The deed I’m looking for (page 32 in volume 16) turns out to be found on image number 40, and here’s how the top part of that deed looks:

Turns out this is a VERY helpful deed for my family research on the Gould's.  Not only is Zaccheus mentioned in the deed, but his relationship is stated as being the "son of the said John Goold, of Topsfield & Sarah His wife", so we have the names of three of the family members, including that of Sarah, the wife of John Goold/Gould.

I hope you'll give this browsing feature a try.  Yes, it's more involved than using the search query forms, but my experience with it has been so very worthwhile.  It has truly been a way for me to bridge more generations and answer questions without having to travel great distances to visit court houses or to order a multitude of microfilms.  It's truly put the records of many of my ancestors at my fingertips.

Born on the 27th of June in 1770[1] in Wales, Massachusetts, John Fitch Bishop lived for exactly 70 years and one month.  He died on the 27th of July in 1840[2]  in Crown Point, New York.

John was probably about 17 years of age when his parents left the Massachusetts town of South Brimfield (now Wales) in 1787.  This is based on land, court and tax records regarding John’s father William Bishop.  At any rate, they’re not in the 1790 South Brimfield census.

It’s one of my ‘unsolved mysteries’:  what happened to William and Catherine after this?  They were said to have moved to New York[3], but I haven’t been able to positively ID them yet.  However, John Fitch left more clues to help us follow his trail, the first being in 2 September 1800, when a John Bishop took the Freeman’s Oath in Clarendon, Rutland County, Vermont.

There are no Rutland County deeds wherein John was a grantee or grantor; but “John F. Bishop” witnessed three deeds in the town of Clarendon, two in 1802[4,5] and one in 1805[6].  In one of the 1802 deeds[4], Daniel Goff was the grantee; Daniel’s daughter Lucy was to become John Fitch Bishop’s wife, perhaps in that very year of 1802.  Some researchers in the family have cited that date; I’m hoping that someone reading this post may have a source for their marriage date and share that with us.

Deeds in the town of Crown Point, Essex County, New York, help us follow John’s trail to that town as of 1806.  For it’s here that John is found as a grantee, buying 100 acres in Lot 44 – across Lake Champlain from Vermont[7].  He’s age 36 now, and it’s in Crown Point where he and Lucy establish their family, parenting nine children:

Julius Bishop - birth and death dates unknown; Julius was listed among the early members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints who were in Nauvoo, Illinois as of 1845[8]
Emeline Bishop - born about 1808, died (perhaps in 1880 in Chicago, Illinois - needs verified)[9]   

The 1810 census seems to be the first time John appears as the head of household.   He would have been 40 then, making him the male between the ages of 26 and 44.[10]

In 1811 fifty men in Crown Point combined their resources in order to begin a public lending library there.  John was one of those men.  Each charter member donated either $2.00 or one book.  I couldn’t help feeling more connected to John when I found out he apparently cared so much about reading.  I love libraries – they’re like candy stores for the mind.

As for John’s military service, an obituary for his son DeWitt Clinton Bishop stated that John had been present at the Battle of Lundy’s Lane (in Canada) during the War of 1812 and that he’d suffered a wound to his lungs during the battle.  I’ve been unable to find anything to back this up, but he did indeed serve in the New York militia from at least 1807 until 1814 and was promoted that year to First Major.[11]

By August 23, 1839, John and Lucy had sold the farm in Lot 44 and bought another tract, Lot 49 in Crown Point.[12]

This farm was their residence when John died one year later, on the 27th of July, 1840.  This is the date his widow Lucy gave when she petitioned the Surrogate's Court of Essex County, New York for the authority to sell the property.  See my next post for an image of this document.

Please see Reference Notes under the Pages heading on the side bar.

Although it took twenty-five years plus to trace the generations after John Fitch Bishop, it took less than two years to follow the trail to John and to learn when and where he died.

Grandma B. (Lucy Jane Atteberry Bishop) kept a Family Bible, but she had only recorded births, etc. starting with her and Grandpa Bishop.  My dad told us names of our great grandparents, though; and that gave my quest a big boost.

Here’s the page in the Bible where Grandma began recording the births:

In later posts, I’ll be sharing with you readers how I linked each of the generations back to John, and then from him back to the immigrant ancestors in Salem, Massachusetts.  I had a great deal of help in this process, and I’d especially like to mention here the help of my second cousin, Janine Bishop Rittel.  She’d been diligently searching and acquiring documents years before I started my quest, and she generously shared everything she’d found with me.  I owe so much to her.

We all have that curiosity-bug that impels us to wonder about our family history, don’t we?  For me, the curiosity was partly driven by wanting to know where we came from, but it was also to see if I could prove or disprove a family story we kids had heard throughout our childhood.  We’d been told that Ulysses S Grant was our great-great-great something, perhaps an uncle.  That certainly piqued my interest.

I found that there was a grain of truth to the story.  On my father’s side, one of my ancestors was a distant cousin of Ulysses S Grant, making us fourth cousins three times removed.

The reward gained from following that carrot-and-a-stick was discovering a book called, “A Genealogical History of the Descendants of Matthew Grant of Windsor, Connecticut, 1601-1898”, by Arthur Hastings Grant.  In this book I found listed my great grandfather Julius C. Bishop, my great-great grandparents, DeWitt Clinton Bishop and his wife Elizabeth Grant AND DeWitt’s father’s name:  John Fitch Bishop.  DeWitt was born 2 March, 1818 in Crown Point, Essex County, New York.

In my next post, I’ll share more of what I’ve learned about John Fitch Bishop, my elusive third great-grandfather.

Ancestry.com, Massachusetts, Town and Vital Records, 1620-1988 [database on-line], Provo, UT, USA, Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011; Holbrook Research Institute, (Jay and Darlene Holbrook).