Knowlton Family Background
Some research I did for the biography and sources I found online
Less than half a century before his birth, the Templeton Massachusetts farm on which Charles Knowlton began his life had been part of an unbroken forest of oak, pine and chestnut, sixty miles from Boston. Tradition among the old families of Templeton held that the woods their grandparents settled had been uninhabited. The Indians had no claim on the land, they insisted, since they passed through it only occasionally to hunt. No settlements or graves had ever been discovered, and the stone mortar and pestle found near Trout Brook were thought of as the exception that proved the rule. Templeton was part of the wilderness between the frontier outposts of Brookfield and Lancaster, and the big Connecticut River towns of Hadley, Northfield and Deerfield.
The Knowltons were part of a large family, spread across New England and English Canada. Family tradition said the original Knowltons had arrived in the new world from England in the 1630s, at Nova Scotia and Hingham. From there, large families spread their sons across the growing colonies. Charles’ grandfather, Ezekiel, had been born in Shrewsbury, thirty miles closer to the Bay Colony’s center, Boston. He had moved to Templeton shortly after its settlement in 1755. Ezekiel wasn’t among the original proprietors of the town’s 123 forty-acre lots. Most of those deeds were owned by rich men in Concord. The land that became Templeton was originally granted to veterans of King Philip’s War, and called simply “Narraganset #6.” But in the generation between grant and settlement, nearly all the deeds had changed hands. Ezekiel Knowlton, like most of Templeton’s first residents, probably got his lot from a speculator who had bought it cheap from the family of a long-dead veteran, and who’d never even considered moving to the town. (Stocking 18, Adams 4)
Ezekiel Knowlton and his wife Anna arrived in Templeton in the first few years of the settlement. Throughout the 1750s, men began clearing the forest from the land they had purchased, working for a few months and then returning to their families. When they had built a cabin and cleared enough land to plant a crop of corn, the settlers brought wives and children to their new homes. Rumors of French and Indian raiding parties might send them back east briefly, but the families returned when the danger had passed and carried on with the hard work of making a living on a New England farm.
By 1760, the twenty-four year old Ezekiel had a son and a farm in the southeast part of the new town. Two years later Ezekiel’s second son, Stephen, was born. Anna and Ezekiel had a total of nine children over sixteen years. Like his neighbors, Ezekiel probably raised “Indian corn,” barley, potatoes and apples. He may have pastured a few cattle in addition to a milk cow and a horse. Ezekiel’s seven sons would have begun working with their father on the farm as soon as they were able. A growing family required more food, which meant more land had to be cleared. But even after all the Knowltons’ land was farmed, not all of Ezekiel’s sons would be able to earn a living on their father’s land. They began planning for the day they’d buy their own farms, either in a later division of Templeton land or in a new settlement farther out on the western frontier. (Adams 175, Templeton 42, Worcester 397)
Though the Indians burned an early sawmill in 1744, the French and Indian War did not threaten Templeton the way it did settlements west of the Connecticut River. The residents were assessed in 1763, but the town was not threatened. A decade later, when tensions began to mount between the colonies and Great Britain, Templeton formed a company of Minutemen and in 1775 the town voted to take care of the farms of their soldiers if they were called into battle. Ezekiel, then forty, served as a Captain under Colonel Nicholas Dike in a regiment assigned to protecting Boston. Ezekiel led thirty-five local militiamen to the defense of Dorchester Heights. Ezekiel’s sixteen-year old son Joseph served with his father in 1776, and even younger son Stephen (age fourteen at the time) was listed in an 1841 census as having received a pension for “revolutionary or military services.” (Heywood 160, Worcester 394, 400, Pensions 38)
Ezekiel served as a Templeton Selectman in 1768, and again from 1778-1781 after returning from the Revolutionary War. And Templeton sent their highly-esteemed “Captain” Ezekiel Knowlton to represent them at the General Court in Boston in 1778, 1779, 1783, 1784, 1787, 1788, and 1789. These were all years when John Hancock won a majority of the Templeton votes, suggesting Ezekiel’s political sympathies may have leaned in the direction of Hancock’s liberalism, away from elitist James Bowdoin and his Federalist supporters in town. (Adams 122)
Like most towns in the western part of the state, Templeton rejected the Massachusetts Constitution of 1777. In 1779 and 1780, the town sent delegates to the state’s constitutional convention with specific amendments approved by Templeton voters. Many out-state delegates arrived with similar orders and with amendments designed to liberalize the constitution they believed was turning away from the freedoms for which they had bled in the Revolution. Conservative politicians from Boston recorded the approving votes of western towns, and threw away their amendments. Templeton’s voters split pretty evenly between what would come to be called Federalists and Democratic Republicans. The winning candidate for governor always won in Templeton, except in 1792, when the vote split evenly between Francis Dana and Samuel Holten. John Hancock, who won the election, received no support in Templeton that year, but was supported almost unanimously in 1793. The 1792 presidential election marked the beginning of vehement party politics and was a victory for the Federalists over Jefferson’s new Democratic Republicans. This may have influenced the voters of Templeton, or there may have been local issues I haven’t been able to identify. (Adams 136)
Ezekiel’s son Stephen remained in Templeton. He married Comfort White (b. 1771), a daughter of Joseph White, who along with his brother Thomas had been an early settler of Templeton. Joseph had served as a Selectman in 1767, before moving to the new settlement at Gerry (Phillipston). Stephen and Comfort married and settled in Templeton in 1795. In 1800, thirty-eight year old Stephen Knowlton was well established as a farmer and leading man in town, and served a term as a Templeton Selectman. Though both from large families (Comfort had eight siblings), the couple had only three children. Emery was born in September 1798, Charles in May 1800, and Augustus in October 1803. (Adams 121, Phillipston 73, Templeton 42)
Bibliography:
Edwin G. Adams, A Historical Discourse in Commemoration of the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Formation of the First Congregational Church in Templeton Massachusetts (Boston: Crosby, Nichols, and Company, 1857)
William Sweetzer Heywood, History of Westminster Massachusetts (Lowell: Vox Populi Press, 1893)
Charles Henry Wright Stocking, D.D., The History and Genealogy of the Knowltons of England and America (New York: The Knickerbocker Press, 1897)
Census of Pensioners for Revolutionary or Military Services (Washington: Blair and Rives, 1841)
History of Worcester County (Boston: C.F. Jewett and Company, 1879)
Vital Records of Phillipston, Massachusetts (Worcester: Franklin P. Price, 1907)
Vital Records of Templeton, Massachusetts (Worcester: Franklin P. Price, 1907)
