BEGINNING OF A LIFE-TIME HOBBY

In 1951, a missionary family on furlough from Africa, the Virgil Moneysmiths, happened to be in the same Michigan home with Guy Lockwood. Guy was a fellow-Wells descendant, a first cousin twice removed of Mrs. Moneysmith. He was a nephew of Roxy Wells Stauffer, though she had been dead 42 years. And he was a grandson of Hannah Compton Wells, who had died in 1888 when Guy was just seven.

Guy showed the Moneysmith family some material he had copied from his grandmother’s Bible, and fifteen-year-old Esther Joanne Moneysmith copied it into a notebook. Though it would be more than a decade until, as an adult and young mother, Esther made her first effort to learn more about the Compton family, that exposure marked the beginning of the current family’s interest in our ancestral heritage. What a journey it has been, especially since the mid-1990s when the Internet became available!

What became of Hannah’s Bible is a mystery and source of distress to those of us who would have highly treasured it. Guy reported that day that it was in the possession of his cousin Carl Stauffer (also a grandson of Hannah through his mother, Jane). Carl died in 1955. When his widow and daughter were approached in 1967 about the Bible, they said they had no knowledge of it—and no “family treasures” nor any interest in such things.  

Charles E. Wells

THE HANNAH WELLS BIBLE RECORDS  

The First William Compton
The first thing Grandmother Hannah told us about was her grandfather who fought and died in the American Revolution. William Compton's name came be seen in the troop registry at George Washington’s Headquarters in Newburgh, NY, where he served under Major Zacharias DuBois.^[1] We know only that his jaw was shot off and that he died, but not where (in what battle). It is likely he was buried pretty much where he fell. Inquiries (1992) to the National Archives did not turn up any information on him.     

But Hannah’s grandfather is not the earliest Compton of whom we have record. The following is a third-hand copy of material in Hannah Wells’s Bible.

Ancestors of Hannah Post    

"Hannah Post was born in Holland, came to New York City, married Wm. Compton, son of Wm. Compton who fought in American Revolution. Eleven children were born to Hannah Post and Wm. Compton.

Annie Compton married Seymour Sachwood
David Compton married Rachel Simmons 
Peter Compton married Elizabeth Hitchman 
William Compton married Betsy Penn 
Abraham Compton married Rebecca Campbell 
Hezekiah Compton married Margaret Benson 
John P Compton married Elizabeth Woodruff 
Susan Compton married Cornelius Thompson 
Elizabeth Compton married John Slaget 
Hannah Compton married Charles E. Wells "

• Esther’s list in 1951 contained only ten names. In 2000 we learned that the missing sibling was brother Runyen, the 5th child. We learned this from a descendant of his, Shelley Compton Hutchens, met through an Internet message board. We also know from the Internet that there was a 12th child, another Hannah born in 1814, who must have died before Hannah Marie (my 5th great-grandmother) was born in 1821.

• We now know Annie's husband's name was Lockwood, not Sachwood.

• See Hannah's Family on Maria Buckbee as Peter's wife.

• For a picture of Hannah and much more about her siblings, their marriages, their children, and how their lives may have dovetailed with hers, click on her name at the top of this page.

Back to what was in Hannah's Bible...

Ancestry of the First Compton Family     

"William Compton was a grandson of a younger branch of Sir Spencer Compton, Warwickshire, England. Sir Spencer Compton was slain in 1648 at Hopton Heath, England, and defeated Oliver Cromwell and his Puritan rebels during the battle. William Compton born in England (our great-grandfather) [served] in the first regiment of Orange County, N.Y. militia had his lower jaw shot off and died during the Revolution. His son, William Compton, married Hannah Post (that is my mother). She is buried in Sugar Hill, N.Y., and he is buried in Watkins, N.Y." 

The Hopton Heath Battle was in 1643, not 1648. We also know now that Oliver Cromwell did not come into real prominence in the struggle with the king until a bit later. Hannah refers to her ancestor as “great-grandfather” here, but she goes on to say that his son married her mother, which would make him simply her grandfather. Hannah wasn’t born until 40 years after the Revolutionary War. We now think there were at least 4 generations between Hannah and Spencer Compton. 

We are still working to find the missing link between Hannah’s grandfather and Spencer Compton, though we’re confident there must be one. Consider how many facts Grandmother Wells had accurately in her Bible, facts we have confirmed elsewhere: 

1. All three parts of his name: Sir Spencer Compton

2. Name of the battle: Hopton Heath

3. Date of the battle: 1648 (though this is not correct, "8" and "3" could easily have been miscopied in 200 years, possibly by me at age 15)

4. He fought against Cromwell

5. He was victorious

6. But he died in battle

7. Finally, the name Warwickshire, which meant nothing to us until Matt Hoppe tracked down the Compton estate, Wynyates, located in Warwickshire, England

How could lowly Hannah Marie Compton, on the frontier of New York two hundred years later, have gotten that many facts correct if they were not based on family knowledge? 

The Second William Compton

The date the Internet has given us for the birth of Hannah's father, whom we call William II, is 1776. If that is true, and it is compatible with the dates of his children's births, and if his father did indeed die during the fighting for independence, then William would not have known his father very well, if at all. We know that he married Hannah Phebe Post (which helps us distinguish her from her daughter Hannah Marie, our Great-grandmother Wells) February 23, 1794, during George Washington's second term as President." 

After several of the Compton children were born, the family moved to the Finger Lakes area of west central New York. The names of some of his children and of their children have been found in the records in Watkins County, NY.^[2] One record tells of the deaths of the three children of Hannah’s brother Peter:     

        “In old Sugar Hill Cemetery . . . Samuel B. Compton, son of Peter, died April 30, 1825 . . . Harriet, his sister, died Sept. 5, 1840, aged 2 years, 5 months, 19 days [b. March 14, 1838] . . . Hannah Louise, their sister, died April 19, 1841, aged 15 years, 2 months [b. February 1826]”^[3]    

Another record tells of four children in the [extended] family, ages 3-13, dying within days of each other, doubtless in an epidemic. Parents are listed as David and Rachel, John P. and Eliza, and William and Elizabeth. The cemetery is identified as “Donovan Hill plot, that general area.” No dates were reported for these deaths (by Barbara Bell).^[4] 

In 1982, Fred and Esther Gross searched a number of cemeteries in the Sugar Hill/Watkins/ Donovan Hill areas, but with no success at locating any of the above headstones or any Comptons at all [quite mysterious and frustrating at the time]. We now know that all Hannah’s brothers but one on whom we have no death info [Abraham] moved to and died in other states—David to Ohio, William and Runyen to different places in Michigan, Peter to California and South Dakota, and Hezekiah and John to Ottawa County, Michigan, near where Hannah ended up. That’s why the cemeteries weren’t filled with Comptons.

The Grosses did, however, locate the common headstone of a niece and nephew of Hannah’s, along a roadside in that area. Their names were Eliza and Lyman Compton, and they died in 1840. Internet databases confirm the dates from their headstones and that they were cousins, not brother and sister. It also tells us that Lyman’s older sister had died two days before and another cousin a week before. See “Hannah’s Family.”

Collaboration from Another Compton

In 2000 a fellow Compton descendant, Shelley Compton Hutchens, shared the following from a letter from Peter Compton’s daughter, Harriet Robinson, written about 1910. Note the common points of her information with what was written in Hannah’s Bible.  

“Grandmom [i.e., Hannah Post Compton] died at Sugar Hill, NY, about 69 or 70 yrs. ago. She is buried there. After we left Sugar Hill and went to Havanna to live Granddad came to Havanna and lived with us. He went down to Jefferson (now Watkins) to visit Aunt Susan and died there and is buried there.  Jefferson you will remember is about three miles from Havanna. The name has been changed to Montour Falls. Uncle John Slaght and Aunt Lizzie [i.e., Hannah’s sister Elizabeth] are both buried at Watkins as is their daughter Hannah who died when a young lady.”  

–Shelley comments: She [Harriet] was writing this letter to a Rachiel (Rachel), and I believe this to be Rachel Compton Stringham, daughter of David & Rachel Compton.

Wm. II was living with Susan Compton & her husband Cornelius Thompson in 1850 & was listed as being 80 years old, according to the census.

Earlier in this letter Harriet says:

4th great-grandson Matt by headstone of Charles and Hannah Wells, Brooklawn Cemetery, on 4 Mile Road nw of Grand Rapids, MI

5th great-grandson Logan digging in preparation for planting a geranium beside the Wells grave.

“Our grandfather married Hannah Post. Her mother's name was Mary Canfield Gibbs and her mother's name was Salina Canfield.”

THE WELLS FAMILY

We know nothing of C.E. Wells’s background and parentage except that he and Hannah were married on his 23rd birthday in 1837 (she must have been four months short of sixteen). The “C” stood for Charles, a name given by his daughter Roxane to her oldest son. Her son’s middle name, Edward, may well have been her father’s middle name as well.     

The first of their four daughters, Marcia Almira, was born two and a half years later in September 1839. The second, Marion Elizabeth (Minnie) was born in 1841, and the third, Sophrona Roxana, in 1843. (It is not clear whether her name was Roxana or Roxanne, Sophrona or Sophronia, or indeed which of the two came first. Whatever, she apparently was known as Roxy; that is even the name on her tombstone.)^[5]     

In 1846, the family moved [from Watkins?] to Painted Post, New York, where in 1848 Mary Jane (called Jane) was born. Six years later, in 1854, when Marcia was 15, Minnie 13, Roxy 11, and Jane 6, the family set out for Michigan. We do not know how they traveled, but it was likely by foot and animal-drawn carts of some sort, and perhaps covered wagon.     

Weddings for the four girls began just three years later. In 1857, 18-year-old Marcia married George Haas. Two years later, Minnie married Seymour R. Lockwood, her cousin, son of her Aunt Annie Lockwood. The following summer (August 1860), not-quite-17-year-old Roxy was awarded a certificate to teach in the schools of Conklin, Michigan. She did not marry until 1865 when she was 22. The following year, Jane, 18, married George Stauffer, the brother of Roxy’s husband, Samuel.  

Charles and Hannah celebrated their 50th anniversary the year before she died. They had eleven grandchildren in the area, though in July that year their eighteen-year-old granddaughter, Rose Stauffer, died of consumption (tuberculosis). You can read a letter Charles wrote to his daughter Roxy about his wife's failing health here.    

Esther Hawkins Moneysmith used to recount that when she was growing up, any “bad traits” displayed by family members were—for unknown and doubtlessly unfair reasons—attributed to “Great-grandmother Wells.”      

We don’t know anything specific about the faith of the Comptons and the Wells except that they apparently were godly people. Much information (including that quoted above) about the family was recorded in Hannah’s Bible.     

GIFTS FROM THE INTERNET

In the 1990s, the Internet opened up for us a whole new world of the Compton families, including dates on Hannah’s siblings and listings of her dozens of nieces and nephews. See “Hannah’s Family.” It gave us a birth date for the first William Compton mentioned in her Bible, the one who died in the Revolution, though it doesn’t give us a death date or location and thus no clue of the battle in which he died. It does, however, give us a birth date for his son, Hannah’s father—1776. If that is true, then William I died after that, which is fully possible, given the dates of the Revolution. The Web gave us a middle name for Hannah Post (Phebe) and a name for her father (Peter Post). 

That doesn’t mean the Web has cleared up all mysteries. In fact, it created more than one. Both Hannah Wells and Harriet Robinson report that Hannah Post’s mother was Mary Canfield Gibbs and Mary’s mother was Salina Canfield. The Internet, on the other hand, lists Salina Canfield as the wife of the first William, as if Peter Post and William Compton married sisters. But if Hannah and Harriet’s records are correct, then that could not be true. So we have another one of those matters about which we may or may not ever have the truth.  

Another discrepancy is that Hannah reports that her mother was born in Holland, but the Web databases list her in Orange County, NY, as well. Another mystery which we are still resolving relates to the geographical places mentioned in our various records of the Comptons.^[6] 

Latest word, August 18, 2001

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