My cousin Stephen Hibbard gave me a family genealogy of the Hibbards in America from the mid-1600s to 1900. There I found family stories. Nothing long, just a few lines or a page written when folks took the time to record a noteworthy event or person.
For instance on page 97 Robert Hibbard, a minister of the Methodist Episcopalian Church and his horse crossed a river in an open scow. The horse “became uneasy and stamped a hole through the bottom of the boat.” Robert fell off the horse and drowned.
The Rev. Ithamar Hibbard, Brigade Chaplain of Col. Herrick’s Regiment, fared much better while retreating from Fort Ticonderoga during the Revolutionary War. He carried both his and his ill servant’s gear while crossing the floating bridge. Unfortunately General St Clair’s horse knocked him into the water. Ithamar managed to get back onto the bridge with all the gear except his musket. This writer of hymns, an uncompromising Whig, whom Ethan Allen sought out for counsel, warrants a page in the book that mostly lists names, birth dates and sometimes death dates.
Few women earned more than their birth, marriage and death. The wife of Ebenezer Hibbard, Hannah Hagan Hibbard, lived to be 101 years old. Her eight children, who all attended her funeral, ranged from 52-72 years old at the time of her death. Sybil Hibbard, widow of a Methodist preacher, received more than half a page. She raised her family of eight sons on $40 per year in the early 1800s. This “noble-minded woman had to battle with the hardships and privations connected with a scanty purse and eight lubberly, hungry boys. She did it artfully, energetically and successfully….and enjoyed the truth of Prov. 31:28. Her children rise up to call her blessed.”
According to the Hibbard genealogy, many served as pastors and deacons from a variety of churches: Episcopal, Methodist, Baptist, Congregationalist. Additionally it appears (reading between the lines) that one became a Mormon, “Fanny Hibbard who had a daughter in Nauvoo, Illinois (where Joseph Smith died), and married Richmond in 1863 in Utah. Their children were born in Salt Lake City.
Seeing all the men who served in the Revolutionary War as soldiers, fifers, chaplains, etc. I might qualify for the DAR (Daughters of the Revolutionary War). Timothy Hibbard of Woodstock, Conn. served as a “fifer through the War of the Revolution.” He was a prisoner of war for nine months in England, until the war ended. Then he was a farmer and deacon.
While many Hibbards fought for independence, John Hibbard’s family fled to Canada because they were sympathetic with England.
Families were generally large. The book notes that Isaac V.V. Hibbard, at 70 years old, built a new house in1829. When completed he noted, “We had a house warming with 82 cousins, all in good circumstances and high glee. And now where are they? Scattered to the four corners of the earth, we hope to honor the good name of their fathers.”
Harry Hibbard scattered to California where he joined the Gold Rush of 1849 and the Indians shot his son Benjamin.
Frederick Hibbard did not seek buried treasure to get rich. He served as master of a packet of ships between London and New York before he worked with Grinnel, Minturn & Co. for 35 years. He rose from the lowest position to command and own the business. He”acquired a handsome fortune. In 1859 he bequeathed $20,000 to the Brooklyn Hospital,” an equivalent today of $745,000.
Whether or not the hospital remembers his legacy, his generosity warranted a sentence in the family genealogy which I read some 170 years later, thanks to my cousin’s generous gift to me.