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Hi,Dick,
The database is a copy of the original on my website. However the website
crashed but not before Dennis partridge moved the database to its current
site
I am not exactly sure who did the research but I am still 90% sure it was
"Herbie" Hume who was responsible for most of the HUME research in Canada
and USA. Unfortunately Herbie was killed in a road accident some years ago
so I cannot check as his close famil;y did not share his interest.
I now realise that it was unfortunate that I neither kept a copy of the
various databases submitted to make up the CHASE/CHACE database nor did I
add the sources. In retrospect a big over sight!
Unfortunately therefore I cannot help other than I know that a descendant
of the ROSS family lives on mainland Alaska but where I do not know
Keep Well,Dick
Keith
----- Original Message -----
From: "Dick Chase" <rachase(a)triad.rr.com>
To: <chase(a)rootsweb.com>
Cc: <anthonybeasley(a)hotmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2007 11:17 PM
Subject: [CHASE] John Lendall MAINS (b. 29 Aug 1959)
>I have received an inquiry from the subject individual who is looking for
> any information on the possible whereabouts of his siblings, Margaret Ann
> MAINS, b. 23 Feb 1958, and Kendall Lloyd MAINS, b. 22 Dec 1960. John was
> doing an Internet search for his family and found that he and his family
> line are listed on our Chase/Chace Family Tree web site (
> http://chase.familytreeguide.com <http://chase.familytreeguide.com/> ).
> (I
> received the query since my name & phone number is listed as "owner" of
> the
> database.) John and brother/sister are originally from Massachusetts.
>
>
>
> Since this tree is a combination of a number of individual family trees, I
> am not able to tell who contributed the portion that includes the MAINS
> line, but it descends (in the database) from John's paternal grandmother
> (Barbara ROSS), through her father, James Ross, and his parents Alexander
> ROSS and Margaret HUME who are from New Brunswick.
>
>
>
> John's question is, does whoever researched his family and included them
> in
> the database have any information that would help guide him to the
> possible
> whereabouts of his brother and sister? He has contacted his father,
> Lendall
> Augustine MAINS III, but he apparently has not kept contact with his
> children.
>
>
>
> The HUME makes me wonder if this is your work, Keith?
>
>
>
> If anyone can provide any useful information, please email John via his
> friend Anthony Beasley at anthonybeasly(a)hotmail.com
>
>
>
> Thanks,
>
>
>
> Dick Chase
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> -------------------------------
> To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to
> CHASE-request(a)rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes
> in the subject and the body of the message
I have received an inquiry from the subject individual who is looking for
any information on the possible whereabouts of his siblings, Margaret Ann
MAINS, b. 23 Feb 1958, and Kendall Lloyd MAINS, b. 22 Dec 1960. John was
doing an Internet search for his family and found that he and his family
line are listed on our Chase/Chace Family Tree web site (
http://chase.familytreeguide.com <http://chase.familytreeguide.com/> ). (I
received the query since my name & phone number is listed as "owner" of the
database.) John and brother/sister are originally from Massachusetts.
Since this tree is a combination of a number of individual family trees, I
am not able to tell who contributed the portion that includes the MAINS
line, but it descends (in the database) from John's paternal grandmother
(Barbara ROSS), through her father, James Ross, and his parents Alexander
ROSS and Margaret HUME who are from New Brunswick.
John's question is, does whoever researched his family and included them in
the database have any information that would help guide him to the possible
whereabouts of his brother and sister? He has contacted his father, Lendall
Augustine MAINS III, but he apparently has not kept contact with his
children.
The HUME makes me wonder if this is your work, Keith?
If anyone can provide any useful information, please email John via his
friend Anthony Beasley at anthonybeasly(a)hotmail.com
Thanks,
Dick Chase
Hello All,
Found a nice little database online today. It is a transcription of Seaman's
Protection Certificates and is online at Mystic Seaport. I was looking for
information on Maxon Chace and found him there. One of the nice features of
the SPCs is that many list physical attributes such as hair and eye color
and complexion, plus height, place of birth, and age. So, it is possible to
get a general idea of what an ancestor looked like. Here is the link to the
Cs:
http://www.mysticseaport.org/library/initiative/protectionname.cfm?mlet=C
Here is a nice article describing what these Seaman's Protection
Certificates were all about. It can be found at:
http://web.archive.org/web/20050507075046/http://www.archives.gov/publica...
Spring 1992, Vol. 24, No. 1
*Genealogical Fallout from the War of 1812*
*By Ruth Priest Dixon*
(c) 1992 Ruth Priest Dixon
The impressment of American seamen by the British was one of the causes of
the War of 1812. The practice also resulted in the creation of extensive
records about merchant seamen that are of great value to genealogists and
historians. These Seamen's Protection Certificate Applications for what
might well be called a merchant seaman's passport have remained virtually
untouched since they were originally filed. Now they are being organized and
preserved, and those from the early years are already indexed. These records
are in the Old Military and Civil Branch at the National Archives.
1<http://web.archive.org/web/20050507075046/http://www.archives.gov/publica...>
Seamen's Protection Certificates (SPCs) were authorized by the Fourth
Congress on May 28, 1796, to protect American merchant seamen from
impressment. The British maintained that they had a right to use press gangs
to forcibly recruit British seamen in port or on the high seas, and their
attitude was "once a British subject, always a British subject." In fact,
any English-speaking sailor was in danger of being impressed. During the war
with Napoleon, the British stepped up impressments.
2<http://web.archive.org/web/20050507075046/http://www.archives.gov/publica...>The
Archives records tell many tales of impressment. John Howard appeared
before a notary in Philadelphia on September 3, 1807, and described his
experiences. He sailed on the ship *Martha Washington* out of Savannah bound
for London with Certificate No. 14148 issued in June 1806 in his pocket. The
ship "sprung a leak" and put into Antigua on St. Johns island "in distress."
Here he was "pressed" by the British and put on board the sloop of war *
Timrod,* and the "Protection was forcibly taken from him." He escaped and
returned to Philadelphia. The deposition of Sarah Dickinson dated April 11,
1811, states that her son, John Dickinson, twenty-two years old and born in
Philadelphia, sailed in June 1809 for Liverpool and that she had been
informed that he was impressed and detained on board one of the British
ships of war. In applying for a duplicate SPC in 1817, James Francis stated
that he "had a protection granted him by the Collector of this Port on or
about 12 March 1806 which was torn up and destroyed by a British Captain
when at sea." After about 1815 the impressment of seamen ceased, but the
Seamen's Protection Certificates had proved to be a valuable form of
identification and continued to be issued until just before the Civil War.
The practice was resumed for a short time during the World War I era.
The application records of the Port of Philadelphia are by far the most
extensive and the easiest to use. Applications through 1823 are indexed on
three-by-five-inch cards; those for 1814, 1824-1830, 1834, 1844, and 1854
are also on computer. In addition, the customs collectors' "abstracts,"
quarterly reports of the SPCs issued, exist for about half the quarters for
that port. Abstracts are filed alphabetically by first letter of last name.
The Work Projects Administration (WPA) made two indexes of abstracts, one
for New York and one for "Other Ports." The abstracts, of course, are one
step removed from the original and do not contain all the information on the
applications, which apparently were destroyed, but they are useful
genealogical sources. Few certificates appear in Archives records; they were
issued to and belonged to the seaman. Some random records exist for about
fifty other ports, primarily abstracts, registers, and a few applications.
Because the purpose of the Seaman's Protection Certificate was to identify
the seaman clearly, the application required his name, age, place of birth,
physical description "as may be," and was either attested to by a
knowledgeable person or by documentation. (Very early applications tend to
have documentation; later ones have attestation.) Public officials and
notaries devised their own application forms to suit their fancy; some were
simple, some flamboyant. The physical description usually included height;
color of hair, eyes, and complexion; distinguishing marks such as tattoos,
birthmarks, scars, or disfigurements; and sometimes the shape of the nose,
chin, and face.
The applications filed in Philadelphia show a wide range of ages and
birthplaces. While most seamen applied for a certificate when they were in
their twenties, boys in their teens and men in their thirties often applied.
Boys as young as eleven and men as old as seventy-seven are on record.
Geographic distribution is equally broad. The Atlantic seaboard states are
well represented, most seamen coming from Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New
York, Maryland, New Jersey, and Delaware. Some gave Connecticut, Maine, New
Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, North and South Carolina, Georgia, and
Florida as their place of birth. A few came from the District of Columbia
and as far away as Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, and Louisiana. A good number
were foreign born.
>From a genealogical perspective, the witnesses are perhaps the most
significant information after age and place of birth. The name of any
witness can help the researcher to expand his or her knowledge of the
merchant seaman. Many times the witness has the same surname as the seaman,
suggesting a relationship, and some identify that relationship as mother,
father, sister, brother, aunt, or uncle. Some appear to be shipmates; they
witnessed each other's applications although they come from widely separated
birthplaces. Ira Dye suggests that some of the female witnesses may be the
seaman's "wife" in that port.
3<http://web.archive.org/web/20050507075046/http://www.archives.gov/publica...>Young
seamen most often have an identified relative as witness. The witness
for Isaac Philips, age twelve in 1826, was Hannah Simmons, his mother with a
different surname. Sarah Loftand witnessed for her twelve-year-old son James
A. Loftand in 1824. Jacob Black/Blake, age sixteen in 1820, had as his
witness his father, Levin Blake. (The notary spelled the name "Black" and
"Blake" on the same page.) It seems probable that the Samuel Nicholson who
witnessed for William Henry Nicholson, an eleven-year-old in 1827, was a
relative. Henry Bray, who witnessed for eleven James Bray, most likely was
related to him. Mary Craycroft may have been the mother of twelve-year-old
Theodore Craycroft, who applied in 1827. In 1814 Mary Howell swore that she
had known eleven-year-old Thomas Little "from his birth." The witness on the
1814 application of Samuel Girdon Dannaker is James Girdon. Was Girdon the
maiden name of Samuel's mother?
In processing these old applications, one pattern immediately catches the
eye: there is an unexpected number of men of color. (For purposes of this
discussion, seamen described as black, mulatto, Sambo, yellow, or colored
are considered men of color.) At times they accounted for almost a third of
the applications, far in excess of their proportion of the population.
Because it often is very difficult to do research in African-American
families, slave or free, the Seamen's Protection Certificate Applications
are a boon to these researchers. The value of a document identifying a man
of color as free is easy to understand. Sometimes these valuable identity
papers were borrowed by a landlubber from a bona fide seaman. Frederick
Douglass, for example, borrowed a certificate in 1838 and walked away to
freedom. 4<http://web.archive.org/web/20050507075046/http://www.archives.gov/publica...>
There are rare finds of manumission in these records. Some suggest a custom
of bound servitude after slavery and before freedom. In applying for a
Certificate in 1797, Charles Anderson states he was born in Queen Annes
County, Maryland, a slave of Richard Small, who freed all his slaves when he
"became to be a Methodist." James Calahan, who was twenty-three in 1854, was
born in Sower Town, Kent County, Delaware. His application states, "I also
present a certificate from my former master George Jones." Peter Till, about
twenty-nine in 1826, was born in Sussex County, Delaware. "The said Peter
Till produced a certificate of his having been manumitted and set free by
Benjamin Robinson a citizen of the State of Delaware to whom he had formerly
been sold for a term of years by his original owner David Hopkins of said
State, the proof of his freedom being duly recorded on the Orphans Court for
the City and County of Philada." In 1804 Pompey Ridley, twenty years old, "a
bound mulatto servant to Samuel Rhoads," a Philadelphia merchant, went to
sea with Rhoads's consent. Three years later, Samuel Ridley, twenty-two,
born in Long Island, New York, as was Pompey, stated that he was manumitted
in 1792 by Stephen Vandyke on condition he would serve nine years with
Anthony Morris, which he had done and so became a free man.
Naturalization information is equally interesting and more abundant in these
records. The name of the court and the date of naturalization is often
given. For example, on August 2, 1824, William Williams, a native of Wales,
was naturalized "in the Court of Common Pleas of the city and county of
Philadelphia." Even when the court is given without the date, researchers
should check that court's records around the date the seaman applied for his
certificate. Almost without fail the seaman seems to have gone straight from
the naturalization court to a notary to make application for his protection.
Bernard Tobin of St. Johns, Newfoundland, is described as an "affiliated
citizen," having "declared my Intention of becoming a citizen of the United
States in the Circuit Court of the United States holden in Philadelphia the
27th of December 1854, a Certificate whereof I herewith present." He applied
for and got his protection certificate that same day.
When using the index to the Philadelphia applications or the WPA index to
abstracts, it is important to look for more than a single name. The index
cards often reveal What appear to be family clusters. Each of the following
lists people who had the same surname and came from the same place.
In the ten years between 1814 and 1824, James, Jason, Levi, Samuel, and
William Blanchard, ages eighteen to twenty-eight, all from North Yarmouth,
Massachusetts, applied for certificates. The same man, Thaxter Prince,
served as witness for three of them.
Between 1803 and 1816, David, Ezekiel, Jesse, two Johns, Joseph, Joseph L.,
and Joshua Hand, all thirty or younger, all from Cape May, New Jersey,
applied. Noah Hand witnessed for twenty-six-year-old Joshua, and Caleb Hand
witnessed for twenty-year-old Joseph. In 1810, Charles and Eldridge Hand
applied from neighboring Cumberland County, New Jersey.
Listed as black or free black, we find David, Jeremiah, John, and Perry
Liston from New Castle County, Delaware, between 1810 and 1821. In 1799
another Perry Liston from New Castle County, age thirty-three, is listed as
a freedman.
The applications of Antoine, Antonio, and Joseph Joachim reflect the
changing flags over New Orleans. They were born in New Orleans, Mississippi
Territory, and renounced allegiance to the king of Spain and the French
Republic.
Eight men— Emanual, Alexander, four named John with different birth dates,
Julius, and Constantine— described as mulatto, free black, or yellow, with
the surname Francis came from New Orleans between 1808 and 1825. One
renounced allegiance to the king of Spain; another stated he was a freeman
at the time of cession of the Louisiana Territory.
While this article focuses on the genealogical value of the seamen's
records, they contain significant data for other disciplines as well.
Historians would be interested in the picture that can be drawn from
Seamen's Protection Certificate Applications of certain localities. Most
noteworthy, or at least the most apparent one, is Duck Creek Crossroads or
Duck Creek Hundred, now Smyrna, Kent County, Delaware, where well over a
hundred men, almost all of whom were men of color, applied for certificates
between 1798 and 1825.
Occasionally the applications are a source of amusement. One notary spells
Maryland "Meriland." Another is farther off the mark: he spells Louisiana
"Lucy anna."
Is it worth a researcher's time and effort to try to find an individual
seaman in the Seamen's Protection Certificate Applications? Most certainly,
if there is any indication that he may have shipped out of Philadelphia. As
indicated earlier, many of these records are indexed. While it is a more
time consuming task, the Philadelphia customs inspectors' quarterly reports
are a usable finding aid for unindexed years. Looking for seamen in other
ports is less rewarding, but the WPA indexes to New York and Other Ports
direct the researcher to the appropriate quarterly report for those ports.
If family tradition or other sources direct the researcher to a specific
port and time period, it would be worth looking at the unindexed
applications or quarterly reports that may exist for any port. And of
course, the good news is that the Philadelphia indexing project goes on.
------------------------------
*Ruth Priest Dixon* is a volunteer staff aide working on preserving,
organizing, and indexing Seamen's Protection Certificate Applications for
the port of Philadelphia. She received her M.A. in political science from
George Washington University.
------------------------------
*Notes*
1<http://web.archive.org/web/20050507075046/http://www.archives.gov/publica...>Records
of the United States Customs Service, 1796-- World War I, Record
Group 36; Records of the Bureau of Maritime Inspection and Navigation, RG
41. See *Guide to the National Archives of the United States* (1974), pp.
168-172, 484; and *Guide to Genealogical Research in the National
Archives*(1985), pp. 189-191. See also Ira Dye, "The Philadelphia
Seamen's Protection
Certificate Applications," *Prologue* 18 (Spring 1986):46-55; reprinted in *Our
Family, Our Town: Essays on Family and Local History Sources in the National
Archives,* comp. Timothy Walch (1987), pp. 60-65.
2<http://web.archive.org/web/20050507075046/http://www.archives.gov/publica...>See
Stuart L. Butler, "Genealogical Records of the War of 1812,"
*Prologue* 23 (Winter 1991): 420-425; and James Fulton Zimmerman, *Impressment
of American Seamen* (1925) for discussions of the War of 1812.
3<http://web.archive.org/web/20050507075046/http://www.archives.gov/publica...>Ira
Dye, "Seafarers of 1812--A Profile,"
*Prologue* 5 (Spring 1973):10.
4<http://web.archive.org/web/20050507075046/http://www.archives.gov/publica...>Frederick
Douglass,
*Life and Times of Frederick Douglass* (1881, facsimile reprint 1983), p.
138.
Articles published in *Prologue* do not necessarily represent the views of
NARA or of any other agency of the United States Government.
--
Jeffrey Chace
http://www.chace.demon.nl