Temporary record

Steward Southgate, born in Suffolk County, England, on September 8, 1703, came to New England with his father Richard Southgate and brother on May 21, 1717, and were among the first to settle in Leicester, Massachussetts. They allegedly joined the Church of the First Society, in Leicester, but this is only mentioned in terms of Steward's withdrawal from this church to join the Quakers in 1744-45. Aside from this, little is known of the family's history prior to the second half of the eighteenth century, though by this time, Steward Southgate's family had grown to include a wife and at least three sons and one daughter.

John Southgate, the eldest was born on January 15, 1738, and lived and worked in Leicester for most of his life. He married Eleanor Seargent and had a number of children, though it is unclear how many. He worked as a land surveyor in Massachusetts, and was, in addition, involved in political circles and participated in a number of military incidents. John Southgate was commissioned under the title Capt.-Lieutenant as a second officer, after 1777; he had acted as adjutant to a regiment of minutemen, and marched to Cambridge just prior to the Battle of Lexington and Concord in April of 1775.

One of John Southgate's brothers, Robert Southgate, moved from Leicester to Scarborough, Maine, to study medicine. While there, he was married to Mary King in 1773, and had about twelve children, some of which passed away only hours after birth. In addition to studying medicine, he also became a large land owner, and was appointed Judge of the Courth of Common Pleas, in Scarborough. Of the brothers, Robert was the one with whom John most frequently corresponded, though there is an absence of communication for about a ten year period towards the later half of the century. In a letter dated August 12, 1789, Robert pleads to his brother John: "For Once in Your Life Lay Aside your Whigism your Politiks...and Write me a full account of your Family Circumstances..."

The whereabouts of of their brother StewardSouthgate are not so clear, though from his letters, it seems he did reside in Massachussetts. In 1795, he wrote a letter from Bardard, Mass., to his brother John Southgate, in it describing a 'Canker Rash' that had apparently seized the lives of at least five of his children within eighteen days.

Their sister Sarah lived in Hadley, Massachussetts, where she was married to Azariah Dickinson. It is unclear exactly what her husband did for a living, and there are only indications of her activities, as in her letters, she often requests a spinning wheel.

After the turn of the century, there seems not to have been much correspondence between the three brothers and Sarah, perhaps due to age, death, or distance. So that from this time on, most of the letters are exchanged among the next generation of cousins and siblings. Eliza Southgate is John Southgate's daughter, and presumably, the one in whose hands the letters and documents were kept for the first part of the 1800s. She had one son, George F. Bigelow, and in her letters often writes of her worries concerning his very poor health. Still, he does go on to college, and from this time on contributes most of the writings in the collection, including several college essays, two written plays, and a few journal entries. In addition, he is responsible for the last writing in the collection, written in 1888, in which he provides a brief biographical sketch of his family, and traces the Southgates back to their arrival in New England, in 1717.

M-2891.30

Subjects

Family--Massachusetts
Whig Party--Massachusetts

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