John Holdershaw

Father of Hope (Holdershaw) Ellingwood and of Delilah, who married Ralph Ellingwood. He was of Eastham on Cape Cod when he married Sarah Cole in 1760, and joined the Eastham (Orleans) church on 29 Mar 1773: “John Holdershaw was rec’d a Member of this Chh in full Communion”; his son William was baptized there in 1774 and his daughter Delilah in January 1777 (record).

In the Revolution he served as “Holdershaw, John (also given John, Sr.). Corporal, Capt. Solomon Higgins’s (Eastham) co.; enlisted July 13, 1775; discharged Dec. 31, 1775,” and then as sergeant in Capt. Samuel King’s company, Col. Josiah Whitney’s regiment, from 1 Aug to 1 Dec 1776, at the camp at Hull, with his son John Jr. a private in the same company. On 17 Sept 1776 he signed the petition of the battalion stationed at Hull “asking for increase and payment of wages” (source).

About 1787-90 he took the family to Bald Hill Cove, Frankfort, on the Penobscot, where two of his daughters married the Ellingwood brothers: Hope married Richard at Orrington in 1787, and Delilah married Ralph in 1792. He is “John Haldershaw” at Frankfort in the censuses of 1790 and 1800, the second noting “from whence emigrated: Cape Cod.” On 24 Dec 1790 he quitclaimed land to his son John Jr., with Israel Mayo and Richard Ellingwood as witnesses, and in 1802 “John Holder Shaw of Frankfort” sold land to Joseph Wardwell, his wife Sarah Shaw relinquishing (record). He died before May 1807, when “widow Sarah (X) Shaw” asked that Asa Bean administer “the Estate of John Holdershaw.” The heirs were six: Hope, Delilah, John Jr. (a mariner of Boston), Joseph, William and Mary, wife of Israel Mayo (record). An old Orrington memorandum says the family “have left off the Holder and the family is now called Shaw”; his son acknowledged a deed in 1807 as “John Aldershaw.” Holdershaw is a real English surname, so he need not have been born a Shaw.

His parents are unknown. The Ancestry tree makes him “Capt. John Holder Shaw Holdershaw,” born at Eastham on 18 June 1735 to John Shaw and Martha Knowles, citing Hufbauer’s Knowles genealogy (source). That John Shaw is real, but his family moved to Hartford by 1744 (a Shaw-Wright family Bible), and he is very probably Capt. John Shaw of Wilbraham, who named a son Knowles Shaw and died in Ohio about 1802; Hufbauer never identifies him with John Holdershaw, and John Holdershaw was on Cape Cod from 1760 to 1787 and never more than a sergeant. The tree’s line is therefore very probably wrong, and with it the tree’s route to the Freemans and Gov. Thomas Prence (research/ellingwood/Ellingwood_Cape_Cod.md, section 1a).

A 1793 portrait of “Capt. John Shaw” attached to him in some Ancestry trees is Unrelated: it shows John Shaw (1773-1823), the U.S. Navy captain born at Mountmellick, Ireland, whose mother was Elizabeth Barton and whose wives were Elizabeth Palmer and Mary Breed.

Open questions

• His birth and parents. The Eastham records before 1760 have no Holdershaw; the Hancock probate papers (docket 2004) may give an age or a kinsman.

Research: research/ellingwood/Ellingwood_Cape_Cod.md.