1812 and Everett's grandfather, Samuel Carpenter, in the Civil War.

Everett Shearman Carpenter circa 1918-1919

Everett tried to enlist in the Army soon after the United States entered WWI, but he twice failed the physical exam.  Finally, on his third attempt, he was accepted into the Ordnance Department on January 1, 1918 and reported to Watervliet Arsenal near Albany, New York on February 6, 1918.  He later was transferred to Camp Merritt in New Jersey and embarked for France on May 26, 1918.

Camp Merritt 1919

Everett arrived at Bordeaux and obtained training at the Ordnance Armament School in St. Jean-des-Monts where he graduated with an A rating.  Everett saw various service in France during the last months of WWI and into 1919.  He was promoted to Sergeant during this time.  On July 1, 1919 he was ordered to Paris where he was given duty as a courier to Washington, DC.  He arrived back in the U.S. on July 13th and took an overnight train from New York to Washington where he delivered the reports he had carried across the Atlantic.  On July 17, 1919, Everett was honorably discharged at Camp Meigs in Washington and arrived back home in Lonsdale (Cumberland), Rhode Island on July 18, 1919.

Panoramic view of Camp Meigs, Washington, DC
 July 20, 1918 three days after Everett Carpenter's discharge there

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For more information on Camp Merritt see http://www.bergencountyhistory.org/Pages/campmerritt.html

Camp Merritt photos from http://veterans.hackensackschools.org/VeteranSubpages/World%20War%20I%20Camp%20Merritt/Camp%20Merrit%20Subpages/Images%20Subpage/Camp%20Merritt%20Images.html# Photos #18 and #19.

Camp Meigs photo by H.M Brown of Washington, DC from the records of the War Department General and Special Staffs (165-PP-37-11) http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/panoramic_photography/part_3.html

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Copyright 2013, John D. Tew

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“Echoes from the Dorr Rebellion: The 1842 Aplin/Carpenter Correspondence.”

The following article is reprinted by permission of the New England Historic Genealogical Society. John D. Tew, “Echoes from the Dorr Rebellion: The 1842 Aplin/Carpenter Correspondence.” American Ancestors vol. 12, no. 4 (fall 2011): 37-40. For more information about American Ancestors magazine and the New England Historic Genealogical Society, please visit AmericanAncestors.org .

UPDATE:  This article was referenced in NEHGS's  The Weekly Genealogist, Vol. 16, No 18, Whole #633, May 1, 2013 in a piece by Editor Lynn Betlock titled "Dorr Rebellion Resources."  Thank you Lynn!

What Is A Dorrite? The 1842 Aplin/Carpenter Correspondence

My 3X great grandparents are Joseph Carpenter and his wife,  Nancy Mason Bullock.  Joseph was born in Rehoboth, Massachusetts on September 8, 1789 and he died in Attleboro, Massachusetts at age 91 in November 1880 just a few months after the death of his wife of more than 67 years.  Joseph and Nancy were married in Rehoboth on February 21, 1813 and she died in Attleboro on May 4, 1880.  Joseph was a veteran and pensioner of the War of 1812.

Joseph and Nancy had fourteen children – nine boys and five girls.  My 2X great grandfather, Samuel Carpenter, was one of the twins Joseph and Nancy had in 1828.  Sam’s sister, Jane Buffum Carpenter, died at just under two years old.

In late 1842, Joseph and Nancy were renting a home in Providence, Rhode Island from a woman named Emily Aplin and her siblings.  On November 2, 1842, Miss Aplin wrote a letter of eviction to my ancestors that included the following lines:

                        When the question was asked me if you could have

                        the tenement, I asked at once if you were a Dorrite!

                        My brother thought not for you appeared respectable,

                        but I have learned a different story – now I have no

                        possible objection to an honest suffrage man, but I say

                        without hesitation that were the privilege granted me

                        of choosing a tenant who must be either a Sabbath

                        breaker or Licentious or a gambler or Intemperate or

                        an understanding Dorrite, though I despise them all,

                        still there would be a decided preference for one of

                        the former named.  My whole soul shrinks from the

                        man, who to gratify his own selfishness would sacrifice

                        the welfare of a community.  So having my feelings I

                        proceed without further ceremony to request you

                        to vacate the tenement as soon as possible, at all

                        events at the end of the quarter.  Sooner would be

                        very agreeable if you can obtain a house, but I

                        repeat, certainly then.  I am decided.

The letter from Miss Aplin, and the reply from Joseph and Nancy’s daughter, Nancy Mason Carpenter (age 24), were found in the Anna Garlin Spencer Papers (DG 034), Swarthmore College Peace Collection.  [Anna Carpenter Garlin will the subject of a future post here on The Prism.] 

The Emily Aplin letter, November 2, 1842

The reply letter from Nancy Mason Carpenter,

November 4, 1842.

As you might imagine, reading a 169-year old letter evicting one’s ancestors from their home during a New England winter, grabs one’s attention – especially when the ancestor is being called a “Dorrite” and a Dorrite is being compared unfavorably with a Sabbath breaker, a gambler, a drinker and others of licentious nature.  I had to find out what this term “Dorrite” referred to.  My subsequent research and discovery led to an article that was published in the quarterly magazine of the New England Historic Genealogical Society, American Ancestors, in 2011.  NEHGS and American Ancestors have kindly granted me permission to post the article in its entirety here on The Prism.  The post of the article must be printed as it appears in American Ancestors and so it will follow in a separate post with the appropriate and required credits.  The permission of American Ancestors and NEHGS is greatly appreciated!

My lineage from Joseph Carpenter and Nancy Mason Bullock . . .

Generation 1:    Joseph Carpenter m. Nancy Mason Bullock

Generation 2:    Samuel Carpenter m. Ruth Ann Miller

Generation 3:    Samuel Eber Carpenter m. Sarah Etta Freeman

Generation 4:    Everett Shearman Carpenter m. Ruth Eaton Cooke

                            (my grandparents)

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Copyright 2013, John D. Tew

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The Genealogical Mystery of Thomas Tew, the Rhode Island Pirate

In January 2012, Heather Wilkinson Rojo, well-known blogger and owner of Nutfield Genealogy, generously asked me to submit as a potential guest blogger a piece on the "Rhode Island Pirate," Thomas Tew.  Heather accepted the piece and published it in its entirety on February 16, 2012.  

Now that I have started Filiopietism Prism, I asked Heather for permission to re-post the piece here.  She readily agreed.  [Thank you Heather!]  

The following is a re-post from the Tew label at Nutfield Genealogy of . . . 

The Genealogical Mystery of Thomas Tew, the Rhode Island Pirate

Copyright 2012, John D. Tew

The meeting between Thomas Tew and the Royal Governor

of New York, Benjamin Fletcher, as imagined by American

 illustrator Howard Pyle (1853 – 1911).

            When Heather’s Nutfield Genealogy blog became the first “Featured Blog” in The Weekly Genealogist newsletter of NEHGS, I took a gander and found, to my surprise, a November 4, 2011 piece on the "Rhode Island Pirate," Thomas Tew.  It is rare enough to find information on my Rhode Island Tew family, but anything potentially relating to the genealogy of Thomas Tew, the pirate, always grabs my immediate attention.  It was the possibility of being related to a pirate that first sparked my interest in family history back in the early 60s when I was not yet a teenager.  I recall how I discovered Ol’ Thomas was from Newport, Rhode Island and how I became really excited because I knew I was a direct descendant of Richard Tew and his wife, Mary (Clarke) Tew, who came to Newport from Maidford, Northamptonshire, England.  I have ever since been on the lookout for anything that might confirm a family relationship to an actual and hugely successful pirate.

            Heather mentioned the possibility of Ol’ Thomas being the brother of her ancestor, Seaborn Tew, and so I immediately contacted her to ask about any source material she might have.  We corresponded on the subject and the result was her very kind invitation to provide a guest piece about Thomas Tew, the pirate, for her blog.

            The BLUF (“bottom line up front") is that I am sorry to report after literally decades of searching many leads about Thomas Tew’s parentage and possible descendants, that I cannot confirm for Heather or myself any relationship to Thomas Tew.  But then, as presented below, others might be closer to descent from Ol’ Thomas than I or anyone else with the last name Tew.  A summary of a partial collection of references to Thomas Tew and his family history will demonstrate why.

  

            Much has been written about Thomas Tew and his brief but fabulously profitable exploits as a pirate.  The most consistent and salient points are worth brief mention.

 

            •  He lived in Newport, Rhode Island. 

            •  In 1693-94 he had one of the most successful pirating voyages in history and returned with booty worth more than £100,000 [approximately $16,168,000 today].  Each crew member’s share was worth about $195,157 in today’s dollars.

            •  He obtained a privateering commission from the corrupt Royal Governor of New York, Benjamin Fletcher.

            •  He died on the voyage of his ship, Amity, to the Red Sea in September 1695 during an attempt to board another Indian merchantman.

The 150-pound painted metal chest

Said to have belonged to Thomas Tew

http://www.piratesoul.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=136&Itemid=196

            There is no authoritative or definitive genealogy for Thomas Tew the pirate, but various writers about pirates have opined on the family history of Thomas Tew.  In almost all cases the explanation is brief and frustratingly lacking in specific source citations for assertions about Ol’ Thomas’s parentage and progeny.

            »   The Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England (James Savage, 1860-62) states that Richard Tew, son and heir of Henry Tew, came to Rhode Island with his wife, Mary Clark, in 1640.  Mary gave birth to their daughter on June 4, 1640 during the voyage from England.  The baby was appropriately named Seaborn.  According to Savage, Richard and Mary had two additional children after arriving in Rhode Island – daughters Elnathan and Mary and “perhaps others.”   Savage mentions no sons.

            »   John Osborne Austin states in his One Hundred And Sixty Allied Families (1893), “There was a Thomas Tew [described as the privateer turned pirate], who was perhaps brother of Henry [the Deputy Governor of Rhode Island in 1714].”   BUT, Austin names only four children of the parents of Deputy Governor Henry Tew.  In agreement with Savage, Austin states that Henry’s parents, Richard Tew and Mary (Clarke) Tew, came to Rhode Island from Maidford, Northamptonshire, England in 1640.  Austin names their children as: Seaborn, born during the voyage in 1640; her sisters Elnathan and Mary, born in 1644 and 1647 respectively; and Seaborn’s only identified brother, the future Deputy Governor, Henry, born in 1654.

            »   Austin further states equivocally, “There was a Henry Tew of Boston, mariner, who             died in 1712 . . . It becomes a matter of conjecture whether this Henry Tew was not a son of Thomas the pirate, and a nephew of Deputy Governor Henry Tew, of Newport.”

            »   The Time-Life series, The Seafarers: THE PIRATES (1978), tells the story of Thomas Tew, but without any specific source citations for the genealogical “facts” in the narrative.  It is stated that in April 1694 Tew docked his ship, the Amity,  “in his native Newport, Rhode Island.”  Thomas is described there upon his return from his 15-month voyage to the Indian Ocean and back as “a man of modest reputation, suddenly the cynosure of all eyes, lionized by the gentry in their handsome frame houses on the hill overlooking the harbor.”  Following the reception in Newport, it is said that, “Tew and his family traveled to New York.  There he was feted and dined by the Royal Governor, Colonel Benjamin Fletcher. . . Mrs. Tew and the two Tew daughters attended gala functions at the Governor’s mansion, dressed in rich silks from the Orient and glittering with diamond jewelry that the captain had brought back with him.  The Tews, in short, were the cream of East Coast society, prominent  (if recently arrived) members of a colonial aristocracy of wealth and accomplishment.”  There is not a single mention of any children other than two unnamed daughters – and no mention of Thomas’s parentage.

            »    A 1995 book by British writer David Cordingly, “the world’s foremost expert on pirates,” continues the narrative that Thomas Tew had only daughters.  Mr. Cordingly states authoritatively,  “As far as can be gleaned from the meager information on the subject, very few of the pirate captains had wives and families.  Henry Morgan was married but had no children. Captain Kidd had a wife and two daughters who lived in New York.  Thomas Tew was married and also had two daughters.”  (Under The Black Flag --- The Romance and the Reality of Life Among the Pirates, p. 71.)  There are no specific citations to the meager information supporting this statement about Ol’ Thomas.

            »   Citing to S.C. Hill’s “Notes on Piracy in Eastern Waters” in Indian Antiquary (Jan. 1923 – Oct. 1928), the author Alexander Boyd Hawes writes of the lineage of the pirate Thomas Tew, “[He] came from a respected Rhode Island family.  Richard Tew, native of England, settled early in Newport.  He was named in the Colony’s Charter of 1663.  His son Henry became Deputy Governor of the Colony in 1714.  The pirate Thomas Tew was probably son of an earlier Thomas, a mariner who lived in Newport and was probably Richard’s brother.  So the pirate was probably Richard’s nephew and Henry’s cousin.”  (Off Soundings – Aspects of the Maritime History of Rhode Island, p. 23)

            »   And finally, without citation to any specific source for the assertion, author Douglas R. Burgess, Jr. stated flatly in his 2009 book The Pirates’ Pact – The Secret Alliance Between History’s Most Notorious Buccaneers and Colonial America, “Thomas Tew was a gentleman.  His grandfather was Richard Tew, a Northampton man who settled in Newport, Rhode Island in 1640 and soon             became an administrator for the colony.”  Since most genealogical sources assign only four children to Richard Tew and his wife Mary -- and only one of them was a son, the future Deputy Governor of Colonial Rhode Island, Henry Tew – this author is asserting the pirate Thomas Tew was the son of the             one time Deputy Governor of Rhode Island!  I have never seen any source document to support this assertion.

            As the above examples demonstrate, the information available on the lineage of Thomas Tew the pirate is far from consistent and so far lacks any specific, hard sources for the various assertions in writings on genealogy or about pirates.  Various claims are made about the parentage of Thomas.  He is at times the brother of Henry Tew, the Rhode Island Deputy Governor, or at other times Henry’s son.  And then still at other times he is the son of a brother of Richard Tew who is also named Thomas. [1]   The one repeated assertion seems to be that the pirate had two daughters.  Only one conjectural reference is made to a son of Ol’ Thomas and that is Austin’s question about whether the Boston mariner, Henry Tew could be a son of the pirate Thomas Tew.  So, until some reliable evidence comes to light to support the existence of a son of Thomas Tew the pirate, the bad news for those of us bearing the surname Tew is that if Thomas Tew only had daughters he would have, as some in genealogy say, "daughtered out" and no one living today with the last name Tew would be descended from him -- unless a female descendant later reacquired the last name Tew via marriage to a male Tew. 

This is a bottle of Thomas Tew Rum
produced by the Newport Distilling Company,
Middletown, Rhode Island

[1]  One problem with this particular assertion is that available evidence only supports a single brother of Richard Tew of Maidford, England who immigrated to Rhode Island in 1640.  According to Austin, Richard Tew had only one brother that he mentioned in his Will --  “John Tew of Towcester County of Northampton, doctor of physick.”  To date, I am unaware of any other reliable reference to another brother of Richard Tew, let alone one named Thomas.

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John D. Tew was born in Providence, Rhode Island and at various times has lived in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire.  He is a New Englander at heart even though he currently resides in Loudoun County, Virginia. He has been researching his family history off and on over the last several decades as his education and work pursuits would allow. His principal lines of interest are currently Tew, Carpenter, Cooke, Shearman, Freeman and Hasselbaum -- all of Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

I invited John to write a guest post for my blog as a response to his comments and our on-going email discussions on the post I did last year on Thomas Tew the pirate at this link:  http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2011/11/thomas-tew-rhode-island-pirate.html

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