The origin of my Packard line in the United States is Massachusetts, the Plymouth Colony, the town of Hingham. Samuel Packard brought his wife Elizabeth and their infant daughter Mary there in 1638. Not long after, they went to Weymouth, and even later to Bridgewater.
The next subsequent two generations pretty well stayed put. Eleazer, Samuel's great-grandson, went west. Though Richards Packard, Eleazer's son, grew up there in western Massachusetts, he was born in Bridgewater.
The American Revolution turned things upside down. Richards, at 17, enlisted in a Massachusetts regiment and ended up serving two enlistments in two different regiments. After the Revolution, he began a fairly long migration north. He settled first in Winchester, New Hampshire, where he met and married Sarah "Sally" Coates. I do not have much information on her as yet. In Winchester, Richards worked in a foundry.
His feet feeling the need to wander once again, he and Sally took up their anchor and headed north. They ended up in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, where their son John Allen Packard, my 3x-great grandfather, was born. It wasn't long after when Richards and Sally sold their farm in Vermont and headed north again, this time ending up in Canada. They settled in Stanstead, in Quebec, in an area known as the English Townships. This was their final migration.
This was also where John Allen Packard grew up, and married. He married Miriam Bullock, and together they had a pack of children. John Allen was a Methodist preacher. One of their children, Mathew Hale Packard, also grew up in the English Townships, and married Emily Hoyt.
Mathew Hale and about half of his siblings ended up going back into the United States around 1850. Mathew and his wife, and their son Oscar Merry, born probably in Hamilton, Ontario in 1848, ended up in Chautauqua County, New York, across Lake Erie where they were enumerated in the 1855 New York State Census in Harmony Township. They also had a daughter, Augusta, born in New York, probably in Harmony Township, Chautauqua County. Members of Emily Hoyt's family had settled there, and the Packards had followed.
It was from here the Mathew enlisted in a New York regiment of cavalry for the Civil War. He served in two different regiments. As with most who fought on either side in that war, Mathew suffered more from ailments than from war wounds.
After the war, Mathew and his family migrated to Bloomington, Illinois, where a number of his siblings had settled. This is where Mathew, by occupation a carpenter, and Emily, a milliner, lived the rest of their lives.
Their son, Oscar Merry, became a real estate agent. He married Augusta Hetherington, born in Chicago in 1851. They had four children: Herbert Roy Packard, Ruby Packard, Walter Hetherington Packard, and Hale Boring Packard. Once he became established in real estate, Oscar packed up his family and migrated to the best place for real estate agents in the late 19th and early 20th centuries -- California.
It was in California that Walter Hetherington Packard grew up, and where he met and married Elizabeth Jane "Bessie" (later "Betty") Reynolds, who was born in Atlantic, Cass County, Iowa. They, like Walter's parents, had four children: Walter Reynolds ("Ren"), John Creighton ("Jack"), Arden (no middle name), and Sarah Virginia ("Sally").
This long enough tale ends here, for the story of Arden and his migrations can be found in my blog entry On the Move: A is for Arden.
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