Rockwell

The current focal ancestor for this wiki's Rockwell line is Silas H. Rockwell, born in 1818 or 1819. Census records consistently report that Silas was born in Ohio, and this is consistent with the hypothesis that the parents of Silas were Joseph Rockwell and Mary “Polly” McCray.

There are no known variations on the name Rockwell, but the names of individuals are sometimes misspelled or have been incorrectly transcribed in records.

The hypothesized ancestry for Silas H. Marshall presented here is based largely on information found on the Internet, including records and family trees found via genealogical websites such as Ancestry.com.

The ancestry of Silas H. Rockwell can now be traced back to a John Rockwell who is first known to have been in Stamford, Fairfield, CT in 1641, where he was given land as part of a distribution to European settlers of land the New Haven Colony believed it had acquired by purchase from the indigenous Siwanoy Sagamores, Wascussee, and Ponus tribes. Sometime around 1654, John married Elizabeth Weed, daughter of Jonas and Mary Weed, had also come to Stamford in 1641. Sometime before 1670, John and Elizabeth moved to Rye, Westchester, NY, where John died in 1673 and Elizabeth in 1676.

John and Elizabeth had three sons: Jonathan, Joseph, and Thomas. All three settled for a time in Norwalk, Connecticut, and that may be where Jonathan married Abigail Canfield. Jonathan and Abigail ultimately ended up back in Fairfild County, making their home in Ridgefield, where their son Jonathan Jr. was born in 1711. In October 1733, Jonathan Jr. married a woman named Esther, whose family name may have been Hurlburt, and they had a son Jonathan III born in 1738/9 in Ridgefield. Jonathan III married Hannah Bennett; sources give varying dates for the marriage, but the most likely date seems to me to be 1860. James Rockwell III and Hannah Bennett are thought to be the parents of James Rockwell of Scioto County, OH. However, if this is the case, it seems unlikely that our James was born in 1753. Also, the census report of 1830 shows James to be in the age range 60-69, which would make his age at most 75 at the time of his death in 1835.

By Catherine R. Marshall

In tracing the family tree for Silas H. Rockwell, I began by trying to identify his parents. I found no records providing this information, but various sources indicate that Silas was born in Ohio in 1818 or 1819, married Rachel Vernon in Jackson County, OH in 1839, and was living in Lick, Jackson, OH in 1850. This led me to look at early records for Jackson County and areas nearby.

Census records for 1820 through 1870 show a Joseph Rockwell living in Madison, Scioto, OH. Madison Township lies along the border between Scioto County and Jackson County, where we find Silas Rockwell and wife Rachel (plus 5 children) in the 1850 census record. Census records for 1820 and 1830 show a boy of age consistent with Silas in the household of Joseph Rockwell, and the census record for 1840 suggest that, after their marriage in 1839, Silas and his wife Rachel lived in the household of Silas' parents for a time.

Starting in 1850, census records began showing names of all household members, so the 1850 record for the household of Joseph Rockwell in Madison, Scioto, OH also shows the name of his wife to be Mary. Records for Scioto county show a marriage on 28.Jan.1819 between Joseph Rockwell and Polly Bennett (Polly was a common nickname for Mary). According to various sources, Polly's maiden name was McCray, but her surname is listed on the marriage record as Bennett because she was the widow of a Thaddeus Bennett.

According to a book published in 1884, ¹⁾ Thaddeus Bennett (b. 1760) founded the first church in Madison Township in 1825, and among its earliest members were James Rockwell and his wife. This reference also lists James Rockwell, Joseph Rockwell and Benjamin Rockwell as having settled in Madison Township prior to 1820. Thaddeus had a son, also named Thaddeus (b. 1783) who married Polly McCray some time before 1810.Thaddeus Jr. is thought to have died ~1817, but before his death Polly and Thaddeus Jr. had a son, Gershom (named after a brother of Thaddeus Sr.) born in 1810. Census records for 1820 and 1830 show a boy of age consistent with Gershom in the household of Joseph Rockwell, and then show Gershom and wife Hulda living in Bloom, Scioto, OH in 1850. ²⁾

Census reports and other records indicate that Polly McCray was born in New York, as was Joseph Rockwell, which is consistent with later birthplace-of-parents census data for Silas Rockwell. So there is various evidence pointing to Joseph Rockwell and Mary “Polly” McCray as the parents of Silas H. Rockwell. There is also evidence that our Joseph Rockwell is the same as noted in the History of the Lower Scioto Valley, and that the James Rockwell is Joseph's father. ³⁾ According to an obituary ⁴⁾ of Ezra Rockwell (b. 1801), his father James Rockwell came to Ohio with his family around 1816, settling first on Dogwood Ridge, near Wheelersburg (Scioto County) and then in Madison township. The obituary also notes that most of James' children were grown by the time he came to Ohio.

There is a grave for James Rockwell (b. 1853) in Butler and Martin Cemetery, Minford, Scioto, OH, along with the graves of his wife Hannah, some of his children (Mary, Ann, Ezra), and his daughter-in-law Polly (wife of Joseph). ⁵⁾ There are photos of the gravestone on the Find-a-Grave webpage. In these, everything is readable except for the numbers giving his age in years. I don't know whether this part of the gravestone has been eroded by time or whether it just appears as such in the photo. The text on the website says (as of May 2025) that James died 15.Feb.1935 at the age of 81 years, 11 months, 9 days. Calculating from this gives a birth date of 26.Mar.1853 – but other sources disagree with this.

Tracing the ancestry of James and Hannah was complicated because the information I saw initially turned out to be incorrect. As sometimes happens with family trees, theories based on shreds of ambiguous evidence latched onto and repeated until they begin to be treated as established fact. Thus I kept coming across family trees and biographies telling me that James Rockwell, sometimes referred to as James Barber Rockwell, was the son of Ebenezer Rockwell and Lucy Barber and thus had a pretty well established line of ancestry back to immigrant William Rockwell who came from England to Massachusetts colony in 1630. In looking for some confirmation of this, I found instead bits of evidence that didn't quite fit. So I kept looking until I discovered that a group of people have put together a well-organized DNA project. The results of this project to date provide strong evidence that our James Rockwell is not descended from said William, but rather from a John Rockwell, referred to as John of Stamford, through his son Jonathan. The DNA project also has shown that John of Stamford was related to immigrant William, likely sharing a common ancestor a couple of generations back, but the identity of this common ancestor is yet to be found.

TBD