Sources used to tell the stories of the family lines include:
Interviews, marriage licenses, birth certificates, census reports, obituaries, news clippings, and other records such as those found on Ancestry.com.
The accuracy and completeness of these sources and records cannot be guaranteed.
While drafts are internally reviewed before publication, undoubtedly some stories and articles on this site contain errors.
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1 LYDIA HAINES ELLIS
This is the first of a series of biographical sketches of the 17 children born to Joseph Wingate and Mary Briggs Haines (hereinafter referred to as “J. Wingate” and “Mary”). In a few instances, such as this one, there are sufficient sources of information to help provide some reasonable context to the life of their offspring. In the case of other children, though, only scarce information of their lives has been found so far. Hopefully, readers of these stories will know something more about the subjects and share their knowledge with the researchers. Similarly, the stories of the many descendants of these children will vary in scope and depth. Notwithstanding the shortcomings, the main purpose of this series of sketches is to demonstrate the magnificent human legacies of J. Wingate and Mary’s relationship and why their descendants should be honoring these remarkable ancestors who first arrived in the 1840s in the area that would be called Fort Fairfield.
Their first child, Lydia, was born on April 19, 1829, in Hallowell, Maine. At the time, Hallowell was a busy community with nearly 70 stores along Water Street which ran parallel to the Kennebec River, the major transportation artery for the area.