I have long been thrilled by the story of George Washington Eayrs, a man of good Boston family who in the early C18th, in the face of Spanish law, set himself up as a buccaneer and smuggled otter skins and the like between Alaska, Shanghai and California. His end was tragic – some of the tale is told at http://www.sandiegohistory.org/journal/81spring/sherds.htm, but for the full version you need to get hold of the biography called A Yankee Smuggler on the Spanish California Coast: George Washington Eayrs and the Ship Mercury, by Robert Ryan Miller (details from joan@sbthp.org).
Anyway, checking through my database for loose ends today I finally made a connection to his family’s origin. I shall put this up on the website in due time, but very briefly he goes back to a Simon Aires, born in Lavenham, Suffolk, in 1557.
This Simon had a number of children, and one of these, also called Simon (Ayres) and born at the time of the Armada in nearby Bury St Edmunds, sailed in April 1635 with his wife Dorothy (née Payne) from London on ‘The Increase”, disembarking in Masschusetts Bay.
Come 1745, give or take a year, one Thomas and four Moses later, George Washington Eayrs was born in Boston, Suffolk, Massachusetts – his story is well worth reading.
Nothing remarkable here perhaps, no major breakthrough, but it’s always good to make a connection, and this one felt good.
And now there’s another challenge. Perhaps the best documented Eayrs immigration into the US has been that of William Eayres, b. abt 1670, somewhere in England. He is said to have married a Margaret in Ireland – certainly his first son William was born in Ulster about 1670. Young William married a Jenette Caldwell (spellings differ) in Clough Parish, County Antrim, Ireland in about 1698 and in 1718 set off with his new family as part of a group of settlers who set up home in New Hampshire at a place they called Londonderry. This William’s older son Joseph participated in the Boston Massacre and the famous Tea Party raid, and got his name on the London Enemies List. Most of the descent of this line is now well worked out, but does the George Washington line connect?
Another Eayres around in the New World at this time, and at present unconnected to either of the above lines, was a certain Thomas Stevens Eayrs, a silversmith born abt 1760, This Thomas married Frances, daughter of the revered Paul Revere (he who sped through the night), and their children eventually took over the Revere bell foundry. This has resonance (I couldn’t resist the pun) as there were so many Eayres involved in Bell making in Cambridge and Northants at the time.
So, three lines which may well be interconnected: however, I have the feeling that much work will be needed to prove the connection. Perhaps one of our US cousins can help out here? As for me, right now I have some marking to do.
Martin
Sunday 25 November 2007
Smugglers and rebels
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4 comments:
I appreciate the work you are doing, Martin. I'm one of those decended from Joseph Eayrs. It sure would be interesting to see if there is a common link to George and Thomas.
Readers of this thread might like to see:
Miller, Robert Ryan. A Yankee Smuggler on the Spanish California Coast: George Washington Eayrs and the Ship Mercury (Santa Barbara: Santa Barbara Trust for Historical Preservation, 2001), 114 pp. Por Carlos López Urrutia, Menlo College.
Professor Miller has already made several valuable contributions by publishing biographical studies of men of prominence is early California History. This time, he has chosen the life and misfortunes of captain Eayrs of the ship Mercury.
We learn that after a successful trip to China, Eayrs’ ship was captured by a Peruvian privateer off Refugio beach near Santa Barbara. He was arrested as a smuggler, his ship confiscated, the merchandise on board sold and the cash used to pay presidio soldiers.
Like other smugglers, he was allowed a relative freedom of movement and he and his common law wife and daughter moved into the Santa Barbara presidio as guests of the commandant. In his efforts to recover his ship and his fortune, Eayrs traveled to Mexico an ended up in Guadalajara where he married one of the local beauties, became a Catholic and settled there.
His former wife and daughter were left to fend for themselves in California. He would never leave Mexico and never recover any part of his goods or ship. He never gave up his claim against the Spanish and later, the Mexican government. When he was finally awarded a large amount of money, the Mexican treasury had no money to pay him.
The book is well researched, written in clear and flowing style and fairly compact. If any criticism can be made, is that the narrative of requests, demands, appeals, rejections by court officials gets to be repetitious, but these are facts and without them the reader would never understand the frustration and suffering of Captain Eayrs.
http://derroteros.perucultural.org.pe/
textos/derroteros10/comentarios10.doc.
I am a decedent of "Peggy" Stewart (Maria Charlotte de la Ascencion Stewart), who was George Eayrs first wife, or common law wife as you say.
You may be interested to know that Peggy was the daughter of HMS Bounty's (of mutinous fame) George Stewart who was captured and died on the Pandora - Peggy, half English half Tahitian was an orphan after her mother died of a broken heart.
Eayrs asked Peggy to join him on his ship and they sailed together in the Pacific for 4 years.
Peggy Stewart is my 4th great grandmother.
Thanks for this - I've spent a little time looking at GWE over the years (much more since this blog posting!).
May I refer you to a posting I made earlier this year (at http://eayrs.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=gwe&action=display&thread=55)
It reads thus:
Numerous accounts on the Web say that George Washington Eayrs had a common-law wife, 'Peggy', later baptised as María Antonia de la Ascención, with whom he had one child, a daughter, María de los Remedios Eayrs. The Mission Santa Barbara Book of Burials records her as dying on January 30, 1871, "aged seventy-five.
It is also commonly said that this Peggy was the daughter of a Tahitian mother and George Stewart of H.M.S. Bounty. Her mother may have been Tahitian, but Peggy was born in the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) in 1795 or 1796, and the George Stewart of Bounty infamy drowned off Australia in 1791, some years before her birth.
Perhaps her father was another man named Stuart or Stuard; Peggy's 1817 marriage record gives her name as 'Maria Antonia Stuard' and her burial record on Jan. 30, 1871 refers to a 'Maria Antonia Estuar' [sic], widow, age 75.
This information from Ryal Millar's book A Yankee Smuggler on the Spanish California Coast: George Washington Eayrs and the Ship Mercury (Santa Barbara Trust for Historic Preservation, 2001).
Maybe you have information I don't, but I think historians have a hard time supporting the Bounty link, romantic as it is.
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