Major William Erving

William was John and Abigail Erving's second son, born in Boston on 8 September 1734.(1) He was Harvard educated and made his career in the British Army before the Revolutionary War. He pursued scientific study throughout his life, and endowed a chair in Chemistry at Harvard, which continues to this day.

Lest we take him to be the perfect intellectual, Harvard records show William was fined for playing cards and missing church services. Friendships made at Harvard would endure; Oliver Wendell (listed below) continued his relationship with the Ervings, and served as an Executor for the wills of both William, and his father, John. (2)

    Graduation list published 23 July 1753 (3)

William continued his education, but was absent from his "second degree" ceremony at Harvard because he was "gone to the expedition against Crown Point."  He was known as a military engineer. His career took him to the second battle of Louisburg-now Cape Breton Island-and he was with General Wolfe at the British victory at Quebec in 1759.(4)  The surrender of the French ended the French and Indian War in New England, but Britain's Seven Years War continued. William participated in the siege of Havana in 1762.

Most of the portraits that depict the second generation of Ervings were painted at the time of their marriages. In his will, William states, "whereas I have never been married and so of course have not benefitted society by adding to their number.” If he sat for a portrait, its disposition is unknown.

William requested a grant of land for his military service, which was defined in June of 1775. He received 4,368 acres and 3 rods in northern New Hampshire from King George, through the Provincial Governor of New Hampshire. The grant was subject to establishing a road and settling three families, paying taxes, and growing hemp or flax on 10% of the land. Timber suitable for ship’s masts would also be reserved for His Majesty’s Navy.(5) The land is mountainous without a waterway to transport lumber from the interior. During the Revolution, William was unable to fulfill the terms of his grant. Although undeveloped, the land is still unincorporated as Erving's Location in Coos County, just south of present Dixville Notch. The population was recorded as 31 in 1920, but none were enumerated in most other years of record. There are a handful of vital records that indicate a birth or death in the grant.

 

                      Erving’s Location in Northern New Hampshire

William may have sat out the war in New Hampshire; he did not fight with the Continentals. He was reportedly jailed briefly upon his return to Boston. The Massachusetts Legislature acted on his petition on 8 February 1786 to "naturalize" William Erving as a citizen of the Commonwealth, giving him all rights, liberties, and privileges as if he had been present at the establishment of the government. (6) 

He inherited his father's pew in the meeting house upon John’s death in 1786. It was highly valued at $50 in William’s estate filing. 

William shared a love of science with his brother-in-law James Bowdoin. James had been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in its first year in 1780, and William joined in 1784. William placed a series of newspaper notices for meetings of its Agriculture Committee in Boston in subsequent years, serving as recording secretary. His brother George Erving, who had moved to England as a Loyalist, was also elected to AAAS in 1790.(7)

Bowdoin’s connections as Governor of Massachusetts in the new republic benefitted his wife’s family. James provided a letter of introduction to Benjamin Franklin in May of 1787, calling William “a worthy sensible gentleman,”(8) and to George Washington, calling William, "a firm and Zealous friend to the rights and liberties of America." (9) 

In 1790, he lived in Roxbury with 2 males and 2 females, all over 16. (10) These servants were named in his will: Ezra Hayward and Perley Pollard, and Jemina and Grace Fuller. Each was granted a year's wages upon his death: $7.16 for the women, $15.12 to Pollard and $23 to Hayward for "two legacies."

William Erving died 27 May 1791. Although he had inherited a sizable fortune from his father only a few years earlier, he did not inherit his father’s longevity; William did not live to see his 57^th birthday. His simple Roxbury house was valued at only $20 in his estate inventory, while the Marlboro Street home that he had inherited from his father was valued at $1,350. With his furniture and kitchenware that are enumerated, the inventory of his personal property included four wigs, and from his military past, his gun and bayonet, two swords, and a pair of pistols. His scientific tools included a compass, a spyglass, a thermometer and barometer, and "a case of instruments." He valued education and had acquired a large library. He willed a portion of the land he had inherited from his father, 120 acres in the Town of Wendell, to support a school there. He wrote, "Whereas I think it of the highest consequence that Learning should be preserved among us for fear from the great inattention threat that people will relapse into a State of Barbarism." He also gave a lot to the Town to support a minister. (11)

His funeral procession left from the home of his sister, Sarah Waldo, to his burial at Kings Chapel on 30 May 1791. (12)  He was buried with his mother and sister, Mary, as he had requested in his will. The identification of his gravesite is simple:

 THE REMAINS OF

MAJOR WILLIAM ERVING

ARE DEPOSITED

IN THIS

       TOMB. (13)

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Notes:

(1)  Massachusetts, U.S. Town and Vital Records, 1620-1988, The Holbrook Collection, Boston 1716-1643, on line at Ancestry.

(2) Suffolk County probate files found at Ancestry.

(3)"Colonial Collegians,"

 (4) Boston Post-Boy, 23 July 1753, image on line at AmericanAncestors.

(5) Provinceland State Papers of New Hampshire, vol. 24.

(6)  Colonial Collegians

(7) The many names can be found at AAAS

(8) American Philosophical Society, "Benjamin Franklin Papers Part 9, Letters to Franklin Mss.B.Finvetory85, XXXV, 58.  Bowdoin, James on line at the website 

(9) Colonial Collegians

(10) 1790 cnsus record

(11) Suffolk County probate files found at Ancestry

(12)  Obituary

(13) "Documents of the City of Boston" Vol. 1, issues 1-23, 1914, p. 747, on line at Google books, 

 Learning About the Land

I'm a map person. I love the variety of historical information that can be found on old maps. I brought some map activities to our elementary school a few years ago to help familiarize the students with the shape and characteristics of our town. The undulating southern border is formed by the Millers River, in contrast with the man-made straight lines that divide us from Northfield to the north. There have been a few boundary adjustments since the land was mapped and subdivided. Orange and Warwick are our neighbors to the east. The Warwick line runs through the middle of Laurel Lake.

The map below is a retracing of a plan drawn by Joseph Metcalf in 1788. The present Town of Erving is west of the crease in the linen, and north of the river. The northern part of the Town of Wendell is mapped south of the river. All of the land was purchased by John Erving in 1751/2. The map was later drawn to divide his remaining property among his heirs.

Why did John Erving purchase "Lands North of Millers River containing Eleven Thousand and Sixteen Acres"?(1) Apparently, pure speculation. There is no evidence that he ever saw the property. There was value in the timber, but it had to be transported to market, and the flow of the Millers River would take it even farther from his enterprises in Boston. According to Thomas E. Sawin, as Pam Richardson relates in her 2015 history of Wendell, the land north of the river was "undisturbed forest" until 1800.(2)   Undeveloped land in western Massachusetts was 'money in the bank' for John Erving.

As the document below indicates, bringing in settlers was a condition of his separate purchase of the land south of the river, and John Erving immediately began selling that land. Before Wendell was incorporated in 1781, this land was known as part of Erving's Plantation or Ervinshire. "Road Town" referred to here is now Shutesbury, of which the northern portion became part of Wendell. If you look in "Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War" you will find several whose residence is given as Ervingshire.(3)

In the 1980s, a Northfield historian named Rosa Johnston did significant work with the old deeds, discovering and recording which of John Erving's children or grandchildren had rights to specific lots after his death, as mapped by Metcalf. She traced them forward through several sales for historical context. Precipitated by their inheritance of the land, and likely by improvements to the road system, it was around the turn of the nineteenth century that the heirs began to sell the land and settlement began to occur north of the river. The Fifth Massachusetts Turnpike was incorporated in 1799, improving the east-west travel route that led from Boston to the Connecticut River. When the heirs began to liquidate the "unimproved land," soon after, the purchasers began to settle on the parcels. This area began to develop a community, first on the eastern side where a road led north to Northfield and south to Wendell. A tavern, a school, and mills were built on the river. 

The Shepherd brothers of Northampton, bought up a large number of the lots in 1817. We will get to their story later, along with the Whites, Alexanders, and Holtons who were early settlers.

As I reviewed Rosa Johnston's notes, I wanted to know who John Erving was in 1752. What was happening at that point in history? It didn't take long before I began populating his family tree and realized just how prominent he was in Boston in the mid-eighteenth century. Phil Johnson, another member of the Erving Historic Commission, joined me in the search. We started to feel like we were "drinking from a fire hose" when we began accumulating records. We discovered that boxes of family documents are archived at the Historical Societies in Boston and New York. We found mentions in published books and digitized documents online. Facts collected led to many more questions to answer.

We will share some of the discoveries, and questions, in future posts.

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Notes: (1) "Acts and Resolves" Legislative Records of the Council 1752/3, Chapter 142.

                  (2)   Richardson, Pamela, and Thomas E. Sawin, "Wendell Massachusetts: Its Settlers and Citizenry, 1752-1900" Pub. Amherst, MA: Off the Common Books, 2015, p. 20.

            (3)   View "Soldiers and Sailors" in the Mass. Archives here