Story Four: The Revolutionary War: If you don’t
succeed, try, try again.
Timothy, William’s father, fought in the
Revolutionary War. He was one of the minutemen who fought off the British in
Lexington and Concord. In 1776, he sailed out from Salem. The British
attacked and he was wounded in the neck by a musket ball. The British
captured his boat and he was put in a prison ship in NY harbor. After six
month of torture, his captors put him, and nine other prisoners, on a
thirty-six-man crew of an armed English ship convoy guarding ships to
England and back. In London he was put on a ship in the Thames and then
transferred to a whip bound for Lisbon. When he returned from Lisbon, he was
put on a ship bound for the West Indies. He was treated cruelly and was
determined to escape.
During a rainy night in Antigua, he escaped
by swimming ashore in a storm and tried to return to Boston on a ship. The
first ship changed its course to Ireland and he ended up on a pilot boat,
which took him to North Carolina. On the ship he took from there to Boston,
he was captured again and taken to New York to be put in a prison ship, and
escaped again. He almost reached American lines when he was captured by
Hessian troops and sent to a New York prison for another grueling six
months. Later that year he was exchanged and passed over to the American
army in a state of destitution. He was two hundred miles from home, without
any money. Luckily he ran into a man from Newton who lent him enough money
to get him home. He arrived home after trying and trying to escape and being
gone for almost two years. He spent a few months in the army in Rhode Island
and then settled as a farmer at the Homestead.
As an aside to this story… While Timothy was
trying to get home, his sisters raised sheep, spun yarn, wove cloth and ran
the farm while he was in the war. Lucy Jackson, his oldest sister, has a
chapter of the DAR named after her located in Newton.
Story 5:
My fifth story is about Women’s Rights. It is called:
Tragedy Leads to Activism.
Francis was an ardent supporter of women’s
rights. His daughter, Eliza Eddy, had lost her children when her husband
seized their two young daughters and took them to Europe without her
consent. This episode prompted Jackson to support women’s rights. His first
action was an anonymous gift of $5,000 to the women’s rights cause and other
reforms.
He primarily showed his support through
financial gifts in his will. The first thing he did was to give 1/3 of
residue of his estate to Edmund in trust for his daughter. He stated, "The
whole net income there of shall be paid semi-annually to my daughter, Eliza
Eddy, during her natural life, for her sole and separate use, free from the
control or interference of any husband she may have."
The second gift was $5,000 to Wendell
Phillips, Lucy Stone, and Susan B. Anthony. It was "to secure passage of
laws granting women, whether married or unmarried, the right to vote, to
hold office, to hold, manage and devise property, and all other civil rights
enjoyed by men…My desire is that they may become a permanent organization,
until the rights of women shall be established equal with those of men". He
would be distressed to know that his will was contested by his heirs and the
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled in 1867 that since "women’s
rights" were not an organized charity, the will was void and the $5,000
should go to the heirs.
As an aside, Francis wrote a complete, very
valuable, History of Newton, including a survey of deeds, homeownership, and
biographies. It was so accurate that people who have confirmed his research
have only found one error. Without it, we would know much less about Newton.
The Homestead has his notebooks that he used for his research.
