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GFHC: He's where???? [1]
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Date: 2025-07-08
We learned in school that Commodore Matthew Perry “opened” Japan to U.S. ships in 1853.
But that’s not quite the whole story ~ and an excellent example of the benefits of the newish full-text search at FamilySearch.org ties into the rest of the story.
My fourth great-grandmother, likely born Nancy Batchelder, the name on her marriage record, has eluded my research for 27 years. She married Lincoln Stetson in Salem MA in 1810, probably aged 18 to 20. Her 1857 death record says her father was Jno. Batchelder and she was born in Billerica MA about 1790ish. That information hasn’t gotten me anywhere in finding her birth family, unfortunately.
I know much more about Nancy’s husband Lincoln Stetson. He was born in Scituate MA in 1774; as a young adult, he moved to Salem MA, as he was a shipwright. In the 1790s, Salem was to shipbuilding what Detroit was in the 1950s to cars, so it was a reasonable career move.
I’ve been able to trace Lincoln through city directories, census returns, children's births and death records, and newspapers advertisements for his services as a shipwright, from his marriage to his death in 1861. As far as I knew, he never really left Salem.
Lincoln Stetson and family, 1830 census, Salem MA
In 1860, when the first Japanese diplomatic mission arrived in the U.S., the Salem Gazette printed a story of Lincoln Stetson, a survivor of the first U.S. voyage to Japan, was still alive and living in Salem.
The Gazette’s story was picked up by many other papers ~ from nearby papers in Massachusetts to as far away as Hawaii.
While Commodore Perry was the first to “open” trade with Japan, a few American ships had visited before Perry. From the U.S. Naval Institute:
In the effort to find Nancy’s family, I eagerly tried her name as my first search when FamilySearch’s new full-text search. I was hoping to find her listed by her married name in a will or deed that linked her to her birth family. No luck, unfortunately.
But I did find this ~ Lincoln Stetson, well settled in Salem MA, buying land in Maine in 1830:
From the wording, it’s pretty clear it’s “my” Lincoln Stetson:
From the research I’ve since done on this, I’m pretty sure that Lincoln was helping out a cousin by buying the land, as later documents have the land back in Jacob’s possession. I’m still poking around to see if I can find a more definitive answer to what was going on.
Lesson to be learned: sometimes people show up in unexpected places. Without the full-text search, I would never have thought to look for Lincoln Stetson up in Maine.
Want step by step details for searching FamilySearch’s full-text feature? I did a YouTube video ~ feel free to watch as much as is helpful (and I wouldn’t mind if you subscribe for future videos).
Note: I’m hoping to usually post GFHC diaries on Sundays, likely late afternoon to early evening, but the holiday weekend managed to disrupt my good intentions, which means this week features a mid-week entry.
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