Margaret (Peggy) Bolles Hathaway 1774-1863 By: Bob Alford 2010 Margaret Bolles was born May 27, 1774 in what became the town of Waterford, Connecticut, on a farm located just north of New London. At the time of Margaret s birth it was part of that city. She was the fifth child of Samuel Bolles and Margaret Moore Bolles. She was one of thirteen children. She always referred to herself as Peggy. Her father was a farmer. He was born in New London and was the son of John Bolles who was sixty-seven years old when Samuel was born. When Samuel was only nineteen he built a house in which he lived all the rest of his life, and where Margaret was born. Samuel lived to be 98 years old. Peggy was born only two years before the Declaration of Independence and the Revolutionary War. Her father enlisted in Captain Christopher s Company of Colonel Joshua Stark s First Connecticut Regiment. His service is recognized by both the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Sons of the American Revolution and his descendants are eligible for membership in those organizations. We know that Peggy was brought up as a Baptist and her parents were faithful followers. She was taught to enjoy reading the Bible and letters that she wrote often contained biblical quotes. She kept a bible all of her life and recorded the birth date of her children in one she had in later life. Bailey and Peggy were original members of the Baptist Church of Hudson, organized in 1810. The following is from the church history of the First Baptist Church of New London: The earliest Baptist services in New London took place around 1674, only twenty-nine years after the founding of the town. Ministers from Newport, Rhode Island, conducted these services and the converts became members of the Newport Baptist churches. The early local Baptists functioned under the protective wing of Gov. John Winthrop, Jr. and the first baptisms too k place at Winthrop Cove. The Baptists increased slowly but steadily for several decades and by 1710 they had grown enough to organize a church of their own. Doing so, they built their first meetinghouse on Niles Hill in what was then the outskirts of New London. The meetinghouse, because of its peculiar shape (square, two storied, with a hip roof), was called the "Pepperbox." Elder Stephen
Gorton became their first pastor and, using this church as a "launching platform," the Baptists spread from here all across the State of Connecticut. Unfortunately, dissensions aroused by the "Great Awakening" destroyed the Pepperbox in 1771. Broken and scattered by the Pepperbox dissolution and the Revolutionary War, the New London Baptists were unable to reorganize until 1792. First meeting in the Court House at the top of State Street, they gradually rebuilt and, in 1804, formally organized as the First Baptist Church. Thwarted in their attempts to buy land for a meetinghouse, they were forced into subterfuge to acquire unwanted land at the corner of Union and Pearl Streets and there built a humble structure on what became known as the "Baptist Rocks." In derision, their plain building was called the Hog House! Bailey Hathaway and Margaret Bolles Peggy married Bailey Hathaway July 13, 1794 in New London, CT. New London is a seaport on the southern coast of Connecticut. We do not know how Bailey and Peggy met, but they were both Baptists, he was a seaman and she lived in a seaport town. She was twenty years old and he was not quite twenty three when they married. We do not know when they moved to Hudson, but it was probably right after they got married. Hudson was a new city planned in 1788 and built by a group of wealthy ship owners to establish a safe harbor for their vessels. News of the new city spread rapidly. Within a few years it had more than 10,000 residents. Bailey Hathaway s older brother John was one of the original settlers. He was a very wealthy man who owned a fleet of ships and was probably instrumental in Bailey and Peggy moving to Hudson. We do know they were in Hudson in 1797 when their oldest child was born, and that they lived there for the rest of their lives.
The Children of Bailey and Margaret (Peggy) Hathaway 1. Harriet born October 12, 1797 in Hudson, NY. She married Fredrick Moores on September 1, 1816 in Hudson. She died May 8, 1839 in New York City. 2. Phoebe Bailey born December 19, 1799 in Hudson, NY. She married Henry Pratt Skinner on December 24, 1824 in Hudson. She died June 12, 1887 in Hudson. She is a grandmother of Frank Randel Hathaway. Her daughter, Margaret Skinner, married her first cousin Bailey John Hathaway. 3. John born June 5, 1801. He died less than a year later. 4. Bailey Jenkins born August 4, 1802 in Hudson, NY. He was the twin brother of Henry Bolles Hathaway. He married Julia Ann Hasketh in New York City July 29, 1835. 5. Henry Bolles - born August 4, 1802 in Hudson, NY. He was the twin brother of Bailey Jenkins Hathaway. He married Hetty Cornelia Sands on May 17, 1824 in Savannah, GA. He died October 9, 1843 in Hawkinsville, GA. He was a grandfather of Frank Randel Hathaway. His son, Bailey John, married his first cousin Margaret Skinner. 6. A son, born and died May 12, 1804. 7. John Bolles born November 19, 1805. He married first Lucy G. Crofut on August 31, 1829 in Ridgebury, CT. They lived in Hudson, NY and had six children. She died September 24, 1845. He married second, Cassandra G Hamblin on October 10, 1851 in Canandaigua, NY. They had two children. He died May 17, 1877 in Hudson, NY. 8. Francis William born October 31, 1807. He died October 14, 1808, two weeks before his first birthday. 9. Margaret E. born December 5, 1810 in Hudson, NY. She married Aaron Whipple Rand on April 17, 1839 in New York City. 10. Sarah J. born October 18, 1812. She married James Hine on August 9, 1836 in New York City. They had eight children. She died March 7, 1891 in Rome, Georgia. 11. Mary born June 16, 1814 in Hudson, NY. She married Major Cooper when she was over 60 years old. 12. Cornelia born December 27, 1816 in Hudson, NY. She married Stephen Rand on April 17, 1840 in New York City. She died in August of 1903. Peggy and Bailey both moved away from the homes of their ancestors. Peggy s ancestors had lived in New London Connecticut for three generations. Bailey s ancestors had lived in the Taunton/Freetown area of Massachusetts for five generations. I saac Hathaway Jr., Bailey s father, moved his family to Adams Massachusetts after the Revolutionary War. Bailey and Peggy moved t o Hudson which became the home of many of their descendents for generations to follow. While these cities are not far apart in modern times they were a great distance apart in the late 1700 s when transportation by sea was powered only by the wind and on land only by horses.
A Colonial Era Map showing the locations where Peggy and Bailey lived In spite of the distances involved, Peggy remained close to her parents. She visited them on the old farm when she could and corresponded with them often. The oldest letter we have was written by Margaret Bolles, Peggy s mother, to Peggy and her daughter Phoebe Bailey Hathaway on July 1, 1818. There is also a letter written by Peggy to her husband in 1820 following the death of her mother. The transcriptions of these letters, shown on the next page, were done by Scott Alford in the 1960 s.
Peggy s husband Bailey Hathaway died August 18, 1831. He was 60 years old. Peggy lived for another 32 years. She became the beloved Matriarch of our Hathaway family, which spread far and wide. In September 1835 a nephew, Joseph C. Hathaway and his wife Esther, gave her family bible. In it she recorded the births and marriages of her children, the births of fifty eight grandchildren, and the births of seven great-grandchildren. She spent her final years living with her children in New York City. She died June 14, 1863. She was 89 years old. She and Bailey are buried side by side in the Hudson City Cemetery.
The Times of the Life of Margaret Bolles Hathaway 1774-1863 She was born two years before the start of the Revolutionary War and died two years after the start of the Civil War. Her lifetime spanned a period of incredible growth and change in America. She spent her childhood in an east coast seaport town at the heart of the American Revolution. revolutionary forces and went to war to give birth to a nation. Her father joined the She married a seaman in the era when ships sailed the oceans driven only by the winds, and settled in a new and vibrant city founded as a safe harbor for ships of the sea. She spent most of her adult life in that growing city during its most successful period. Sixteen men held the office of President of the United States in her lifetime, starting with George Washington, ending with Abraham Lincoln and including men like John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson. She saw one man from her home town of Hudson, New York, Martian Van Buren, take the office in 1837. The steamboat, the hot air balloon, the threshing machine, vaccination, the gas stove, morphine, the steam locomotive, the bicycle, the electric motor, photography, Portland cement, the internal combustion engine, matches, the telegraph, the refrigerator, the electric light bulb, the sewing machine, the passenger elevator, the oil drill, lead acid batteries, the vacuum cleaner, and the player piano were all invented in her lifetime. The population of the United States grew from around two and a half million at her birth to close to thirty five million by the time she died. She was born into the thirteen colonies two years before the Declaration of independence. A week after she died West Virginia was admitted as the thirty fifth state in what was at that time a divided nation. She lived in a time when there seemed to be no limits to the growth of the nation, when new cities were being built and new frontiers explored, yet it was a period with many wars, starting with the Revolution and ending with the Civil War, both of which took a terrible toll in human lives and suffering. As you look at the timeline on the next page, try to imagine what it must have been like to have lived during the first century of the United States of America, and what life must have been like in Hudson, NY for Peggy Hathaway.
So How am I Related to Margaret Bolles Hathaway? If you can trace your ancestry to Frank Randel Hathaway and his wife Beulah Messer Hathaway, who were my grandparents, you are a descendent of Margaret (Peggy) Bolles Hathaway. Peggy was the great grandmother of Frank Randel Hathaway. Simply determine how many generations you are descended for him and add that number of Greats. If you are not sure who Frank Randel Hathaway was, see his biography which will tell you who some of his descendents were, and perhaps you can establish a relationship. If you are a more distant cousin who is descended from one of the early generations you can do your own generation counting. In this case please contact us and let us know who you are. I hope you have enjoyed meeting Peggy and thinking about what her life was like. Had she not lived, married and had her family, none of us would exist today. All the information in this biography is historically accurate to the best of my knowledge. With genealogy, new information often comes to light that contradicts the old. If you are aware of any errors I have made or corrections or additions to this that should be added, please let me know.