Wednesday, September 05, 2007

Did He Really Do That?

Have you ever been reading a history book and happened upon a name that rang a bell with you? That's what happened last night as I was reading The Eastern Frontier: The Settlement of Northern New England, 1610-1763 by Charles E. Clark. It came as no surprise to me to find a reference to Rev. Stephen Bachiler (also spelled Batchelor or Batchelder, etc.) as he was the founder of Hampton, New Hampshire and is quite notorious. However, the name I ran across a chapter or two later in the book was a name I recognized from some of the materials I'd studied when doing some preliminary work on my lines. While I haven't proven all the relationships back to this particular ancestor, I have it proven back far enough that I feel comfortable based on the quality of other people's research that have worked on the line in question that he is actually my 8th great grandfather. Some of you probably know the story far better than I since this was a new one for me and caught me completely by surprise as I was reading last night. I had to grab the notepad and paper. You see Edward Gove, my 8th great grandfather, was an assemblyman in the province of New Hampshire back in the 1680s. Around 1683, the English apparently sent a new governor to the New Hampshire and within a few days he'd removed a couple of folks from power that really made Edward Gove angry. The gist of it is that Gove (who apparently was very popular among the citizens of the area) led an armed revolt against the governor. He was tried and convicted of treason. He was sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. Somehow instead of such a drastic measure, he was shipped off to the Tower of London where he was imprisoned for about 3 years before being pardoned and returned to New Hampshire. I was hoping the Provincial Papers of New Hampshire were on Google Books, but they didn't have the volume I need. I can't wait to get my hands on this and see what really happened. I need to find other things to support this "story" that I read, but it has my attention. I've found a few things online, but I've not had time to really print and read them yet. If you have more information on Edward Gove, feel free to email me at lorithor@yahoo.com. I really had not worked on this Gove line, but I at least recognized the name when I ran across it.

1 comment:

Heather Wilkinson Rojo said...

http://www.sos.nh.gov/archives/nhstatepapers.html The New Hampshire State Papers page at the NH Archives and Records Management website.

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~vtwindha/nhsp/index.htm Rootsweb’s PDF index to the NH State Papers

Look up Gove in the index, then look up the pages at the first website. All volumes are avaialable for viewing. I hope you find your Gove story. My Godfather in Rye is a Gove, and I'm going to start him on his genealogy this summer. He's living right where his ancestors lived!