MARY LEWIS
(Here is the best information we have on the two Mary Lewis'. If you have any different information, please let me know.)Mary Lewis , grand daughter of Running Deer and husband of Sylvanus Hulet, was a dark-eyed dark-haired girl. Her mother, perhaps Jane, was even darker, half Indian, who married Francis Lewis. Jane's mother was Running Deer, a Mohawk Indian, who married a white man known as Squaw Man.
Mary was born April 3, 1763 in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, the far western county next to New York. The Mohawk village of her grandmother was in New York. Mary married Sylvanus Hulet, and with their children they moved to Portage County, Ohio. There Sylvanus died in 1824, and there most of the family joined the Mormon church a few years later. With the church, Mary and several of her children moved to Missouri, and amid the persecution Mary died in 1835 and was buried there.
Another Mary Lewis was born April 5, 1761, in Pepperrell, Middlesex, Massachusetts (near Boston) to Jonathan Lewis and Persis Crosby. Jonathan was born April 10, 1731 in Massachusetts, to Benjamin and Elizabeth Jacquith Lewis, and Persis was born August 9, 1733, also in eastern Massachusetts, to Lt Simon and Abigail Kidder Crosby. This Mary Lewis married Elijah Noyes, son of Enoch and Elizabeth Chute Noyes, in 1784. The Noyes family lived in New Hampshire, just across the state line from Pepperrell. Mary and Elijah were having children at the same time that Mary and Sylvanus were, but lived across the state, 70 miles away.
Both Mary Lewis' have been mixed up in the family genealogy and in the church records. The New.FamilySearch has hundreds of submissions, many of which mix up parts of the two families, and will be difficult to get entirely correct.
January 31, 1966
Hulet Family Newsletter
By Orville Cox DayDear Cousins,
No, I cannot believe that Mary Lewis, daughter of Jonathan, is our Mary Lewis. There are many reasons for this.
- To find a man’s wife, you follow his travels. I have never heard of a road from Lee to Pepperell by 1786. The easiest way to get there would be to go south from Lee to the coast by ship to Boston, then 70 miles by boat and road to Pepperell. I cannot learn that Sylvanus ever made that trip, but definitely Sylvanus was in Albany County in 1777-78 at age 19-20 and it was only 30 miles from Lee to Albany County.
- I cannot find the least indication that any of Mary Lewis’ of Pepperell had Indian progenitors. But, hundreds of white men in Albany County married Mohawk Indian girls.
- If my memory serves, the vital records of the town states definitely that Elijah Noyes married Mary, daughter of Jonathan Lewis. I investigated the possibility that Elijah died shortly after his marriage, but he did not.
- So many mistakes are made by some doing research. Archibald F. Bennett was such a dependable genealogist. He printed in the Utah Genealogical Magazine that Elijah Noyes and Sylvanus Hulet were having children during the same period of years… Elijah and “his wife, Mary Lewis”.
- There was a well-traveled road in 1786 from Lee to Albany… in fact two often traveled highways. One was used for 180 years from Lee to Lake Champlain, another from Lee to the Hudson River and by boat to Albany.
- D.L. Jacobus, the best genealogist of all, stated that almost never did any White Man marry a New England Indian woman, but so many married Mohawk Indians.
- So many researchers are prone to mistakes. Please forgive me.
Sylvanus was released from the Army in Albany County after Bourgoyne surrendered, after October 20, 1777. O.C.
After 71 years, since mother Euphrasia told me our 7th mother back was an Indian:
- Euphrasia
- Elvira
- Rhoda
- Mary Lewis Hulet
- ¼ Indian
- ½ Indian
- Running Deer (Josnorum Scoenonti)
With love, your cousin Orville Cox Day.
The Lord surely will bless you for the good work you are doing. O.C.D.
PITCH PINE TALES
Reference: “Pitch Pine Tales”, by Howard R. Driggs, son of Rosalie, daughter of Emeline Whiting, first wife of F. Walter Cox of Manti, Sanpete County, Utah.
Sally Hulet, who later married Elisha Whiting Jr. was the oldest child of Mary Lewis and Sylvanus Hulet. Sally was taken to visit her Indian relatives. This would be around 1800, when Sally was 13 years old. They traveled northwest from Lee in Berkshire County in western Massachusetts about 50 miles to Albany, New York, then west, up the Mohawk River Valley to the Indian village. Running Deer, her grandmother was then dead.
About 1906, Howard R. Driggs, at the Cox Reunion, asked each one of the older Coxes still alive to write about their pioneer experiences. Howard is now dead.
His grandmother, Emeline Whiting Cox told him how her mother Sally had been taken to visit her Indian relatives. Emeline remembered the name in English, “Running Deer”, but had forgotten it’s Mohawk equivalent. Probably we can find it.
These older relatives, aunts, wrote their stories. After Howard died, his nephew Clare Christensen (son of Maud Driggs) got a box of Howard’s papers. Clare also went to Manti for more pioneer manuscripts.
From a Cox/Tuttle School Teacher cousin in Nephi, Clare got another box of manuscripts. He is now writing a Cox history.
In 1814, the Hulets sold out in Lee, Massachusetts and moved to Nelson, Ohio.
I hope Running Deer’s temple work can be done. I wish every one of the descendants of Walter Cox of Fairview could learn about Running Deer. The Book of Mormon is our book.
How many of us have hunted and hunted for the ancestry of Mary Lewis!
JOSNORUM SCOENONTI or RUNNING DEER
Cousin Howard R. Driggs was born about 1877, a son of Rosalie Cox Driggs of Pleasant Grove, Utah, daughter of F. Walter Cox of Manti, Utah.
Around 1900, Howard was much interested in family history. At a reunion, he assigned to each aunt to write her pioneer memories. Several copies of each one have been typed since the aunts died.
Later, Howard spent his time on Utah and Western History.
After Howard’s death, his young second wife Margaret looked over his stacks of papers and books and manuscripts. She gave a lot of them to cousin Clare Christensen in American Fork.
Clare is a son of Howard’s sister, Maud Driggs Christensen. He has gathered up so many of these old manuscripts and is writing a Cox history and trying so carefully to get dates and places accurate.
He figures that when grandfather Orville S. Cox was endowed in the Nauvoo Temple in January or February, 1846, they recorded the place where he was born.
In Manti, aunt Ada hired Peter Poulsen to keep the Cox and Mills temple books for the family and he spelled the town wrong, making it the wrong town, many miles… 50 or 75 or 100, away from where the Coxes lived.
Clare phoned me as to who could look up grandpa’s endowment record. I told him I thought you would know how best of any cousin. He asked me if I would write you and ask you to please find it for us… Nauvoo Temple Record, Endowments.
Uncle F. Walter Cox died around 1878 or later. Afterward, his first wife, aunt Emeline Whiting Cox visited a lot with her daughter Rosalie Cox Driggs in Pleasant Grove. She told the Driggs cousins ‘til she died in 1896, many true stories about every family history.
Howard printed many books. In a book for children, age ten, “Pitch Pine Tales”, he put the name in English of our 5th great grandmother, Running Deer.
I wrote to Utah Representative Burton in Washington, D.C. and he looked up her Indian name in the Indian Dictionary, Josnorum Scoenonti. (She was baptized in the temple 15 September 1966 and endowed 2 February 1967).
It will be recorded in the archives [LEWIS] Josnorum Scoenanti or Running Deer, born C 1682 in Mohawk Village, Mohawk River Valley, Northern New York, married a White Man C 1700. (Perhaps 26,000 descendants).
We have arranged to have her temple work done.
JOHN HULET FAMILY
The John Hulet family moved from Killingly to Lee in 1760. Sylvanus Hulet moved from Lee to Nelson in 1814. He made application for a Revolutionary soldier’s pension on 14 June 1814 and said his wife was age 57. The application was revised 8 August 1820 and granted. For 4 years she received $16 per month. He served in two campaigns, against Burgoyne in 1777 and against Arnold in 1780. We have not yet found the parents of Mary Lewis. Some one said she was part Mohawk Indian. The Mohawks lived west of Albany, New York. When asked how much Indian blood he had, Sylvanus answered “not one drop”.
The Hulets moved from Nelson, Ohio to Jackson County, Missouri around 1831 and there Mary Hulet West died. She left 2 little girls. Her husband lived near Nauvoo until 1846.
When mobs drove Sally Hulet and her husband from Nauvoo, they died in Mt. Pisgah, Iowa. Two of their 12 children came to Utah: Edwin Whiting to Manti, Utah in 1849 and to Springville, Utah in 1860; Emeline Whiting Cox came to Manti, Utah in 1852.
Charles Hulet moved to Springville in 1850. Charlotte was mother of the “Cornshock Baby”. Rhoda had two children: Elvira, who reached Utah in 1847 and lived in Manti and Fairview, Utah; Fred was a soldier in the Civil War and had no grandchildren. Francis was in the Mormon Battalion but lived in the East. Sylvester was a lieutenant in the Mormon Battalion. He lived in Manti and had no children.
O.C. Day
[Note: The names O.C.Day used above can be found in the Family Tree tab on this web site.]
LETTER FROM HANNAH BIRD MENDENHALL
Springville, Utah, March 1933
“I had a letter from some of uncle Chauncy’s (Whiting) grandchildren (in Minnesota) and they said that Sally Hulet, our grandmother came from an Indian grandparent. She, mother, said many times she has heard of her father telling of his mother relating to the children, of the Indian blood they had in their veins. Sally Hulet was a very dark woman, black hair and many of the Whitings have traits of character that would indicate the blood.”