A Heroine in the House

Summer, 1837

“Tell the story again, Grammie,” said young Elizabeth Nelson, late on one of those muggy nights when, on a New England farm, even the barn animals can’t sleep.

“What story, Miss Lizzy?” asked old Lydia Spofford, happy for any kind of company during the dark hours. She’d outlived three husbands and now, at ninety-two, was one of the oldest people in Georgetown. The oldest, probably.

“What story?” Elizabeth repeated in disbelief. “Why, the one where you caught the redcoat, of course!”

“Oh, yes. That one. I still remember.”

“So, tell it,” the child prodded.

“All right, dear.”

Lydia paused to collect her thoughts, often scattered these days, like berries overflowing from a basket. She spoke slowly, but with passion. An old woman, yes, but she still knew how to tell her heroic tale, one she’d repeated often since that spring day in 1775, when all of Massachusetts revolted against the British crown.

So many lifetimes ago. . .

Lydia Warren Barnard Wood Spofford

Born in 1744, one of the fourteen children of Phineas and Grace Hastings Warren, Lydia Warren grew up outside of Watertown, a small farming community of roughly seven hundred residents from one hundred families. Since schools were not yet taken for granted in New England, Lydia received little formal education. The town’s biggest expenses were the minister’s salary and simple welfare, for example ensuring widow Tanner had a roof (making it up) and young Sam Coolidge had britches (not making it up).

Lydia grew to be six feet tall, “a woman of strong mind and body, weighing more than two hundred pounds”. As she remarked in her later years (often enough for the Boston Herald to report it), “she never saw a man that she thought she could not have handled.”

In 1766, at age 21, Lydia married David Barnard, a cordwainer (shoemaker), from Watertown. They lived in a house just off the “main road”. The marriage produced no children, which by 1775, almost ten years later, must have left Lydia in a different state of mind than most women her age.

And since she was also much larger. . .

The Day of the Battle

“The day of the battle of Lexington,” Lydia told her granddaughter so many years later, “my husband and brothers and all the other able-bodied men had gone to the fight, leaving only women, children, and a few old men at home, anxiously awaiting the result.”

She meant “few” literally. Even Lydia’s father, 58-year-old Phineas, had marched to the fight with Captain Pierce’s company. Watertown must have felt all but deserted.

“Toward night,” she continued, “several women came running to my house, crying, ‘Mrs. Barnard, the Regulars are coming!’”

“Were you scared?” young Elizabeth asked.

“No, Miss Lizzy,” Lydia said. “I was mighty angry though. I looked up the street and saw that redcoat riding towards us on a horse. He was only a private, the lowest rank, but it seems he decided to steal himself a horse. He thought he would return to Boston in style! He rode right up and inquired if he was on the right road. The nerve of him, to ask us for directions!”

“What did you do?” Elizabeth asked.

Lydia said, “I stepped through the group, and I grasped the horse’s bridle, and I ordered that soldier to DISMOUNT!”

“Did he obey?”

“He did not,” Lydia smirked. “But pulling him from the saddle was but the work of a moment. I shook him vigorously and shouted, ‘You villain!’”

Elizabeth giggled. The idea of her old grandmother shouting at a man, and with so much anger, seemed funny indeed.

“You villain!” Lydia repeated, enjoying the pleasure on her granddaughter’s face. “Then I said, ‘How do I know but that you have been killing some of my folks?’”

“Had he?”

Lydia said, “He protested that he had not fired a shot. ‘Let me see your cartridge box,’ I ordered him. Opening it, I found several missing.”

“Missing!”

“At this I shook him still more violently and, my anger increasing, I grasped his sword. In my mind, I held the very fellow who murdered my father and all my brothers and my beloved husband, too.”

Elizabeth looked shocked. “He didn’t, did he?”

“No, no, they were all fine,” Lydia assured her. “But I didn’t know it at the time. And my imagination won over my heart that minute, and I held that sword in such a threatening manner. . . well, that redcoat’s fears overcame him, they did.”

“What did he do?”

“He fell on his knees and begged piteously for his life,” Lydia said cheerfully. “So I gave him up to some old men, who took him to the tavern. They kept him there a while, until the proper authorities exchanged him for one of our men.“

Young Elizabeth furrowed her brow, frowning with concern from a new question, one she’d only just thought of.

“What is it, dear?” Lydia asked.

“What happened to the horse?”

Lydia laughed. “Why, nothing, Miss Lizzy,” she said. “We turned the horse loose in a pasture and it ate there, content as only horses can be, until its master came for it.”

Elizabeth looked relieved. “I’m so glad,” she said, finally drifting off to sleep.

Lydia patted the young child gently. “You go to sleep now.”

Thinking: Even that horse had more trouble coming.

Widow Barnard of Watertown

David Barnard died in August 1775, four months into the war.

Lydia notified the court of his death the following March. Her brother Peter Warren (with two others) served as executor of David’s estate, from which Lydia received, “for the upholding of life”, a settlement of seven pounds, seven shillings.

Not zero, but not nearly enough to fund the retirement of a thirty-year-old childless widow.

Young widows were hardly unheard of in New England towns, especially in the middle of the rebellion. Common practice in those days was for the town selectmen to license widows to operate taverns and boardinghouses out of whatever house they happened to live in. A stratagem that allowed the poor women to earn an income. And stay off town welfare.

Lydia, like many others in her position, began taking strangers into her home.

She cannot have imagined the consequences.

From Watertown to Boxford

When the British retreated into Boston on April 19, 1775, the General Court of Massachusetts (as the legislature was called) fled the city. For the rest of 1775 and into 1776, government meetings convened at the home of Edmund Fowle in nearby Watertown.

From the Fowle residence, the provincial assembly organized the rebellion. They voted to raise a fighting force of 13,000 men from Massachusetts with plans to raise another 17,000 from elsewhere in New England. They drew plans to organize the military; companies of sixty men supplied with horses (pressed into service, not purchased) and equipment. They established a postal system with routes laid out and rates prescribed (5.5 pence for 60 miles). They planned to issue notes to fund it all.

Politicians were not the only refugees from Boston. Paul Revere took over a house near Galen Street and began engraving a set of plates for printing money. The Boston Gazette newspaper, mouthpiece of Samuel Adams, set up shop near the bridge on the north side of the river. Entire congregations of displaced Bostonians, opening their services in Watertown, sang psalms of sorrow, worried they would never see their home city again.

And for nearly a year, they didn’t. But even after the British withdrew from Boston in March 17 1776 (“Evacuation Day”), a small pox outbreak in Boston caused government business to continue in Watertown well into the summer. The Declaration of Independence was read first in the Fowle home on 17 July. That same day, the first treaty between the newly formed United States of America and another country, in this case the Mi’kmaq Nation of present-day Canada, was signed in Watertown.

Lydia had a ringside seat for all this activity, more so than one might expect, for one simple reason: these politicians needed a place to stay.

Among those boarding with Widow Barnard (mere months into her new career as a hotelier) included the Honorable Aaron Wood, a judge from Boxford, a farm town north of Boston. Mister Wood, a 55-year-old widower himself, “fell in love with his buxom hostess, married, and brought her to Boxford.”

They married in Cambridge 8 May 1776.

And Lydia moved.

Mrs. Lydia Wood of Boxford

Neither Lydia nor Aaron had children from their prior marriages, and their own marriage produced no children. Little is known about the fifteen years she spent with her second husband, nothing about their relationship, or about Lydia’s daily life as Mrs. Wood. One might assume, however, she spent most of her time managing the substantial family properties and entertaining whatever visiting dignitary Aaron happened to bring home.

Some surviving documentation illustrates Aaron’s life as a public servant. He worked in many public capacities, from town clerk to judge to state representative—he served in the General Court throughout the revolution and in the State Senate during the 1780s—and was well regarded for both his character and his civic dedication.

Notably, one of his last contributions was attending the 1788 Massachusetts convention to ratify the Constitution of the United States. He initially voted against its adoption, but when the final vote proved in favor—barely, the tally landed at 187-168 after a month of debate—the minority (including Wood) acquiesced and said they would support the new form of government as if they had voted for it from the beginning.

When Aaron died in early 1791, age 71, Lydia was 46 years old. How she fared as Aaron’s widow is unclear. According to the “History of Boxford”, Aaron’s will directed all income from his properties toward the benefit of the town, specifically for the establishment of a school. First opened in 1795, the Aaron Wood Grammar School operated until at least the 1950s. The building, which still stands today, was renovated in 2015 and currently houses the school administration offices for Boxford, Topsfield and Middleton.

Presumably Aaron left his wife a handsome sum, but even wealthy, Lydia’s life was barely half over. And a woman named Polly Spafford, also of Boxford, had died within a month of Aaron, leaving her husband Benjamin a widower, and her two young girls without a mother.

 A role that Lydia, who married Benjamin Spafford in the fall of 1792, had yet to play.

The Spafford Years

The Spafford family had lived in the area longer than anyone, ever since 1669 when Benjamin’s immigrant ancestor, John Spafford, an original Rowley settler, built a log hut on the plateau of what was then the western limit of that town.

Like most everyone his age (24), Benjamin Spafford served in the Continental Army during the revolution. Boxford companies earned renown at Bunker Hill, where they came to the defense of Connecticut troops being overwhelmed by the Regulars. In August 1775, Benjamin is listed with those serving in Gloucester in defense against any British attempt to outmaneuver the militia by sea. The following year he served at Fort Ticonderoga overlooking Lake Champlain in upstate New York. Whether he was still there during the 1777 siege of that fort is unknown.

After the war, Benjamin settled in Boxford. He married Polly Adams in 1786. They had two daughters before Polly’s untimely death: Sally Spafford, born 31 Dec 1786, and Polly Adams Spafford, born 4 Jan 1789.

The 1790 census lists the “Benjn Spafford” household with two males and four females. It’s not clear who the extra bodies were; perhaps Benajmin’s mother Eleanor lived with them along with a male farmhand. Polly died later that year.

Neither young Polly (who later went by Mary) nor Sarah (aka Sally) Spofford remembered their birth mother, who died before Polly’s second birthday. Sarah might have remembered the day she met Lydia—she was six when her father remarried—but even then Polly was barely three.

As far as Polly remembered, Lydia had always been her mother. A stepmother, perhaps even a wicked one (no records survive, so who know?), but regardless the only mother figure she ever knew.

Sarah grew up and married Phineas Barnes of Boxford and had several children. Polly Spofford married later. In 1828, nearly 30 years old, she married Nathaniel Nelson, a widower twenty years her senior with three grown children. The arrangement might have felt completely natural to Polly. If a woman with no children of her own had raised her, so could she, too, play the role of childless stepmother.

Except Nathaniel and Polly had one daughter: Elizabeth.

Elizabeth Nelson Jones

Elizabeth Nelson was not Lydia’s blood granddaughter. Given the age difference, it’s not clear they had any relationship. Also unknown is whether she went by “Miss Lizzy” or would have called Lydia “Grammie” or something else.

However, Elizabeth’s cousin, Benjamin Barnes, recalled hearing Lydia’s exploits directly from her own mouth, so while Elizabeth was much younger, it’s nice to believe she, too, listened to the stories of her step-grandmother Lydia Warren Barnard Adams Spafford.

A woman with at least one wonderful tale to tell.

Our Relation to These People

Elizabeth Nelson, who married Nathaniel Jones, was Eleanor Kimball’s grandmother and great-grandmother to her namesake: Elizabeth Nelson Kimball Tidd. 

So, Lydia Warren Barnard Wood Spafford was the (step) grandmother of Mom’s great-grandmother.

Final Note

Elizabeth Nelson grew up in New Rowley, a western village of Rowley on the border of Boxford. New Rowley incorporated as the independent town of Georgetown in 1838.

Elizabeth was born the same year as Caroline Amanda Tidd. They may have attended Georgetown’s School #5 together, along with Carrie’s slightly older brother Cyrus Tidd (our 3^rd great-grandfather). School #5 was midway between the Tidd farm and Nelson’s house on the corner of Elm and East Main.

Either way, they certainly would have known each other, and not simply because it was a small town. Carrie’s mother and Elizabeth’s grandmother were siblings, both children of Stephen and Elizabeth Mighill of New Rowley’s Mighill clan. So, Elizabeth Nelson and Carrie Tidd were 1^st cousins (once removed).

Which means Mom and Dad have some common blood way back there.

Sources

1. The History of Boxford, Sidney Perley, 1880, p350
2. Ancestry.com: Descendants of Phineas Warren describe his service on Sons of the American Revolution membership applications.
3. Versions of Lydia’s story have been recorded by the Boston Herald (see Dorman’s “She Captured A Redcoat”), Watertown’s Military History, and Daughters of the Revolution (1893). It’s possible all accounts stem from Elizabeth Nelson’s cousin, Benjamin Barnes, who may have been related to Dorman.
4. https://boston1775.blogspot.com/2010/05/lydia-barnard-she-captured-redcoat.html
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1781%E2%80%931782_Massachusetts_legislature
6. Watertown in the Revolution 1770-1781 https://content.civicplus.com/api/assets/6b605e7a-c7e4-417e-8961-0959cc1c24b5