The Moody's and Coffin's and Everyone: One Family's Tales and Genealogy

By Marilyn R. Moody

This wonderful book is about life and death, and about everyday people who made a difference in the world. It is the story and genealogy of two settlers to Mass Bay Colony in the 17th century, and follows those two immigrants families to today. Amazingly, those two friends, Tristram Coffin and William Moody, had grandchildren born into the 20th century who met, fell in love, raised a family and died never knowing their connection to these two early immigrants. This couples daughter went on a journey, to her roots, in order to share this family history with her descendents.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 16, 2007
• ISBN: 9781465321428

Marilyn R. Moody

Marilyn R. Moody is retired from the County of Orange as a Senior Social Worker. Marilyn is the author of 7 other non-fiction books. Reading and collecting inspirational quotes has always been one of her passions. Now she would like to share some of these favorite quotes with others.

Book preview

The Moody’s and

Coffin’s and Everyone

One Family’s Tales and Genealogy

Marilyn R. Moody

Copyright © 2007 by Marilyn R. Moody.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in

any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,

recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without

permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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Contents

Chapter I

Where to Begin?

Chapter II

There Really is No Beginning

Chapter III

Mimi’s and Rooster’s Families

Chapter IV

Following Back on the Coffin Line

Chapter V

And the Genealogy and Down Memory Lane Trip Begins

Chapter VI

Onwards to Massachusetts

Chapter VII

Memories of Old Neighborhoods, a Short Visit With Good Friends and Then Cape Cod

Chapter VIII

Finally the Coffins/Coffyns/Coffens

Chapter IX

Tristram Coffin and the Two Islands of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard

Chapter X

Newbury, Massachusetts and Its Surrounding Towns

Chapter XI

Finding My First Settlers of Newbury

Chapter XII

Handkerchief Moody, Old York and Old Orchard Beach, Maine

Chapter XIII

Our Moody Line

Chapter XIV

The Moody Line Continues

Chapter XV

Freeport and Camden, Maine With a Quick Stop at Moody’s Cabins in Waldoboro

Chapter XVI

My Newly Found Cousins

Chapter XVII

A Little Fun Genealogy and More New Cousins

Chapter XVIII

A Real Vacation Day as We Head North

Chapter IXX

The Moody Cousins’ Reunion

Addendum

This is a story for my descendants,

whoever they might be.

It is written to let them know

who their ancestors were.

Many thanks to all the people who have helped me including, but

not limited to: Sue, Dot, Richard, Don, Barb, Mel, Cliff, Bud,

Thomas, Sandy, Virginia, Fred, Joyce, Isabel, Tom, Sharon, James

and especially to Val.

Tell me, and I won’t remember.

Show me, and I’ll remember.

Involve me, and I’ll understand.

Author Unknown

As an introduction of sorts I’m writing this to explain why I’m doing genealogy, and why I feel the need to write a book about what I’ve learned.

I’m now sixty years old, and at this time in my life I reflect back often. In reflecting I want to understand more about myself, and also more about the people who got me to this plane of existence. My curiosity about my ancestors has been all-consuming for about two years now. Well, maybe I exaggerate about the all-consuming part. I do have a life beyond my time spent doing genealogy.

Puzzles never have held my attention in the past. I always thought I just didn’t have the patience for them. But, what I feel about genealogy is that it is truly one huge puzzle. Today there are over 62,000 names in my genealogy database. Well, some of those names aren’t really names—they are Unknowns. Some may even be duplications if I haven’t quite connected their dots yet.

What I won’t exaggerate about though is the time it has taken me to accumulate what I know . . . or at least what I think I know. It has taken hundreds and hundreds of hours. It has also cost a small fortune to buy books, CDs, genealogy programs, and to hire professional genealogists—just to name a few of the typical expenses.

Part of the problem is that there are just so many missing pieces. There are still many unanswered questions for me. I’ve learned to accept that I won’t ever know all of the facts that I want to know. It is frustrating, but it’s also part of the nature of this beast.

So, what I would like to do is put down in writing what I know, or think I know. And, I’m adding a disclaimer; right here and now, that I haven’t documented all the data I’m showing in this book. I also want descendants to find the discrepancies, errors, missing pieces, and make the appropriate changes. I believe that in future times, new information, or new means to obtain information will come to light. In other words I expect there are many errors, but please know that what has been written here has been done with sincerity, and with the best of my knowledge, or in some cases just plain old, and often times reliable, intuition.

Genealogists know that all of these works are just, works in progress. Genealogy is never finished. For me—I feel content enough—in what I’ve found, and what I’ve learned, and now it’s time to write the book, or it may never get done.

Marilyn R. Moody

November 2006

Cypress, CA

Chapter I

Where to Begin?

For something like this I don’t even know where to start. I guess I’ll just write, as it comes to me, and hope for the best. Today is Thursday, June 15, 2006. I hadn’t really planned on writing this family book until after the big trip this summer to the East Coast. It’s what I’ve been calling my Genealogy Trip and Down Memory Lane Trip. Actually, it’s going to be both. I’ve never been on a vacation for almost a month before. I’m really looking forward to this trip. The plan is that I will keep a journal as to people, places and things visited, observed and/or encountered. That way when I do start writing a little book about our family genealogy it won’t just have names, dates and places listed—it will hopefully have more of a personal slant to it too.

What I’ve been learning about genealogy is that it is always unfinished. New information is always being found, and things you thought you knew shift. When I first gave you, my family, a little Family Tree Book for Christmas about 1-½ years ago—it might have had 200-400 names in it. My current database is over 62,000 names and still growing.

One reason it is so large is my weakness. I tend to go off on tangents about other people, and things I want to find out about them. But, for this book I mainly want to just stick to the direct line lineages—referring to my maternal Coffen/Coffin line and my paternal Moody line. It’s near impossible to do this though, because it took a heck of a lot of grandparents for me—and you, to be here. Just a lot of people were involved in our creation. Then too I am so proud of our ancestors that I want to show the cousins or people related to us by marriage, or who were somebodies, or who had interesting lives to share. Some are inspiring in regards to their accomplishments, and some are sad because of their circumstances. Everyone though has a story, and I wish I could have uncovered more about each of the people I have typed into my genealogy computer program.

One thing I shared with the Northern Moody’s (Bud, Lynn and their family) this past April when visiting them over Easter, is that this whole genealogy journey can become quite emotional, and can also be the ultimate roller coaster ride. I teased that doing genealogy is making me bi-polar—with high, highs and low, lows. That is just the way it is from what I’ve heard from other family researchers who I meet and get to know online.

I would like to be able to say that I’m a good genealogist—but I don’t even come close to being good. I’m afraid I don’t document a lot—and sometimes, most of the times, I just search the Internet to see what other people have come up with already, and then I use their findings to include with my searches. At other times though I can be quite unwillingly to move on, and leave unfinished business behind, when it’s hard to find out something about somebody. I’ll spend way too many hours/days/weeks tracking a person—and way too much money trying to find the elusive documentation.

Right now I’m just beside myself. My great, great-grandfather, John R. Moody born in Waldo County, Maine—supposedly in Belmont in 1839, seems impossible to document in regards to his birth and his parents. The reason this is so difficult is that the Town Clerk in Belmont was actually a merchant. He ran a store. In 1855 and I believe it was in May—his store burned down. All the town records were kept in his store. Gone are the vital records of marriages, births and deaths.

Some of those folks’ records have been recreated through other sources over the years. But, when you really need proof, as I do right now—it will often seem like an impossible quest. My endeavors currently are two letters with two checks out to two different counties in California where I think John might have come to live and where he died. I sent those requests out this morning. It could take weeks before I get responses. And, I’m so used to getting, No records found that I almost lose hope—but something keeps me going.

As of today—who do I think John’s parents are? I have felt for a while now that they are William Robert Moody and Abigail Mahoney who were both born in Maine. They had a son born in 1839 in Waldo County. He is in some records as John R., and in one census record as John M. He shows as being born about 1839. I have temporarily placed my John R. Moody with them in my database.

To show you some of the work involved: I was surprised when I finally found out that John and his young wife, Amanda A. Hart (born in 12/1848 in Waldo County, ME) were the parents of my great-grandfather George Waverly Moody who was born in 12/1862. The way I found this was to send for a copy of George’s death certificate. On it John and Amanda were shown as his parents. I was thrilled to have one more link to our Moody ancestors.

Actually, when I started doing genealogy I didn’t even know what my dad’s (Henry Andrew Moody) parents’ names were. I sent away to the Social Security Administration for a copy of his original social security number application from the 1930’s. When it came—his parents’ names were listed on the application. That was a major breakthrough for me.

See—I do have to jump around some, and then come back now and then to finish off previous thoughts written here—sigh.

Again, when I first started doing genealogy I was very fortunate to find online, Sue, the wife of one of my mother’s cousins. (Coffen line) She had already done a lot of research and documented it in a booklet. What she had done amazed me. I have been pleasantly shocked to find out what I have about our Coffin’s. (And, yes a grandparent changed the spelling to Coffen for our family line.)

The Immigrant Coffin was Tristram, and I will get to him in more detail later. But for now, he came in the 1600’s to the Mass Bay Colony, from Devonshire, England. He, along with others, settled the very beautiful and historic town of Newbury, MA. There is a monument in the town (which I plan to see soon) with the names of those First Settlers. And, we are descended from quite a few of them because of the intermarrying going on back then. One of the other First Settlers of Newbury really caught my eye—it was a William Moody.

Being a novice genealogist, and someone easily excited, I thought WOW—this must be my dad’s ancestor. That was the initial reaction. It seems possible, right? How naïve I can be at times.

I started searching and found, as it turned out to be though, bogus information from genealogists from 100 or so more years ago. I thought I was really on to something when I traced us back to a Clement Moody of Exeter, NH. And, then I came in for one of my first shocks and letdowns. The line I was chasing—well, someone way back when decided that a certain Clement Moody of the 1600’s was a grandson of William Moody, of Newbury and that’s where he and his descendants were placed, until recently.

I first met Don, (through the Internet), a retired history professor in Maine who said I needed to, talk with Barbara in Oregon, and that she had new Clement Moody information. Well, Barbara let me know that the current theory on Clement was that he was not a William of Newbury descendant, but instead the son of a Scottish POW who was captured during the War of Dunbar, and then he was sent to the Mass Bay Colony as an indentured servant in about 1650 to do his servitude at the Saugus Lynn Ironworks.

That just blew me away. It took a couple of weeks, but they (Don and Barbara, and eventually they introduced me to Melissa in Atlanta too) finally convinced me of the error of my thinking.

I always refer to Don, Barb and Mel as the Three Musketeers—and I have to admit they intimidated the heck out of me in the beginning. Let’s see, Don is a PhD. and knows all kinds of important people everywhere. He is world traveled and has written many history books, and is just an overall knowledgeable person. Then Barbara is a medical doctor and child psychiatrist up in Oregon. She is such a brain. And, Mel—well, she keeps rather secretive, but she’s pure genius, and probably the best Moody Genealogist in existence today. I can’t keep up with the three of them. I’m just grateful that they’ve let me tag along with them on this journey.

So the four of us started talking about meeting in Maine (since Clement’s descendants eventually settled in Maine) in the summer of 2006. We were going to call it the Mini Moody Cousins Reunion—hmm. The reunion is two months from now, and guess what? We have over 60 people coming now, and they are from all over the U.S., and from different Moody lines. Yes, amazing, isn’t it?

But in the meantime, I fell off the Clement Moody descendant lineage. I will explain. I believe I’m (as of today’s date) the only Moody Cousin who will be attending the reunion who doesn’t really know who she descends from. (See my bipolar self here?)

How did this happen? I was bonding with the others, and feeling so secure in knowing who I came from when we all decided to do a Y-DNA Moody Project. Some other Moody lines were already doing this and we decided to join them. My brother, Henry Frank Moody, and you know him from the previously mentioned Northern CA Moody’s, agreed to do this for me, his little sister. He wasn’t interested in all this genealogy stuff at that time, but I was happy that he was going to humor me—once more in this lifetime. He did his swabs, and off they went. Other Moody men around the country were doing the same. We had one person, Cliff, in Sacramento who agreed to submit his DNA for a control, as he is documented as descended from William Moody of Newbury. The rest of us felt pretty sure we were descended from Clement of Exeter, NH (and later, as I mentioned above—from Maine.)

Results started coming in, and then my brother Bud’s (aka Henry Frank Moody) DNA results came in. His DNA didn’t match the group of Clement descendants, and his DNA also didn’t match our control’s—Cliff in Sacramento.

I was devastated. It takes a lot for me to have any kind of depression. I’ve been through too much in past years. Well, maybe way in some past years I had spells of depression, but a battle with breast cancer in 1994 made me realize how precious each day truly is. I usually am up, up, up. (Usually) With our DNA results I crashed.

And then I started looking at my genealogy data, and sure enough, it was wrong. Something someone had said to me about George Waverly’s wife Nellie’s last name. (By now I had found my great-grandmother Nellie’s last name and it was Humphrey.) So I dug, and dug even deeper and soon discovered that I had made a major genealogy error. This made me slump lower than I was before. I felt terrible, stupid and of course embarrassed. (My personality here.)

There was another George born in 1862 in Maine and he was also married to a Nellie. The problem was that he wasn’t my great-grandfather. He was descended from Clement, and the cousins coming to the reunion were not really my cousins. Well, some of them still are because we connect through my Coffin/Coffen line . . . but we weren’t Moody Cousins. And, I’m the Keeper of the Moody Cousins List for this Internet group. Since then though we have had other Moody lines join us, so I won’t be the only one there who isn’t from Clement. But, as I said, right now I’m the only one who doesn’t know who her Moody Immigrant is.

But, while I’m writing all this, I want to state that I felt a little better about myself and my error when I had two expert Maine Genealogists, who were trying to help me, make the same error. They too tried to connect me to the George of Pittston, Maine who we now know as being descended from Clement of Exeter.

Am I losing anyone here yet?

This DNA stuff has been shaking people up. Mel in Atlanta—she found out that she’s descended from another Moody line that is from the Orkney Isles and then Nova Scotia. She really wasn’t happy about finding that out at first. Now that she’s rolling right along with all her finds she’s just thrilled.

And, then there’s me. I plod away. But, I can’t complain. I think Mel, Don and Barb, and others have been doing this for 20-30 years. Me, I have only about two years into it. I guess I have to pay my dues too.

Back to the surprises of the DNA: For about 75 years the line of Moody’s of another Moody Cousin, who lives in Maine, has always believed they were descended from William of Newbury. He did the DNA. Guess what? He matches all the Clement guys. He’s part of the Moody’s Diner crowd of Waldoboro, Maine. I wonder who’s going to be lucky enough to tell them about this news? (Not me even though I’m staying at their cabins during the reunion. They aren’t on our Moody Cousins List so they don’t get all these updates.)

But, one more major surprise came from someone out of the blue. He’s in the