The Trumbull Family Name and History
By Freda Francis Trumbull (1894-1990), Reviewed October 7, 1983
Robert Trumbull 1754 – 1840
born 1754, Cambuslang, Scotland, to Robert Trumbull and Ann Jackson Trumbull
married December 18, 1784 to Lucy Babcock (August 30, 1762-may 24, 1835)
died August 24, 1840, Craftsbury, Vermont
Children of Robert and Lucy: James 1787; Mary 1790; Nancy 1792; Clarissa 1794; Augustus 1797; John King 1800; Robert II 1807
The story of our legendary ancestor who was given the name we bear goes back several centuries – six at least.
In Scotland a doughty young peasant whose fortune it was to be on hand when King Robert the Bruce, hunting in Sterling Park, was attacked by a furious bull; the gallant young peasant threw himself on the animal, grasping him by the horns, and with a combination of courage, strength, and dexterity, flung him on his side, thus saving the king’s life.
A very grateful Bruce granted his rescuer a comfortable cottage, Badyrull, hear Peebles, gave him the name “Turnbull” in honor of his valor, and a coat of arms bearing three bulls’ heads and the motto, “Fortuna favet audaci.”
This champion of great stature was slain later in single combat by Sir Robert Verrole, just before the battle of Holidan Hill, in 1332.
As years rolled by, the prowess of Turnbull of Badyrull was forgotten, and his descendants, though they preserved the motto and device, corrupted the name into Trumbull. Some of them settled in Cumberland, and one of these in the days of the persecution of the Puritans emigrated to the colony of Massachusetts and founded a line of distinguished patriots.
Jonathan Trumbull, the elder, governor of Connecticut, was the great-grandson of this Puritan emigrant. He married Faille Robinson, great granddaughter of John Robinson, pastor of the Puritan congregation at Leydens. Johathan died on August 19, 1785.
The ancestor we are concerned with is Robert Trumbull who was born in 1754 in Cambuslang Parish, near Glasgow, Scotland. The record of his birth, also that of a brother, as well as the death of both parents who died young, was found in a kirk of this parish.
The Trumbull orphans were given a home by an aunt, a Mrs. King. She and her husband were people of means who did a kindly act in providing for the boys. The Kings had two sons of their own, younger than the Trumbull boys. The King boys, after the Revolutionary War, came to America and settled in one of the Carolinas.
When he was seventeen years of age, Robert Trumbull ran away and enlisted in the British Army and was sent to help put down the rebellion in the American Colonies. He was on a British transport that sailed into Massachusetts Bay on the day of the Battle of Bunker Hill (June 13, 1775), and he was set to digging a trench that evening.
Later, he joined Lord Howe’s troops in New York State. He spent three years in the British Army, but after the Battle of Long Island in which the British were victorious, Robert, who had become heart and soul in sympathy with the American Cause, decided to join the colonial troops.
One day at noon, during the changing of the sentries, Robert made a break for the cat-tail flags and long grass along the shore. Bells and guns sounded and a guard was dispatched to capture him. If captured, he would have been shot as a deserter. He lay, with only his head out of a thicket of tall grass, in water two or three feet deep. Two guards passed by close enough for him to hear one say to the other, “Trumbull is probably eating his supper tonight with the Yanks.”
At noon the next day, he saw a fishing boat and swam toward it. The fisherman saw his plight and took him into the boat. A British guard who discovered his swimming, fired shots which fortunately missed their target and the boat drew out of range.
A powerful man, he swam with his soaked boots and full regimental uniform on. An American officer told Robert Trumbull that he was the first soldier to get to him with a stitch of clothing on.
Robert was taken before American officers where he was examined and accepted. He then swore allegiance to their cause and enlisted in the Continental Army He was assigned duty that did not compel him to fight against his former associates. Besides guarding against Tory defection, he drilled recruits and organized companies of colonial soldiers. Serving until the war was over and the colonies had become independent, he then went to Pomfret, Connecticut.
Robert had learned shoemaking in the British Army, which discipline shows he was a lively chap and not altogether submissive, since British soldiers were made to work only when they had been insubordinate or held in duress. He had time to learn this trade which he could now put to use in making a living. He boarded with Mrs. Mary Johnson Babcock, a widow with two children, a son John, who later became the father of Stephen Babcock, and a daughter Lucy, who, in time, became Robert Trumbull’s wife, on December 18, 1784, in Wilbraham, Massachusetts.
There is no information available which tells how Robert Trumbull became a friend and follower of Colonel Ebenezer Crafts of Sturbridge, Massachusetts. But in 1780, Colonel Crafts, with a group of other pioneers from Massachusetts, petitioned the State of Vermont for a tract of unappropriated land within the northern part of the state for the purpose of settling a new plantation which would later be formed into a township. The petition was granted.
Colonel Crafts, who was born in Pomfret, Connecticut, graduated from Yale in 1759, studied theology with the intention of becoming a clergyman, but apparently received no call from any of the churches in which he had preached as a candidate. He gave up the ministry and married Mehitable Chandler of Woodstock, Connecticut. In 1770, he moved his family of a wife, a son, and two daughters to Sturbridge, Massachusetts, where he became a store-and-tavern keeper. In his tavern he met and conversed with many travelers. It could have been here that he came in contact with Robert Trumbull.
Because his business had thrived, Colonel Crafts acquired a large estate. He accumulated a store of muskets and ammunition before the Revolution and personally equipped and drilled a cavalry regiment. In 1775, as Captain of this company, he joined the army under General Washington at Cambridge, but after the British evacuated Cambridge, Colonel Crafts returned to Sturbridge.
Because of generous donations to Leicester Academy and of losses in business, incident to the depression caused by the war, Colonel Crafts was compelled to sell his tavern in Sturbridge. It was there that he called together sixty men to discuss the matter of going north and settling in the new Republic of Vermont.
On November 6, 1780, Governor Chittenden signed a charter granting to Colonel Crafts and his associates a tract of land six miles square in the southern part of Chittenden County in the northern part of the state. The grant authorized Colonel Crafts to distribute tracts as he deemed best, to Joseph Scott, William Scott, Jonathan Mason, Timothy Newell, Nehemiah Lyon, John Babcock, John Shepherd, Nathan Cutler, and Robert Trumbull.
Almost a year later, on August 23, 1781, Ebenezer Crafts again received a paper from Governor Chittenden, the charter of the town, stating that the area formerly granted on November 6, 1780 to Colonel Ebenezer Crafts and associates should be known as the township of Minden, Vermont.
The charter divided the township into twelve ranges, each range into twelve lots, each of a half-mile square. Two lots were to be held by each of the sixty-five proprietors on condition that he clear five acres and build a house within three years. The remaining fourteen lots were reserved for special purposes, namely, one for a mill-lot, one for the meeting house and Common (this lot was to be as near the center as possible), two for the benefit of the future colleges of the state, two for the benefit of the academies of Chittenden County, two for the public schools, two for the churches that would be erected and two were to be given to the first minister settling in the town. The last two lots were to be disposed of by the proprietors as they saw fit. These last two lots contained Elligo and Upper Horsemore ponds.
Colonel Crafts had to wait eight years before his plan could be carried out. There were many problems to be settled and arrangements to be made. The land was surveyed and each proprietor assessed one pound, seventeen shillings and four pence to cover the expenses. All these assessments were paid for by sixteen men, Colonel Crafts himself representing twenty-four proprietors. The Mill lot was granted to him provided that he build a sawmill in one year and a gristmill within three years.
On May 21, 1788, Colonel Crafts, his son Samuel (a Harvard graduate), Joseph Scott, Jonathan Mason and Nehemiah Lyon arrived in the area destined to be their future home. Colonel Crafts cleared ten or more acres and built a house beside a stream later called Trout Brook. He also built a sawmill and made preparations for a grist-mill on the Mill lot which was at the foot of Ketchem Hill. The other three men cleared their land sufficiently to build their cabins.
Later in the summer of the same year, Nathan Cutler, Robert Trumbull, and Ashbel Shepherd moved their families into the settlement and located in the eastern part of the township. The two lots assigned to Robert Trumbull, as well as to each of the other associates, would mean for each of them an area of three hundred and twenty acres.
Later in the fall of the same year all the settlers but the Cutler, Trumbull, and Shepherd families returned to Sturbridge. Soon afterwards, Robert Trumbull, because of illness in his family, was forced to remove to Barnet, twenty-five miles, more or less, southeast of the settlement.
The Cutlers and the Shepherds were living seven miles apart and had no other neighbors. In March the snow was four feet deep and the Cutlers’ supply of food was reduced to a quart of corn meal. When that was gone, they would face starvation. Fortunately, Ashbel Shepherd was able to kill a moose and after butchering the animal, took a quarter of the meat on his back the seven miles to the Cutler Cabin. Mrs. Cutler, telling of the low food supply, thankfully received the meat and said she would never give up hope again.
This was only the first year of hardship for the new settlers and the experience of suffering was repeated, more or less up to the year of famine in 1816 and 1817 and after that. Boys and girls would eat birch twigs and beech leaves and called them good. A family with only a half loaf of bread shared with a family which had no bread so that on one occasion one half loaf fed fourteen people. Mothers would go without food in order to feed their hungry children. By 1825 the settlers began to have more means to do with and began to have a better living. Robert Trumbull brought a bag of potatoes into the colony to use for seed, carrying it on his back. His point of departure was not stated – perhaps he had been given the potatoes in Barnet or Ryegate.
The foregoing has been related to show the pioneer conditions and hardships endured by these early settlers among whom Robert Trumbull and his family can be counted. When the town was organized on March 15, 1792, a Town Meeting was called and officers elected, Robert Trumbull being chosen as the first grand Juror.
Mrs. Lucy Trumbull, a member of the established church of Scotland, in coming to America had connected with the Congregational Church so prevalent in New England. He never was satisfied with this body of Christians on account of their heterodox views respecting the atonement of Christ and their loose practices in many ways. He earnestly desired and ceaselessly labored to secure a return to puritanic orthodoxy. After unsuccessful attempts in this direction, he waited upon the congregational services at Peachan and Barnet, but things were no better in these churches. It was suggested to him that no denomination would fit his ideas and principles unless it was the “McMillanites” down at Ryegate, who had the Reverend William Gibson for their pastor. He determined to hear Mr. Gibson. It was a communion Sabbath, and the preacher was unusually comforting and eloquent on this occasion. Mr. Trumbull remained until the close of the post-communion services on Monday, and then returned to Craftsbury, contented and cheered, because he had found a denomination of Christians with which he could fellowship in all his views.
In June 1807, the Reverend Mr. Gibson preached in Craftsbury in compliance with a cordial invitation extended by Colonel Crafts, Mr. Trumbull, and others. This was the first Covenanter preaching known to have been given in Craftsbury. In the spring of 1808, Mr. Trumbull and his family connected with the Covenanter congregation in Ryegate. Mr. Gibson preached his last discourse in Craftsbury on September 4, 1814. The subject of his morning lecture was part of the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, and in the afternoon he preached on the sixth verse of the same chapter.
On the following Sabbath, the Reverend Mr. Farren, the Congregational minister, argued against the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ, which Mr. Gibson had taught, and maintained the doctrine of universal atonement, which was the system known as the “Hopkinsian heresy”. This discourse of Mr. Ferren gave offence to many of his hearers and a considerable number left the communion of the Congregational Church and kept society meetings with Mr. Trumbull.
In the winter of 1815, the Reverend John Cannon, thence licentiate, preached with great acceptance, and convinced many of the impropriety of the New England custom of beginning the Sabbath on Saturday evening and ending it at sundown on the Lord’s Day.
In September 1816, the first session meeting was held at the house of Mr. Robert Trumbull, and the Craftsbury society became a regularly organized congregation. Among the first members enrolled were: Robert Trumbull, Lucy Babcock Trumbull, his wife; his children, James, Mary, Nancy, Clarissa, and his nephew, James Trumbull; his brother-in-law, John Babcock and John’s wife Elizabeth.
The society continued to enjoy the ministration of the Reverend James Milligan of Ryegate until 1833 when the members felt they were able to support a pastor themselves. In the spring of 1833, the Reverend Samuel M. Willson became the pastor at Craftsbury where the membership numbered sixty communicants.
Robert and Lucy Babcock Trumbull reared seven children to adulthood on their farm near Craftsbury in northern Vermont, where the growing season is short even during the best of years. There is no doubt that all of the children were taught to work and to endure the hardships of the pioneer life. They were also taught by precept and example to worship God and those who married also established Christian homes and remained in the membership of the Reformed Presbyterian Church.
Robert Trumbull died in 1840 in his eighty-sixth year and his body was buried in the cemetery at Craftsbury Commons, the largest of the three villages bearing the name of Craftsbury, and the one most likely to be the original village. His is the only name carved on the tombstone which has weathered badly, making the inscription difficult to read. Lucy had preceded her husband in death, dying on May 24, 1835. Her name does not appear on Robert’s tombstone though the records show she was buried in Craftsbury Cemetery. Robert’s body would certainly be interred in a grave beside Lucy’s.
Some time after the preceding material was written, a tribute to her grandfather, written by Anna Margaret Trumbull was discovered, a portion of which follows:
“Grandfather was treated as a friend and trusted ally by Governor Trumbull (Connecticut) who introduced him to George Washington. He was often sent out to intercept and drive back skirmishing parties of British sympathizers making many successful raids, but none that particularly distinguished himself.”
“He used to tell that he spent evenings and other spare time repairing the badly worn shoes of his fellow soldiers or making entirely new ones. Governor Trumbull abetted this work and furnished the material which Grandfather needed. He always had the highest praise for Governor Trumbull. “
“Grandfather was a fine specimen of physical strength, standing six feet and one inch in height and well proportioned. He never had a day’s illness in his life, with the exception of a case of smallpox acquired in camp where the toughest conditions surrounded him.”
“He died August 26, 1840, on the farm he had redeemed from the wilderness, an honored, respected and upright man.”