Ancestors

Caleb Fobes Jr.

Caleb Fobes the younger was born on 8 January 1784 at Lyme, in Grafton County, New Hampshire. The date comes from his Find a Grave memorial. His father was Caleb Fobes, a Bridgewater man who had married Susanna Keith in 1776 and taken his family north to Lyme. They went with a migration. The Rev. William Conant of Bridgewater became Lyme's first minister in 1773, and within ten years some thirty Bridgewater families had followed him up the Connecticut River.

The Lyme records call him "Caleb Fobes Junr", which is how the town told him from his father. On 17 November 1806 he bought eleven acres at the vendue of Caleb Alden's estate, at $7.50 an acre. A vendue was a public auction, here the sale of a dead man's land. In 1807 and 1808 he was one of the claimants on the insolvent estate of William Conant 2d, along with his father, a Solomon Fobes and "Stella Fobes now Conant", probably his brother and sister. On 6 October 1815 he signed as witness to the deed by which his father and mother sold eighteen acres at Lyme to Isaac W. Perkins. The census of 1810 finds two Caleb Fobes households at Lime, and these two men are the likeliest pair.

A Caleb Fobes later held land in Oswego County, New York. He was assessed there in 1835 and again in 1851, and an 1855 deed in the town of Parish bounds on "land in possession of Caleb Fobes". Adna Fobes lived at Parish. The family of Hannah Snow, the first wife of Solomon Forbes, came to Michigan from Oswego County. Whether the Oswego Caleb is this man is probable, not proved.

By early 1838 he was in Kalamazoo County, Michigan. On 8 February 1838 the Baptist Church in Kalamazoo elected its first five trustees, and he was one of them, for a term of three years. He signed the record as moderator, the man who chaired the meeting.

In the census of 1850 he was living at Oshtemo, aged 67 and born in Connecticut by the enumerator's entry. He was in the household of Nathan Fobes, 40, born in New Hampshire. Nathan had been born at Lime in 1811. The household next door was Solomon Forbes's. The census gives no relationships.

Find a Grave links him to a wife, Sarah Barry Sumner, 1782-1849, and to a daughter, Susan Keith Forbes, later Harvey, 1819-1902. Susanna Keith was his mother's name. The memorial adds a note that cites nothing: "Wife was Abigail Conant, burial unknown. Married Iona Gibson 17 Nov 1850 Kalamazoo, Michigan." None of the three marriages has been found in a record, so the mother of his children is not known.

He died at Oshtemo on 13 April 1857 and is buried in Liberty Street Cemetery at Alamo, under a small granite block that reads "CALEB FORBES 1784-1857". Solomon Forbes lies in the same cemetery.

No record names him as the father of Solomon Forbes, and Solomon's Michigan death record of 1896 names no parents. The case rests on five things. He was 32 when Solomon was born. He was the younger Caleb at Lyme, in the county where Solomon was born in 1816. In 1850 he was living with Nathan Fobes, next door to Solomon. He is buried in Solomon's cemetery. And his daughter Susan carried his mother's name. The probate of his estate at Kalamazoo in 1857, or Solomon's marriage record of 1837, would settle it.

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Cite: Heirology, "Caleb Fobes Jr. (1784-1857)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/caleb-fobes-jr-1784-1857-3b8103.