The Topsham Generations

Third great grandfather Thomas Gelston Sandford was born in Portland, Maine in 1781, the middle of seven children of Thomas and Jerusha Gelston Sandford.  He was married at age 32 to Maria Halsey Head from Warren, Maine.  The 1783 marriage notice cites Thomas Gelston as a resident of Topsham (the ‘h’ is silent), so he must have moved to Topsham sometime between coming of age and marrying Maria, say between 1800 and 1813.  His father Thomas died in 1811 in Portland, and this may have played a role in the timing.

Topsham is a small town, even today.  You only have to look at a map to get a good sense of why it exists.  Located near the confluence of two major navigable rivers, the Androscoggin to the south, flowing eastward through from the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and the Kennebec River to the north, originating near Québec and flowing southward through Augusta.  Thirty miles north of Portland (originally named Falmouth), Topsham is a logical base camp for a population expanding north from Massachusetts looking for new opportunities on the frontier.  It sits right between all those trees and all that water, and was in fact a shipbuilding center from its origins, which is probably why the ship-owning Sandford family wound up there.  

The railroad didn’t come through from Portland until 1851, so for Thomas Gelston and the next two generations, travel from Portland to Topsham must have been by boat.

The Sandford house in Topsham sits atop a hill overlooking the Androscoggin river.  Built in 1809, it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and has been owned by several prominent Topsham citizens.   Thomas Gelston Sandford appears to have been its second owner. 

Maine achieved statehood in 1820.  As half of the Missouri compromise, Maine was and remains staunchly proud of its anti-slavery stance, balancing the pro-slavery position of Missouri which achieved statehood at about the same time.  Topsham was a part of the underground railroad, a last stop on the coast before proceeding inland towards Canada.  The town history boasts of a series of tunnels between safe houses, some of which must have been within a quarter mile of the Thomas Gelston homestead.

Like his father, Thomas Gelston Sandford kept his own log book documenting business transactions throughout his life.  Like his father’s, Thomas Gelstons’s book is preserved by the Maine Historical Society.

Thomas Gelston and Maria Sandford had seven children between 1814 and 1829, the eldest James Head Sandford, our 2nd grandfather.

Family life in Topsham must have been very difficult.  The families of both Thomas Gelston Sandford and James Head Sandford suffered spates of early death that must have required a great deal of shuffling among families and siblings to care for young children who had lost their parents.  Maria died at the age of 35, in 1831.  Thomas Gelston would die a year later, at the age of 51 when James Head, the oldest of seven, was only 18 years old.  

In a previous post, I mentioned that there was at least one other Sandford branch from Long Island living in Topsham at the same time as our branch.  John Sandford was a cousin of fourth great grandfather Thomas Sandford of Portland, John being eight years younger than Thomas.  He was the son of Captain John Sandford, a member of the First Regiment of Minute Men of Suffolk County, Long Island, who is recorded to have been one of the first Southampton signatories of the 1775 Articles of Association pledging loyalty to the Colonies.  John the son moved from Southhampton to Topsham in 1776, leapfrogging his cousin Thomas who had moved to Portland 8 years earlier.  When Thomas Gelston Sandford arrived in Topsham between 1800 and 1813, the John Sandford branch had already been there for 25-35 years.  

As various Sandford children lost parents at early ages in the first half of the 1800s, the existence of two separate Sandford clans perhaps allowed the families to rely on each other to look after their children.

James Head Sandford married Dorothy Burton in 1837 when he was 23.   They had two children, our great grandfather Edward T. and his twin brother James, in 1840.  Dorothy also died young at age 30 in 1847 when the twins were only seven.  

James Head remarried after Dorothy’s death to Arabella Pierce.  They had a son, George, Edward Thomas’ half brother in 1850.   They would resettle in Minnesota after Edward Thomas had set out on his own.  The 1870 census shows James, Arabella, and George living in Wabasha Minnesota, 50 miles southeast of Saint Paul on the Wisconsin border (coincidentally, just 75 miles from Mankato). James is listed as a farmer in this census. James and son George would eventually move to southern California.  James died in 1898 and is buried in Corona–he probably lived with his son Edward T and grandson Joe in his final years.  George would settle in the Long Beach area, and started a parallel branch of Sandfords that would be in that region for several generations, just a few miles away from the family of Earl and Saada Sandford Beck, Edward Thomas’s oldest daughter.  Many of George Sandford’s descendants eventually migrated to the San Diego area.

There does not seem to be much to have kept Edward T. in Topsham.  In Joe Sandford’s narrative of his father’s life he opens with:

His uncle Thomas Sandford owned a fleet of clipper ships that sailed the seven seas.  The opening of the Civil War in the United States found father in Chinese waters on one of these ships serving as First Officer.

Joe Sandford, 1966

This Thomas Sandford is most likely Thomas H Sandford, James Head Sandford’s brother, two years younger, although were Thomas Sandfords everywhere and it could possibly be a distant uncle, even one from John Sandford’s clan.  

Summarizing, Edward T. Sandford was born in 1840 and lost his mother in 1847 at age 7.  His father remarried quickly and had son George, Edward T’s half brother, in 1850.  Somewhere around 1860 Edward T. was already a First Officer on his uncle’s ship in the waters near China.  He got word of the Civil War and decided he wanted to be part of that. Much more to come on the life of Edward Thomas Sandford in future posts.

Topsham’s Riverview Cemetery sits on a hilltop overlooking the Androscoggin River, a quarter mile down the road from the Thomas Gelston Sandford house.  Near the entrance is a family plot which includes the graves of Thomas Gelston Sandford, his wife Maria, and James’ wife Dorothy.  (James is buried in Corona.)  Other Sandfords can be found nearby and it would take a lot of research to sort out everyone from the two Sandford branches.  Next to Dorothy is the grave of James’ younger brother William Horvey Sandford, 1819-1827.