Polly Griffin and Timothy Gaylord of Norfolk

Polly/Edward/James/Samuel of Killingworth------ Of all of the family wills I have discovered the will of Edward Griffin is by far the most detailed and descriptive. It contains a narrative of his wishes for his family. From it you can gain a detailed picture of his views on life. From it you can gain a picture of him as a person, for example, the fact that he left his Masonic badges of office to his sons. It also contains a detailed section for each of his children. It then became a quirk of history that given the detail in his will there was so very little known about the actual lives of his children, where and when they were born, who they married, and where they lived out their days. I would like to share with you the story of his daughter Polly. If you add up the evidence from dates throughout her life it is a calculated guess that she was born in 1784. Census and other records put her in Killingworth at her birth. At some time near his death her father Edward built a large home in nearby Madison. After his death her mother, Submit DeWolf Griffin, moved the family to Colebrook, Litchfield, Connecticut to be near her brothers. There is no record of Polly’s marriage but early family historians, from her husband’s family, place it in 1808, in Colebrook. The reason there is so much mystery surrounding these events is the fact that there are very few original records that have survived from the early history of Colebrook. With no birth records, no church records, no marriage records, how did we find the married Polly Griffin? As the final act in Edward’s will in 1826 Submit deeded the remainder of the family’s property to her children. On that deed is listed the names of her married daughters Polly and Timothy Gaylord of Norfolk being among those listed. Given that hint it was then quite easy to find evidence of Polly and Timothy in the nearby town of Norfolk where the Gaylord’s were a very prominent family.------ It seems appropriate to introduce Timothy Gaylord. This is a task that is not as simple as it seems. Timothy was a legacy name in the Gaylord family. Almost every branch of the family had a Timothy. There are large groups of Gaylords in the adjoining towns of Goshen and Norfolk. As a result various histories have Timothy connected to several different family lines from both towns with a number of different dates of birth. We have included a number of documents that I hope will help establish an accurate identity for the husband of Polly Griffin, Timothy Gaylord. Timothy’s father Roys, subsequently written Royce, was born according to the vital records in Wallingford July 17, 1737. In 1765 he married Sarah Norton. We find Roys and Sarah in Norfolk in 1768. On page 15 in the Norfolk Town Records we find a notation for the birth of the oldest child, Wait, dated “April 19, 1768 son of Roys and Sarah”. Roys and Sarah had six boys, Wait, Amasa, Samuel Norton, named for his mother’s family, David, Roys and Timothy, his date of birth recorded on page 24 as February 28, 1775. We have included the records for Wait and Timothy. The notations included the date of birth and lists their parents as Roys and Sarah. The record for Timothy is hard to read but when viewing the original the date is quite easy to make out. We have also included two other documents. One is an original church record from the Church of Christ in Norfolk from 1784, which notes that Roys and Sarah had all of the listed children, including Timothy, baptized on that date. The last document dates from the 1820s. At that time the clerks for the Church of Christ edited the early records and rerecorded many of them. You can see the 1820 record is a transcription of the original 1784 record but written in a very beautiful hand. I hope these records help to firmly establish the identity of our Timothy Gaylord born in Norfolk, February 28, 1775, to Roys and Sarah Norton Gaylord. We have included the documents for his death on May 6, 1848 at age 73. There is a brief note in the probate records concerning his estate, which was not finalized until some years later. Managed by his son Edward is appears that his estate was seamlessly passed on to his family. Polly and Timothy set up house in Norfolk building their house on the Greenwoods Turnpike. From her father Polly had inherited enough fine furniture and home furnishing to provide a comfortable start to her married life. There are multiple citations for Timothy in the histories written of Norfolk. Timothy is numbered among the men who were honored for serving their country. Timothy is also noted as the owner of a prominent tavern a feature of which was a large ballroom. From the multiple references to the tavern it seems to have served as a prominent landmark and played a conspicuous role in the public life of Norfolk including service as the Masonic Lodge ------ The historical work, “The History and Pedigrees of the House of Gaillard or Gaylord”, serves as the background source for much of our remaining narrative. I use it here because there is not a lot of original documentation for their children. Using a 3rd person source always introduces an element of uncertainty. Family trees that are not based on original records are full of mistakes repeated from 3rd person sources. In this case there is a good argument for accepting the data contained in the history. The main author added the following to his description of Polly and Timothy’s family. “His widow, WITH WHOM I CONVERSED, age 84, lives in Norfolk, her faculties unimpaired, she never used spectacles, can do fine sewing and read fine print still”. I have not discovered any birth records, but he gives the dates of birth for Polly’s children as-------Edward L, November 21, 1809;------Caroline S, January 29, 1812;------Charles, May 21, 1817;------Julia Ann, 1821;------Fanny, 1825. As you may have noted Polly named each of her children after one of her siblings. The “S” in Caroline’s name is for Submit.------Polly and Timothy’s oldest child was Edward Lyman, the Lyman after her sister Fanny’s husband. We have included two documents from Norfolk. Edward Lyman and his sister Caroline were baptized in the Church of Christ August 8, 1812 the year their mother joined the congregation. The second document is the 1820s rewriting of the earlier record. This notation provides us with the full name for Edward and his sister Caroline Submit. Edward was the only child who married. He married Jane Seymour in Colebrook May 13, 1841. They had three children, Francis Edward, James and Isabella. The Gaylord history writes of him. “He resides in Hartford, Ct. Principal of the Pension Agency”. Imagine that, an insurance business in Hartford, Connecticut. His life seems to indicate that he grew up in a home that had the resources to make education a life choice. In the town history written in the latter part of the 19th Century his name appears frequently as a source of information. He died in Rock Hill, Connecticut, a town just outside of Hartford, February 1, 1901. He and his wife are buried with the family in Norfolk.------Caroline Submit never married. Census records indicate that she lived with her mother until her death. In the 1880 census she is living on her own her occupation listed as “dressmaker”. Cemetery records from Norfolk list her year of death as 1890 at age 78. Death records extracted from original source material by the state of Connecticut also list her death as 1890 with no month or day and her parents as Timothy and Polly Gaylord. She and the rest of the family are buried together in the Center Cemetery in Norfolk.------Charles; He and Julia Ann are listed on the same page in the town records for Norfolk. His death is noted as November 15, 1849 at the age of 33.------Julia Ann; we do not have a birth record for her but we have her death record from the town records from Norfolk. She died September 26, 1849 age listed as 29.------Fanny; The History of Norfolk contains a comprehensive list of deaths in Norfolk. All of the Gaylords are listed. The history lists her death as June, 1843. The state record also lists her death as 1843 at the age of 19, her parents as Timothy and Polly Gaylord.------ And what of Polly Griffin Gaylord? Born in the Killingworth Second Society in 1784 to a sea captain. Raised in what was probably a very comfortable circumstance. Meeting up with the cousins for the holidays at Grandma Mary’s house. Losing her father at the age of 18. Growing to maturity within the family circle in Colebrook where she met and married Timothy Gaylord. From the records it seems she lived to a ripe old age. We have included several documents recording her death on December 10, 1867 in her eighty-third year.