| Notes |
- When Charles Fisher wrote to a cousin in Palmer, MA in January 1842, he explained his family’s history through the ground around his home. His Fisher grandparents, he said, had lived and died within one hundred rods of where he lived in Victor. Both were buried in the town. For Charles, their history remained close enough to walk to. Behind that small piece of western New York lay a much longer journey—from maritime Massachusetts, through Palmer, to Cazenovia, and finally to the neighborhood that became Fishers.
His grandfather, remembered as Captain John Fisher, was reportedly born about 1742 in Boston. His exact birth and parentage remain uncertain, but his connection with the sea appears early. The published Medford marriage entry for May 27, 1762, calls him **“a Seafaring Man”** when recording his marriage to Bethiah Scolly, whose surname the family generally spells Scollay. If his approximate birth year is correct, John was about twenty when they married.
That brief description places the young husband in the maritime world around Boston. It does not identify his ships or tell us when he became a captain, but it gives his later title a credible beginning. His working life was connected to the water before the surviving records began to follow him inland.
John and Bethiah raised their children during the years of growing conflict between Britain and its American colonies. The family genealogy names John, Samuel Scollay, two daughters successively called Hannah, Robert, Deborah, and Martha. Bethiah also appears alongside her husband in a family research abstract of an October 20, 1767 Boston property conveyance. It describes John Fisher, mariner, his wife Bethia, and Hannah Scolley conveying property in Williams Court to John Greenleaf, an apothecary. The original deed remains an important record to obtain, but the abstract offers a specific connection between their family and Boston property.
Later generations remembered more than names and transactions. In a signed account written in November 1990, J. Sheldon Fisher recalled his grandfather’s stories of Captain John and Bethiah living within walking distance of Boston Common. Bethiah, he said, helped care for the household’s cow and horse. Those details survive as family recollections, giving a glimpse of the daily work behind a household remembered principally through its sea captain.
Sheldon also preserved the tradition that John participated in the **Boston Tea Party** and testified concerning the **Boston Massacre**. Neither claim has yet been established by a contemporary record securely identifying this John Fisher. They nevertheless belong in his biography as traditions the family carried forward.
The historical setting helps explain their significance. Old South Meeting House was a gathering place for debate about the Massacre and the impressment of sailors. On December 16, 1773, it hosted the great meeting preceding the destruction of the tea. The subsequent closure of Boston Harbor struck at the maritime economy upon which families such as the Fishers depended. These events describe John’s world, although they do not establish his individual role.
An additional note is the connection to other families in the area. As Capt. John's wife, Bethia Scollay was raised by her Uncle and Aunt, John and Mercy(Greenleaf) Scollay, from a young age and would have been closely associated with the children of John Mercy, one of which, Priscilla, married Major Thomas Melville, of the Tea Party fame and associated of other revolutionaries.
The Mason connection provides another tangible link. Deacon Jonathan Mason, the Boston merchant and Old South church officer associated in the research with the Sons of Liberty, owned land in Palmer. A deed dated December 17, 1794, describes land belonging to “Deacon mason of Boston” and improved by “Captain John Fisher of Palmer.” John was therefore working or improving property identified as Mason’s. Whether he occupied it as a tenant, manager, or under another arrangement remains unknown. The relationship is worth investigating, but it does not by itself prove that the men shared revolutionary activities.
By 1786, the taxpayer record places John in Palmer. The 1790 census provides another anchor: his household contained two males sixteen or older, one younger male, and three females. Only John was named, leaving the identities of the other five people uncertain.
For someone first described through his work at sea, Palmer represented a different livelihood. The records now concern taxes, land, boundaries, and improvements. His title followed him inland, even as the work visible in the documents became tied to the soil.
Two generations of John Fishers appear in these transactions. The 1793 tax-sale purchase names John Fisher, while the December 1794 conveyance to Alpheus Converse expressly names **John Fisher Jr.** as seller and mentions Captain John separately in the boundary description. The January 1795 conveyance to Judah Ferry likewise begins with John Fisher Jr. These deeds illuminate the family’s Palmer years, but they should not all be treated as the captain’s personal transactions.
Meanwhile, his children were forming households of their own. **Hannah married Hezekiah Ferry in Palmer on August 9, 1792. ** Robert married Lucinda Cleland, with the family compilation giving January 25, 1797. **Deborah married David Barrett in Palmer on January 18, 1798.** Through these marriages, the Fishers became connected with the Ferry, Cleland, and Barrett families—relationships that would remain important after some of them moved west.
By 1800, John was in Cazenovia, New York. The census preserves a revealing sequence: David Barrett immediately precedes John Fisher, and Robert Fisher begins the next page. Here were a father, his married daughter’s household, and his married son’s household enumerated together. Census order cannot prove adjoining property lines, but it strongly supports the family account of closely connected settlement.
The move probably occurred during the closing years of the 1790s. Deborah’s 1798 Palmer marriage and the 1800 Cazenovia census provide useful limits for her household’s movement, though they do not establish that John waited until the wedding or that everyone traveled together.
After the death of Deacon Johnathan Mason in 1798 property sale may have helped prompt the departure. Jonathan Mason Jr and his wife Susanna conveyed Palmer land to Jacob Converse in March 1799. Changes in the ownership or management of land John worked could have influenced his plans. For now, however, that is a possible explanation rather than a documented reason.
The family’s New York connections continued to appear in shared business. On September 1, 1810, Robert and Lucinda Fisher joined David and Deborah Barrett in selling Cazenovia property to John Leary for $1,300. Captain John was not a seller in that deed, but the transaction helps trace the households associated with him toward their next home.
Sheldon Fisher’s recollection places the family’s arrival near present-day Fishers(NY) around 1811. He described homes established by the Barretts and Fishers and a family burial ground. Charles’s much earlier letter independently confirms the essential conclusion: his Fisher grandparents spent their final years near his Victor home and were buried in the town.
John’s often-repeated death date of about 1815 remains provisional. If approximately correct, he lived into his early seventies. His son Robert’s death is placed in 1814 by the family genealogy, suggesting a difficult period of loss across two generations. The exact order of John’s and Bethiah’s deaths has not yet been established.
Captain John Fisher’s story survives through both documents and family memory. The memories preserve a sea captain connected with revolutionary Boston. The records reveal a husband and father who worked land in Palmer and moved west among his children. His grandson’s letter brings those strands back to a particular place: a home in Victor, near the ground where the Captain and Bethiah had lived, died, and become part of the family’s remembered landscape.
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Notes from Sheldon Fisher.
- Master of the Sloop Beaver II. Lost some of his property in the great Boston Fire of 1760. A child's arm chair and a matching adults chair were saved and is still in the family (2001-Shelton Fisher).
[The record of the Sloop Beaver as Capt John's ship may be confusion or ironic as one of the ships boarded during the Boston Tea Party was the Beaver].
The following was also written, however, John did not die in the 1780's at sea he was in fact living in Victor in 1810.
- If you are attacked by a would-be assassin and your life is saved by the providential hand of a passing stranger, just give the man a pipe he can smoke — and if it's your best smoker to boot, he'll cherish it all of his days and pass it on to posterity. That's what happened to Capt. John Fisher, 18th Century tea trader, enroute to China, who stopped in India for an extra cargo. While witnessing a procession in honor of an Indian prince, he quickly turned the hand of a ruffian who tried to murder the potentate. So pleased was his majesty that he bestowed upon the captain his favorite pipe. Fifteen inches long, with a stem of carved horn, wood and ivory, and a porcelain bowl in the form of a turbaned head, the pipe has been handed down from one generation to another, finally reaching its present owner, J. Sheldon Fisher, of Fishers, N. Y., great-great, great-grandson of Capt. John. The adventuresome seafarer lived in Boston, overlooking the Common and according to family tradition, participated in a certain famous tea party. As the boxes were broken open, on that historic occasion, some of the tea spilled into the captain's boots. Arriving home from the "party," he and his wife, Mary, so the story goes, set aside their patriotic fervor, for the moment and stole into the attic for a quiet (and secret) cup of tea. Soon after Capt. Fisher set forth on a long voyage which proved to be his last. He is believed to have perished at the hands of Portuguese pirates upon whom he had sworn vengeance for a previous unfortunate encounter. His son Robert brought his family overland to the Irondequoit Valley In 1811 and died shortly after, when his son Charles became the head of the family, thus firmly fixing the name of Fisher's to the settlement where he had made his home.
ROCHESTER TIMES-UNION, THURSDAY EVENING, MAY 15, 1941, Chats On Antiques, By JOAN LYNN SCHILD
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Abt 1742 - Abt 1815 (~ 73 years)
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