Captain Josiah Angier Mitchell

Birth appears in Maine Births and Christenings, 1739-1900. Death date appears in Notes to The Autobiography of Mark Twain, online.

Josiah A. Mitchell, Shipmaster, appears in the 1860 U.S. Census for Freeport, Maine:

• Josiah A Mitchell Male 46 born Maine
• Susan R K Mitchell, 45 Maine. Captain Josiah Mitchell Family Tree on Ancestry.com (browna68) has her as: Susan Rachel Kelsey b. 12 MAR 1816 • Guilford, Piscataquis Co., Maine-d. 31 OCT 1866 • Freeport, Cumberland, Maine.
• Harry W Mitchell Male 19 Maine
• Mary A Mitchell Female 17 Maine
• Sarah A Mitchell Female 13 Maine
• Florence Mitchell Female 4 Maine

He appears in the 1870 U.S. Census for Freeport, Maine, without his wife:

• Josiah A Mitchell Male 58 Maine
• Harry W Mitchell Male 31 Maine
• Mary A Mitchell Female 27 Maine
• Abbie L Mitchell Female 23 Maine
• Flora L Mitchell Female 15 Maine
• Jennie Mitchell Female 13 Maine

Josiah Mitchell survived 43 days at sea in a lifeboat with brothers Henry and Samuel Ferguson. The 3 of them washed ashore in Hawaii barely alive. Henry kept a journal documenting the saga. He writes of eating their boot leather to survive. In Hawaii Mark Twain happened to be there and came to meet the survivors and hear their story, which made it into some of his writing.

Excerpt from the Account of the Burning of the Clipper Ship Hornet, by Mark Twain, Sacramento Daily Union, 1866:

“At seven o’clock on the morning of the 3d of May, the chief mate and two men started down into the hold to draw some “bright varnish” from a cask. The captain told him to bring the cask on deck – that it was dangerous to have it where it was, in the hold. The mate, instead of obeying the order, proceeded to draw a can full of the varnish first. He had an “opening light” in his hand, and the liquid took fire; the can was dropped, the officer in his consternation neglected to close the bung, and in a few seconds the fiery torrent had run in every direction, under bales of rope, cases of candles, barrels of kerosene, all sorts of freight, and tongues of flames were shooting upward through every aperture and crevice in the deck…

Captain Mitchell ordered the three boats to be launched instantly, which was done – and so hurriedly that the longboat (the one he left the vessel in himself) had a hole as large as a man’s head stove in her bottom. A blanket was stuffed into the opening and fastened to its place. Not a single thing was saved, except such food and other articles as lay about the cabin and could be quickly seized and thrown on deck. Forty minutes after the fire alarm the provisions and passengers were on board the three boats, and they rowed away from the ship – and to some distance, too, for the heat was very great. Twenty minutes afterward, the two masts with their rigging and their broad sheets of canvas wreathed in flames, crashed into the sea…." -- Freeport, Maine, Historical Society

Captain Josiah Mitchell's son, Harrison W. Mitchell, married Lily Von Schmidt in 1886. They had two daughters, Alexine (1886-1958) and Marion (1888-1966), both born in San Francisco (and grew up in Alameda, Calif.). When Harry died of Bright’s disease in 1890, Lily was not a single mother for long, marrying Charles Lee Tilden in 1892. The Tildens had one more child, a son, Charles Lee Tilden Jr. (Mitchell sisters). Alexine and Marion Otis Mitchell were active in WW I.

Lineage of Josiah Angier Mitchell is stated on The Allerton Family Journal website, in a November 2015 piece by descendant Judy Elfring:

• Isaac Allerton m. Mary Norris
• Mary Allerton m. Thomas Cushman
• Isaac Cushman m. Rebecca Harlow
• Ichabod Cushman m. Patience Holmes
• Patience Cushman m. Caleb Sturtevant - he is a Hopkins and Cooke descendant
• Sarah (Sturtevant) Whitman m. Jacob Mitchell - he is a Chilton descendant
• Josiah Whitman Mitchell m. Sarah Angier – they both died in Freeport, ME
• Josiah Angier Mitchell m. Susan Rachel Kelsey – he was a sea Captain and Mark Twain wrote about him after his ship burned in the Pacific
• Sarah Abbie Mitchell m. George Freeman Creech
• Abbie Mitchell Creech m. Carleton Allen Read
• Lawrence Mitchell Read m. Dorothy Leona MacDonald (J. Elfring's parents)