Adams and Humphrey

1591–1926

The line in brief

The ancestry of Harriet Ellen (Adams) McMillan (c. 1848-1926), called Ellen or Helen, wife of William McMillan and mother of Alfred Ross McMillan: through her mother, Caroline Humphrey, it goes back to the first settlers of Windsor, Connecticut. James Eno, at Windsor by 1646, was the town’s barber; in 1663 it granted him a strip of land in the Palisado for his shop, and his barber’s bowl of coarse delft, with a notch for the customer’s neck and the date 1663, was kept by his descendants. His second wife was Elizabeth, widow of Thomas Holcombe, who had been made a freeman of Dorchester in 1634 before moving to Windsor, and in 1678 the barber’s son James married her granddaughter Abigail Bissell, whose other grandfather, John Bissell, kept the ferry across the Connecticut. Their son Sgt. James Enos was one of the twelve Windsor men to whom Connecticut deeded the town of Union, and the only one of them who settled there.

His son Joseph Enos of Union married three times, and his third wife, Abigail Keyes of Ashford, bore him four children when he was nearly sixty and older, among them Hannah, in 1781. About 1802 Hannah married Joseph Humphrey of Windham County, son of Ebenezer Humphrey and of Lucy Robbins, who was deaf from her youth. They settled at Marcellus, New York, where her brother Joseph lived, moved on through Steuben, Ontario and Chautauqua counties, and in 1839 went west to Richmond township, Walworth County, Wisconsin, where Joseph, a farmer and a deacon of the Baptist church, was elected a supervisor at the first town meeting. Their son Jasper followed the sea forty years, commanded steamers on Lake Michigan and was harbor master of Milwaukee. Caroline, probably their daughter, born at Richmond, Ontario County, in 1814, married Robert Adams of New York, six years her junior; they were at Richmond, Walworth County, in 1850 with their daughter Harriet, born about 1848, and were early settlers of Columbia County. Harriet married William McMillan at Fall River, Columbia County, had nine children, and went with him to Iowa, Minnesota and Tacoma, where she died in 1926.

Where it went

  1. 1634Dorchester, MassachusettsThomas Holcombe
  2. One of its twelve proprietors, from Windsorby 1646Windsor, ConnecticutJames Eno
  3. by 1762Union, ConnecticutJames Enos
  4. 1781Ashford, ConnecticutEbenezer Humphrey
  5. c. 1802Marcellus, New YorkJoseph Humphrey
  6. 1839Richmond, Walworth County, WisconsinJoseph Humphrey
  7. by 1854Columbia County, WisconsinRobert Adams
  8. 1900TacomaHarriet Ellen Adams

Eight generations

The Adams name, two generations

  1. 1Robert Adams c. 1820–1909At Richmond, Walworth County, Wisconsin, in 1850 with his wife Caroline Humphrey, and one of the early settlers of Columbia County; he later moved on to Iowa, where he was in Worth County in 1880 and Mitchell County in 1900.
  2. 0Harriet Ellen Adams c. 1848–1926Called Ellen or Helen; daughter of Robert Adams and Caroline Humphrey, early settlers of Columbia County, Wisconsin.

The line down the left is drawn as the tree draws it: solid where a record shows the link to the parent above, dashed where it rests on compiled accounts, dotted where it is reasoned from the evidence, grey where it is only possible. A bar fades where a birth or death year isn't known.

Everyone in the line, 18 people

Notable ancestors and small world

4 notable ancestors in the line

  • James Eno

    The Windsor barber, at odds with the church over the baptism of his children, and fined for his wife's selling cider to the Indians

  • John Bissell

    Keeper of the first ferry across the Connecticut River at Windsor

  • Thomas Holcombe

    Freeman of Dorchester in 1634 and one of the first settlers of Windsor and Poquonock

  • James Enos

    The one proprietor of Union, Connecticut, who settled there

With the famous kin, on Notable connections →

1 small-world story

Still being worked on

Research thread

Open questions

  • A record naming Caroline (Humphrey) Adams’s parents: her death record or obituary, or Joseph Humphrey’s probate at Whitewater.
  • Robert Adams’s parents, and where and when he married Caroline.
  • Ebenezer Humphrey’s parents and birth.
  • Hannah Enos’s birth, 31 May or August 1781; Abigail Keyes’s maiden name.
  • Who was Hannah Phelps, second wife of Sgt. James Enos? And did he die in 1762 or 1764?
  • William McMillan and Harriet’s marriage year, 1862 or 1865.
For the record: the line at a glance and how sure it is

The line at a glance

  • Humphrey: Ebenezer Humphrey, of Windham County, Connecticut = Lucy Robbins (1750-1835) > Joseph Humphrey (1782-1864), Baptist deacon, of Marcellus and Whitewater = Hannah Enos (1781-1855) > Caroline Humphrey (1814-1889) = Robert Adams (c. 1820-1909) > Harriet Ellen Adams (c. 1848-1926) = William McMillan (1841-1927) > Alfred Ross McMillan (1884-1966).
  • Enos: James Eno (d. 1682), the Windsor barber = Anna > James Eno (1651-1714) = Abigail Bissell (1661-1728) > Sgt. James Enos (1679-1762 or 1764), of Union = Hannah Phelps > Joseph Enos (1721-aft. 1800), of Union = Abigail Keyes > Hannah Enos, above.
  • Bissell and Holcombe: John Bissell (c. 1591-1677), of the Windsor ferry > Samuel Bissell (d. 1697/8) = Abigail Holcomb (bp. 1638/9-1688), daughter of Thomas Holcombe (d. 1657), of Dorchester and Windsor, and Elizabeth, later the barber’s wife > Abigail Bissell, above.
  • Adams: Robert Adams’s parents are not known.

The scope walks every ancestor of Harriet Adams. Her husband’s side is the McMillan line, which stops at her.

How sure it is

  • Harriet to Robert Adams and Caroline Humphrey: documented, proven: the 1850 census at Richmond, Walworth County (Robert, 30, Caroline, 36, Harriet E., 2); the Wisconsin marriage index, which names Robert and Caroline Adams as her parents; and Humphreys (1883), which lists Caroline’s children Jerome B., Ellen and Marion. Her own death certificate gave her father only as “Adams” and her mother as “Unknown” (research/mcmillan/McMillan_Frost_Master_Research.md).
  • Caroline to Joseph Humphrey and Hannah Enos: compiled, probable. It rests on Frederick Humphreys’s The Humphreys Family in America (1883), whose informant for this branch was her brother Capt. Jasper Humphrey; the 1850 census and the Walworth County history, which has Joseph Humphrey settling Richmond township in 1839, agree with it. No record yet names her parents, and everything above her rests on this link (research/mcmillan/McMillan_Humphrey_Bell_Connections.md).
  • Joseph Humphrey to Ebenezer Humphrey and Lucy Robbins: compiled, probable. The marriage is documented, “Ebenezer Humphrey & Lucy Robbins, June 19, 1781,” at the Second Church at Westford in Ashford, and Joseph was born nine months later. Ebenezer’s parents are not known: Humphreys sets him in a section that “may belong” to the family of Capt. Ebenezer Humphrey of Oxford, Massachusetts. The family is not Michael Humphrey’s of Windsor and Simsbury, nor Jonas Humphrey’s of Dorchester, so there is no blood link to the archive’s Dorchester Humphreys. Lucy was “daughter of Joseph” Robbins (probable); WikiTree’s Joseph Robbins of Attleborough and Lucy Cushing are possible only.
  • Hannah Enos to Joseph Enos and Abigail Keyes: compiled, probable. She is the only Hannah born to a Joseph Enos in the district in 1781 (the History of Union, 1893); Humphreys calls her “Hannah (daughter of Joseph) Enos, of Tolland”; and her full brother Joseph was “of Marcellus, N. Y.” by 1805 (the Burleigh genealogy), where she and Joseph Humphrey settled. Union gives her birth as 31 May 1781, Humphreys as August.
  • Abigail Keyes was “of Ashford” when she married in 1778. Keyes may be a married name: she was possibly the widow of Ephraim Keyes Jr., born a Chaffee. The master research called FamilySearch’s “Abigail Chaffe” disproven; the later research finds that too strong, since the Union record proves her name in 1778, not her birth surname.
  • Joseph Enos to Sgt. James Enos: documented, proven: his birth in the Windsor records, as indexed (“Joseph Enno born on 20 Jan 1721, child of James, in Pinemeadow, Windsor”), and the History of Union’s “Joseph Enos, son of James.” His mother, James’s second wife Hannah Phelps, is not identified: Stiles makes her a daughter of Lt. Timothy Phelps, which the Phelps genealogy (1899) rules out, and WikiTree’s Hannah Birge, widow of Benjamin Phelps, is possible only.
  • The Windsor generations (James Enos to James Eno, James Eno to the barber, Abigail Bissell to Samuel Bissell, Abigail Holcomb to Thomas Holcombe): documented, proven, from the births and baptisms of the Windsor Old Church Record and town record as Stiles’s Ancient Windsor (1891-92) prints them; Samuel Bissell to John Bissell, documented, proven, from John’s will of 1673, which names “my four sons, John, Thomas, Samuel, and Nathaniel.” The mothers (Anna, Abigail Bissell, Abigail Holcomb, Elizabeth Holcombe) are probable: each rests on the father’s marriage.
  • Robert Adams: born in New York about 1820 (the 1850 census); his parents are not known. His death at Plymouth, Iowa, in 1909, and Caroline’s in Cerro Gordo County in 1889, are the Ancestry tree’s (possible).

Left out: the modern claim that James Eno was Jacques Hennot, baptized in 1625 at the French church in Threadneedle Street, London, which is unproven (Stiles called the French tradition “worthless”); and FamilySearch’s Ebenezer Humphrey “b. 1739 Ashford,” son of Samuel, which has no source. A descent from Arthur Humphrey of Woodstock, whose family helped found Ashford, is possible only.

Their families and the files

+ 12 husbands, wives and children

Research filesresearch/mcmillan/McMillan_Humphrey_Bell_Connections.mdresearch/mcmillan/McMillan_Frost_Master_Research.md

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