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Scan of page 42 of the 1906 Oak family register
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34
OAK—OAKS—OAKES
I, 1811
; died September 24, 1851.
Wife, Abigail Cartland, daug^h-
ter of Elijah^ and Abigails (Scales)
; born Lee, N. H., December
17, 1788; died August 18, 1866; 8 children, Eliza, Samuel, Abigail,
Harriet, Nathaniel, George, Joseph and Mary.
Nathaniel^ Oak left Chelsea, Vt., at the age of
18, with
all his
possessions hanging from a stick over his shoulder.
Working on
bridges and other structures
in Portsmouth and Bangor, he
at
last came on a
visit
to
his
sister Abigail
to Exeter,
Me., v^here
in 1810 he bought a farm in the wilderness, which he cleared and
made his home for life.
Physically he stood "six feet in his stock-
ings." and was a model of athletic manhood.
His character was
equal to his physique; and his "luck" was proverbially not infe-
rior
to
either.
From
the beginning he was
a
leading
citizen,
though never accepting public
ofifice.
He prospered as a man
is
likely to do who can do the work of three
in
field or forest, and
has no bad habits
; and he became rich according to the standards
of the time and
region.
Of unquestioned
integrity,
strict mor-
ality, a leading member of the Baptist church, noted for his liber-
ality to the poor, he was a general favorite, whose success created
no envy.
One of his children, Nathaniel, lives
in old age,
1906,
on the old farm, the last of his generation.
"Jl.
Arethusa.
Born January
20,
1782;
died young.
74.
Abigail.
Florence, Ind.
; baptized Winchester, N. H., May,
1785
; married Chelsea, Vt., about 1806; died Hamilton, O., March
17,
1862.
Husband, Matthew Hedges, farmer, son of David and
Phebe (Shaw)
; died March 22, 1863; 7 children. William, Mary
Jane,
Nathaniel
Gates,
Harriet,
Chas,
Emerson,
Hester
Ann,
Davenport Oak.
The family lived for a year or two in Stow, Vt., and went to
Exeter, Me.,
in
1807-8, Abigail being the
first of this 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, and spending their last years
with their youngest son in Cincinnati.
Abigail was traditionally
older than Nathaniel, and though baptized in 1785, she may have
been born some years
earlier, or she may have been
a twin
of
William, baptized the same year.
Her descendants and those of
William, the western
lines
of this branch,
far outnumber those
of
all
the
other
children
of
Nathaniel^
(20).
The
eastern
cousins had long
lost
all knowledge of these
relatives when
in
1891 the search was begun for this record.
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