A to Z Challenge On the Move: B is for Bicoastal

My father's family line in America began with Samuel Packard, born around 1610 in Stonham Asphal, Suffolk, England.  He became a separatist and left England for the Plymouth Colony in 1638.  With him were his wife Elizabeth and their infant daughter Mary.  Elizabeth's maiden surname has never been discovered.

Samuel and his family settled first in Hingham, Massachusetts, then removed to Weymouth and finally ended up in Bridgewater.  As towns were organized in those colonial days, it all revolved around the church.  There was a squabble in Samuel's church, and one part of the congregation broke away and renamed their part of the town North Bridgewater, which today is known as Brockton.  Samuel was a farmer, and he also kept a tavern, known as an ordinary, in his home.  This was a common colonial practice, and not just in the English colonies, but also in the Spanish colonies in Florida, as my studies of one of those colonies, St. Augustine, Florida, have revealed.

Samuel was also at one time or another the Keeper of Minister's Rates (tax collector) and Surveyor of Highways.  He was obviously literate and worked well with numbers.

Descendants of Samuel, through several generations, scattered to the four winds.  My fourth great-grandfather, Samuel's great-grandson Richards, served in the American Revolution and afterwards, went north in search of land.  He went up into New Hampshire, where he met and married Sarah ("Sally") Coates.  They continued their migration up into Vermont, where my third great-grandfather, John Allen Packard, was born.  And apparently Richards was not satisfied with the land he tried to farm in Vermont, and he heard that the Canadians were giving away land and were not being particular about who they were giving it to.  He eventually settled near Georgeville, Quebec, in an area known as the English Townships, because so many Anglophones settled there.  My great-great grandfather Mathew Hale Packard was born there.*

Mathew Hale Packard married Emily Hoyt in Canada.  Their son Oscar Merry Packard, my great-grandfather, was most likely, by everthing I have found so far, born in Hamilton, Ontario.  His happy-sounding middle name came from the Merry family, close friends of the Packards in Georgeville.  Mathew and Emily also later had a daughter, Sarah Augusta.  This family migrated from Canada to Chautauqua County, New York, after the Civil War, in which Mathew served from two different regiments of New York cavalry.

Another migration was in store for this family, as they ended up in Bloomington, McLean County, Illinois, with a few of Mathew's brothers and sisters, and their families.  It was in Bloomington that Mathew Hale Packard died.

His son, Oscar Merry, continued the peripatetic Packard tradition, and after becoming a real estate agent, took that career to the perfect place for it at the perfect time -- southern California in the early 20th century.  Before leaving Illinois, however, he married Agusta Hetherington.  They had several children, among them my grandfather Walter Hetherington Packard.

It was in California that my grandfather met and married my grandmother, Elizabeth Jane Reynolds.  Their children were Walter Reynolds Packard, Arden Packard, Sarah Packard, and John Creighton Packard.

In my previous post, A is for Arden, the story is told of my father's migrations, which went from California to Maryland to Virginia to Florida, and back to California.  We have been a very bicoastal family.


*Be it noted that, yes, my fourth great-grandfather's name was Richards, with the s.  His mother's maiden name was Mercy Richards, and that is probably where his name came from.  And my great-great grandfather Mathew Hale Packard had only one t in his first name.