Upton Tavern Farm

        Interactive Map of 1692 Salem Village by Charles Upham                             

        The Upton tavern farm was home to generations who descended from John Upton and Eleanor Stuart of Scotland.  He was sent by Oliver Cromwell after the Battle of Dunbar to Hammersmith (Saugus IronWorks.) 

Following his indenture, he purchased land on “Wood Hill” near the Ipswich River.  It was his son Ezra and his wife, Mehitabel Goodell, who added the tavern to the farm.  It operated through the Revolution and continued until 1819.

     Eventually, the tavern farm was operated by Jesse Upton (1765-1824), and his first wife, Molly Upton, the daughter of Ebenezer Upton of Reading, Massachusetts.  They had three sons: Ebenezer (1794), Ezra (1795) and Jesse, who died young.  Mary’s two older half-brothers were musicians in Salem.  Their children, Mary’s nephews and nieces, are included in her will, although they later challenged that will in Probate Court.

After Molly died, Jesse married Eliza Wyman Wood in 1798; they had six children,  four survived to adulthood: including: Eliza (1802), George (1805),  Mary (1810) and Andrew (1812.)  Mary was called Polly after a sibling who died.

                https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/tree/162378261/family/familyview

         Jesse and both his wives were members of the First Baptist Church of Danvers.  All of the Upton children were baptized in this church.  Founded in 1781, the church preached a strong Calvinistic creed.  

        The spirit of independence and the conviction that the support of public worship should be voluntary were a distinguishing trait of Baptists.  The thirty-seven constituent members of 1793 were eleven males and twenty-six females, including Elizabeth Upton.  Four years later, the church's membership was fifty:  twenty males and thirty females.    

First Baptist Church of Danvers Celebrates its 225th Anniversary

When Mary was twelve years old, the question of woman suffrage agitated their church, the rule - a compromise - was adopted that “the sisters be allowed to vote on admission and exclusion of members, but only the brethren voted on other business, after prudent and reasonable consultation with the sisters and showing due respect to their opinions and feelings.”

The Upton family experienced two significant events about that time.  The tavern closed in 1819 and Jesse moved, by himself, to Troy, Indiana. He died there in 1824. Why did he move?  Where did Molly and her children, including twelve-year-old Mary, go following the closure of the tavern and Jesse's departure?