American AcornsHenry Dow's Hampton and the family's Maine connection
Family tradition connects the Oak family to the early settlers of Hampton, New Hampshire. Printed genealogies trace a Dow line to Augustus Ames, born in 1839, and a Coxe–Rawlins line to Mary Rawlins Coffin, who married in 1725. The later links from those families to the Oaks remain unverified.
Henry Dow and the new town
In April 1637 Henry Dow, a Norfolk man of about twenty-nine, was licensed to emigrate to New England, according to the 1893 town history. He settled first at Watertown, Massachusetts, and moved to Hampton in late 1643 or early 1644. The town chose him as a selectman in 1651, and he served as its deputy to the General Court in 1655 and 1656. He died on 21 April 1659.
From Hampton to Skowhegan
The printed Dow genealogies trace a line from Henry through his son, Sergeant Joseph Dow, who married Mary Sanborn in 1662, to their son Jeremiah, born at Hampton on 24 March 1677. Jeremiah's son Ebenezer was born on 13 January 1708, and Ebenezer's son Jonathan on 13 August 1735. Jonathan married Lydia Huse in 1764, and their son David, born on 12 July 1782, went to Skowhegan, Maine, after 1808; he died on 17 August 1862.
Source: Copied into the family tree from another contributor.
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The Book of Dow continues with David's daughter Hannah E. Dow, born on 13 March 1806, who married Nathaniel P. Ames of Canaan. Their son Augustus Ames was born in 1839.
Source: Town of Madison, Maine, marriage certificate (copy in the family tree)
How it is shown: Complete image as held; no crop, no retouch.
Keep in mind: What the page says, as read at thumbnail scale: 'This is to certify that Mr. Nathaniel Ames of Milburn and Miss Hannah Dow of Madison in the county of Somerset(?) and State of Maine were joined in marriage ... the 20th day of December 1825', signed by a justice of the peace and 'a true copy, attest, Samuel Weston, Town Clerk'. Whether these are our people: Likely, not Confirmed: Nathaniel Phineas Ames (1800-1882) and Hannah E. Dow (1806-1881) match the names and a marriage in the 1820s; the Book of Dow gives the same marriage.
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Evidence note: The early Dow generations appear in the 1893 town history and the 1929 Book of Dow. The later generations rely on the Book of Dow alone, leaving that part of the line probable rather than independently established. The continuation from Augustus to the Oak family comes from the family tree and remains unverified.
The wives' families
The town history records Jeremiah Dow's marriage to Elizabeth Perkins in 1697. She was born on 9 April 1676, the daughter of Abraham Perkins Jr and Elizabeth Sleeper, and the town history says her father was killed in an attack by Native Americans on June 13, 1677, when she was a year old. Her mother's father, Thomas Sleeper, was at Hampton soon after its settlement and held land there by 1646. Her father's father, Abraham Perkins, was made a freeman on 13 May 1640 and granted eighty acres that year.
Mary Sanborn, who married Joseph Dow on 17 December 1662, was the daughter of William Sanborn and Mary Moulton, according to two compiled genealogies. That would make her a granddaughter of John Moulton, a freeman of 1639 and Hampton's first deputy, and a great-granddaughter of the Reverend Stephen Bachiler, the town's first pastor. The two genealogies agree, though one may copy the other, and the 1893 history's list of William Sanborn's children has no Mary.
The Coxe and Rawlins line
The Rawlins genealogies trace another line to Hampton through Moses Coxe, who was there by the spring of 1640 as the town's first herdsman, served as a selectman in 1662 and died on 28 May 1687, aged 93. His daughter Rachel married Thomas Rawlins about 1670, and their son, Lieutenant Thomas Rawlins, was born at Exeter on 14 July 1671 and lived at Stratham. His daughter Mary married Abner Coffin of Newbury on 10 December 1725. The family tree carries this line on through the Coffin and York families to the Oak family; those later links are unverified.
Source: Copied into the family tree from another contributor.
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Sources
- Joseph Dow, History of the Town of Hampton, New Hampshire, from its Settlement in 1638 to the Autumn of 1892, ed. Lucy E. Dow, vol. 2 (Salem, Mass., 1893): archive.org/details/historyoftownofh02dowj
- Robert Piercy Dow, The Book of Dow: Genealogical Memoirs of the Descendants of Henry Dow 1637, Thomas Dow 1639 and Others (Rutland, Vt., 1929), pp. 231–232, 247 and 256–257: archive.org/details/bookofdowgenealo00dowr
- V. C. Sanborn, Genealogy of the Family of Samborne or Sanborn in England and America, 1194–1898 (Concord, N.H., 1899): archive.org/details/genealogyoffamil01sanb
- John R. Rollins, Records of Families of the Name Rawlins or Rollins in the United States (Lawrence, Mass., 1874): archive.org/details/recordsoffamilie00roll
- The Ancestry of Frederic Rockwell Gladstone Sanborn (1928), Rollins or Rawlins section: archive.org/details/ancestryoffreder01sanb
- The family tree, for the later links to the Oak family.