Our Curious Connections to Nicholas Holt

I ran across this interesting little tid-bit concerning the family of Ada (Rockwell) Hotchkiss (see July 2010 post) and thought it was worth sharing. 

I first encountered the name Nicholas Holt when I was searching for grave stones in Norfolk, CT.  The stone for my Sixth Great-Grandmother, Ada's father's Great-Grandmother, reads: "Lydia, wife first of Jedediah Phelps then of Nicholas Holt..."

(picture taken Jul 2010 by SEM)


I didn't think much of it at the time, but I took the picture and made a note of it.  Every once in a while I would be doing research and would run across "she later married Nicholas Holt" or something to that effect, and I would think, "Oh, yeah.  I remember her grave stone. Nicholas Holt." 

Last week, I was reading part of a book on the history of Norfolk when I ran across that very phrase:  "she later married Nicholas Holt" and I thought, "Oh, yeah, she's..." I went to her profile on ancestry.com but there was no grave picture, so I decided I would upload the one I had taken (even though I thought I had already done that). I soon discovered that I had already uploaded it, but to a different person. I was talking about two different grandmothers, both of whom married Nicholas Holt as their second husband!  The one I was reading about in this book was not Lydia but Sarah (Phelps) Bingham, my Fifth Great-Grandmother and Ada's mother's Grandmother.

So, who was this Nicholas Holt?  He was born in 1755 in East Haven, CT but moved to Norfolk with his parents when he was a child.  He enlisted in the revolutionary army as a teenager and was soon on the Campaign to Quebec.  It was at Lake George that he fell sick with smallpox. To avoid death, he jumped into the freezing waters of Lake George which quelled the smallpox but led to a severe cold.  Swelling in his hip caused him to be disabled for the rest of his life.


(picture from http://www.familysearch.org/)

He returned to Norfolk after serving in the Revolution and married his first wife, Keturah Pratt.  They had ten children together and she died in February 1798.  With five children under the age of fifteen, he married his second wife, Sarah (Phelps) Bingham in February 1799.  She had been married to Ozias Bingham, my Sixth Great-Grandfather with whom she had five children.  Some records indicate Ozias and Sarah were divorced and other records say he abandoned his CT family.  Either way, Ozias ended up in Wysox, Pennsylvania where by all accounts he lived a respectable life with his second family, living to the age of 90. 

While Sarah and Nicholas had no children together, Sarah raised the youngest of Nicholas & Keturah's children.  Her children with Ozias were probably all near adulthood by the time she married Nicholas.  They remained married until 1821 when she died at the age of 67.

Nicholas next married Lydia (Gaylord) Phelps, his third wife, in 1824.  She was the widow of Jedediah Phelps, my Fifth Great-Grandfather and brother of Sarah (Phelps) Bingham Holt, the second wife of Nicholas.  Are you confused yet?  Maybe this will help:

Brilliant Chart created by SEM

I think this makes him my Step Fifth Great-Grandfather and Step Sixth Great-Grandfather - or maybe it's Fifth Great-Stepgrandfather and Sixth Great-Stepgrandfather.  I'm not sure which is the correct termininology to use!

Either way, Nicholas was a respected member of the Congregational Church in Norfolk and served two terms representing his town in the Connectictut Legislature. He died in 1832 at the age of 77. He wasn't our direct ancestor but we can still honor him and remember his multiple connections to our family.