James Weaver Family

In November-December 2008, Mike Reilly, the Sussex-Lisbon Area Historical Society’s assistant curator and, more importantly, its Web site editor, contacted an English lawyer, Richard Hughes, a member of the Hardeman family from the Kent part of England.

The Hardemans are related to the Weavers, the founding family of Sussex–Lisbon. Hughes is also, no doubt, related to Sussex’s extended Hardeman family.

The real contribution to the society from this exchange is eight letters written between 1831 and 1883 by the Weavers in America to the Hardemans in England.

James Weaver (1800-1886) sailed from Rye Harbor in southeastern England in April 1830 to New York, where he spent the next seven years before moving to Lisbon in the summer of 1837. He lived out the rest of his life as an important man in Sussex-Lisbon. He has the largest stone at St Alban’s God’s Acre Cemetery on Main Street and Maple Avenue.

His mother, Mary Hardeman (or Hardiman), provided the connection to Richard Hughes. (She died Dec. 11, 1819, when James was 19 years old and is buried in England.)

On receipt of photo copies of the letters, society volunteers typed them out and bound them in a three-ring binder that will be available to researchers in the future, along with e-mail and postal-mail copies of the correspondence between Reilly and Hughes. A copyright by the Hughes family protects their ownership of the letters and their contents.

Six of the eight letters were from James Weaver. Another was from his son, William, and the last one, dated May 14, 1883, is from his granddaughter, (Betty) Amelia Weaver. She was born August 18, 1849, and died at 74 on July 5, 1924 (some records say July 19, 1926). She married Richard Connell of Pewaukee.

Amelia, who went by the nickname Mealy, never used her first name, Betty, because it was also her mother’s name. Her father, Thomas, was the second born of James Weaver’s 16 children by wife Betty Fielder.

James Weaver is considered the “Father of Sussex-Lisbon” because of his large family, because he served as Lisbon town chairman, because two of his sons were elected to the same post, because he also once served as the local postmaster, because he was a very wealthy land owner, because he served in the territorial and state legislature, and because two of his sons succeeded him in the state legislature.

Amelia’s letter, the eighth and last, tells of her grandfather’s infirmities.

The first letter, from James Weaver, was sent April 27, 1833, from western New York to his uncle, William Beal, in Tenterdon, Kent, England.

The second letter was written two years later on March 30, 1833, and addressed to his cousin, Richard Hardeman (as were Weaver’s next three letters). James writes of a second son born in the United Sates, listing him as a “second yankey.” He also mentions that his first born was very sickly.

In the third letter, written July 20, 1834, also from New York state, Weaver writes of the good fortune to have moved to the U.S. because of his large family, but also talks of a rivalry between his wife and his brother, William.

When he wrote the fourth letter, dated Dec. 13, 1839, he had lived in Lisbon for two years. He writes of a son shooting a deer weighing 86 pounds, and brags that his property tax cost him only $5.

A short fifth letter dated June 21, 1842, says his aged father (widower of Mary Hardeman) is doing well at his age.

The sixth letter, dated June 25, 1869, was from Weaver’s son, William, to his cousin, Herbert Hardeman (Richard’s son).

In the seventh letter (James Weaver’s sixth and his first to Herbert Hardeman), written May 14, 1873, he recalls his prior life in England, but describes how good life is in the U.S., especially now that it includes four grandchildren, with more expected.

Future Retrospect columns will publish the contents of these letters.