I love wills. They tell so much about a family.
Here's a probate file on my paternal fifth GGrandfather, Jacob Babbitt. His part in this probate book begins near the bottom of the left-hand side and continues to the second page. Click once on the image to enlarge, and click once again to return to this page:
Source Citation Will Records 1803-1931; Will Index 1804-1895; Author: Warren County (Ohio). Probate Court; Probate Place: Warren, Ohio. Ancestry.com. Ohio, Wills and Probate Records, 1786-1998 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2015.
Jacob was born March 12, 1769 in Mendham, Morris County, New Jersey when it was British America. His death date is August 5, 1823 in Warren County, Ohio where he was living with other family members who had joined a group of Shakers.
Yes, Shakers. The first I have found in my family tree. Go ahead, google it to learn of this religion. I don't believe Shakers exist any more.
Jacob and (most likely) his wife Alice Sarah Craft Babbitt had joined the Shakers along with eight of their ten children in the year 1817. I say maybe because I've no proof Alice was with Jacob when he left their Pennsylvania home to join an Ohio Shakers group. I don't know Alice's death date either. Just that she was born about 1765 in Pennsylvania. Do you?
Are you to related to this Babbitt family? Well, thankfully one of their children didn't become a Shaker or we wouldn't be reading this. Why? The Shakers did not believe in having children.
My dad's mom Esther was the 3x GGranddaughter of Alice and Jacob Babbitt.
Their daughter Anna (1796-1870) married a local Greene County, Pennsylvania boy in 1813 named Michael Rush, Jr. It was but four years later her parents and many of her siblings up and moved to Ohio to join a Shaker community.
Did you notice how much Anna's father willed to Anna? Here. Let me enlarge that section for easy viewing:
Anna and Michael Rush stayed and raised a family in Greene County, PA. Anna bore 15 children. Yes, fifteen.
Their eighth child, Sarah Rush, married and eventually went west with her young family. Her husband Sam Ackley made the 1893 Cherokee Strip land run, and their final home was in Keystone, Pawnee County, Oklahoma Territory.
Sarah and Sam lived in Ohio, Wisconsin, West Virginia and Kansas before crossing into Indian Territory in 1878. I imagine she visited her Shaker aunts and uncles living in Ohio, and wonder what she thought of their new lifestyle.
I don't know when the last Shaker died. Could only find when the third to the last one passed in 2017:
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/01/03/508100617/one-of-the-last-shakers-dies
This link below leads to a too-dark photo of one of the Shaker buildings in Lebanon, Warren County, Ohio. The note attached reads:
"Union Village was the first and largest Shaker community west of the Allegheny Mountains, and was established in 1805."
http://www.midpointedigitalarchives.org/digital/collection/p16488coll13/id/594/
What a lifestyle change! Can't help but wonder what the Ohio Shakers thought upon meeting Jacob and Alice Babbitt and learning they had ten children. Then again, they may have also come from large families.
If you know more of the Babbitt family's Shaker experience, please forward to me.
Glad you stopped by!