I had a link I liked about the term Black Dutch. I went looking for it today and found it in Wayback. The page is so old it recommends a Yahoo group for further discussion.
In 19th and 20th centuries America it was relatively common for people to identify themselves or other people as Black Dutch. The idea was that even though a person’s skin was dark enough to be noticeably different, they really were still White.
The Black Dutch were said to be Germans (Deutsch) or Dutch with dark hair and coloring. The analogy is to the Black Irish; Irish with black hair as opposed to Irish with red hair. (Remember, we’re dealing in stereotypes here.)
In reality, Black Dutch was often a euphemism for bi-racial (White and Indian) or tri-racial (White, Black, and Indian). It was also relatively common to explain people with dark skin as Portuguese, which served the same purpose of obscuring a mixed-race background.
Grandma Miller told me her Horn ancestors were Black Dutch. “Grandma Miller” was Evelyn (Horn) Miller (1913-2010), of Lovelock, Nevada. Her grandmother Rachel (Roberson) Horn (1847-1932), of Tulsa, Oklahoma was probably Cherokee or part-Cherokee. (This is my conclusion. It’s been hotly debated my entire life.)
I wasn’t surprised. The Horns claim to have Indian ancestry. If that’s true, and it seems to be—the DNA shows the smallest trace of it—they would almost certainly have had some way of explaining it away. The odds were good their explanation would have been Black Dutch.
Mike Nassau finds 8 different meanings for Black Dutch, including the relatively modern “Melungeon“. As a working definition I still prefer to gloss it as bi-racial or tri-racial but I like Nassau’s niceties. I’m hoping to find a case someday where one of the less common definitions comes into play.
Mike Nassau, “Black Dutch,” Black Dutch <blackdutch1.webs.com>, Apr. 6, 2006.
The Scottish prisoners of war who are the subject of this society’s research were taken prisoner after the Battles of Dunbar (1660) and Worcester (1661), then deported to New England. In America they tended to stay together, with some intermarriage in the first generations. They formed the Scots Charitable Society, now the oldest charitable organization in the Americas.
It was this tendency to stick together that led to the idea Thomas Nock might have been one of them. He was where they were, and his surname Nock could maybe be a form of Knox.
The modern expert on the Scottish prisoners is Andrew Millard, an archaeologist at the University of Durham. He supervised excavations on a mass grave used for the Scots who were interned at Durham Cathedral in 1660 after the Battle of Durham.
The SPOWS page for Thomas Nock quotes from an email Dr. Millard sent to Teresa Rust and me on Oct. 9, 2018:
The date of the 1652 grant was doubted by Stackpole in his Scotch Exiles typescript (see attached page) where he said “the last figure is very indistinct and doubtful. It may be 1656 or later.” Have you managed to see the original of this grant?
If that date is not certain, then all are agreed he had a land grant was in 1657, but there is another indication he was there slightly earlier. Both the Tibbetts and the Knox books says Thomas’s son Thomas jr. made a will on 15 Feb 1676, though Stackpole says 15 Sep 1676. An image of this will ought to be on Ancestry https://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=8996, but I don’t have a subscription to US records. Ancestry have transcribed the month as February. Sylvanus, another son, was taxed in 1677 according to the Tibbetts book and Stackpole. They must have been 21 to make a will and be taxed, placing their births in or before 1655 and 1656. Sylvanus was apprenticed in 1670 according to the Tibbetts book, which conventionally would have happened at the age of 14. Although age at apprenticeship did vary, this would fit with a c.1656 birth.
If the 1652 date is correct I agree he is unlikely to be a SPOW, but if he first appears in 1655-56, in a place where there were a number of SPOWs, then I’d still consider him to fall in the possible category. The key thing is the date on that first land grant, for which the original or a good image of it needs to be consulted.
Good enough. We have to start somewhere. I was skeptical, however. It’s unfortunate my response the same date is missing from the Society’s website.
One of the main reasons for thinking Thomas Nocke might have been a Scot is that his surname could have been Knox, and in fact this is typically the modern spelling among his descendants. However, the spelling Nock is preserved in the place name Nock Marsh, and there are Nock/e families documented in England. In fact there have been several attempts over the years to identify Thomas Nocke in Dover with different men of that name in English baptismal records. I continue to be cautious. This line of thinking can only be speculative until there is a firmer basis for going a particular direction.
I think it's also worth noting that while Stackpole did so much of the pioneering research on the families in this area, he is not always as careful as he might have been. You yourself have provided an example. He says the will of Thomas Jr. was 15 September 1676. The actual date is "the ffifteene day of ffeburary in ye Yeare of our Lord God one thousand six hundred Seaventy Six".
Similarly, when he says the "the last figure is very indistinct and doubtful" in the 1652 grant, that's something I would want to verify. It might be worth noting that others have also read it as 1652 (for example, Genealogical Dictionary of Maine & New Hampshire). I've seen it myself on LDS microfilm but didn't pay any particular attention. Without unpacking my notes, I couldn't even say right off if what I've seen is the original or a typescript copy. As I recall it's in a somewhat unexpected place in the records so it might take me some to find it again.
However, I'll repeat what I said in my first message. Thomas' son Thomas Jr. was born 26 March 1654/55. This, I believe, is key to the rest of the dating. Thomas Sr. and Rebecca were likely married before June 1654. This makes 1652 a very plausible date for a first land grant to Thomas. We see this scenario over and over and over in early New England genealogy. A boy reaches his majority, ends his apprenticeship or indenture, then marries and gets a grant of land almost simultaneously. Of course it would be that way. The town would not have allowed him to marry if he could not provide for a family. Nor would the town have failed to provide him with land if he had recently come of age and expected to marry. Thomas' marriage before 1654 and the date of 1652 for the grant are mutually supportive.
Then approaching the question from the opposite direction - if Thomas had been taken prisoner at Dunbar in 1650, and arrived with other Scots prisoners on the Unity in Dec 1650, it seems he would have served an extraordinarily abbreviated indenture if he was free and married by June 1654. Three years, compared to the 6, 7, 8 years served by other prisoners.
This additional information seems dispositive. It is highly improbable Thomas Nocke was one of the Scottish prisoners.
A few days ago I wrote about Online Learning (Apr. 13, 2020). There’s no doubt you can learn on the Internet. Good quality stuff, if you search it out.
Here’s an article that suggests targeted learning might someday replace university degrees. “Could targeted, bite-sized chunks of education help you get a job?”
This particular article focuses on the rising cost of education, and whether online courses and certificate programs could replace a university degree. Or maybe not replace, just supplement.
This isn’t a new idea. I think it must have been around since the early days of the Internet. Hey look, here’s something that might happen. Easy futurism.
Now the landscape has been transformed, just in the two months since this article was written. Here in Colorado we’re all in COVID-19 lockdown. Schools are closed; replaced in various ways by online instruction.
It’s a new world, both for school and for work. It was totally impossible, so they said, to let people work at home. Until it had to be done to keep employers in business. Now it’s magically possible.
I tease my nephew that his education is over. He’ll never get further than 9th grade. It’ll be digging ditches for him. It’s funny only because we know the world has changed. Whether or not he’s ever able to go back to a traditional classroom environment, the certification process will adapt. He’ll graduate high school and go on to college, in whatever way those things end up being defined.
When I retired a few years ago, I thought I would like to good back, finish my Masters’ degree and get a PhD in History. I applied to universities. I got accepted. And I decided I don’t really want to go. Not this school. Not that school. Not right now. I love reading and watching videos; the learning itself.
Even when I was college I pushed against the structure. I wanted to go my own direction. Week 3, I’m thinking that chapter we had to read is fascinating. I want to explore that. I’m not ready to move on with the rest of the class to the next topic.
Today, when I look at online versus classroom education, I agree with the guy in this article. “[H]e came to the conclusion that a major part of formal education was ‘signalling’; that it was used to ‘filter society by which people are smart, conscientious and conformist enough to put up with it'”.
Malatiah Luce, of Martha’s Vineyard married a woman named Eleanor Harley or Harlow. Everything I’ve found about her online comes directly or indirectly from Charles Edward Banks’ 3-volume History of Martha’s Vineyard (1901, 1966):
59. Malatiah(3) Luce, (Thomas(2), Henry(1)), b. 1710; res. T., husbandman; m. Eleanor Harley (or Harlow) 5 July 1738, who was b. 1715 and d. 18 Feb. 1787. He d. 3 May 1801. (Banks 3:255).
I’ve pushed a bit from time to time to see if I could take the line further. It seemed to me she was probably really a Harlow because there was a Harlow connection on the Vineyard. I never found anything but I spun some good theories. And, predictably, many people copied my texts without attribution.
About a year ago I tried again. This time scrapping my old theories and starting from scratch.
I already had an extract of the two records on which Banks based his information. Tisbury Vital Records shows Elenor Harley and Malatiah Luce, married 5 July 1738, and Elanor, w. Meltiah, [died] Feb. 18, 1787, in 73d y.
Tisbury Marriages
So we see the primary source says she was a Harley. Banks must have had the same thought I did, that she might really have been a Harlow.
If we calculate her birth from her death it looks like she should be born 1712/13, even though Banks says 1715. Doesn’t really matter. Some play in the dates wouldn’t be unusual.
I was blown away to find, almost immediately, a simple and direct record of an Eleanor who is probably her: Elenor, christened 17 August 1712 in Boston, daughter of Robert Harley and Elinor. This must be the Robert Harley and Eliner Kerr who were married in Boston on 15 November 1711 by Cotton Mather.
Second Church of Boston
That’s it then. Now we can move to looking for her parents’ ancestries.
Old Theory
Here is the last iteration of my old research on Eleanor’s ancestry. An earlier version presented a theory about how she might have been connected to the Plymouth Harlows. I touch on that theory here, and dismiss it.
Her ancestry is unknown. There are some speculations, but no evidence.
Although her marriage record calls her Elenor Harley (Tisbury Vital Records) it seems certain her name was Harlow rather than Harley. There was a Harlow family on Martha's Vineyard but no other references to a Harley family in this area. Moreover, her daughter Mary's first child was Harlow Crosby (born 15 December 1768).
Theories about her origin include the following:
She might have been an otherwise unknown daughter of (Deacon) Robert Harlow and Susanna Cole.
She might have been an otherwise unknown daughter of Benjamin Harlow, and a granddaughter of Sgt. William Harlow.
She might have been an otherwise unknown daughter of Thomas Harlock and Hannah.
She might have been an indentured servant from England.
It is widely believed Eleanor was one of the Plymouth Harlows and therefore a descendant of Sgt. William Harlow (FamilySearch (2017)) but there is no evidence. A genealogy of this family published in NEHGR does not show an Eleanor (Adams 1860: 227-33), but is undocumented and contains known errors.
The Plymouth Harlows were connected with the Holmes and the Wests, two families who lived on the Vineyard a generation later. Rebecca Harlow of the Plymouth family married 1730 Jabez Holmes. His cousin John Holmes came to the Vineyard about 1757. Rebecca's nephew Robert Harlow married 1749 Jean West, of Tisbury, and Robert's brother James Holmes married 1757 Jerusha Holmes, who was niece of Jabez.
FamilySearch shows Eleanor as a daughter of Robert Harlow and Susanna Cole (2017), and therefore a sister of the Robert Harlow who married Jean West, and of the James Harlow who married Jerusha Holmes. The relationship is problematic, however. The chronology is too tight. Eleanor is thought to have been born about 1714/15, which would make her about 23 at the time of her marriage and would tally with her death record, which says she was in her 73rd year. However, Robert Harlow and Susanna Cole weren't married until October 1717. They had their first child Ebenezer Harlow 16 months later, in April 1719. Their subsequent children follow the usual Puritan pattern of a child about every two years until 1752, with each birth duly recorded at Plymouth, and no child named Eleanor. There is no room for Eleanor in this family.
Justin Swanström, 11/1/2010, rev. 9/30/2017.
Sources
Adams, Theodore P. “The Harlow Family” in The New England Historical and Genealogical Register, Volume 14(1860), pp. 227-33.
Banks, Dr. Charles E. The History of Martha’s Vineyard (Dukes Co. Hist. Soc., 1911, 1966).
“Family Tree,” database, FamilySearch (http://familysearch.org : modified 23 May 2017), entry for Eleanor Harley (https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/LHJ6-TFB); contributed by various users.
I’m a fan of using networks to break through genealogical brick walls. My shorthand for this is “People tend to marry someone they know.” When you’re studying a community it helps to start mapping everyone. Look at their relatives, look at their neighbors, look at the other people who sign the same documents. It’s time consuming but not hard.
It’s called social network analysis. I remember reading something from Tony Proctor at Parallax View, I can’t put my finger on it right now. I also remember seeing something with the leaders of the American Revolution. Can’t find that either.
Instead I find some old bookmarks about researchers who analyzed the social networks in three epic poems: the Greek Iliad, the English poem Beowulf, and the Irish Táin Bó Cuailnge. It turns out these three have the characteristics of real-life social networks.
Then, the researchers analyzed four works of “modern fiction”: Fellowship of the Ring, Harry Potter, Les Misérables, and Richard III. The social relationships in these are flatter. They don’t have the interlinked connections with other characters that people have in real-life networks.
I feel like I could almost have guessed, even before I read about the study. In high school I read Gone With the Wind, with some of my friends. As a group we ended up having many different discussions about idealizing the past and distorting the evils of slavery. In among the politics and ethics, I also thought this novel was a bit unusual in the number of relationships among minor characters. Kathleen Calvert. The Tarleton twins. Mrs. Mead. It’s common in novels. I thought it might be that Margaret Mitchell based the story on real life, just because of the network depth she gave it.
Now I’m going to go figure out where I’ve stashed all my info on social networks. Must be around here somewhere.
NNDB: Tracking the Entire World. Retrieved Apr. 15, 2020. “The NNDB Mapper is a visual tool for exploring the connections between people in NNDB, linking them together through family relations, corporate boards, movies and TV, political alliances, and shadowy conspiracy groups. Maps can be saved and shared for others to explore.“
