Rebecca Hartwell

Rebecca Hartwell (Sherman)

• Find A Grave Memorial ID # 96020098
• Yates County Cemetery Project
• The travails of an early Yates family, the Hartwells

In Rebecca’s latter years she and several of her children (and their spouses) became enamored with the Universal Friends Religion and moved to their settlement in Jerusalem, Yates County, New York. In a letter from her brother, American founding father Roger Sherman, he implores her to return to her husband, Deacon Joseph Hartwell.

Dear Sister, . . .Philadelphia January 18, 1792

I have for a long time been waiting for an opportunity to write to you and have now obtained one by favour of Mr. Phelps who has undertaken to forward this to you.

NOTE: in 1792, the most likely candidate for Mr. Phelps, would be Oliver Leicester Phelps of Canandaigua, Ontario County, New York, the husband of Roger's granddaughter, Elizabeth Law “Betsey” Phelps (Sherman). Oliver was also the son of U.S. Representative Oliver Phelps (famous for being the Phelps in the Phelps Gorman Purchase.)

I was at your house at New Milford in September last. Brother Hartwell and your children were then in health. I saw your daughter Gaylord who lives in the house with Deacon Gaylord. She told me that your friends there were all well. Brother Hartwell appears to live a lonesome life in your absence he says he was not willing that you should go so long a journey He says that he does not expect to come and accompany you home, nor does he know that you would be willing to come if he should — he came to New Haven once on purpose to ask my advice about the matter. It appears to me that it will be best for you to return home as soon as you can have the company of any friend. I should be willing to assist you if it was in my power.

Your husband and you have lived together a great number of years and by your joint industry have acquired a good estate — and brought up a family of children who are all married and settled in families by themselves, and now you might be mutual comforts to each other in the decline of life and enjoy the fruits of your industry, and dwell together as heirs of the grace of life as an inspired Apostle enjoins. I fear that if you should continue absent from your husband till the expiration of three years he will despair of your returning and obtain a divorce. I hope you will find means to come home soon I would give ten dollars toward the expence to any friend that shall assist you in coming home — You would not I believe be willing to be forever seperated from your husband and be considered as the blameable cause of it — I have been at Philadelphia attending Congress about three months, and expect to continue here till the middle of next month — I wish you would send me a letter to this place, to let me know how you do and what wishes or prospects you have of coming home. I received a letter from home this week & my family were well.

I am your affectionate, Brother

Roger Sherman

† OS or Old Style dates used the Julian Calendar with the New Year on March 25. NS or New Style dates started the New Year on January 1 and were 12 days further along. People born between the New Year dates are shown with birth years that show both styles: 1740/41. This discrepancy existed in the American colonies until 1752.

Sherman Genealogy; Thomas Townsend Sherman; Tobias A. Wright Publisher, New York 1920, Page 147

LOOKING BACK: The travails of an early Yates family, the Hartwells

Early, non-native settlers of Yates County were an unusual group. Unlike those moving into the Finger Lakes at the end of the 18th century who were seeking cheaper, more plentiful land, the early people of Yates County came for religious reasons. Many left comfortable homes behind, heading into an unbroken wilderness, experiencing many adventures and hardships along the way.

One family underwent more than their fair share of adversities after leaving New England for Yates County.

In the difficult years after the American Revolution, dozens of people (and even whole families) in southern New England fell under the spell of the Public Universal Friend, an enigmatic religious leader from Rhode Island. This included Rebecca Sherman Hartwell, a middle-aged mother in Connecticut. While Rebecca was a firm follower of the Friend, her husband, Joseph, was not. She left him behind and joined her married children, who had decided to follow the Friend to what is now Yates County in the 1790s. Rebecca’s brother, who happened to be Roger Sherman (signer of the Continental Association, Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, U.S. Constitution and the 1774 Petition to the King), wrote her a letter warning that Joseph would divorce her if she did not move back. She took her chances and stayed in Yates County, living separately from Joseph the rest of her life.

One of the sons who accompanied his mother into the Yates hinterland was Samuel Hartwell, born in 1760. He married the Public Universal Friend’s sister, Elizabeth Wilkinson, cementing the family’s tie to the sect. They moved to present-day Yates County and constructed a log cabin in what is now Torrey and had a large family: Samuel, Betsey, Amy, Stephen, Mercy, Joseph, Elijah, Moses and Aaron. In 1807, the family moved again and settled in Canada, leaving Joseph and Moses behind. By 1810, Joseph and Moses were carving farms out of the wilderness in the Italy and Naples area.

Meanwhile, things became difficult for the Hartwells in Canada. The War of 1812 broke out and Canada — still being British territory — fought against the United States. As Canadian residents, three of the Hartwell boys — Samuel Jr., Stephen and Elijah — were conscripted into the British Army.

They deserted their British regiment and foundered through the backwoods of western Ontario until they were able to cross the border near Detroit in what is now Michigan. Detroit was the site of a military base run by General William Hull, who welcomed Canadian deserters, and even at one point crossed into Canada to actively recruit from the Canadian regiments.

Two stories of escape

Eventually, General Hull invaded Canada, and the Hartwell brothers were obliged to go with the army. Hull withdrew back to Detroit, was counter-attacked and surrendered the fort on August 16, 1812. The Hartwells were immediately taken prisoner as deserters of the British army and imprisoned at Kingston, Ontario.

At this point, the boys tried their luck and slipped away from the guards. Samuel was caught, but Stephen and Elijah escaped and made their way back to Yates County, where their parents had returned due to the war. Elijah and Stephen even joined the army — American, this time — and fought in the war beginning in 1813. They were both in the regiment of Colonel Philetus Swift of Phelps, who was a well-known state senator and later acting lieutenant governor of New York state.

Meanwhile, Samuel Hartwell remained imprisoned in Canada with others caught as deserters. Unbelievably, he escaped again, and this time did not get caught. Many years later, in 1862, an unsigned letter in the Penn Yan Democrat described his escape. The writer claimed that Hartwell and his companions were rewarded for their good behavior with little supervision, and one day wandered into the corridor and secreted themselves under benches. When the guard neglected to check on the men at night, they opened a window in the corridor and sneaked out onto the roof.

“Passing over the main building, they got upon the roof of the addition,” the letter explained, “and from that they let themselves down upon the top of the wall, which was some eighteen feet in height.” Somehow – the author does not explain how – they got to the ground unharmed and started moving. When dawn broke, they were crestfallen to see they had only made about a mile headway in the thick darkness. Running into the woods, cavalry officers chased them. Samuel escaped thanks to the softness of the soil, which caused the men on horseback to ride slowly.

He became separated from the other men in the chase and spent three weeks wandering alone in the wilds near Lake Ontario, until he met another escaped prisoner. They stole a canoe and paddled across the lake. Since the entire area was blanketed in thick forest, they did not know if they were in American or Canadian territory. Desperate for food, they finally approached a cabin and were able to determine they were indeed back in the United States

Unlike Stephen and Elijah, Samuel does not have military pay records from the War of 1812. According to S.C. Cleveland, author of “The History of Yates County,” Samuel possibly drowned in the Niagara River and did not return to Yates County. This is unlikely, because although he did not return and join the military and does not appear in Yates County records after the war, there is a Samuel Hartwell (who is not his father) that appears in Ontario County in years following. If he had drowned after escaping from prison, details of his escape would also not have survived to be repeated in the newspaper decades later.

The other Hartwells, except for Moses and Amy, all moved to Blood’s Corners in Cohocton, Steuben County. Amy married Samuel Street and Moses married Honor German, and both left descendants in Yates County. Of the Hartwells who moved to Steuben County, some pushed further west and settled in Erie County near Buffalo, close to where the boys had been imprisoned.

This may have included Samuel, whose children ended up in Erie County. In 1841, one of these children, Samuel III, was convicted of grand larceny and sentenced to five years in Auburn State Prison. Like his father, this Samuel teamed up with another prisoner and escaped.

He was never found.
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The Public Universal Friend

She "became a follower of Jemima Wilkinson AKA The Public Universal Friend, and accompanied her children Samuel Hartwell and Mary Botsford to Yates County, New York, where she died at age 90."

NOTE: The Public Universal Friend[a] (born Jemima Wilkinson; November 29, 1752 – July 1, 1819) was an American preacher born in Cumberland, Rhode Island, to Quaker parents. After suffering a severe illness in 1776, the Friend claimed to have died and been reanimated as a genderless evangelist named the Public Universal Friend, and afterward shunned both birth name and gendered pronouns. In androgynous clothes, the Friend preached throughout the northeastern United States, attracting many followers who became the Society of Universal Friends.

The Friend's theology was broadly similar to that of most Quakers. The Friend stressed free will, opposed slavery, and supported sexual abstinence. The most committed members of the Society of Universal Friends were a group of unmarried women who took leading roles in their households and community. In the 1790s, members of the Society acquired land in Western New York where they formed the town of Jerusalem near Penn Yan, New York. The Society of Universal Friends ceased to exist by the 1860s. Many writers have portrayed the Friend as a woman, and either a manipulative fraudster, or a pioneer for women's rights; others have viewed the Friend as transgender or non-binary and a major figure in trans history.

The Friend was a cousin of Stephen Hopkins, a chief justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court and longtime governor of Rhode Island. He was also a signer of the Continental Association AKA Articles of Association and Declaration of Independence. (This is NOT the Stephen Hopkins from Jamestown, Virginia and The Mayflower passenger.)

Rebecca Hartwell (Sherman) Life Timeline:

• Birth on 30 July 1731 • Stoughton, Norfolk County, Massachusetts, Colonial America
• Death of Father William Sherman (1692–1741) on 20 March 1741 in Stoughton, Norfolk County, Massachusetts, Colonial America
• Marriage on 24 May 1751 in Newton, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, Colonial America to Deacon Joseph Hartwell (1728–1818) to Rebeckah Sherman [Connecticut Town Birth Records, pre-1870, Barbour Collection]
• Birth of Daughter Mary Hartwell (1752–) 30 Sep 1752 in New Milford, Litchfield, Connecticut, Colonial America
• Birth of Daughter Ruth Hartwell (1755–1804) 6 Mar 1755 in New Milford, Litchfield, Connecticut, Colonial America
• Birth of Daughter Sarah Hartwell (1757–1847) 15 Jun 1757 in New Milford, Litchfield, Connecticut, Colonial America
• Birth of Son Samuel Hartwell (1760–1851) 20 April 1760 in New Milford, Litchfield, Connecticut, Colonial America
• Her son Samuel Hartwell marries the sister of the founder the Society of Universal Friends, The Public Universal Friend, previously known as Jemima Wilkinson
• Birth of Daughter Elizabeth Hartwell (1763–1800) 24 April 1763 in New Milford, Litchfield, Connecticut, Colonial America
• Birth of Son Joseph Hartwell Jr. (1766–1845) 7 March 1766 in New Milford, Litchfield, Connecticut, Colonial America
• Birth of Son Isaac Hartwell (1768–1855) 14 June 1768 in New Milford, Litchfield, Connecticut, Colonial America
• Birth of Daughter Rebecca Hartwell (1770–1847) 1 August 1770 in New Milford, Litchfield, Connecticut, Colonial America
• Death of Mother Mehitable Wellington (1687–1776) 12 April 1776 in New Haven, New Haven County, Connecticut, Colonial America
• Estrangement in 1792 to Jerusalem, Yates County, New York, United States of America
• Death of Brother Honorable Roger Sherman (1721–1793) 23 July 1793 in New Haven, New Haven County, Connecticut
• Death of Daughter Elizabeth Hartwell (1763–1800) 9 May 1800 in New Milford, Litchfield County, Connecticut, United States of America
• Death of Daughter Ruth Hartwell (1755–1804) 10 May 1804 in New Milford, Litchfield County, Connecticut
• Death of Husband Deacon Joseph Hartwell (1728–1818) 11 Apr 1818 in Jerusalem, Yates County, New York, United States of America
• Death 1821 in Jerusalem, Yates County, New York, United States of America (she never returned to Connecticut)