Madison
County Genealogical Society
Minutes of the Meeting – October 10, 2019
The October 2019 meeting of the Madison
County Genealogical Society was held at the Edwardsville Public Library on
Thursday, October 10, at 7:00 pm.
President, Robert Ridenour, called the meeting to order.
GIFT
MEMBERSHIPS AVAILABLE
Do you have a family member that is
interested in (or even obsessed with) genealogy? A membership in the Madison
County Genealogical Society would be a very thoughtful gift. A gift card will
be sent to the recipient of any gift membership.
The following memberships are available:
Individual/Family Annual Membership $25.00
Patron Annual Membership $35.00
Life Membership $300.00
Contact our Secretary, Petie Hunter, at petie8135@att.net,
about a gift membership.
October
Meeting
On October 10, 2019, David Axtell presented a program
titled A Tale of Two
Brothers — The Axtells in 17th Century England and After
Back in 1642, a little quarrel broke out in
merry old England, between the King, Charles I, and Parliament. This quarrel
rapidly escalated into a civil war. From WIKIPEDIA:
The English Civil War (1642–1651) was a series
of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians
(“Roundheads”) and Royalists (“Cavaliers”) principally over the manner of
England’s governance. The first (1642–1646) and second (1648–1649) wars pitted
the supporters of King Charles I against the supporters of the Long Parliament,
while the third (1649–1651) saw fighting between supporters of King Charles II
and supporters of the Rump Parliament. The war ended with Parliamentarian
victory at the Battle of Worcester on 3 September 1651.
The outcome of the war was threefold: the trial
and execution of Charles I (1649); the exile of his son, Charles II (1651); and
the replacement of English monarchy with, at first, the Commonwealth of England
(1649–1653) and then the Protectorate under the personal rule of Oliver
Cromwell (1653–1658) and briefly his son Richard (1658–1659). In England, the
monopoly of the Church of England on Christian worship was ended, while in
Ireland the victors consolidated the established Protestant Ascendancy.
Constitutionally, the wars established the precedent that an English monarch
cannot govern without Parliament’s consent, although the idea of Parliamentary
sovereignty was only legally established as part of the Glorious Revolution in
1688.
At the same time, in the village of Berkhamsted,
just north of London, two brothers were just coming into their prime. They were
Thomas and Daniel Axtell. They came from an old English family that had been
around since before the Norman Conquest in 1066. This is known as the name
appears in the Domesday Book, the census taken by William I immediately after
the Conquest. The name appears as Osketiel, Osketill and Ansketill. (Spelling
was not too exact in those days.)
The name originally comes from old Norse,
“Asketill.” This is a combination of “As,” the Norse name for the Gods, and
“Ketill” or kettle. It apparently referred to the person who kept the container
used to collect a blood sacrifice to the Gods.
The first recorded ancestor in their family line
was Johannes Akstyl, born in 1520. His great-grandson was William Axtell, the
father of Thomas and Daniel. Thomas and Daniel had six siblings, four brothers
and two sisters. There is no record of the subsequent lives of those siblings.
After the start of the Civil Conflict, the lives
of the two brothers took totally different paths. One avoided the conflict
altogether, while the other joined in with a passion. Thomas, the elder, who
had two children, elected to emigrate to America, which he did in 1642. Daniel
enlisted in the forces opposing the King. Both were strongly religious,
believers in the strict Protestantism of the Puritan faith. This belief led to
their choices of their future lives, Thomas joining the Puritan migration to
America and Daniel joining the “Roundheads” in opposing the King.
At first, Daniel was just an ordinary soldier in
the Roundhead forces, but he exhibited exemplary abilities and was soon
promoted to officer. When Oliver Cromwell became head of the Parliamentary
forces, Daniel was promoted to Captain, then later to Colonel. As Colonel, he
was the officer in command of the King’s guard at the execution of Charles I.
For this reason, he is known as the “Regicide.” As Colonel, he was complicit in
the violent oppression of the Catholic Irish, for which he was known in Ireland
as “Bloody Daniel.” He was later made Governor of Kilkenny. He retired from the
military in 1657, returning to Berkhamstead, where he was granted ownership of
Berkhamstead House. He was also given a Coat of Arms, the motto of which is “We
Glory Under The Cross.”
Daniel was married to Mary Marsam in 1639 and
had a daughter (name unknown) and two sons, Daniel, born in 1640, and William,
born in 1646. The story of Daniel Jr. we will get back to later. William was
born in West Africa in what is now Liberia. He was probably a “natural child.”
His mother was probably not white and what her connection was with Daniel is
unknown. There is no further information about him.
In 1660, upon the return of Charles II to the
throne, Daniel (Senior) was arrested and sent to the Tower of London by June
14, 1660, when he was specifically excepted from the general Bill of Pardon by
Charles II, even though Daniel had not been one of the judges who signed the
death warrant for Charles I. The trial of the Regicides was quite notable in
London, even being mentioned in the diary of Samuel Pepys, a major English
historian.
The trial for the regicides began October 9,
1660; Axtell was 11th on the list. He initially refused to plead
guilty or innocent, arguing precedents that the court had no power to try him.
But after the Solicitor General counseled him that remaining silent was to
admit guilt, he pled “not guilty.” The trial began October 15, 1660.
“I came to the trial of Charles I,” he said, “not voluntarily, but by
command of the General, who had a commission from Parliament. I was no
councilor, no contriver, I was no parliamentary man, none of the judges, none
that sentenced, signed, none that had a hand in the execution, only that which
is charged is that I was an officer in the army.” The Chief Justice
complimented him on his manifest diligence in the study of law, but with his
associates overruled his plea, deciding that the command of a superior officer
constituted no excuse, for the superior officer whom he obeyed was a traitor
and all that joined him were traitors.
The result
was certain from the first. The prisoner, finding his argument of no avail, said,
“I leave all to the jury in whose hands I and my little ones and my family are
left.” The jury, as well as the court, could be trusted for their part, and so
they brought in a verdict of guilty. The old account goes on to say, “returning
from his trial at court to his prison with a cheerful countenance and his wife
coming to him full of trouble, he said to her ‘not a tear, wife, what hurt can
they have done me, to send me sooner to heaven.’ In prayer
he laid all his comfort in the blood of the crucified Christ and upon the
covenant of free grace, and did heartily desire pardon for all his judges,
jury, and those false witnesses.”
His
daughter coming to him he said, “Where hast thou been all this while, I thought
thou hadst been ashamed of my chains but they that will not bear the cross
shall not wear the crown. Bid our
friends,” he said, “keep close to Christ and love the image of Christ wherever
they see it, in the Presbyterian, Independent, Baptist, or others.” Speaking of his faith, he said, “I believe
in all the things written in the Old and New Testaments as the principles and
doctrines of a believer’s faith. I believe the blessed ordinances of Christ,
that it is our duty to hear the word preached, to seek unto God in prayer and
to perform family duties and walk in communion of the saints. For my part, I am
a member of a congregation of which I judge to be the way of Christ which is
the company of men born again by His grace that walk in the way of Christ
blameless and harmless.”
His execution occurred at
Tyburn, October 19, 1660. Francis Hacker was executed with him, and Colonel
Axtell, at Hacker’s request offered prayer for both. One portion of the prayer
was filled with earnest pleadings for the people
standing· near,
for the City of
London, for
the magistrates and hangman, and for the Chief
Magistrate of the nation. The prayer was offered while he stood in the chief
hangman’s cart with a rope around his neck. After it was all over, no one was
found to put forward the horse, the cartman saying, “that he would lose both
the cart and the horse before he would have a hand in hanging such a man.” The
great crowd of spectators behaved civilly. Only two cried out, “hang them, hang
the rogues, traitors, murderers,” whereupon a man desired them to be civil, and
they were silent and gave attention to Col. Axtell’s speech and prayer at which
they were very much affected. He was subsequently beheaded and his goods
and lands were forfeit.
Thomas, his brother, on the other hand, landed in
Massachusetts in 1643 and set about starting a farm in the village of Sudbury.
He bought five acres of land from a fellow immigrant from Berkhamstead, Edmond
Rice, and began to plant. His adventure did not last long, however, as he died
of natural causes in March 1646. Fortunately, (for me anyway) he had a son,
Henry, who was born in 1641 before leaving England. Thus, the family line
continued.
Thomas’
wife, Mary, remarried a widower, John Maynard, in June 1646, and raised Henry,
five, to be a good member of the community. Just as an aside, Thomas’s entire
estate was valued at 31£ 10s. In
1660, at nineteen, Henry helped found Marlboro, west of Sudbury. In 1665, he
married Hannah Merriam, and had six children by her. In 1676, he was killed in
an Indian War and his widow was remarried to Will Taylor in 1677. Of his
children, only two were male, Thomas and Daniel. My ancestor was Daniel, born
in 1673. Again, I narrowly avoided extinction.
In
1695, Elder William Pratt organized a church in Dorchester, Massachusetts, then
later went off as a missionary to plant his church in South Carolina. Daniel
apparently accompanied Elder Pratt on his journey. He apparently had reasons
other than religious fervor, as he married Thankful, the daughter of Elder
Pratt, in 1702. They lived in South Carolina until 1707, when the family
returned to Massachusetts, settling in Bridgewater, later moving to Taunton.
While resident in South Carolina, Elder Pratt
and Daniel were received by Lady Axtell, widow of Landgrave Daniel Axtell,
wherein lies another curious story. John Locke, the celebrated philosopher, worked for a
time for the “Lords Proprietors,” the eight nobles commissioned by Charles II
to settle the Carolinas. Locke drew up a form of semi-feudal government for the
proprietors called “The Grand Model.” There were various orders of nobility and
serfdom. One of the chief orders of nobility was to be the Landgrave,
and one of the twelve who held this position was Daniel Axtell, the son of the
Regicide. Hence, his widow was called “Lady Axtell.” He died in
1686, and his son Holland, named after his mother, Rebeckah Holland, became
Landgrave in his place. The latter died childless in 1692, and with him the
name perished in South Carolina.
Apparently,
after the execution of his father, Daniel Junior had a difficult time in
England. He had a degree in law from Oxford and was a successful merchant, but
was under constant suspicion of being involved in some plot to overthrow
Charles II. A warrant was issued for his arrest, but he departed for America
before it was carried out. He had been given a grant of 3,000 acres in South
Carolina in 1680 by one of the Lord Proprietors, along with the
title of Landgrave. He brought along with him about 500 settlers of
“puritanical tendencies.”
The relationship
between Daniel Axtell, son of Henry, and Daniel Axtell, the Landgrave, is
attested to by the 1720 will of Lady Axtell, which says, “I give unto my
kinsman Daniel Axtell of New England 300 acres of land and to his son Daniel
200 acres.”
Several of Lady
Axtell’s daughters survived. One of them, Elizabeth, married
Joseph Blake, the great English Admiral and naval warrior of Cromwell’s time.
He later became Royal Governor of South Carolina. Rebecca married John Moore,
who later moved to Philadelphia and became Attorney
General and King’s collector of Pennsylvania. She died in Moore’s Hall,
Philadelphia, December 21, 1749.
Daniel Axtell had ten
children, of which six were male. My ancestor is Henry, his sixth child, born
in 1715, when he had returned to Massachusetts. Daniel died in 1735, so Henry
was 20 on his passing. He became a blacksmith, and in 1737 married Jemima
Leonard of Taunton. In about 1740, his father-in-law decided to migrate to the
Wild West – New Jersey. Henry and his family accompanied him, settling in
Morris County. Nine years later, the township of Mendham was established there,
and became the base of my ancestral line for several generations. Henry is
recorded in the “History of Morris County” as “Henry, the blacksmith” and was
well known. He died in 1754, at 34 years of age, and left a widow and six
children, three of whom were male. His widow remarried to a Mr. Lumm and passed
away at 90.
The male children of Henry
Axtell were Henry (born 1738), Calvin (born 1750) and Luther (born 1753). All
three produced numerous children – all leading to important lines of Axtells in
America. Henry was my direct ancestor. He spent his life in Morris County, New
Jersey, as a farmer. He married Mary Beach in 1760, and had three children by
her. She died in 1766, leaving him with young children. Not far from him lived
a young widow, Phebe Condit Day, who came from a very prominent family in the
area. He asked her to marry him.
She confessed that she had
tender regard for him, but she had serious doubts about becoming responsible
for those three young children. When Henry heard this he rose to depart,
saying: “Now I know what I will do; I will go right home and kill those
children!” When Phebe heard this, she consented to be his wife. They were
married in 1767 in Morristown. They had six more children, three girls and
three boys. One of the boys died quite young. Silas, born in 1769, was my
ancestor.
Henry was a man of
prominence and influence in the area. When the Revolutionary War broke out, he
took a decided stand for independence. He held the rank of Major in the Morris
County “Minute Men” and was always called the “Old Major.” As an officer, Henry
was probably acquainted with George Washington, as Morristown was an important
headquarters for Washington during much of the Revolutionary War.
NOTES on
other related Axtells –
Besides the daughter already mentioned, the Colonel had a young son
and possibly other children. The son was probably the William Axtell of
Jamaica, who is mentioned in 1683. The next in this line is a Daniel Axtell, (supposed
to be a son of the above mentioned William) who acquired a large fortune in
trade in Jamaica; and, visiting New Jersey, purchased a great tract of land in
Somerset County. The following quotation from the History of Washington County,
Pennsylvania, seems to coincide in part at least: “Maj. Daniel Axtell was the
original purchaser
of land acquired by ‘East and West Jersey’ in 1682. About the year 1740, he
purchased 2,000 acres in what is now Bedminster Township, Somerset County, New Jersey. He died within the next ten
years and his son William came into
possession; he sold a part in 1750 and a part in 1760. This William Axtell was born in Jamaica, West Indies, about 1720.
He came to New Jersey about 1746 to dispose of some of his holdings and he soon found a place in high society in New
York City. Winning the affections of a daughter of Abraham DePeyster, he ran
away with and married her. He was known as “William the Gay.” He lived in a
fine mansion on Broadway as well as maintaining a country seat in Flatbush,
Long Island. From the time of his marriage, he was both politically and
socially prominent in city life.
As the Revolution approached, he was at first favorable to the
colonial party; but when the struggle finally opened, he took sides with the
mother country. He was a member of the council in 1776, and, when examined by
the Whig committee in that year, he stated the bulk of his property was in
England and the West Indies. In reporting his case to the Provincial Congress,
the committee remarked that they believed him to be a gentleman of high honor
and integrity. He became a Tory, and was commissioned Colonel of a corps of
loyalists by Sir William Howe. In 1793, his furniture was confiscated and sold
at auction in New York. He went to England and was indemnified for his losses
by the British Government. He died at Beaumont Cottage, Surrey, in 1795, aged
75. He left no issue, but while in
New York adopted a daughter, Miss Shipton, a relative, who
married Maj. Giles of the Continental Army.
(See Sabines American Loyalists.)”
William
Axtell of Dunstable, England, wrote in 1878, “There is no doubt that Thomas
Axtell, progenitor of the Axtell family in America, and Daniel Axtell, the regicide, were brothers to my progenitor, Samuel, as appears to have the same father, viz. William.”
Descendants of this William of Dunstable, England, are at present living in the
vicinity of Boston, Massachusetts.
This presentation was very well
received and provoked several questions and comments.