had the children...Rebecca, Hannah, Zaccheus, SAMUEL, Mary, Desyer, and Abigail.
It's son SAMUEL with whom we connect as our direct family line.
Born the 24th of July 1678 to Zaccheus and Rebecca (Bristol) Cande, Samuel Cande came into the world of predominantly Protestant New England. He was born the middle child of seven and only had one other brother, so we know that he grew up surrounded by strong New England women in addition to having the fortification of Cande men in his community.
Samuel stayed "close" with his father...each man lived on opposite corners of "the green" in West Haven.
Baldwin's GENEALOGY tells us that Captain Samuel's father Zaccheus lived on the southeast corner of the green and Samuel on the southwest corner.
That long-standing Candee house was taken down in 1877, but there is a photograph of it in Baldwin's book!
The Candee families had also given half of the green to the town so that the Congregationalist Society could build a meeting house, Baldwin tells us.
In Baldwin's GENEALOGY we find mention of the father and son Zaccheus and Samuel, along with some others, giving six shillings each for the service of having the church bell rung each night at 9 p.m. They were pretty determined to help keep the staunch in New England. And "the instance" shows people in action. It's one thing to surmise that ancestors were products of legislation and military customs, but it's another precious thing to see them in the everyday engaging with and enacting tradition.
We came across another example of a Captain Samuel Candee's humanitarianism in a COMMEMORATIVE BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD OF NEW HAVEN COUNTY (Chicago: J.H. Beers & Company, 1902--online thanks to Cornell University Library). But it's dating information makes it clear that the Captain Samuel Candee mentioned must have been a relative of the Captain Samuel Candee (born 1678). The biographical sketch gives us a man named Jesse Gould Smith. One of six children born to Gould and Susanna Smith, Jesse lost his father (a Captain in the State Militia) in 1800. Jesse lived with Captain Samuel Candee on the southwest corner of the West Haven Green for eleven years. Before living in New Haven and learning the saddler's trade.
It's the kind of snippet of snapshot that could be very confusing without it's date and citation.
As it is, with Captain Samuel Cande (born 1678) we are into second generation Cande in early America and our family tree drawings and temples are instantaneously more complicated.
The cohesiveness of a Puritan family was part pride, part social compact to watch out for the well-being of others. This made for a tightly knit society where Christian piety was the measure of an individual's worth. We didn't know really understand this clearly until we read the terribly exciting history book, THE VISIBLE SAINTS: WEST HAVEN, CONNECTICUT, 1648-1798 by Peter Malia (CT, 2009).
It had been a while since we'd studied history in school and Malia's book sucked us right into feeling like history is alive when we read good story. Chock full of every sort of detail about West Haven before and during the Revolution and rich with the connective tissue that helps explain why the colonials did what they did in those days, Malia's book transcends souvenir book and takes it's place among the greats as far as we're concerned.
Enough praise cannot be heaped on this book and reading it takes the pressure off a contemporary to find way through the labyrinth of general information about the colonials alone. No need to re-invent the wheel when a work is so thorough and genuine. And Malia's VISIBLE SAINTS does an exceptional job of showing how everybody's (not just the Candees) West Haven Way Backs tie into early American history .
One challenge we might take on instead of re-writing Malia's work word-for-word in this Quilt is to apply the same sort of working methodologies to some of our Southern folk. That being said, it would be an ambitious effort and nobody can write a book in Malia's voice except Peter. And that, is to credit VISIBLE SAINTS with having a style and voice and not just being template-like. We know that Malia is endeavoring to write more historically-grounded work which may delve even further into character development and plot tension and seeing VISIBLE SAINTS as one piece in the evolution of a story-teller's path is also exciting in that regard. There's definitely an art to historical writing! And it bode well for Malia's efforts that our interest in colonial history was sustained throughout VISIBLE SAINTS, enough so that we couldn't put the story down for its culling of context and not just searching through it for sprinkling of specific family history.
Malia's particular writing style also gives us a sense impression of our Way-Backs' softer qualities. For example, we find out that in the extreme cold of New England's winters the society's meetings were often moved from the church to Captain Candee's home.
Samuel had stayed in the West Haven area and married Abigail Pineon in late April of 1703. It was actually in the year that he was born (1678) that people started laying out land according to directions of the Court in Derby. The countryside around New Haven colony was being planted.
The violent fighting in Deerfield (now in the state of Massachusetts) in 1702 may have added to Samuel and Abigail's sense of the importance of making family in such a cruel world, and, turning that family strength into strong community with neighbors.
Samuel didn't marry his sister Abigail, he married Abigail PINEON on the 28th of April 1703.
Abigail Pineon's father was Thomas Pineon and her mother was Mary _____________.
Thomas Pineon had come from Sudbury, Massachusetts and died in New Haven on the 10th of October 1710. Abigail's siblings' names were Experience, Christiana, and Mercy. Thomas Pineon (and his probable father Nicholas Pineon) seems to have been professionally associated with iron works first in Massachusetts and then in New Haven. Abigail lived from 1680-1743.
Like Zaccheus and Rebecca (Samuel's parents), Samuel and Abigail named a daughter--their first daughter--Hannah. She was probably born in 1703.
And they named a son, Samuel--after the Captain, of course. He was born on Christmas Eve of 1705.
They had a daughter they named Thankful who arrived in June of 1708. She was only seventeen when she died in the autumn of 1725.
And another daughter named Abigail like her mother, born in the fall of 1709. Also still a teenager when she died in the summer of '23. 1723.
Next came Gideon in 1711.
And then Lois (in 1709?), and, then Timothy and it was already 1717.
And last, but not least, they gave birth to Caleb in 1722. Well, that's birthing children for nineteen years! And Mother Abigail lived on well past her last, all the way until that January of 1743.
At the time of his birth, little Caleb didn't know that his wife-to-be had been born just a little bit before him in November of 1721.
Caleb's grandfather Zaccheus, one of the Cande Cornerposts on the West Haven Green died in 1720, two years before Caleb was born.
Samuel is in the records as having served as a Lt. of the Company of West Haven in October of 1731. Then he became Captain Samuel and continued to serve with the West Haven Company.
In 1642 New Haven's General Court had ordered a militia to be formed and required all able-bodied males, black and white, ages 16 to 60 to attend six training days a year. The town ordered each male inhabitant to have at constant readiness a workable gun, a sword, four pounds of pistol shot, a pound of gunpowder, matches for a match lock and six good flints, Malia's research tells us. Failure to attend training sessions or lacking the proper equipment resulted in fines up to ten shillings.
Despite the law requiring military readiness there was some roughness to the militia's discipline, equipment was frequently defective, and officers were often "elected" on community prestige and popularity rather than for previous service experience. During West Haven's first century there was all the warring with the Dutch, Indians, and French that stressed out the militia's ability to remain in a constant state of alert.
Just a couple years before Captain Samuel's birth was the King Philip's War which produced stories that made settlers nervous and all Indians suspect. So Captain Samuel had been born into a world at war with each other according to race and nationality. The early West Haven in which he lived was at first heavily wooded land and farm dreams.
This was the time of garrisoned living and alarms being sounded if anybody encountered trouble. One of the first alarms in West Haven was a drum, also used to summons to meetings. Malia cites the first village drummer as John Benham who was succeeded by Nathaniel Kimberly in 1672.
Captain Samuel would've been eleven years old when the King William's War broke out, and he would've been twenty-one years old as it ended in 1697.
Turning 21 years old, for the colonial men of West Haven parish meant the men were to attend town meetings in New Haven proper--once or twice a month. A 21-year-old male having property valued at 40 shillings or more was considered a "freeman" and a voter. Malia points out that few West Haveners obtained it because of higher property restrictions (p. 21 VISIBLE SAINTS). Residents needed freeman status to vote.
"Honest man" status was a determination made by the minister and put to a vote at the town meeting.
Many West Haveners did hold public offices at one time or another. The most respected officers--Deputies to the Connecticut General Assembly and the seven selectmen, a colonial executive branch of government.
Also elected were: town clerks, town listers and collectors, constables and deputies, overseers of the poor, tithingmen, surveyors of highways, branders, haywards (who regulated access to common land), fenceviewers, sealers of weights and measures, packers (supervision of meat and fish packaging), justices of the peace, and keykeepers. All part-time offices, and, effective for one year. "Once elected inhabitants served their term or paid a fine. Not surprisingly, most served multiple terms and there was a wide range of people holding public office in what amounted to a rough-hewn democracy on the local level" (VISIBLE SAINTS, 21).
In 1732 the small pox was going around West Haven. Malia writes that it was "prevalent enough throughout the colony for the CT. General Assembly to order all those suspected of having the pox to hoist a white flag in front of their homes as fair warning of what lay inside. It additionally ordered all dogs appearing to have symptoms of the disease to be destroyed, either by their owner or anyone else who did so lawfully" (56 VISIBLE SAINTS). In December of that year Daniel Sperry, Jr.'s family raised the white flag outside their home. The Sperry's asked for some assistance from the town which gave them 25 pounds to help defray the cost of the medical bills. The Sperry's are the only case in the town records, but Malia points out that New Haven ordered the construction of a "pest house" and so there seems to have been more than one case of the disease settling into the area. Malia also notes that mobile troops continually passing through the area exposed the local population to a "heightened risk of infection" (58 VISIBLE SAINTS).
These days Connecticut is leading the way on research regarding another parasitic insect--ticks! Lyme Disease resulting directly from tick bites can paralyze children and sap a grown up of health and it's not easy to heal up from the disease. With a booming tick population in Connecticut and other states where human development has been rapid and has altered the deer trails and hangouts, the crisis that Lyme Disease poses has reached epidemic proportions.
VISIBLE SAINTS does a good job of weaving the various patches of place together and by looking back at the 1730's we find plenty of religious activity afoot in little West Haven. This, of course, tied in with the broader world fundamental questions about faith and policy.
By December of 1733 there was trouble actively brewing amongst the church members in the Congregationalist Church. The reverends Samuel Johnson and Jonathon Arnold had been visiting with each other, they'd been spotted strolling and talking together, and the people caught wind of the discussion. Rev. Johnson "suggested" to Rev. Arnold that he and the entire Congregation should convert to Anglicanism! In a letter dated December 1733, the Reverend Johnson told the Bishop of London that he thought Rev. Arnold and the congregation might convert.
The suspicions of the congregation about politicking fell on Reverend Arnold and in a winter meeting in '34, the church members decided to approach the reverend and actually ask him if he'd come to doubt his Presbyterian ordination. His answer to the questioning was SHOCKING. Malia relays his proposition: "He would continue as their minister....on condition that he now be a spokesman for the Church of England" (47 VISIBLE SAINTS).
The Church of England?!?!??
The vestry demanded Reverend Arnold's IMMEDIATE RESIGNATION.
Arnold "reluctantly agreed" but refused to give back monies he'd been given. He took a handful of parishioners with him "...and he vowed to one day return" (Malia, 47).
The West Haven parish had suffered 2 crises in minister loyalties. "Unwillingly, the village was earning an uneviable reputation as the weakest link in Connecticut's Standing Order" (48 Malia). This left its church government in shambles and its resources so depleted that the congregation turned to the Connecticut General Assembly for help. A committee was appointed to look into West Haven's affairs and the committee determined that West Haven lacked the funds to attract a new Presbyterian minister. "To avoid further embarrassment, the Deputies pledged 200 pounds in additional funds to help settle an orthodox minister" (48).
The calm between the Anglican Church and the Congregational Church that Reverend Arnold had managed to negotiate for about a decade before his resignation was shattered. Arnold had been given the title to the property of William Gregson up in New Haven which the Reverend intended to use as a site to build Connecticut's first Anglican Church. After a trip to England, Arnold in 1738 "drove a team of oxen across West Bridge into New Haven proper" (Malia, 48) and promptly attracted the attention of several locals seeing him tilling the land in defiance of New Haven's officials.
But a student protest, a mob of townspeople, rocks thrown, insults hurled, personal threats made--and the Reverend Arnold "now turned his attention to his former congregation in West Haven. Securing a donation of land directly south of the Congregational meeting house from Samuel Brown, John Smith, Thomas Stevens and John Humpreyville, all of whom were members of his new congregation, Arnold set about to build an Episcopal Church in the very shadows of his former parish" (48 VISIBLE SAINTS). The title secured by Arnold was to the southern portion of the West Haven Green which the Congregationalists had considered unstable marshland (Malia end note, page 219).
Captain Samuel--"Old Light" was sixty years old when the Christ Church had their ground-breaking ceremonies across the way in 1740. He and Abigail were entering their last years of life. 1740, that was also the year that their son Gideon married Sarah Smith. Their son Gideon was ill-fated and died only eight years after he married Sarah.
Captain Samuel didn't survive the winter of 1749. At that time he'd already lived through six winters without Abigail who'd passed away in January of 1743. Both of their graves are in the West Haven Green Cemetery.
It is through Captain Samuel and Abigail's son Caleb whom we trace Mama's (Sherry Candy Lane's) direct family line. Caleb had been born in little West Haven but settled in Oxford, Connecticut about 1730. It wasn't until 1742 that Caleb married Lois. Mallory. Lois Mallory not his sister Lois.
