Some of our subscribers may not have the “Red Book”, and have not seen the article on Capt. Jabez. It is repeated here for their information.
It is from "Genealogy of the Olmsted Family in America, Embracing the Descendants of James and Richards Olmsted and Covering a Period of Nearly Three Centuries - 1632-1912", compiled by Henry King Olmsted, Revised and Compiled by Rev. Geo. K. Ward, A. T. De La Mare Printing and Publishing Company, LTD., New York, 1912. PP. 390-393.
CAPT.
JABEZ OLMSTED, OF WARE, MASS.
(INTRODUCTION
BY FREDERICK S. HAMMOND, ESQ., OF SYRACUSE, N. Y.,
COMPILER
OF THE HAMMOND GENEALOGY)
The
ancestry of Jabez Olmsted, who was born about 1690, is one of the unsolved
genealogical problems.
It
seems strange that the parentage of a man of so much importance in the locality
in which he lived cannot be established with some degree of certainty, but we
must bear in mind the fact that the emigrant ancestry of a very large
percentage of the families who came between 1630 and 1700 is either unknown or
established by unsatisfactory circumstantial evidence. We have our "
Farmer " and our "Savage " and our " Hotten's Lists "
of emigrants but still we know that many thousands landed upon our shores of
whom we have no record whatever. The writer has found many circumstances in his
own genealogical work to prove this fact conclusively.
It
has also been asserted on good authority that many came under assumed names to
escape religious persecution and for various other reasons.
There
are indications of other Olmsteds in this country at an early date, not of the
families of James and Richard Olmsted although possibly closely connected with
their families. It seems probable that Jabez Olmsted belongs to one of these
closely connected families. In the early Court records of Preston and Norwich,
Conn., we find references to a Mrs. Joanna Rose, widow of Anthony Rose, who
married second a man named Fleming and for her third husband an Olmsted whose
given name does not appear. In 1688 she was living as Mrs. Joanna Olmsted, in
Norwich, Conn. There does not appear to have been any known member of the James
or Richard Olmsted lines who could have been her husband. Dr. John Olmsted had
but recently deceased in Norwich, leaving a widow, Elizabeth (Marvin) Olmsted,
and it seems probable that her husband was more or less distantly related to
Dr. John Olmsted.
It
is possible that a solution of this problem might reveal the parentage of
Jabez. Sheldon's "History of Deerfield" mentions just two of the
name: Jabez, a soldier in the Indian wars in 1709, and William Olmsted, a Conn.
soldier who, with one Benton, was killed by the Indians July 31, 1704. This
William may have been the father of Jabez. The late Dr. Henry K. Olmsted supposed
this William to have been a son of Nehemiah and Elizabeth (Burr) Olmsted, but a
thorough search of the records at Fairfield, Conn., shows that the said
Nehemiah who died in 1657 left an only child, a daughter, Sarah. The final
settlement of his estate a year later shows a division between the widow and
this child, precluding the possibility of any posthumous child.
Genealogists who have undertaken to solve this problem have evolved various visionary theories which when followed out to their supposed foundations have been found to be absolutely without any foundation in fact.
Hyde,
in his anniversary address at Ware, Mass., made prominent a tradition that
Jabez Olmsted had Indian blood in his veins. This is so utterly improbable as
to be scarcely worth the mention. If true he must have been a half breed or at
least a quarter breed Indian and no one of mixed blood would have held a
commission in the British service. There were Indians and half breeds in the
ranks and as scouts but none amongst the officers.
Furthermore
a part blood Indian would never have married into a family like the family of
Thomas Banes. Some other genealogist advanced the theory, which gained some
credence, that Jabez was the child of Martha (Bagel) Olmsted, the discarded
wife of Thomas Olmsted, of Hartford, who married Obadiah Wood and reared a fine
family of children. This child was born tn 1686. The sex of the child is
unknown; there is no evidence whatever that it lived to grow up. This child was
born in wedlock and probably would have held the Olmsted name even though the
mother was divorced, but a thorough search of wills, administrations, deeds,
etc., in both the Olmsted and Wood families does not show any evidence of the
child or any evidence of any Jabez Olmsted and the same is true of the Court
records.
Jabez
and Thankful (Barnes) Olmsted named a daughter Martha but Thankful had a sister Martha Barnes who married
Thomas Gilbert. She also named a daughter Prudence after her sister Prudence.
The
only other fact that could be construed by any stretch of fancy into
circumstantial evidence of such a connection, is the record of the sale of a
tract of land in Ware, Mass., June 27, 1733, by Jabez Olmsted to Obadiah Wood
of Hartford, presumably the son of Obadiah and Martha (Bigelow-Olmsted) Wood
but the deed was given for a liberal consideration and nothing contained
therein implies any relationship, so we dismiss this theory as not worthy of
serious consideration.
In
our branch of the family is found a tradition of Rhode Island ancestry but the
Olmsted name has not been discovered amongst the early settlers of Rhode
Island. Emery Olmsted, son of Timothy, was living at an advanced age in
Greensboro, Vt., in 1873.
He
gave us the tradition that Jabez was the son of " Moses" Olmsted who
was an emigrant to Hartford before 1700. No evidence of such a man has been
found. Traditions are unreliable but they usually have a considerable
foundation in fact, even though the details are not strictly accurate and it
may be that the father of Jabez was an emigrant even though his name may not
have been Moses. Jabez named a son Moses, however, and the name has come down
to us through that branch of the family. It is quite possible that Jabez
himself may have been the emigrant from England not long before his appearance
in Deerfield, Mass., in 1709. The almost complete difference in given names in
the early generations of this family and the families of James and Richard may
be taken as an indication of different ancestry. Jabez, Israel and Jedediah are
confined exclusively to this line and Jeremiah appears very rarely in the other
lines at a much later date. Joseph is common to all the Olmsted families, while
Timothy and Simeon apper at about the same period in the Jabez and James lines.
A very probable ancestry for Capt. Jabez Olmsted is found in "Waters
Genealogical Gleanings in England," published in the N. E. Hist.-Gen.
Register, Vol. 41, p. 173.
"
Will of John Hawes, the elder, of St. Lawrence, in the County of Essex yoeman,
dated Aug. 7, 1613, proved Oct. 12, 1613. Son, John and Elizabeth, his
daughter; kinsman John Anthony; Charles Anthony the younger, a sister's son;
Martha Anthony, youngest daughter of said sister; Frances, the eldest daughter
of sister Alice Anthony; John Olmsted, son of Richard Olmsted and daughter
Elizabeth; Israel Olmsted, their second son; Jedediah Olmsted, their third son,
and Elizabeth Olmsted, their daughter; daughter, Elizabeth, wife of Richard
Olmsted, clerk; wife, Elizabeth Hawes."—(From Commissary Court, Essex, Herts,
1613.)
This
Rev. Richard Olmsted who married Elizabeth Hawes, daughter of John Hawes and
Elizabeth Gold, was at one time Rector
of Arwarton County, Suffolk. He was Chaplain to Lord Loftus in Ireland in 1630
and later Rector of Dunnington, near Framingham, about ninety miles from
London. In Dunnington Rectory is painted the Olmsted coat of arms.
Rev.
Richard Olmsted was a Military Chaplain. The military spirit has been very strongly developed in this family from Capt.
Jabez down to the latest generations. Capt. Jabez Olmsted named his eldest son
Jeremiah, and Jeremiah had a son named Jedediah and a daughter Elizabeth. Capt.
Jabez's second son was Israel and these names have been handed down from one
generation to another. This sequence of names, while no proof in itself, is
strong presumptive evidence of a connection, as all genealogists know, and at
some future time the connecting links may be found to establish this theory.