♂Michael Merryman

Michael Merryman (1760 – 2 February 1848) was one of five Merryman brothers who each headed a household at Harpswell, Maine, in the first federal census of 1790. He was the fourth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son Walter Merriman (1785–1867), who married his first cousin Hannah, the daughter of Michael’s brother James, so that Michael was also his daughter-in-law’s uncle.

Early life

He was born at Harpswell in 1760, when the town, like the rest of what became Maine, was part of Massachusetts; Maine became a separate state in 1820. The Harpswell christening records, as indexed, show him christened on 6 July 1760, the son of Walter Merriman. A genealogy of the family published in 1905, Walter Merryman of Harpswell, Maine, and His Descendants by the Rev. Charles Nelson Sinnett, makes him the fifth son of Walter Merryman, the first of the family at Harpswell, and Betsy Potter. His brothers were Thomas, Hugh, Walter and James.

A history of Brunswick, Topsham and Harpswell published in 1878 and the 1905 genealogy both record the family’s tradition that the elder Walter was an Irishman, kidnapped and brought to Boston, where a Mr. Simonton of Cape Elizabeth paid his passage; the 1878 history names Dublin as the place, and the 1905 book adds that Simonton taught him ship carpentry. Both writers took the story from members of the family, so it is one tradition recorded twice, and no record of the crossing has been found.

Marriage and family

On 13 February 1783 he married Mary Bishop (1756–1832). The 1905 genealogy calls her a daughter of Luke Bishop; no record of her parents has been found, though the census of 1790 lists a Luke Bishop among the Harpswell householders. The 1878 history also records the marriage. According to the 1905 genealogy the couple lived on the family farm at Harpswell Center, where the elder Walter was said to have lived for a time, and which later carried the name of a Hudson Merryman of the family.

The 1905 genealogy names seven children, born between 1785 and 1799. Two sons were named Hudson: the first died at the age of three in 1797, and the second was born in 1799. The Harpswell town birth records, as indexed, list the same seven as the children of Michael Merryman and a mother entered only as Bishop; there the two Hudsons are written Watson. The eldest, Walter, married his cousin Hannah Merryman in 1805 and farmed at Rocky Hill in Brunswick. A daughter, Mary, also married within the family, a younger James Merryman of her uncle Thomas’s line.

The federal census of 1790 found Michael’s household at Harpswell with one man, two boys under sixteen and two females. That matches the book’s list for that year: Michael, Mary, their sons Walter and James, and their infant daughter Mary. His brothers Thomas, Hugh and James and two men named Walter, his father and his brother, headed households nearby, and the ages in each household fall in the order in which the family genealogies place the brothers’ births.

Death

Mary died on 26 January 1832, according to the 1905 genealogy. Michael died on 2 February 1848, aged 88.

Notes

His parentage rests on the 1878 history and the 1905 genealogy, which drew on the same family’s recollections; the 1790 census places him at Harpswell beside the men they name as his brothers, but no town or probate record naming his father has been found. The 1905 genealogy gives Mary Bishop’s age at death as 66, which does not agree with the birth year of 1756 that it prints for her; a family chart compiled in 1994 gave her birth as 1766, her death as 25 January 1832, and her name as “Mrs. Mary (Estes) Bishop”; no record has been found to explain that name. The 1905 book also says Hudson Merryman inherited the Harpswell Center farm from his uncle Michael, while listing a Hudson among Michael’s own sons.