This post is Part 3 of a series which adds to the story of English-born Charles Cossill and his Maori wife Pourewa (later known as Margaret) who raised a family in the far north of New Zealand from the mid 1830s. These posts investigate what happened to their first-born child believed to have been called Ella - but later discovered to have been known as Sarah - with many variants of the spelling of the surname Cossill. Follow this link for Part 1, and Part 2 of Ella's/Sarah's story. Please leave a comment at the end or email me (see side panel for email function) if there is any information you would like me to amend or include. I am happy to be challenged as this is a work in progress, and it will be updated as new information arises. All my information has been fact-checked with links or sources acknowledged or comes directly from primary evidence available online, mostly through Family Search, My Heritage, or Ancestry.com. Even then, the information in some documents is only as accurate as details which were given or known at the time. My speculation is clearly indicated as such. I am incredibly grateful to New Zealand author Joan Druett who discovered our Ella/Sarah in her research on women in whaling. She found my research here on Charles and Pourewa and joined the dots to connect it with her research on Sarah the whaling wife. I encourage you to read her books to gain a greater understanding of the context in which our Ella/Sarah lived. From this point on Ella will be referred to as Sarah.
It is interesting to speculate on Sarah's decision to return to America as a 20 to 21-year old widow, the only female on the whale boat Jireh Swift - and pregnant. The wife of Captain William Earl (also known as Earle) of the Jireh Swift had been known to travel with him, but I can find no evidence of her on this particular voyage, so Sarah is likely to have travelled unchaperoned. It's a long time to be the only female on a whaler, even if it was returning straight home. Was it a measure of his respect for the late Charles or pity for his widow that prompted William Earl to take Sarah back to America as a passenger? Regardless, she would have been expected to pay for her passage which took three months. She either had the money already or may have been eventually entitled to her late husband's share of the whaling profits to date and possibly inherited his estate on return to America. Pure speculation, but the payment had to come from somewhere. What made Sarah choose to leave her mother, father and siblings - and her buried husband - and return to the other side of the world to uncertainty? She had only been back in New Zealand for a few days since stowing away on the Arctic the previous year. Sarah must have made a deliberate decision to give birth to her child in America - where she would have met Charles' family the previous year. She must have liked them enough or felt obliged enough to return - or there may have been discord within her own family enough to make her not want to stay. Or maybe she just felt she had more opportunities in America - even as a solo mother. Charles must have left her well provided enough for her to consider being able to survive financially, or she had an expectation that his father could help her.
Given any of the possible circumstances that set this course of events in motion the previous year when Sarah stowed away on the Arctic, she was undoubtedly a strong, independent and resilient woman who must have known it was unlikely that she would ever see her family again.
The Jireh Swift left Mangonui on the 2nd of February and arrived back in New Bedford on May 6th 1857. I have no details about Sarah's movements after the Jireh Swift arrived at New Bedford, but she must have made her way back to Charles' home in Northfield, Merrimack, New Hampshire.
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| "New Bedford, Massachusetts, 1854," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/node/17826. |
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"The State of New Hampshire: I hereby certify the above birth record is a correct transcript as required by Chap. 21, Session Laws, 1905. Signed Clerk of Northfield, Date: Dec 1, 1905.
This must be Sarah's baby, though interesting that her name wasn't included in the information. Strangely, there's occasional references elsewhere (will add them when I re-find them) to Charles Herbert's father being Lyman B Evans (who was the late Charles A Evans' brother). This is not possible - given the dates and locations of all the key players and is probably incorrect information supplied by a family member at a later date.
Sarah is in the employment of Colonel Jeremiah Carter Tilton (aged 41) and his wife Emily Tilton (aged 40). Other household members noted in the 1860 census are the Tiltons' sons Frank (14), Fred (11), and Charles (3). Tilton is very much a local name of significance and is connected to all the other notable local families by marriage across several generations. There is also a town called Tilton which was created alongside - and absorbed some of - Sanbornton in the 1850s and was named after the family's ancestral connection to the area. Jeremiah C was instrumental in the creation of this new town.
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Jeremiah C joined his father's woollen manufacturing business in 1848 (J & JC Tilton) and remained there for the next 20 years when the mill became G H Tilton Hosiery Co. (This information will be useful in the next installment of Sarah's story.) He was also a member of the Legislature in 1855. In the 1860 census, Jeremiah C Tilton's occupation is listed as a manufacturer. Such was his interest in the textile process that he applied for, and was granted, at least three patents for weaving, loom and flocking equipment. Jeremiah sold his business at the beginning of the Civil War when military responsibilities took over his time.
In the 1861 New Hampshire Annual Register and United States Calendar, Jeremiah C Tilton is listed as a Justice and a Railroad Commissioner for the town of Sanbornton. In April 1861, after the outbreak of the Civil War, Jeremiah was one of the special aides appointed to manage the recruitment of volunteers to supply the regiment required of the state of New Hampshire. By August of that year he had been appointed Commissary of Subsistence. It was during his time as a commanding officer of commissary supplies that he contracted malaria in the swamps of Virginia, and the ongoing resulting health complications eventually caused his premature death at age 53 in 1872. Jeremiah was also the postmaster of Sanbornton Bridge from 1871 and was widely involved in public affairs until his death.
Sarah appeared to have landed a job and accommodation with one of the notable families of Northfield.
As an interesting aside, in 1868 (after the war and after Sarah's time with the family)Jeremiah C patented an "improved composition for dressing hair . . . and for restoring grey and faded hair to its original colour and promoting its growth." The ingredients included precipitate of sulphur, superacetate of lead, glycerine, borax, spermaceti, Barbary tallow - and perfume. . .
Other points of interest to note from this 1860 census page is that Sarah is the only non-New Hampshire-born resident on the entire page. Her place of birth is recorded as New Zealand, and then above it, Pac.Isl. seems to have been added as an after thought (Pacific Island). There were 27 white males, 16 white females, no coloured males or females, no blind, deaf, dumb, or insane people, and one foreign born person - our Sarah. Here, and everywhere else I have seen this information required, Sarah is classified as white. By omission (a column to indicate persons under the age of 20 who cannot read and write) it is inferred that Sarah is literate.
Of further interest, Sarah is living probably two doors down from her parents-in-law. House No. 548 on the page records the details of Sarah's late husband Charles Evans' family: father John, age 59, a farm labourer; his second wife Laura, aged 48; and his twin sons Horace and Hiram (19) and daughter Mahala (17). The Rollins' house (recorded as house no.549 on the page) is between Sarah's parents-in-law's and her employer Jeremiah C Tilton's house (house no. 550 on the page). I wonder if this means that Sarah was on good terms with her in-laws and they were helping her find accommodation, employment and support nearby? Or did they not want her in their house, or maybe their house was too small?
Of perplexing interest in the census is that Sarah is recorded to own real estate to the value of $2000. No personal estate is recorded. This is more than her employer's declared real estate of $1,500 and personal estate of $100. I note that John Evans had no real or personal estate recorded, and Sarah's amount was similar to other householders on the street where it was recorded. Was this her husband Charles' estate that she inherited? Where was it and why wasn't she living on it? And if she had independent means, why was she a house servant?
So many questions to ponder. But we now know what happened to her and why we could find no reference to her at all in New Zealand.
I'm pretty sure nothing nearly as exciting and adventurous happened to Sarah again in her life, and yet living in a totally different culture must have been adventure enough. Just think of the short distance in time between Sarah's mother Pourewa's "traditional" Maori early childhood in pre-Colonial New Zealand and Sarah's son Charles' early childhood in the society of urbanised New Hampshire. What monumental changes in less than about fifty years.
Stay tuned for the next instalment of "What happened next?"
Sources:
History of Northfield, New Hampshire, 1780-1905. In two parts