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NORTH SHORE BREEZE 
£ AND REMINDER 
Manchester, Mass., Friday, May 25, 1917 
No. 21 
Vanished Names 
By ROBERT S. RANTOUL 
(Reprinted from the Harvard Graduates Magasine) 
A® incident to researches in the early records of the 
~Massachusetts Bay Colony, I have been impressed with 
the number of well-established families whose names have 
passed wholly out of our ken. Of course failure of male 
issue accounts for some of these lapses. At least half the 
population were daughters, who either left no issue or 
left descendants bearing the names of their husbands andl 
not names of their fathers. Here are Legge’s Hill and 
Jeggle’s Island on the Marblehead side of Salem, and 
Brimble or Brimball Hill and Sallowes’ Bridge and Brack- 
enbury Lane on Beverly side,—all named for persons 
whose stock is no longer to be discovered. Thomas 
Scruggs was a prominent town official and a large land- 
holder hereabouts. He sought, with the aid of Hugh 
Peter, to locate on his Swampscott farm Harvard Col- 
lege, before Newtowne became its home. Here was 
Captain Thomas Breadcake, furnished, in 1644, with two 
guns from the Winter Island Fort to aid him in his 
cruise against the Turkish pirates. Billings Bradish estab- 
lished and developed a prosperous farm in the Danvers 
section. Then there were, in the centre of the town, ‘the 
-Pudeators (Upham said the name was corrupted from 
Poindexter), people of means,—one of them hanged for 
a witch: Puddester the nearest surviving name,—and 
Naugus Head, a refinement of Noggs’s Head, and Tug- 
mutton Cove, vulgarized from Throgmorton Cove, and 
not a trace of any such families survives. Is this state 
of things to be expected in a community no older than 
ours? No great migration has occurred here, such as is 
point on today into Russia from parts of Poland. By 
some law of nature, pins, which are accepted as an at- 
tribyte of woman, and marbles, which are a requisite ot 
the genus school-boy, all disappear—who knows whithet ? 
But here was a class of well-to-do planters, rooted in the 
soil,—not quite ascriptiti glebae to be sure, but unlike the 
floating populations of our industrial centers, whe, fol- 
lowing the fluctuations of the labor-market, are here to- 
day and gone tomorrow, living, in leased lodgings, with- 
out Jocal repute or traditions or attachment to tether them 
to one spot. On the other hand, we ask attention to a 
substantial class of steady-going people, tilling their soil 
and gathering their crops, conducting the trades and fol- 
lowing the professions, holders of farms and dwellings, 
so that they could not readily skip about, and having busi- 
ness, connections and reputations in the neighborhood, 
either earned or inherited, to sustain. Palfrey’s New 
England, Young’s Chronicles; Winthrop and Bradford 
and Hutchinson, and Savage’s New England Genealogy, 
makes us acquainted with scores of such. Where are 
their sons? 
The Town Records of Salem—now in print from 
1630—furnish a host of names, no longer to be traced, ot 
persons who became freemen and church members, ac- 
quiring homesteads and tillage lots and rights in the Com- 
mons pasturage. We have fine old families left, dating 
from the colonial and provincial days, aften maintaining 
their traditions and their social claims, but what has be- 
come of the other families to which I ask your attention? 
I have made a collection of names, which might readily 
be multiplied three or four times, and which seem by 
sore mysterious freak of fortyne to have been lost sight 
of, becoming so unfamiliar as to sound outlandish, some 
of them, in our ears. Some of the best of these people 
were banished for heterodox views in religion, but not a 
great many. Of course the Revolution drove out fami- 
lies whose relations were official, and others whose sym- 
pathies were loyal. But allowing for all this,—for the 
failure of male issue, for changes in the spelling of names, 
for the political attachments which may have alienated 
sere families firmly intrenched among us, and dropping 
from the list the names of those who may have died with- 
out issue in early manhood, or who failed to make good 
the promise with which they became established here,— 
there is left a residuum of by no means inconspicuous 
persons whose names should survive, and whose descend- 
ents and representatives are missing. Where are they? 
Reversing the poet’s dictum, they seem to have turned to 
airy nothing a local habitation and a name. I give a group 
of these names among which the local antiquary will 
recognize some of the leaders of the colony and province. 
What befell them? Did they cease to multiply? Did 
they leave us for British Provinces? Did they ‘‘go West’? 
Sabine’s Loyalists accounts for some of them. So do 
Curwen’s Journal and Sibley’s College Graduates, but not 
for many. Where shall we look today for such patron- 
vvics as Agur, Antram, Auchisden, Batter, Brickenstatt, 
Charnock, Corlet, Corwithen, Cotta, Craighead, Cravette, 
Davenish, Felmingham, Pacy, Pulling, Rumboll, Swin- 
nerton, Vermais, Verren, Wathen, Whithaire ? Not a 
half-dozen of them to be found! 
Wishing to push the research into a sonewhat broad- 
er field than my own bailiwick, I examined the Catalogue 
of Harvard, which begins in 1642, and in which, for the 
first one hundred and thirty years, names are entered, not 
in alphabetical order nor according to scholarship, but in 
a rank following the approved .social position of families, 
so that the graduates entered, before 1772, in the upper 
section of a class are of the very best lineage in the colony 
and-province. Indeed, few names got into the Harvard 
Catalogue at all, in those days, save the names of pretty 
well-established families. The catalogue gives the date 
of death, and I have included, in this paper, only such 
names of graduates as had survived the marriageable age. 
From these I draw a list of persons bearing names prac- 
tically unknown today in our community. 
For instance, here are four Bridghams,—John, 1660; 
loseph, 1719; James, 1726; Powning, 1736; three of them 
in first-rate class standing, only one of them dying before 
old age. Never another Bridgham at Harvard! 
Then take the Checklevs, four of them, in still better 
encial repute than the Bridghams, all dying mature men: 
Samuel, 1715; John, 1728; Samuel, 1743; William, 1756. 
Who ever heard of a Checkley! 
Then comes the three Gees, all in good social rank: 
Toshua (College Librarian), 1717; Ebenezer, 1722; 
Toshua, 1744. No Gees since 1744 in the Catalogue. 
What became of the Gees? 
Then follow the three Haseys: Isaac, 1762; Ben- 
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