THE BATES & WEBSTER FAMILIES of West Farmington, Trumbull, OH

Researched, written by: Jody Glynn Patrick, a Webster Family Genealogist Elisha Bates Webster Family Genealogy

Father: Norman Webster, born abt. 1809 in Sharon, Chenango, New York Mother:  Lucy Harrison Bates, b. September 13, 1808 in York County, Virginia.————————————————————————————————————–

The BATES Family If you dig around in this family tree, you find some interesting branches. This family line has direct descents which include the Governor of Missouri (Edward Bates); a man killed in an 1806 duel (Tarlton Bates); a woman killed by lightning (Susanna Woodman Bates); and Attorney General in President Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet (and father of 17 children, Edward Bates).  Thomas Fleming Bates, born in Virginia on November 1, 1741, was remembered by a descendent as “a man of peace, born and bred in the doctrines of the Quaker sect and so imbued with these doctrines that they were illustrated in his whole life and transmitted to his posterity. But this did not deter him from fighting for his country in the War of the Revolution. The old flint lock musket, which he carried throughout the war, and which is said to have been used by his son Edward in the year 1813 in the second war with England, is still possessed by his oldest great-grandchild. In the stock of this gun is a silver plate, placed there by Edward, which bears the inscription, “Thomas F. Bates, Whig of the Revolution, fought for liberty and independence with this gun. His descendents keep it to defend what he helped to win.”  

     It is this mixture of adventure and principal that makes this family so interesting to research. Religious persecution was at the heart of the Bates family’s travels — from England to Virginia and then on to Ohio. It appears that the first of the family to land on American soil was John Isaac Bates, who was born in Canterbury, Kent, England, in 1598. John may have come to the New Country to avoid persecution for his faith, which was Quaker. He was listed as arriving in Virginia in 1623, one of those who “ took ship to the Americas for political, religious, and economic reasons; of those who were deported for vagrancy, roguery or non-conformity, and of those who were sold to labor in the New Colonies.”  John’s long trip over the ocean would not have been made with the best of provisions or courtesies. However, when John arrived in America, he must have had some resources with him or available to him, because he quickly became a merchant in the new Jamestown Colony. He would settle in York County, Virginia, where he would live out his life with his wife, Virginia native Elizabeth Winston, whom he married in 1624. When he died on September 21, 1666 in Bruten Parish, his will probate proceedings were held in Middletown Parish.  He left his estate to his eldest daughter Anne; son George; daughter Alse (Mrs. William Dean); son John Bates; and wife Elizabeth.   Daughters Susan and Elizabeth likely preceded him in death.

        Son George Bates was born in 1625, and he lived out his life in York County, Virginia, as would several next generations of Bates men. He married Virginia native Mary Smith in 1643, and they were blessed with children James, John II, Hannah, Mary, and George. Sometimes, sons were named for their grandfathers, which was the common custom. Other times, the moniker “II” implied that a son already had been born with that name, but had died before the son being given the name again. Particularly when the name was given to honor an elderly male family member, there was resistance to seeing it die with a frail child, so the names often were resurrected and given again. In this case, it is uncertain how John became known as John II — whether in honor of his grandfather or named for a “lost” brother. John Bates II was also a life-long native of York County, Virginia. He was born in 1655  and dubbed John Bates II of Skimoino. He  married Elizabeth Daniel prior to 1685. With his first wife, he had children John Bates III, Isaac, Hannah, and Ann. Sadly, she died in 1692, leaving him with four children under the age of 10. It isn’t clear if John kept the children and raised them for the next five years alone, or if he handed them off to relatives to keep, as was common practice for a widower of that era. However, we do know that he married  Hannah Trudall in about 1697. With Hannah, he had children Mary, Alice, George, and James. John II died on Christmas Day, 1719.

    John Bates III lived out his life also in York County, Virginia. He was born in 1685 and married Susanna Fleming, born in 1691.  The couple were wed in New Kent County, Virginia on May 8, 1713. Their children included Fleming, John, Charles, Hannah, James, and George. By this time, the family was intermarrying with Flemings, Jordans, Harrisons and Ratcliffes. All appeared to be prolific, large families being the norm. Many were noted to have had “a skill and grace with a pen” but their eloquence was commonly applied to theological thought, as they were pious Quakers. These five families tended to be tobacco farmers and plantation owners. It would be an easy error to mistake the Pious for Paupers, but they do not synonymously mean “poor.” Quakers banded together to raise their crops and support their neighbors in similar work toward hopes of prospering and leaving their sons adequate land to support larger and larger families. It isn’t documented whether or not the Bates family owned slaves, which was the common practice for plantations of the day. In fact, slavery was legalized in Virginia in the 1600s, and during John’s lifetime, about 80,000 slaves were imported into the colony. While John Bates III toiled on the land, Virginia was a central slave trade region. He died in 1723, and it would be more than  50 more years before slave importation would be abolished in 1808. However, Quakers were, by faith, people of peace who typically supported the abolitionist movement — just as they often refused to muster or carry arms into war — and as a sect, Quakers were essential hubs of the Underground railroad.

      Fleming Bates, 1712-1794, also lived out his days in York County, Virginia. He married Sarah Jordan on January 5, 1737, and the couple soon had children Edward, Elisha, Mary, Sarah, Fleming, and Thomas Fleming. Son Thomas was a young man during the Revolutionary War, and he defied his family when, as remembers a descendent, “His love of country and hatred of tyranny caused him to break faith with [his Quaker] sect and he enlisted as a soldier, and continued as such until the patriot armies of the colonies conquered a peace.”  While the family were skilled at writing to each other, and there are collections of family papers, I haven’t yet discerned Fleming’s reaction to his son’s adventures. 

      Benjamin Bates was born April 14, 1739 in York County, Virginia. He married Hannah Green of the same county on  May 1, 1760. They had children Elisha, Mary, Edward, Sarah Jordan, Susanna Fleming, Benjamin and Fleming. Before Benjamin’s death in 1804, there had been much discussion about leaving York County, Virginia. The nucleus of the talks was the “Ohio Project” discussion being carried on by family in-laws, primarily those of William Harrison’s family. Their plantation was known as the Queen Creek Plantation, and there was ongoing discussion of taking the entire Queen Creek flock of Quakers to new land. In the early 1800s, Quakers were also leaving slave-holding lands by the thousands, in protest to the practice of slavery. They primarily moved westward, to Ohio or Indiana. In truth (though Samuel Gordon Harrison suggested that another reason to leave the area was so his sisters might have better marriage prospects in the future) economically, the families were struggling to keep the quality of life they had worked so hard to earn for their children. The soil was exhausted, and tide-water tobacco plantations were not as profitable as they had been in the past. Parts of the Harrison plantation had been sold off, and much of the land was mortgaged.  So the plan had been talked about and refined for years.  Edward Bates had founded a school for Quaker children in York County, and Elisha Bates had kept it afloat as its young minister and director, but he, too, was having his doubts… and his own troubles.Elisha  had encountered problems with Sheriff George Jack of York County over debts due from him and his father. Not only had he suffered the humiliation of having a cart seized by deputy sheriff Samuel Shields, but he also was fined by York County deputy sheriff Richard Cocke for not attending musters. As a devout Quaker, he could not defy the sect’s edicts to live a peaceable life and to refuse to bear arms. However, that refusal led not only to verbal harassment, but also to fines and threat of imprisonment. And Elisha Bates did have a family to support. He and Sarah Jordan Harrison  had married in 1803. They had children Lucy Harrison, Anna, Charles, Mary Morton, Rebecca, William Jordan, Deborah, Charles, and Sarah Ann. When in-law Harrison Ratcliffe returned from a scouting trip to report that he had found a suitable tract of land for the family’s consideration in Ohio, Elisha Bates was persuaded to visit and lend his opinion as well. The wealthiest of the Harrisons, Samuel Harrison, agreed to finance the migration, including provision of a “prime horse” to Elisha Bates for his scouting journey. Finally, in 1816, the families purchased the land near Mount Pleasant, Jefferson County, Ohio. Jordan Harrison was sent ahead to make a home ready for his parents, and then William Harrison summoned his family and gave the order to move.  Though 70 years of age himself, the family patriarch sold the Queen’s Creek property, took up the reins and helped align the wagons. The related families made the journey together, including Benjamin Bates’ widow. The trip began “in the fifth month” of 1817 and took four weeks by carriage, horse and foot. It took the families through the Cumberland Gap and over 500 miles of wilderness. They took the main north and south highway through Virginia and, between Philadelphia and the Carolinas, they crossed the “Great Wagon Road”.Soon after settling, Elisha became leader of the Mount Pleasant Meeting for Quakers (Jordan Harrison was it’s clerk), but the families’ transitions were not without tribulation. At the time, there was a huge argument amongst Quakers about what form church leadership should take. This emotionally-charged argument became known as the Hicksite Schism. Ultimately, this philosophical split would pull Quaker families from their neighbors and cause one of the largest religious migrations known, as like-thinking people separated themselves from different-thinking brethren. Lucy Harrison Bates, born September 13,1808 in Virginia, was a young child when she and her parents made the arduous move from Virginia to Ohio.  She was greatly influenced by her father’s ministry and in her later years, in her memoirs, remembered with great fondness her Grandmother Harrison as a great reader of the Bible and a devout student of the Friends (Quakers) written works. Lucy must have been confused by the Hicksite movement, and the disintegration of her family’s Quaker roots, for her father eventually left the fold, despite his leadership position and regardless of two trips to England in the hopes of working toward a peaceful resolution. 

      Elisha Bates, when a Quaker minister in Mount Pleasant, Ohio, converted to Methodist in 1838.In 1840, Lucy Harrison Bates married Norman Stanley Webster, a farmer who was a native of Sharon, Chenango County, New York.  The couple quickly had a family, and by 1850 were farming in Mead, Belmont County, Ohio, where they lived with children Mary F., 11, Sarah J., 6, Elisha Bates, 4, and youngest son Norman W., 2.  Norman moved the family back to the East Coast, to Independence, Washington County, Pennsylvania, by 1860. The children, who now ranged in age from 12 to 18, lived on the family farm.Elisha Bates Webster soon followed in the footsteps of his grandfather, Elish Bates, by becoming a Methodist minister. He then came to West Farmington in 1877 as a graduate of  Mt. Union College, a private liberal arts college in Alliance, Ohio. By 1870, he and wife Delia Calvin had settled into their lives in West Farmington, Trumbull, OH. 

      Son Calvin Webster, born in January, 1870, moved to North Carolina, where he married a woman named Ellen and had a daughter Mary, born November of 1895 in North Caroline. In 1900, he lived in Ashville, Buncombe, North Caroline, where he was a merchant.Elisha’s daughter Maud Webster, born circa 1874 in Ohio, never married. Maud was the Director of Speech at what is now Texas A&M, and there is a dormitory named Webster in her honor. Elisha’s daughter Mabel Webster, born about 1877, married Lynn Osmer and moved to Chicago.  Mabel was an incredible piano player who taught music at the Seminary and eventually opened her own studio in Chicago.  ———————————————–