Who Was Samuel Charles Tidd?

In the beginning, there were no Tidds in Georgetown.

This 13-square-mile stretch of Massachusetts saw its first Europeans in 1639, when a few English settlers trudged inland from Ezekiel Roger’s Rowley settlement. They found low hills surrounded by meadows suitable for grazing and farming. Young Samuel Brocklebank brought cattle to these meadows in the summer. John Spofford, the first permanent settler, built a log hut there in 1669. By 1700, some twenty families had built homes in Rowley’s western reaches.

Names like Nelson and Chaplin and Mighill.

Not Tidd.

The area around Bald Pate Hill remained part of Rowley for another hundred years, first at Rowley’s 2^nd Parish and then as the village of New Rowley. During this period of diligent recordkeeping, no births, marriages, or deaths of anyone named Tidd are recorded. After the Revolution, the first two official United States Census rolls, in 1790 and 1800, show no one named Tidd living in Rowley. In fact, it’s not clear anyone named Tidd lived anywhere in Essex County.

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, a young man named Samuel Charles Tidd appeared in Rowley. Where did he come from? How did he come to live in the part of Rowley that became Georgetown?

Time-consuming questions without, it seems, pat answers.

Who Was Samuel Charles Tidd?

Contemporary sources, including Clara Tidd’s genealogical record of her ancestors (circa 1970?), list the parents of Samuel Charles Tidd as Samuel and Ruhamah Richardson Tidd, both of Woburn. Records show Samuel and Ruhamah married in May 1781. What is known about them:

Ruhamah was born December 15^th, 1762, the only known child of James and Hannah Richardson. Her mother Hannah’s maiden name is unknown. (Note: A different James Richardson, born the same year as Ruhamah’s father in Woburn, also married a woman named Hannah. That James and Hannah (maiden name Reed) had many children, though they had moved to Leominster in Western Massachusetts prior to 1760 and none of their children were born in Woburn.)

Samuel Tidd, the supposed father of Samuel Charles, was born December 7^th, 1759, the second son of Lt. Jonathan Tidd and his wife Serviah Baker. This Samuel was fifteen when, in 1775, his father marched to the Lexington alarm with Samuel’s older brother, Jonathan Jr. Samuel himself served in the Continental Army in 1778, stationed at Fishkill New York to help defend against the occasional British sorties from their New York City stronghold. He served again for several months in 1781 (the year of his marriage).

Their supposed son Samuel Charles was born 1 December 1784.

Samuel, the father, must have died during the 1780s, because at some point Ruhamah remarried John Wyman.

Then Ruhamah, too, passed away in 1792, age 30. Samuel Charles became an orphan at age seven. Unwanted by Wyman, Samuel Charles grew up with Tidd relatives in Woburn, possibly spending his teenage years in the home of his Aunt Martha and her husband, Dr. Josiah Converse (The 1800 census shows an extra teenage male in the Converse household). Then, as a young adult with little to inherit, Samuel Charles headed east to Essex County, where shoe manufacturing boomed in many coastside towns. He shows up in the Rowley record soon after.

That’s one possible story, anyway.

Truth be told, what happened to Samuel and Ruhamah Tidd after their 1781 marriage (for which a record exists) remains shrouded in mystery. There are no surviving death records for either of them, nor do any birth records exist for any children of the Samuel/Ruhamah marriage.

This includes Samuel Charles, for whom no birth record survives (as far as I can find), not in Woburn nor in any other Massachusetts town. His supposed birth date, 1 Dec 1784, is known only from the inscription on his tombstone.

In fact, Samuel (son of Lt. Jonathan Tidd) disappears completely from all known records after he was paid in 1784 (late) for his 1781 military service. The when and how of his death are unknown. Perhaps he died near home and records were lost. Perhaps he went west with many others of his generation, settling in Ohio or elsewhere, and was never heard from again. Perhaps Ruhamah went with him and came home when he died.

The Richardson family history, available online from Yale University, says Ruhamah married John Wyman, but provides no date. It makes no mention of her first marriage to Samuel Tidd. Meanwhile Woburn has no records of the Wyman marriage (though 1790 US Census Records show John Wyman lived in Woburn with two boys and two women/girls, so presumably he had a family).

Further complicating matters, the one surviving Woburn record that mentions Samuel and Ruhamah is the 1848 death record of a completely different Samuel Tidd, which lists Samuel and Ruhamah as his parents. This “Samuel B. Tidd” of Woburn lived from 1796-1848 with his wife Hannah and several children. He could not have been the same person as Samuel Charles Tidd of Rowley/Georgetown.

Would Samuel and Ruhamah give two of their sons the same name? Did Ruhamah not die in 1792 as the Richardson family records show? Or is the Samuel B Tidd death record, likely a copy of the original, simply wrong?

This is not the only conflicting fact in the records. Samuel Charles Tidd’s own death record states his mother’s name was Maria, not Ruhamah. Is this also a mistake? Or is it not coincidental Samuel’s oldest son Mighill gives the name Maria to his oldest daughter? Hard to say. While Maria became a common name in the 1800s, there were few Maria’s born prior to the Revolution and none in Woburn. It’s possible Maria was a nickname for the uncommon and somewhat unwieldy “Ruhamah”, or simply a variant of the more common Mary. In any case no one recording Samuel Charles’ death in 1857 would have ever met the woman, especially if she indeed died when Samuel Charles was young. “Maria” could have simply been another innocent error by an underpaid town recordkeeper.

Another possibility: Samuel Charles might have been the son of Samuel and Maria Renaux Tidd (or Teed) who lived in upstate New York. This, too, seems unlikely. That couple also seems to have had a son Samuel in 1786 (two years after Samuel Charles) who had a family of his own and lived a full life and died on the far side of the Hudson.

Any yet other anomalies exist. The death record for one of Samuel Charles’ children reports his birthplace as Reading Mass, not Woburn (The two towns border each other, so perhaps the line moved). And then there is the curious spelling of Samuel Charles’ surname, Tidds with an “s”, in the Rowley records. The only other place that shows up is in Nova Scotia, where some British Loyalists named Tidds seem to have migrated during the revolution. Supporting that theory (a little) is the remigration of some loyalists to Maine, and the fact that some records show Samuel Charles’ oldest son Mighill was born in Maine.

None of this information points to any reason for Samuel Charles to wind up in Rowley/Georgetown at a time when most young people were pushing west into Ohio or north into New Hampshire or Maine. Was he a free-spirited wanderer who settled down when he met his soul mate Ruthy? Or was he a wanted man, on the run for a horrible crime?

The simplest explanation might be the rise of shoe manufacturing in the towns north of Boston. The Tidds of Woburn were accomplished leatherworkers, which Samuel would have grown up around and likely gathered some skills he could, as a young man, take with him and find work.

Mere guesswork, without more facts.

What’s On Record

Samuel Charles Tidd first appears in Rowley history in 1807, where records of an August 3rd meeting show the town voted to set the pay for volunteer militia. The list of recipients included “Samuel C Tidd”. If the birth date on his tombstone is correct, he would have been 22 years old.

It’s possible he worked in nearby Danvers a few years later, where a “Samuel Tidd” shows up in the 1810 Federal Census. That Samuel lived with another man about his age (16 to 26), who might have been a sibling or cousin or factory coworker.

Then, on November 2 1813, Rowley records show Samuel Charles Tidds married Ruthy Mighill. Ruthy’s parents, David and Huldah Dole Mighill, had passed away the prior year. Whether Ruthy, 2^nd of four surviving children, inherited anything is unclear (Wills and deeds may exist, but I don’t have access to them) but, since they lived most of their lives across from Ruthy’s brother, she probably did.

It’s possible Samuel Charles and Ruthy moved around in the early years of their marriage. Some records show their eldest son Mighill Augustus was born in Maine in 1814. Others show their second son Luther Pierce was born in Lunenberg, a small town in western Massachusetts. Whether these are A) recording errors, or B) the boys were born on trips to visit relatives, or C) attempts to start a life somewhere outside of Rowley/Georgetown, is unknown.

They did spend at least some of this time near Ruthy’s childhood home on western Rowley, as shown by the 1816 birth of their eldest daughter Harriet Braman (note the middle name). Her birth was recorded back in the Second Parish Church of Rowley (later the First Congregational Church of Georgetown), then led by the pastor Reverend Isaac Braman.

The 1820 Census shows Samuel Charles and Ruthy back in Essex County, living in Boxford with their three small children. Samuel Charles listed his occupation as “Agriculture” not “Manufacturing”, so he seems to have been earning a living as a farmer.

During the 1820s, Samuel Charles and Ruthy had four more children: Charlotte Eliza (1821), Ruthy Mighill (1823), Charles Sumner (1824) and Cyrus (1828). All births are found only in the Rowley town records, so there is no reason to believe the family lived anywhere else.

The 1830 Census shows a “Charles C Tidd” (another recording error?) living in Rowley with one woman over forty (Ruthy) plus four boys and three girls under age 19. No occupation is recorded. However, an 1830 map of Rowley shows “S. C. Tidd” lived across the road from Ruthy’s brother, Doctor David Mighill, at the foot of Bald Pate Hill on the Boxford line.

Their youngest child, a daughter named Caroline Amanda, was born later in 1830.

Georgetown incorporated as a town in 1838, occupying what was roughly the West (Second) Parish of Rowley where Ruthy Mighill was raised and at least one of their children (Harriet Braman) was born.

The 1840 Census has Samuel Charles and Ruthy living in Georgetown (likely the same house), with six children still living at home. Four of the eight reportedly worked in “Manufacturing or Trade”, most likely shoemaking.

The 1850 Census has them still in Georgetown with five grown children still living at home. Samuel Charles’ occupation, as well as that of sons Charles and Cyrus, is listed at “Shoemaker”.

One question is where Samuel Charles worked as a shoemaker. Did he move around every few years or stay with one employer? Either is possible. Many small shoe manufacturers existed at the at time, and many town centers (Boxford, Rowley, Georgetown, Topsfield, to name a few) were easy walking distance for someone commuting off the Tidd farm on the West Rowley/Boxford line.

When he died in 1857, of lung fever, Samuel Charles occupation was listed simply as “Farmer.” He had evidently not worked in the factories for several years. Ruthy died a few weeks later of the same disease. They are buried together in Union Cemetery in Georgetown, leaving behind seven grown children (Harriet Braman died in 1843) and, by then, numerous grandchildren.

We descend from Samuel Charles (whoever he was) and Ruthy’s son Cyrus.