Email#2. From: "David A. Macdonald" To: "John Hoyt" Cc: "Terry Colegrove" Sent: Sunday, January 22, 2006 1:05 AM Subject: John Colegrove, Esq. First Marriage Hi John, And thank you for the trouble you've taken, both in sending attachments and in poking around in the LDS and web sources. Terry Colegrove mentioned quite a while back the Colegrove book from which but I had not come across a copy of it. I particularly appreciate the excerpts that you sent, which give more information on the children by John Colegrove's first marriage than I had had. I note that although his first wife is said to have been named Martha (perhaps Martha Corwin), none of the known children from the first marriage bore that name. I am not working on my own genealogy but rather trying to link all who persons born before 1850 who bore the name Corwin and were descendants of the Matthias Corwin, who settled on Long Island in 1640, . In several instances I have made donations to local genealogical societies and raised problems, when the importance of the problem justified it, but there is simply is no way in which I can join the dozens, actually hundreds, of local genealogical societies that might be of help in solving any particular problem. This means that I must largely rely on the censuses. on material available in libraries to which I have access or posted on the web, and on the research of correspondents, always with some uncertainty when the sources are not cited or the sources cited do not look very authentic. The material that you sent, and in particular the very specific material from the Colegrove genealogy, has led me to take a deeper look at my own data. Given the size of my project, it is easy to lose sight of some of it. And so I find that it was an earlier Colegrove-Corwin family that really raises the problem: On 4 November 1779, in Norwich, New London County, Connecticut, PHINEAS CORWIN married PHOEBE COLEGROVE of Coventry, Rhode Island, daughter of Stephen Colegrove and Phoebe Millard. MapQuest puts today's driving distance between the two at a little over 33 miles. Now, Phoebe Colegrove was a sister of John Colegrove, who married Phines Corwin's sister Hannah Corwin on on 5 March 1795 in the Congregational Church at Franklin, [New London County]., Connecticut. (Barbour Collection, citing Franklin First Church records, 1: 388.) You will see the marriage at http:// www.rootsweb.com/~ctcfrank/marriages.htm as well. But Phoebe Colegrove was described as being of Coventry, Rhode Island, in 1779, and John Colegrove was described as being of Coventry, Rhode Island, in 1795. This again rasises the question how a family that was solidly of Coventry, Rhode Island, could marry with a family that solidly lived more than 30 miles away in Connecticut. And it leads me to your comments on the distance. I think that the distance of 20-25 miles that you gave for Coventry- where? for the 1795 marriage is too short. Even by today's roads lies (MapQuest) 35 miles from Coventry, Rhode Island. The 1795 distance by horse or carriage was probably about the same, as the part off the route that lies on today's IS 395 would have been zig- zaggier but would not have run down through Yantic as the MapQuest route between the Coventry and Frnklin runs. You suggest that church meetings or church-sponsored events might have brought the Colegroves and Corwins together. I don't think that that can have been the reason. Church meetings would involve deacons or others intimately involved in the church, and Phoebe Corwin would not have been one to be delegated to a church meeting. Church- sponsored events 30 miles away would not work in 1779 or 1795. No such function could have taken Phoebe Corwin alone the 33 miles; it would have had to be a trip by the entire family, by carriage or wagon, and it would have meant at least 3, more likely 5 days away from the farming. Moreover, marriages were usually held where the bride's family lived, not where the groom's family lived. I now suspect that the Colegroves had sought refuge from British activity in Rode Island by moving from Rhode Island to Connecticut for a few years, just as the Corwins sought similar refuge by moving from Long Island to Connecticut. But the Corwins moved permanently and were no longer called "of Long Island", while the Colegroves moved temporarily, with every intention of returning to Rhode Island, which is why they continued to be called "of Rhode Island." The death of the first wife, Martha, on 30 April 1793, aged 39, that appears on page 111 of the Colegrove genealogy, is almost certainly sound. It seems to have come from a gravestone at Oneco, and that is something that can be verified. The fact that the first child was named Hannah is suggestive, since that was the name of the second wife's mother, and it would have been the name of the first wife's mother if the first wife was Martha Corwin. All in all I am pretty well convinced that the 1779 marriage of Phineas Corwin to Phoebe Colegrove is the one that has to be accounted for, inasmuch as it is the one that brought the two families together. The 1795 marriage off Phineas's sister Hannah to Phoebe's brother John is much easier to account for. And a 1793 marriage of Martha Corwin, daughter of a Hannah and sister of Phineas Corwin and Hannah Corwin, to John Corwin becomes extremely plausible, although one is left wondering why no record of it is found either in Connecticut or in Rhode Island. So once again I thank you for your help. David