The Curious Case of Phalarius Russell 

     and one Zadok St. John Bennett

Zadok St. John  Bennett 1814-1902

(Author's note: Sometimes you are just going down that rabbit hole. No matter what you do- there's always another story to tell.)

Edited along the way.

IN MY FAMILY, we have always been prone to taking in strays. From dogs and cats to people, it's just one of those things that seems to naturally occur in my tribe — not particularly special, or, as mother might have called it, "wondermous" in nature, but not something we ever set out to do either. It's just one of those things that seems to happen. Whether those stray spirits come looking for us, or we for them, that they end up part of us has always struck me as one of God's better plans.

I was reminded of this recently, thinking back on my stint at a school for special-needs kids — kids who often had no parents. I couldn't quite cotton to the idea that any kid, especially a wee one, wasn't worthy of being cared for, or worse, had no home at all. Lest you think I'm rearranging my own halo here — please, there's too much rust on it for that — just let me explain. We've had strays of every kind: the old guy (hey, I resemble that remark) lost in the grocery store, an aunt born out of wedlock, my grandfather's dog Spot in the 1950s, a cat-at-the-car-lot named Velvet in the '60s, a wayward young woman named Heidi who came to live with us in the '70s. They reach out to us, and we to them. This isn't another tell-tale-heart story, though — it's the one about the stray I found.

I stumbled on this particular genealogical stray while working through my mother's Salem ancestry — specifically the collateral descendants of those ill-fated "witches." It's nagged at me ever since, because it's both a family stray and a genealogical "who" that refuses to resolve. So if you're willing, and not too bored by it all, let me introduce you to my Uncle Phalarius Russell, and our stray in question, one Zadok St. John Bennett. (With names like that, how could I not be interested?)

  

Above: George Ely Russell's Descendants of William Russell of Salem, Mass., 1674, page 127

I'd been amassing my great body of bullsh*t — that is, my great body of proofs and reasonings and examinations of all things old and connected to a lady named Betsey Carrier. To get to Betsey, I've needed to verify everything I can about her life and the life of her husband, Roswell Russell — which meant verifying, or at least accounting for, everyone connected to our dear boy Roswell Russell, of Colebrook, Connecticut, and later Genesee County, New York.

That's when I stumbled on Phalarius. Phalarius, you see, was Roswell's baby brother. And believe it or not, Phalarius held the key to identifying Roswell and Betsey's children as belonging to one and the same family. Morose as it is to say, Brother Phalarius did me a great favor when he died seemingly intestate and without a will or any heirs. In doing so, his estate fell to the intestate succession laws of 1830 New York. Kind of a bad break for Uncle Phalarius, but for his collateral-line relative two hundred years later, it was definitely for me, a Winner, winner, chicken dinner.

Above: The important detail is who it names, and who it doesn't. New York Land Deeds, Niagara County, FamilySearch.org

This deed's opening clause identifies seven parties collectively as "heirs at Law and to the Estate of Phalarius Russel late of the County of Niagara deceased":

1. Elizur Russel & Margaret, his wife
2. Gould Stratten & Cyntha, his wife
3. Calvin Russel & Patience, his wife
4. George W Darling & Nancy, his wife
5. Lovina Russel
6. Noah Brooks & Marcha, his wife
7. Erastus Russel

Uncle Phalarius's probate administration and subsequent land sales have been a genuinely useful thing — it names pretty much everyone in my 1830 Russell family line, right on down to my three-times-great-grandmother's twin sister, the ill-fated Lovina. Everybody had to sign off on it as they sold their portion of what they'd inherited from "Uncle P." Talk about a genealogical checklist. LOL.

But working through Uncle P's estate administration turned out to be a little strange. The intestate succession as it reads implied he had "no direct heirs" — no children or wife with a claim were listed. Everyone shown is just "kin." That didn't quite square with what little I already knew about him. The 1820 census for Royalton, Niagara County, New York, showed him in a somewhat unusual household: two adult men, one adult woman, and four children. But hey, who am I to judge — that other adult male could just as easily have been a brother, a boarder, or Aaron Burr, for all one can tell from an 1820 census. What it did mean, in relation to Uncle P's 1830 probate, was that everyone in that 1820 household was either dead by 1830 or somehow legally excluded from inheriting.

Remember though, having "no direct heirs" doesn't mean not having any "heirs at law."

Above: Phalarius Russell in the 1820 Royalton, Niagara County, New York, census.

That was all well and good for my actual purpose — identifying the descendants of Roswell and Betsey. The probate admin verified two of their unmarried children (Erastus and Lovina), neither married nor minors in 1830, both apparently still in New York. So for my purposes, I had what I needed. It was a "yeah, that's a weird and sad genealogical moment" — but the reasons Uncle P's blended family had predeceased him wasn't a rabbit hole I needed to go down for my Salem line.

Still, it bugged me. Poor Uncle Phalarius, right? Manages his finances well, has a slightly unconventional 1820 household, and ends up in a situation where everyone's died before him and his collateral relatives get the spoils. Nobody left for Uncle Phalarius?

So I went back and had another look.

That's when I found "the stray" — and the stray did not make sense. That's when I first found mention of one Zadok St. John Bennett — "heir at law" to Mr. Phalarius Russell, of Royalton, Niagara County, New York.

The year is 1835.

Above: "Zadock Bennett of Henry County and State of Indiana, one of the heirs at law of and to the Estate of Phalarius Russell late of the County of Niagara in the State of New York deceased." New York, Niagara County, Land Deeds, FamilySearch.org

A curious indenture or land sale for Uncle P — the sale of land one naming all his intestate "heirs at law" — his probate administration had been closed for five years. Yet newly filed in that court, on some blustery day in 1835, is a document naming Zadok St. John Bennett a new "heir at law" to Uncle Phalarius.

So just who the hell is Zadok St. John Bennett, and why is he after my inheritance from Uncle Phalarius? Who is this pretender to our Royalton and Niagara Falls fortunes?

Nobody really seems to know.

The document itself is clear enough. But a search of the family lines turns up nothing. No Bennett family married into Uncle P's line. No St. John family married in through the Sage family or the Carriers. There's seemingly nothing tying Uncle Phalarius to any Zadok at all.

A quick dig into Zadok St. John Bennett's own life turns up a few clues — but only a few.

  

Zadok, it seems, was an orphan. According to his obituary, Zadok was taken in by one "Mrs. Russell" (first name unknown) when his mother died six weeks after giving birth. He was raised by Mrs. Russell until he was 17 or 18. When Zadok came of age, the obituary says, he learned that his biological father (unnamed) was still living, and rode a horse from Indiana back to New York to meet him — for the second time, apparently.

Here's the interesting part: the obituary never names any connection between Zadok and Uncle Phalarius at all. It only mentions the unnamed wife. We wouldn't even know Phalarius had a connection to Zadok were it not for Zadok's 1835 claim against the estate as an "heir at law."

But how?

The obituary states Zadok was born in 1814. He'd have reached his majority — age 21 — in 1835, which is exactly when he filed, making him legally able to bring a claim if he'd somehow been excluded from the estate as a minor. (He'd have been sixteen in 1830.)

But to be an heir at law, Zadok would have needed to be a bloodline relative of Phalarius Russell's. And even if Zadok was raised as a son in Uncle P and Mrs. P's household, legal adoption processes anywhere in the country at this point in American history were limited — the concept of a child having a legal claim on property through anything other than blood was complicated at best.

From what I can discover, it wasn't until 1873 that statutes were enacted in New York to allow for the creation of a legal parent-child relationship between persons who did not have a biological relationship. 

So just who are you, Zadok St. John Bennett?

I have a few working theories, and no proof. Other researchers are chasing his parentage too — some name a Benjamin Bennett as his father, though I've seen nothing beyond wishful thinking to substantiate it. There's also a hefty old genealogical compilation, the St. John Genealogy, packed with "Zadok St. Johns," which makes it tempting to assume he belongs to that lot. He probably does. Proving it looks close to impossible.

         

Above: Orline St John Alexander's The St. John Genealogy, page 184

The bigger puzzle is why Zadok should have any claim at all. Was he Phalarius's own child, born to a woman who died six weeks later, quietly absorbed into the blended 1820 household by Mrs. Russell? That would explain the later claim to a share of the estate — except the obituary already tells us Zadok rode off to meet his father as an adult, and that father wasn't Uncle P, who was long dead by then.

I don't know. Zadok is a stray.

                        

         

                            

In any event, he found his way into the Russell family, or the family found him, and somehow he was a stray legal heir enough to file a claim for his share. I've wondered whether the connection runs through Mrs. Russell's own family instead — whether Zadok's claim traces to what she might have inherited from her husband, had she lived to see 1830.

But she was dead. Indeed, they all were - and nobody thus far is talking.

Save, of course, for Zadok St. John Bennett.🕊

  BEYOND NEVERSINK

                  and 

      "THE DEARBORN WITCH"

                                IDENTIFYING BETSEY CARRIER: 

        The WIDOW of ROSWELL RUSSELL, and WIFE of ABRAM GRANT                                     

(Author's Note: This is a prelude and a likely in progress with hopes of later publication. For now though, the tale of it all will just have to do. It's straight up campfire and s'mores style genealogy. And hey, if you're offended by witches in the family tree - well, you "probly oughta" run.)

As always, almost all spectrally edited.

In most American families, the question has been asked for years: “Just who’s buried in Grant’s tomb?” In my family, there’s always been a particular answer to that question: "Grandma."

Say what? Keep reading - you'll figure it out.

Above: My Sage family ancestral line down to "Sam" my great-grandfather.

More precisely, the "Grandma" in answer to the question about Grant's tomb is my ancestor, Elizabeth “Betsey” Carrier of Colchester, Connecticut—later the wife and widow of Roswell Russell and then of Abram Grant. Betsey (as we'll call her here) died, most likely in Dearborn County, Indiana, in the early 1840s. And, on the surface Betsey looks like any other early-nineteenth-century pioneer wife who moved west out of New England into the wilds of New York and further into the frontier. However, if you dig a little deeper Betsey's story sharpens a bit in color. You see, through her first husband, Old Roswell Russell, Betsey became "the mom" to a line of people who descend from Rebecca Towne Nurse- who was hanged for witchcraft at Salem in 1692. Through Betsey's own bloodline though- and if the identification here of her parentage holds, she also carries the line of Martha Allen Carrier, who was also hanged there the same year.

Two condemned women, now brought together roughly a century later, through each of their own descendants, and now as husband and wife.

History does have an odd sense of irony if not humor, huh?

Above: "Descendants of William Russell..." - outlines my mother's ancestry from Rebecca Towne Nurse's daughter Elizabeth Nurse who married William Russell.

Above: Helynn Carrier's well-intentioned but very flawed "Carrier Clearinghouse" genealogy from the 1970s - traces Betsey back to Martha Allen Carrier of Salem repute.

The trouble is that Betsey’s exact place in the Carrier family itself has never been truly pinned down. It's the "pez-key" kind of truth contemporary record genealogists insist on if not prefer. Yet, published accounts have long assumed she was the daughter of Isaac and Elizabeth (Adams) Carrier of Colchester and later Liberty, New York, and Dearborn County, Indiana- and indeed she most likely is. The geography fits, the social circles overlap, and a Carrier family Bible lists her a such. But assumptions are not proof, and one stubborn headstone- Betsey's own headstone- keeps refusing to cooperate. What follows is the case for Betsey's identification - the complications that will not go away - and why the whole puzzle (at least for my family anyway) still matters.

Connecticut Beginnings

Betsey's parents, Isaac and Elizabeth (Adams) Carrier were already in Colchester, Connecticut, by the mid-1770s. They show up in deeds and in a 1774 probate receipt that has them acting jointly under the Carrier surname. Betsey’s recorded birth—22 November 1778—falls squarely inside their documented years there. By January 1795 the family had moved to Colebrook CT, where they appear as original church members; a son David was baptized the next year. In 1798 Betsey herself gave birth to daughters, my ancestor, the lovely and talented Lucinda (Russell) Sage, and her illfated twin sister Lovina, in Colebrook. That single fact places Betsey (and almost certainly her first husband the dashing Roswell) still in Connecticut just before their next leap to Ulster/Sullivan County, New York - and settling about the year 1803 near a place called Neversink.

(I know "Neversink" - go figure!)

Above: The Bible record of Betsey's birth (Nov 22 1778) does not agree with her headstone above (Sept 10 1780). So just who is in Betsey's tomb? 

Betsey's first husband, Roswell Russell, born in 1772 in Southwick, Massachusetts, had been in Colebrook with his parents since the early 1780s. The two families, those of the Carriers and the Russells, therefore shared years in the same small town of Colebrook, CT before both turned up in what became Sullivan County, New York. Coincidence is possible. Patterns of migration, land dealings, and church membership make coincidence look increasingly thin.

Liberty, New York: Hammers, Deeds, and a Family Bible

In Liberty, Sullivan County, New York, the paper trail thickens. Isaac Carrier Sr.'s sons, (and Betsey's brothers) Asa, Elijah, and Isaac Jr. formed a carpentry partnership with Roswell Russell and his brother John. Local histories credit the "Russell/Carrier" group with building most of the early frame houses and barns in town. Land indentures and deeds from 1802 to 1810 repeatedly put Roswell Russell and “Elizabeth his wife” on the same legal instruments with the Carrier brothers. Roswell sat on juries with the Carrier brothers. Elizabeth (Adams) Carrier—almost certainly Betsey’s mother—appears as a charter member of the First Presbyterian Church in 1810 beside Betsey’s sister Lucy Carrier and Lucy’s husband, Eber Hall.

Above: Quinlin's 1873 History of Sullivan County, New York, page 337

Above: My Carrier and Russell ancestors serving on the juries of Liberty, New York in 1807 - with a surprise member of my wife's own Bloogood family alongside them. (Hey, you cannot make this sh*t up.)

Above and below: An 1810 land indenture entered into by "Roswell Russell and his wife Elizabeth" with one of her brothers and one of her Carrier Cousins.

The single most important document (and indeed thus far the only one) placing Betsey inside this particular Carrier family is a DAR transcription of a family Bible kept by Betsey's presumed nephew William A. Carrier. It lists the July 1841 death of “Betsey Grant” among the family deaths, and among the children of Isaac Carrier Sr. and Elizabeth (Adams) Carrier. There she is entered under her second married name, "Betsey Grant" - exactly as the names of other married daughters appear. The Bible is retrospective (the family acquired it in the 1840s), but it has checked out against independent records for several other relatives. It is not conclusive. Again though, it is the only source that actually writes Betsey’s name among Isaac’s children. Everything else is circumstantial—strong circumstantial evidence, but still circumstantial.

The Second Husband and the Indiana Chapter

Betsey's first husband, and our hero, the industriuous and seemingly irascible Roswell Russell, disappears after the 1810 census. No death, probate, or burial has surfaced. Sometime between 1811 and April 1817 (when Betsey's daughter Lucy Grant was born), his widow Betsey had remarried the already twice widowed and much older Abram Grant. By about 1814, and as it is uncertain when Roswell passed away, the blended household shows up further west to Genesee (later Monroe) County, New York. My ancestor, the lovely Lucinda (Russell) Sage later swore that she married Harlehigh Sage in 1816 there “at the house of Abram Grant.”

A contemporary Belcoda Baptist Church in Wheatland, Caldenoia township, Genesee County has a membership roll that lists both an "Abraham Grant and an Elizabeth Grant" - and even old Harlehigh Sage's mother, the crafty matriarch Zilpha (Sly) Sage on the same membership roll.

None of this is airtight, but the pieces keep fitting.

Above: Betsey's grandson and Lucinda's son John Sage and family

All I can say, is that about 1819, the couple (Betsey and Abram) ups and books it outta there for Indiana.

Go figure.

We need to remember though that aside from Lucinda (Russell) Sage's statement that she was "married at the house of Abram Grant - The strongest original document tying the couple together (that of Betsey Grant and her second husband Abram Grant) comes from a Dearborn County, Indiana in the form of a deed. On 21 January 1836, where “Abram Grant and Elizabeth Grant his wife” sold thirty acres to David Tibbetts—the same David Tibbetts who had married Fanny Russell, another of Betsey’s daughter by the dashing Roswell, twelve years earlier. Both Abram and Betsey signed and sealed the deed. It does not call her "Elizabeth Carrier," yet when it is set beside later vital records that do, the identification becomes difficult to dismiss.

Above: An 1836 Dearborn County, Indiana deed linking Abram Grant to his wife Elizabeth

Those later records are blunt: (1) Betsey's son Hiram by her second husband Abram Grant: Hiram's 1890 marriage record names his parents "Abraham Grant and Elizabeth Carrie[r]." (2) Betsey's daughter, Lucy (Grant) Jaquith’s 1905 death certificate gives her mother’s maiden name as "Elizabeth Carrier." An 1884 obituary for Betsey's daughter Fanny (Russell) Tibbetts casually lists “Mrs. Lucy (Grant) Jaquith” and “Mrs. Lucinda (Russell) Sage” as her surviving sisters—one daughter from each marriage. The next generation intermarried with the same Jaquith family so thoroughly that the two halves of the household essentially fused.

Above: The 1884 obituary of Fanny (Russell) Tibbetts

                

Above: "Aunt Fanny Russell" - sister of Lucinda Russell Sage and wife of David Tibbetts

    

Above: The clues in the somewhat jarbled Jaquith genealogy

Of note: Alternative theories would require inventing a second Elizabeth Carrier who also married a Roswell Russell, and also then an Abram Grant, and also whose children then happened to marry into the identical Jaquith circle and were publicly called sisters. At some point the multiplication of entities becomes its own argument against itself.

The Headstone That Will Not Behave

Yet despite all this - the problem:

There is the stone in Wright’s Corner Baptist Cemetery, Dearborn County, Indiana. Older inventories transcribed it as Elizabeth H. Grant, born 10 September 1780, died 12 July 1840, aged 59 years, 10 months, and 2 days -with relationship lines from other transciptions (and not seen on the stone itself) linking her to her daughter Lucy Grant's married family- the Jaquiths. Direct examination of the photograph today confirms the name "Elizabeth" and the age at time of death and a slim possibility (via the transciption) of a middle initial "H." Yet the middle initial “H” does not actually appear to be present- or the stone is simply too worn in that spot.

More troubling though are the dates. The family Bible gives Betsey’s birth as 22 November 1778 and her death as July 1841. The birth dates alone—10 September versus 22 November—cannot be reconciled by adjusting the year. If Betsey and her documented sister Lucy (born 1780) were both born in the same year, they would have been fifty-five days apart, which is biologically impossible for full sisters.

One way to resolve the conflict is to consider the possibility of two daughters named Betsey. Infant and childhood mortality was high. It is entirely plausible that Isaac and Elizabeth (Adams) Carrier lost an earlier daughter named Betsey (the one born Nov 22, 1778) and later gave the same name to another child. This was an extremly common practice - and one I have encountered in documenting my father's Mayflower lines. In that reading, the family Bible could also be recording the birth of the first Betsey who did not survive and also recording the death of the 2nd, "Bestey Grant" who did.

Indeed, the Wright’s Corner stone may mark the grave of a different Betsey Carrier—still a daughter of the same couple, still carrying the same bloodline, still the widow of Roswell Russell and Abram Grant, but not the same individual named in the repeated birth record from the family Bible transciption. The dates would no longer need to agree because they would belong to two different women. However though, the “witch’s bloodline” from Martha Allen Carrier would remain intact either way.

Whether the stone belongs to the "Betsey of the Bible," or to a second Betsey of the same parents, or to some other Carrier woman entirely, one conclusion is hard to escape: the woman buried in that Dearborn County cemetery is most certainly a Carrier - and most certainly the widow of Roswell Russell and of Abram Grant.

What Remains

Betsey Carrier—whether one woman or two sharing a name—was very probably the daughter of Isaac and Elizabeth (Adams) Carrier. She married Roswell Russell by about 1797, bore him a large family, and after his death married Abram Grant. Her children by both husbands grew up as one household and intermarried with the same Dearborn County, Indiana circle. Through Roswell they descend from Rebecca Nurse. Through the Carrier line they also descend from Martha Allen Carrier. The paper trail is incomplete. Parentage still leans heavily on one retrospective Bible, and the headstone continues to argue with the rest of the evidence. Yet the overall pattern is coherent enough to be persuasive.

Genealogy rarely delivers neat endings.

Sometimes the best available result is a well-supported probability and a headstone that seems determined to keep the debate alive. In this case, that is more than enough. And if the woman in Grant’s tomb—whether she is the Betsey of the Bible or a second daughter of the same parents— or even a different "Carrier" cousin all together - her children via Roswell Russell carry the blood of two women hanged at Salem.

The old Grant's tomb riddle has then acquired an unexpectedly sharp family punch line.

Nana, it turns out, came with quite a history.