James Corse

  General Notes:

We know very little about James's life in Deerfield. Melvoin (1983, 286-289, 625-626) places James among a second wave of new settlers to Deerfield who appear between 1689 and 1704. Most of these second wavesettlers were not immigrants, rather, they were the children of the first wave of Deerfield residents. In this sense, James was out of place, but they were a young crowd, and in this James was probably on themark with his age.

Unless otherwise indicated, the facts for James Corse's life come from Sheldon's History of Deerfield, Massachusetts ([1895-1896] 1983, 2:133-134, 398).

James first appears in a record dated 18 March 1686 (Temple and Sheldon 1875, 96; there is some question about the date as you will see in the next paragraph). He is on a list of men granted land at Northfield, Franklin County, Massachusetts. This was for the second settlementof Northfield, or Squakheag as the Indians called it, which started around 1682. The first settlement lasted from 1671 to 1675 when the the site was abandoned because of Indian attacks. The second settlement did not start in earnest until 1685 when dwellings and a fort were built. The men granted land were to settle on it before 10 May 1686. Out of the forty men on the list only James, John Kingsley, ThomasRoot, Jr., and Joseph Sheldon were not assigned specific amounts of land (Temple 1890, 125).

In a letter dated 15 October 1895 from Charles Corss to George Sheldon, he wrote: "I am indebted to your hist. of Northfield for the first mention of James Corse. At the second settlement in 1682 or 1683 or 1684 he was one of 40 to whom house lots were offered on condition of settlement. Though no 'Intervale land' was allotted him, he certainly was in that part of Mass. six years before he married Eliz. Catlin. Of the 40 names some were from Deerfield, some from Northampton, & some from Springfield." (Intervale is a New England term for bottomland.) Furthermore, Corss wrote to Shelden, in a letter dated 16 March 1896, that the date for this list was uncertain and he was inquiring after copies of the original Northfield Committee minutes.

The uncertainty of the first mention date for James in Northfield possess a problem in assigning a possible birth year for James. No original record mentions his age. However, to own land, or be offered land, in colonial New England it is very likely he would have been an adult, that is, over 21 years of age. If he was offered the Northfield lot in 1686, then he would have been born in 1665 or earlier, but probably no earlier than say 1635. It is unlikely that he would have beenin his 50's when he settled in New England. A birth year of 1665 fits in well with the average age of marriage in Deerfield, being around25 year of age for men and 19 for women (Melvoin 1989, 132, 321 n. 7). Thus being married around 1690, James would have probably been born in 1665 and his future bride, Elizabeth Catlin, born around 1671. Sheldon ([1895-1896] 1983, 308) estimated her age at about 32 in 1704,which would mean she was born in 1672. If the year James was mentioned in the Northfield records was really 1682, 1683, or 1684, then the year of his birth must be pushed back further. For our purposes, until we come up with something more solid, let us assume that James was born around 1665, give or take five years.

Around the time the Northfield settlement collapsed in 1689 again because of further Indian threats, James had moved to Deerfield, FranklinCounty (formerly, part of Hampshire County until 1811), Massachusetts. Like Northfield, Deerfield also had two settlements. Originally, it was known as Pocumtuck, the name of the local Indian tribe. The first settlement lasted from 1671 to 1678. As in the case of Northfield, Deerfield would lay abandoned until the second settlement in 1680. In 1689, Deerfield was the last outpost on the northwest frontierof Massachusetts.

It was at Deerfield, round 1690, that James took for his wife Elizabeth Catlin, the daughter of John Catlin, a socially prominent Deerfieldresident, and Mary Baldwin. She was probably born around 1672, giventhat her parents were married in 1662 and she followed at least two older children in birth order. The Catlins were one of the better off families in this rugged little frontier outpost.

James and Elizabeth had three children

James certainly did not have as important a career in local affairs as did his father-in-law. According to Deerfield town records, he wasappointed fence viewer, along with Samuel Carter, on 2 March 1695/6 (Williams 19th century, 42-4). Then as now, people would argue over fences, especially if an animal got lose and damaged property. In New England, the maintenance of fences was vital because of the common-field system (Melvoin 1989, 159, 165-166). Citizens were expected to keep their fences mended along their portion of the common field. Each year in March, four to six fence viewers were elected to observe compliance. This was not a prestigious job. In fact, it was the job held by most of the villagers at least once in their life. In a town were almost everyone served in some capacity, James played only a very minor role in its affairs.

James died at Deerfield on 15 May 1696. Given that he was born around 1665, he would only have been about 31 years of age. Their is no cause of death given. He probably did not die from an epidemic or fromwar with the Indians as these causes would have been mentioned in thelocal records.

His last mention is in the inventory of his estate dated 13 June 1696, made by Lieutenant David Howe and Ensign John Shelding [sic] (Doubleday n.d., 31). The estate he left behind was valued at 79£, 14s., 6d. However, he left debts of 8£ 12s. 3.5d, thus his free estate was only 71£ 2s. 2.5d. It is a rather modest estate listing some clothing,arms and ammunition, beds and bedding, cloth, chests, chairs, pots, dishes, spoons, bags of meal and corn, two mares, a colt, three cows, two steers, and three yearlings. Also, mention is made of a house and boards worth 4£ 10s., less than the value of his beds and bedding at 10£. However, there is no mention of a house lot or any farm land as insome other Deerfield inventories. It is particularly odd that a married man with children in New England during this period would be lacking land. Nevertheless, this seems to be the case with James. There is no record of him being granted any land in Deerfield or elsewhere.His house had to sit on some property. One wonders if he had a smallcabin situated on his father-in-law's house lot in town. We know that there were several cases of people being allowed to build a dwelling inside the fortification while lacking a home lot (McGowen and Miller 1996, 43; Sheldon [1895-1896] 1983, 2:243). Supposedly, they must have been allowed to squat on a neighbor's or relative's home lot. Inthe case of Benjamin Munn, he built his dwelling as a cellar half hidden underground, a modest dwelling probably on par with what James had.

James did not live to see the devastation of Deerfield on 29 February1703/4 (11 March 1704 in New France, due to the difference between the Julian and Gregorian calendars). The French, St-François Abenakis,and Caughnawaga Mohawks, lead by Lieutenant Jean-Baptist Hertel de Rouville, raided the village burning 17 out of 41 house, immediately killing 44 out of 291 residents, taking 109 prisoners of which 21 were killed on the march back to Canada (Melvoin 1989, 220-221, 235). In particular, they took Elizabeth Catlin, the widow of James, and their daughter Elizabeth Corse captive.

No known tombstone was erected for James at the time of his death. However, Charles Corss, a descendant, erected a tombstone for James atthe end of the nineteenth or the beginning of the twentieth century.This tombstone still stands in the Deerfield graveyard. It reads as follows (Baker and Coleman 1924, 19):

In memory of
JAMES CORSE
first of the name in America,
m. in Deerfield abt 1690,
d. May 15, 1696, aged abt 30
ELIZABETH, his wife,
dau. of Mr John & Mary (Baldwin) Catlin
Captured Feb. 29, 1703/4,
k. on the march to Canada, aged abt 34
Children.
EBENEZER, b. Apr. 7, 1692
JAMES, b. Mar 20, 1694
ELIZABETH, b. Feb. 4, 1696
was carried captive to Canada
and never came back.
She m. at St. Lambert, Nov. 6, 1712,
Jean Dumontel
She m. (2) at St. Lambert, Jan. 6, 1730
Pierre Monet.
She was the mother of 15 children
the last (twins) b. Apr. 12, 1737

The following is a misguided alternate research of the corse family:
Roloson's Blunder
Anyone addressing the origins of James will eventually stumble upon the claim that he was the son of Ebenezer Corse and Sarah Warner of England. His mother was supposedly the daughter of Jonathan and Sarah Warner. There is no evidence to support this claim! It is based on a confusion of data and I have traced it back to a book by Roloson (1981,104) on the Catlin family. In her book she claims the following:

2.13 Catlin, Elizabeth, b. c. 1667 Bramford, Ct., killed on march to Canada 1704, m. c. 1690 James Corse b. Eng. c. 1666, d. Deerfield, Mass. 5-6-1696, s. Sergt. Ebenezer & Sarah (dau. Jonathan & Sarah Warner)Corse.
2.131 Ebenezer b. 4-7-1682 m. Sarah French
2.132 James b. 3-20-1694, m. (1) Thankful Munn, (2) Elizabeth Gleason

No source is provided for this information. However, it is relatively easy to detect the probable source of this information. I believe that she has confused information about the Corse, Warner, and French families to arrive at this blunder. Just compare her published notes with what you can find in Warner and Nichols' (1919, 68) genealogy of the Warner family. I have abstracted the following pertinent information from their book concerning a child of Jonathan French and Sarah Warner:

Sarah French
b. 1 March 1694-5
d. 4 January 1768 [Judd MS], 11 June 1768 [Sheldon's Deerfield]
m. 2 November 1715, Northampton, Sergt. Ebenezer Corse
b. 7 April 1692
d. Southampton, Mass., 3 May 1776 [Judd MS], 14 May 1776 [Sheldon's Deerfield],
son of James Corse and Elizabeth (Catlin) Corse

From this data it is clear that Roloson confused the son of James with his purported father. Furthermore, she botched the relationships between people by dropping the French surname from Sarah and Jonathan and replacing it with the Warner surname. There is only one Sergeant Ebenezer Corse, and he is the son of James Corse, not the father. His wife was Sarah French, not Sarah Warner, though she was clearly the daughter of Jonathan French and Sarah Warner.

Although I refer to this mistake as Roloson's blunder, to be fair, itis just as likely that the editor of the book may have mishandled hernotes and created all this confusion. Roloson died in 1974 and her notes were not published until 1981. She did not have the opportunityto proof read this publication. Unfortunately, this blunder has been accepted by several genealogists and is now part of the International Genealogical Index, the Ancestral File, the Churchyard (1999) web site among others, and in many notes, pedigree charts, and family groupsheets of amateur genealogists. Whatever the cause of this blunder, it is time to remove it and move on to more realistic theories of James's origins.

James married Elizabeth Catlin, daughter of John Catlin and Mary Baldwin.