Captain Nathaniel Oak of Chelsea, Vermont

In 1794 the town of Chelsea, Vermont, voted to pay "Capt. Nathaniel Oak nineteen and a half bushels of wheat for building the pound, stocks and sign-post." The sentence is in Thomas Hale's historical address at the town's centennial in 1884. Hale explains that the stocks were "a sort of contrivance in which guilty persons were made to stand with their feet fastened," and thinks the sign-post may have been "a post on which to post bills or public notices." He also remembered the old town house from his boyhood: "In that house lived Capt. Nathaniel Oak, so long acting sexton of the town, who subsequently moved into a smaller house on the north side of the street, running east of the jail, at the foot of the hill."

The soldier from Winchester

The Nathaniel Oak who lived at Chelsea told the government in 1832, at the age of eighty-one, that in 1775 he had been living at Winchester, New Hampshire, and that on April 19 he volunteered and marched to Cambridge in Captain Benjamin Hastings's company of Bolton minute men. An old comrade, Elijah Whitney, swore to the same in a deposition. That puts his birth about 1751 and probably identifies him with the Westborough boy born on May 16, 1751, a grandson of the immigrant Nathaniel Oak, whose mother later lived at Winchester according to the 1906 register. A sworn statement of December 22, 1837 has a Nathaniel Oak of Chelsea, aged eighty-six, recalling a half-sister's 1777 marriage near Winchester, which fits the same mother's family by a second marriage; the statement is on John Oake and Susanna Allen. The company, and the wife and Hastings connection that go with it, are on the Hastings story. Winchester's town history names a "Lieutenant Nathaniel Oaks" on a committee to hire Continental soldiers in April 1782, without saying which Nathaniel. Whether that lieutenant was the Chelsea man is not known.

The pension file calls him a private. The title "Captain" comes from Chelsea: the 1794 vote, Hale's address, a grandson's memory and the stone at his grave. No commission for him has been found.

Chelsea, 1790 to 1839

The census indexes enter a Nathaniel Oak at Chelsea in 1790, 1800 and 1820, and a Nathaniel Oaks in 1830. Hale says the house where he lived was "occupied, I believe, as a hotel," and that Oak was the town's sexton for a long time.

Chelsea's death card, a town clerk's copy made in 1919, records Susannah Oak, wife of "Nathianiel Oak," dying in September 1801, aged fifty-two years, six months and fourteen days, and buried at the "Old" cemetery. The index reads the day of death as the 7th, but the digit on the card is unclear. The card gives no maiden name. The name of her granddaughter, Susannah Hastings Oak, born at Chelsea on May 26, 1808, and a Bolton marriage of 1773 between Susanna Hastings and Nathaniel Oak Jr., suggest that she was probably Susanna Hastings; Bolton's records enter the birth of "Susanna, d. Benjamin and Abigail" Hastings on February 11, 1748-49, broadly consistent with her age at death. A year after her death, on September 7, 1802, the town clerk of Norwich entered the marriage of "Capt. Nathaniel Oak" of "Chelsea, Orange Co." and Elizabeth Gates, performed by Constant Murdock, justice of the peace (the bride's surname is written cramped, "Gats" or "Gates"); the card does not say whether either had been married before.

Two manuscripts show him dealing in money. On September 6, 1816, he wrote to Capt. Alden Partridge asking to borrow $500; the letter doesn't say whether he got the loan. On December 24, 1822, he sold one share in the Chelsea Turnpike Corporation to Jacob Cutter for $60, acknowledged the same day before a justice and recorded on March 5, 1823. Nothing ties the sale, six years later, to the need behind the 1816 request. The name, town and period make him the probable writer of both, though neither manuscript gives his birth or parentage.

Benjamin Hastings Oak appears on Chelsea's lists: the town list shows him as town clerk in 1807 and as its representative to the legislature in 1810, and the 1906 register says he was clerk from 1807 to 1812. Benjamin's marriage to Hannah Smith at Chelsea on December 23, 1804, and the births and early deaths of their children there (William S., 1805 to 1806; Genett, January 22 to April 28, 1810) are in FamilySearch's index of the town's records. Only the 1906 register calls him Nathaniel's son; the town entries give no parents, though they give his daughter the name Hastings.

To Exeter, Maine, 1839 to 1840

On March 22, 1839, at Bangor, Nathaniel Oak swore that he had left Vermont to "spend the remainder of his days with his son who resides in Exeter" in Penobscot County, and asked that his pension be paid there. A witness, "Nathaniel Oak Jun'r of Exeter," a "very respectable farmer," swore that he was the same man. The witness was very likely the son, though the page doesn't say so. The county's history names a single Nathaniel Oak at Exeter on its 1818 tax list.

He died there. Hale says he died "while happily praising God in a love feast," the Methodist gathering for bread and testimony. Hale gives no date. A contemporary notice describes the death: the Christian Mirror of Portland, Maine, April 9, 1840 (p. 3), copying the Dover Herald, reads "In Exeter, Capt. Nathaniel Oak, aged 88 years 10 months. The deceased arose in usual health, walked from his residence to the meeting house, a distance of half a mile, and had been seated but a few moments, when he suddenly fell and expired." The notice gives no date of death. Exeter's town record of deaths enters "Nathaniel Oak. Revolutionary Soldier. March 15, 1840," a Sunday, which fits the notice's 88 years 10 months from a birth on May 16, 1751; the 1906 register gives the same day (it says eighty-nine).

A newspaper of October 1841 enters the death at Exeter of Mrs. Eliza Oak, "eldest daughter of Nathaniel Oak, Esq., of that place," who fits the register's Eliza, the first child of Nathaniel Jr. of Exeter. A grandson wrote in 1895 that the last pension was drawn on March 4, 1840, and that an older brother remembered going to Bangor when it was collected. The Find a Grave transcription of his stone at Crowell Cemetery in Exeter reads "CAPT. NATHL. OAK / 1751-1840 / 'A SOLDIER OF THE REV.'" The stone, which he shares with his son Nathaniel (1780-1859) and Abigail, "his wife," is shown below in a family-tree photograph that reads "CAPT. NATHL. OAK / 1751 - 1840 / A SOLDIER OF THE REV." The Crowell Cemetery footstone photograph also held belongs to a different Nathaniel Oak (1824-1907).

What the family register remembers

Henry Lebbeus Oak, who compiled the 1906 family register, wrote that his branch was "descended from her only brother—Nathaniel," meaning this Nathaniel, brother of his sister Hannah (John Oake and Susanna Allen). His entry for Nathaniel (no. 20, on page 18 and page 19) is the fullest portrait of him, set down from family memory more than sixty years after his death.

Nathaniel lost his father as an infant. In 1754 he went with his mother and stepfather, John Butler, to Shrewsbury, Massachusetts. From 1766, "and perhaps earlier," he lived with his uncle Nathaniel in Boston, perhaps also spending some years in Winchendon with his cousins William and Seth. The register notes that the Bolton record of his 1773 marriage calls him "Nathaniel Jr.," which "at first led to error as to his identity." At the Lexington alarm he served twelve days in the company of his father-in-law, Capt. Benjamin Hastings. The register suggests he may have been the Nathaniel of later enlistments, and that he sent his wife to Winchester, New Hampshire, to live with his mother and sister, and soon followed. Most of his children were born there, and there, between 1777 and 1783, he bought 176 acres in three lots for £508. His 1832 declaration places him at Winchester already in April 1775.

In 1790 he moved the family to Chelsea, "his home for half a century." The register says he kept a hotel in a building still standing in 1900, whose hall was long used as the county court house, for town meetings, and for meetings of the Congregational church. Later he lived in a cottage, also still standing, served as pound-keeper and sexton, "took great pride in his garden," and worked as a carpenter at odd jobs, being, "like all his tribe, 'handy with tools.'" This matches Hale's memory of the hotel, the sexton and the smaller house. The register reads the large number of land transfers in his name as some speculation in real estate, and records "traditions of considerable wealth and of extreme poverty, both perhaps well founded, but exaggerated and referring to different periods of his life." In later years he spent some winters with his oldest son, Benjamin Hastings Oak, in Boscawen, New Hampshire, before going in 1839 to his son Nathaniel Jr. in Exeter. There, on a Sunday, he "died suddenly in church at the age of 89."

The register sums him up: "He was a man of robust physique and of jovial temperament, as befitted a landlord; well known and liked wherever he lived; in religion an active Methodist, but at home in the meetings of any denomination." His descendants numbered about 500 in 1906.

Of Susanna Hastings it says: "She was a woman for whom her children had an unusually strong affection and reverence; and the name of Hastings has been preserved in many branches of her descendents. She was a good singer, a favorite pupil of Billings, the famous New England teacher and composer." It gives her nine children. The register's dates for her differ from the town cards: it has her dying "about 1803" and Nathaniel marrying again "about 1804," where the Chelsea and Norwich cards give September 1801 and September 7, 1802. It names the second wife as "Elizabeth ——— (widow Gates)," so, by the register's account, she had been married before. They had no children. After Nathaniel's death she left Exeter to live with relations in Castleton, Vermont, and died before 1848.

The register follows the nine children in its next pages (pages 32-36). The oldest, Benjamin Hastings Oak, founded the Garland branch. Susanna, the oldest daughter, married Enoch Challis, who kept the Boscawen hotel in 1812 "but then went into the army, returning with shattered health"; she died in Howard County, Indiana, in 1870, aged ninety-one. Abigail and her husband, Matthew Hedges, went to Exeter, Maine, in 1807-8, the first of the branch to live in Maine; "In 1816 the famous 'year without crops,' the Hedges removed to Ohio, and in 1821 settled in Florence, Ind., returning to Ohio soon after 1840." Her descendants and William's, the register says, "far outnumber those of all the other children." William left Chelsea in 1803-4, "not being able to agree with his step-mother," and "the eastern relations knew nothing of him for 90 years"; he settled in Indiana in 1815 and was "an active Methodist, the meetings being long held in his home." The register could not use his family Bible: "the grandchildren in possession fearing an intention of the writer to get their share of some great fortune!" Betsy kept the Mansion House at Andover, Massachusetts, with her first husband, "a very tall, straight woman of great worth, much courage and ambition; but her life was full of misfortunes"; she spent her last years in Garland and died there in 1872. Sarah, who never married, lived with her sister Mrs. Challis "and died of cholera in Cincinnati." Nancy, the youngest, went to Exeter, Maine, in 1810 to visit her sister Abigail, married Dr. Benjamin Evans, and stayed; "if Mrs. Evans ever had any faults her most intimate friends never discovered them."

What we're still looking for

Only the register, his granddaughter's name and the Bolton marriage of 1773 tie Susanna Hastings to him; no record names her as his wife. The nine children the register gives him have not been traced in Chelsea's records; the register says most of them were born at Winchester. We have not yet searched Chelsea's or Orange County's deeds for the register's hotel, cottage, garden and land dealings, and the Winchester purchases of 1777 to 1783 have not been found in Cheshire County's deeds. No record has been found of his office as sexton or of the commission behind "Captain." Elizabeth's first husband and maiden name are unknown. The grandson's letter and the register are the family's memory of him; the town of Chelsea's votes and Hale's recollection are the town's.

Sources

• Thomas Hale, historical address, in Chelsea Centennial: Proceedings of the Centennial Celebration of the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Settlement of Chelsea, Vermont (Keene, 1884), pp. 45-47 and 54-55. archive.org/details/chelseacentennia1884chel
• Nathaniel Oak to Capt. Alden Partridge, September 6, 1816 (loan request), and Nathaniel Oak to Jacob Cutter, December 24, 1822 (Chelsea Turnpike Corporation share sale, with its reverse docket), shown inline above.
• Nathaniel Oak, Revolutionary War pension file S.18534, National Archives (declaration of August 21, 1832; Elijah Whitney's deposition; transfer application of March 22, 1839; Joseph Oak's letter of November 25, 1895).
• "Vermont, Vital Records, 1760-1954," FamilySearch: death card of Susannah Oak, September 1801 (day read as 7 in the index; image 850); marriage card of Capt. Nathaniel Oak and Elizabeth Gates, September 7, 1802 (image 813); entries for Benjamin H. Oak and his children at Chelsea (index lines only; the cards not opened).
• "United States, Census, 1790, 1800, 1820 and 1830," FamilySearch index (Chelsea, Orange County; index lines only, the households not opened).
• Hurd, History of Cheshire and Sullivan Counties, New Hampshire (1886), Winchester chapter, p. 568. Vital Records of Bolton (1910), marriage of Susanna Hastings and Nathaniel Oak Jr., June 2, 1773. History of Penobscot County, Maine (1882), Exeter.
• Exeter, Maine, town record of deaths: "Nathaniel Oak. Revolutionary Soldier. March 15, 1840." "A Record of Deaths in the Town of Exeter," image 142 of 158, FamilySearch (shown inline above).
• Find a Grave, memorial for Nathaniel Oak, Crowell Cemetery, Exeter, Maine (stone transcription).
• H. L. Oak, Oak-Oaks-Oakes: Family Register (1906), no. 20, pp. 18-19. Public domain; browse it page by page or read the whole book: PDF, from the Internet Archive.

The earlier generations are on Where Nathaniel Oak's family went, and the searches made for the family are summarized on the research log.