Courthouse records go only so far in piecing together a story like this. But the names I had found did give me enough to start turning to online genealogies, Find-a-Grave posts, and related histories to augment the investigation, often including the exasperating process of eliminating possibilities before chancing upon nuggets.
A conventional telling I found repeated contained this: “Captain John Shackford died at his home in Eastport, Maine, on Christmas day, 1840, having attained the eighty-seventh year of his age, and his widow obtained a pension from the U.S. government by reason of his service in the American revolution.”
Christmas, by the way, was not observed in Massachusetts, and likely not Maine at the time, even now that it was an independent state. As many journals of the time noted, “It was an ordinary day.”
The quick mention of his widow slid by almost unnoticed. It seemed to be an error, no, considering that Esther had died a decade earlier?
My big “ah-hah!” moment came in coming across a free ebook copy of the 1888 Eastport and Passamaquoddy, a Compilation of Historical and Biographical Sketches compiled by William Henry Kilby. Of special interest was in the 506-page book was a chapter, “Captain John Shackford and His Family,” by his grandson Samuel Shackford, living in Chicago. I’ve already referred to it, but the most crucial part for me was this: “After his decease, his second wife, who was widow Elise Olmstead, obtained a pension from the United States government for his services in the Revolution.” The crucial points were that Captain John had married a second time, something not obvious elsewhere, and even better, I now had a name to focus on.
As I soon found, her name was Elsie, though it also appears as Elise, Elsa, and Eliza. She was the widow of Darius Olmstead.
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The September 27, 1831, Eastport Sentinel reported the marriage of Elsie and John Shackford senior, with the Reverend Bonds officiating. In the Sentinel, her name was Mrs. Elsa, widow of the late Darius Olmstead.
Captain John would have been 77 or 78. Elsie, around 52.
She was born around 1779 in Chatham, England, to James Haddon and a presently unknown wife. He then then brought the family to Saint John, New Brunswick.
Elsie’s first husband, Darius Olmstead, was a merchant, “copartners in trade under the firm D&E Olmstead, with his brother Ethel. Between 1822 and 1825 they purchased sections of Central Wharf in Eastport from James Olmstead.
Darius died July 13, 1825, age 48.
He descended from a well-known and prolific colonial family in Connecticut., one that becomes difficult to follow in its many repetitions of Darius and Ethel across generations and geography.
In the instance at hand, Darius was born in 1776 to Aaron and Hannah Peat Olmstead.
His brother Ethel married Nancy Ann Haddon, presumably Elsie’s sister.
While Olmsteads appeared in historic roles during the American Revolution, Aaron was of the Loyalist faction and relocated to Saint John, New Brunswick, at the end of that war.
Partisan alliances aside, the border between the United States and Canada was loosely enforced. In 1798, Aaron drowned in the harbor at Eastport.
Among the children born to Darius and Elsie Haddon Olmstead was son Ethel (a name also spelled Ethal and Ethell in the records). He was born in 1814 in Eastport. Another son was named Darius.
In 1826, Eliza Olmstead, widow, and Ann Olmstead, wife of Ethel, sold a property on Key Street that Darius had purchased from John Shackford in 1810.
With the widow’s remarriage, her son Ethel, around age 16, would have become Captain John Shackford senior’s stepson.
I have nothing more on his brother.
All of it, of course, has relevance on the house we bought.
Jnana's Red Barn 