Name: Charity Corson97 
   Born: 1780s
  Place: Cape May, New Jersey
   Died: 
 Buried: 

Charity had five children; two with her first husband, a Mr Stites, and three with John Wood.

Following the Benajahs

This "map" may be a good starting point to the understanding of Charity Corson's family.

                Benajah Tomson
                 (1720-1780)
                      |
             Christianna Thompson
                (c1760-1841)
                      |
      --------------------------------------
      |               |                    |
Benejah Corson    Eli Corson        Charity Corson
  (-1827)             |                    |
                Benejeh Corson        John Wood
                m Mary Sparks          (c1820-)
                                           |
                                    Benajah G Wood
                                       (c1858-)

The latest record I can find for Charity is from the 1835 tax duplicate for Columbiana twp, Hamilton county, Ohio. There is a John C Wood of that township in the census for 1840 but he appears to have been born in the 1810s, too old to have been Charity's son. However, the following entry for the 1840 census is likely him.

    1840  >  OHIO  >  CLARK  >  HARMONY
    Series: M704  Roll: 383  Page: 63

                Males         Females
    John Wood   0000100000000 00010000100000

One would want to guess that the woman aged 50-60 is Charity. The age is right. J W Fisk says in his memoirs that John (Jr) moved to Marion county, Iowa in 1844 "with his mother's family." I find him on the 1850 census for that county with a young family and a 62 year-old woman name Lurena Wood, birthplace not listed. J W says that he knew his grandmother as a child--and he lived in Marion county most of his life--but we know her name was Charity, not Lurena. I'm not sure how to interpret these findings. On the other hand, this woman could have been John's relative from his father's side of the family--his father's spinster sister or widowed sister-in-law.

Fisk goes on to say in his memoirs that his grandmother's maiden name was Carson,¹ that she was born in Cape May, New Jersey during the 1770s and that she first married a Captain Stites.⁹⁷ The somewhat famous Captain (sometimes seen as Major) Benjamin Stites died in Ohio in 1804. He could not have been Charity's first husband as her first child, Julia A Stites, was not born until 1815. This marriage in Cape May is a tantalizing clue:

George Stites & Charity Corson, 15 Nov 1806

It's certainly a worthy lead. However, her grandson (Fisk), states specifically that his grandparents married in Ohio--and there were other Charity Corsons in Cape May. In any event, on 20 Dec 1818 the widow Charity Stites married John Wood in Clark County, Ohio.

Further speaking about his grandmother, Fisk says:

She saw General Washington many times as he was at their house often. Her father was a commissioned officer under General Stark.² She had moulded bullets many times all night to supply the soldiers rifles...Grandmother's people, that is the male element, were mostly military men. They emigrated together with quite a number of other families to Ohio in an early day. There being no defined roads they were forced to move with pack horses and finally settled in what is now Clark County, Ohio, then a stark howling wilderness.

I can find no evidence of a commissioned officer by the name of Corson in Washington's army. However, read on.

Charity's family, with husband John Wood as the head of household, appears in Harmony township, Clark county, Ohio on the 1820 census. The second and third entries on the 1830 census for the same township are as follows:

    Harmony Twp, Clark Co OH
    Series: M19  Roll: 128  Page: 100

                        Males         Females
    Christianna Corson  0000100000000 0010000010000
    Charity Wood        0000000000000 0100001000000

If this is as it appears, it would be a fabulous find. John Wood was presumably dead by 1830. The young female in Charity's home listed as 5-10 years old would have been her daughter, Araminta, the future wife of Edward Curtis Fisk. Charity's age is given as 40-50. If accurate, she'd have been born in the 1780s--not necessarily too late to have been a bullet maker for Washington's army. But what of the entry above hers? Could this have been Charity's mother and the true source of the stories? Christianna, according to the census, would have been born in the 1760s. Just right. And Charity's age makes a lot more sense in context to her marriage to John in 1818. Furthermore, she would have been old enough to have married George Stites in 1808. Could J W Fisk have confused the stories about his great-grandmother, thinking they were about his grandmother? It seems highly plausible. This would also mean that the man who served under General Stark could have been someone other than a Corson.

A cursory search on the net shows a Christianna Thompson married to Eli Corson. She was born in 1755, Cape May, NJ and died 1841 in Auglaize, Allen Co., Ohio.³ Although the birth year and place of death are not a perfect match, it's close enough to consider that these are the same people, particular in light of Fisk's story.⁴

Eli and Christianna Corson had several children. According to Kathleen Wolfe's website,⁵ their son "Benajah died without wife or children. His will lists brothers and sisters as Aquilla, John, Eli, Ruth (Baldwin), Charity (Wood), Letty (Smith), and Angelina (Warwick) deceased." [Will Clark Co OH pg 232]. The pieces are coming together.

So who was the commissioned officer that J W Fisk believed he was descended from? There was a Captain-Lieutenant Thompson who served in New Jersey. He died in 1780 leading 250 men against the British. So far, I've seen nothing to tell us this man's first name nor do I have any real evidence that's he;s in any way related. And there's also this story from the "Military Journal of the American Revolution", Dr James Thacher's personal account of his years serving in Washington's army:

p 184

January 1st, 1780.-A new year commences, but brings no relief to the sufferings and privations of our army. Our canvas covering affords but a miserable security from storms of rain and snow, and a great scarcity of provisions still prevails, and its effects are felt even at head-quarters, as appears by the following anecdote: "We have nothing but the rations to cook, sir," said Mrs. Thomson, a very worthy Irish woman and house-keeper to General Washington." - "Well, Mrs. Thomson, you must then cook the rations, for I have not a farthing to give you." - "If you please, sir, let one of the gentlemen give me an order for six bushels of salt."- " Six bushels of salt! for what?" - "To preserve the fresh beef, sir." One of the aids gave the order, and the next day his excellency's table was amply provided. Mrs. Thomson was sent for, and told that she had done very wrong to expend her own money, for it was not known when she could be repaid. "I owe you," said his excellency, "too much already to permit the debt being increased, and our situation is not at this moment such as to induce very sanguine hope." - "Dear sir," said the good old lady, "it is always darkest Just before day-light, and I hope your excellency will forgive me for bartering the salt for other necessaries which are now on the table."

I have no proof that Mrs Thomson was connected in any way to Christianna's family. In fact, if the circulating genealogies are true, her mother died in 1778. (Benajah married a second time to an Elizabeth Peters, 4 Dec 1778.) In any event, this story dovetails so nicely with Fisk's account that it's certainly worth trying to ascertain a more complete identity for this woman.

If Eli Corson and Christianna Thomson were Charity's parents, she fits easily into the traditional Corson genealogy, although the following lineage, as far as I can tell, does not indicate a Mayflower descent as Fisk claimed. But Daniel Perrin, "The Huguenot" of Staten Island, is certainly an ancestor worthy of the pioneering spirits of Christianna (Thomson) Corson, daughter Charity (Corson) Wood and granddaughter Araminta (Wood) Fisk. A great deal has been written and extensive genealogies compiled about the Perrins. (Elizabeth, below, was Daniel's second wife.) And note that Charity's grandfather, Benajah Tomson, died in 1780, the same year that Captain-Lieutenant Thompson was killed. But the story gets even more interesting. According to legend, Benajah's wife's birth name was Toudl-Hkiligo (translates to "Snowflower") and is said to have been the sister of Na-Mahomie (known as "King Nummy"), chief of the Unalachtigo branch of the Leni-lenape, an Algonquian (Delaware Indian) tribe.

     79. Charity CORSON (1780s-)

    158. Eli CORSON (1757-1813)
    159. Christianna THOMPSON (-1841)

    316. Jacob CORSON Jr (1730-1803)
    317. Charity STILLWELL (1736-)
    318. Benajah TOMSON (1720-1780)
    319. Prudence ELDREDGE (1756-1778)

    632. Jacob CORSON Sr (c1686-1735/36)
    633. Naomi
    634. Nicholas STILLWELL (1714-1771)
    635. Sara HAND (1718-1776)

   1264. Jan CARSTENSEN (c1660-)
   1265. Maria Elias DAAS
   1268. John STILLWELL Jr (c1694-1714)
   1270. George HAND

   2528. Carsten JANSEN (1634-)
   2529. Barbara
   2530. Elias DAAS
   2536. John STILLWELL (1681-1753)
   2537. Elizabeth PERRIN
   2540. Thomas HAND
   2541. Katherine STUBBS

   5072. William STILLWELL (1648-)
   5073. Hannah
   5074. Daniel PERRIN (1642-1719)
   5075. Elizabeth
   5080. John HAND (1611-c1660)
   5081. Elizabeth GRANSDEN (1613-)

  10144. Nicholas STILLWELL (-1671)
  10145. Abigail HOPTON (1610-)
  10148. Pierre PERRIN (1615-)
  10149. Andrienne JUBRIL (1617/18-)
  10160. John HAND (1580-)
  10161. Joan SIMMONS
  10162. Henry GRANSDEN (1562-1623)

  20290. Sir Robert HOPTON
  20298. Jean JUBRIL (c1595-)
  20299. Juvine LOMBARD (c1596-)
  20326. William GRANSDEN
  20327. Ann

Finally, there's very active interest in the Corson Surname DNA Project. The DNA evidence combined with the genealogical record substantiates to a large degree the Corson lineage. See the article on Eli Corson for more information.