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Archiver > GenMassachusetts > 2007-11 > 1195603482


From: "Sue Maxwell" <>
Subject: [GENMASSACHUSETTS] Captain Shubael Swain
Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2007 17:04:42 -0700


I don't know if I brought this up on this site.
My ggg grandfather is Captain Shubael Swain( 1777) ( of which there are several by the same name). I suspect he came from Nantucket into NYC in 1803. I have good reason to believe that his wife was Sarah Turner.
He worked as a ship captain for a group of merchants, then retired and worked as a keeper at the Bridewell Prison until his wife died in 1845. Then, I just recently discovered, that he went to stay with a son in Ohio and died there and is buried there- but he must have been transferred from another cemetery in Cleveland, as it opened two years after he died and there are no buriel records. The death list for his wife says that her body was shipped to Newburgh NY temporarily and where it went after that I don't know.

In all of the information I have collected about him and people that lived around him, or even moved into his house in NYC and he moved to another, plus other information, and in trying for ages to find his childhood family- I have found a perfect fit except for one small hitch- Ebenezer Swain and Lydia Ellis's son Shubael is supposed to have died at sea with a probably or possible brother Valentine in 1808- which would eliminate them as a family. I also have a photo of a portrait of him, that I bet was done by William Swain, and he looks exactly like Robert Burns.

But because it seems so very likely that this is his family, I would like to know how one goes about proving or disproving a death at sea. I have read the Charles Folger report in his volumes, plus the report in the Barney collections, which probably came from that, and also the notes in The Vital Records of Nantucket which probably came from that, too.

Before I give up again on finding his childhood family, how would I go about proving or disproving this so called death at sea- which is simply reported that way-"died at sea".

Otherwise, does anyone have any other ideas of how I might find his family, other than this?

Sue

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