Ebenezer Merwin and Jemima Plumb

Ebenezer Merwin was born in Wallingford, New Haven Co. CT on 3 April 1744 the son of Henry Merwin and Sally Mott. [1]

Ebenezer married Jemima Plumb in Wallingford on 1 May 1766. [2] Jemima was the daughter of Seth Plumb and Hannah Clark. [3] The couple began their married life in Wallingford, near numerous kin, and it was there that their first child Lois was born on 19 July 1767. [4]

By 1785 the family had relocated to Pittsfield, Berkshire Co. MA, the hometown cited for Ebenezer and Jemima in a deed signed that year purchasing 90 acres of land in neighboring Washington in the same county. Interestingly, Jemima purchased the land in her own name. [5] It is possible that Ebenezer followed a trade that required frequent travel, leaving his wife to manage their financial affairs. In December 1789, Jemima sold the same land for 70 pounds 10 shillings, significantly less than the 90 pounds she had paid four years earlier, even taking into account the ebb of inflation from the catastrophic rates experienced earlier in the post-revolutionary period. [6] The sale of the land may have been a result of their move to Lenox, a town neighboring Washington, where the 1790 census found them. The household included, in addition to Ebenezer and Jemima, two other females, no doubt daughters Lois and Orra. Also enumerated was a male under the age of sixteen, possibly an unknown son or perhaps a hired hand or apprentice. [7] Further confirmation of their residence in Lenox is found in the undated listing of Ebenezer's livestock mark, described as "a swallow tail on both ears and a half peney the underside of the writ ear." [8] The 1800 census showed Ebenezer's little family diminished in number with the marriage of daughter Lois, consisting only of himself, Jemima, and daughter Orra. [9] Orra married later that year, wedding David Shattuck of neighboring New Ashford in November. [10]

Neither Ebenezer nor Jemima do not appear in any subsequent records in Berkshire County. He may, however, be the Ebenezer Merwin enumerated in Bethlehem, Albany County, NY in 1810. Bethlehem is only some 34 miles from Lenox. It is difficult to track Ebenezer's movements with any certainty, given that he did not own land for much of his life, but the Ebenezer Merwin household in Bethlehem provides a reasonable fit with his own if daughter Orra and her husband David Shattuck were living with her parents. The household contained one male, over 44 (a candidate for Ebenezer), one maile aged 26-44 (David Shattuck), and two males under ten (David's sons Stephen, born c. 1803 and Timothy, born between 1800-1810). On the distaff side, there was one female over 44 (Jemima), one female aged 16-25 (Orra) and one female under the age of ten (perhaps Orra's daughter Samantha, age unknown.) [11] Several additional pieces of evidence support an Albany residence for the family. In the 1855 NY census, David and Orra's daughter Jemima A. (Shattuck) Smith gave her c. 1811 birthplace as Albany County. [12] Somewhat weaker evidence comes in the imaginative family history related by Orra Merwin's grandson DeWitt Shattuck in A Twentieth Century History of Allegan County, Michigan. Along with much information that is demonstrably untrue, Dewitt stated that his Shattuck grandparents had lived in the Albany area (although he places their residence there during the Revolutionary War period.) He does come close to the truth, however, in asserting that the family came from "Ashford Mountain," clearly a reference to New Ashford, David Shattuck's place of residence when he married Orra. [13]

Although Ebenezer and Jemima do not seem to have left additional records, their grandson, Martin L. Shattuck, recalled in a 1909 newspaper interview that his grandparents both lived to be 100 years of age and that Jemima (mistakenly referred to as "Jeremiah") froze to death one winter. His memories may not be entirely accurate, as he apparently attributed his grandfather Shattuck's Revolutionary War service to his grandfather Merwin, not known to have served in the war. Ebenezer Merwin and his wife Jemima may well have lived to a venerable old age, however, and if they indeed reach the age of 100, they would have died about 1844. [14]

Ebenezer Merwin and Jemima Plumb had the following children:
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