Ancestors

Nathan Noulton

Nathan Noulton was born on 23 May 1764. The date is in the family Bible. His birthplace and his parents are not known. The clerks who wrote him down spelled the name Nolton, Nolten and Knolton, and his son Harvey's family settled on Noulton.

He first appears at Shelburne, a hill town of Hampshire County, Massachusetts, west of the Connecticut River. It is now in Franklin County. His sister Sarah married Newton Ransom Jr. there on 5 September 1783. Three years later, on 14 December 1786, Nathan married Ariminta Baldwin at Shelburne. The pension clerks wrote her name as Amittai, Amitta and Amitte. Shelburne's printed town records do not carry the marriage. It is known from the sworn word of their son Daniel, given sixty four years later.

In 1790 the census taker at Northfield, a Connecticut River town in the same county, entered a household headed by "Nolten, Nathan". He was the only Nathan Nolten in Massachusetts that year, so the entry is probably him.

He had served in the Revolution. In June 1818, at fifty four, he applied in Albany County, New York, for a pension under the act of that year. The act of 1818 pensioned men who had served in the Continental forces. He was living then at Northumberland, in Saratoga County. His file is W.24358, entered as "Nolton, Nathan, Amittai, MA Line". His declaration of service is in the file, and its text is not known. Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War has a Nathan Knolton of Shrewsbury who was paid a bounty at Worcester in May 1782 to serve three years in the Continental Army. It also has a Nathan Knowlton in Col. Benjamin Tupper's 10th Massachusetts regiment "from May 16, 1782, 7 mos. 16 days". Nathan would have been eighteen. That soldier may be him, but nothing proves it.

His sister, by then Sarah Ransom, swore an affidavit for him in Rensselaer County on 4 November 1819. In 1820 the pension office recorded his household as "a wife Amittai aged 57 & 1 son Harvey aged 16 living at home." He drew $96 a year.

His grandson, the Rev. Levi B. Noulton, wrote in a family memoir that the family came from Massachusetts to Fort Miller Falls, on the Hudson in Saratoga County, when Harvey was very young. Fort Miller Falls is in the same corner of the county as Northumberland, where the pension found him.

He moved on once more, to Tioga County on the Pennsylvania line. He died there on 9 November 1829. The pension papers and the family Bible give the same day. His widow lived on in Tioga County until 27 March 1840.

Six children are known. Nathan, born about 1793, lived in Rensselaer County and was probably the Nathan Nolton sworn as a justice of the peace at Schaghticoke in 1828 and 1830. Daniel, about 1795, stayed in Tioga County and administered his mother's estate. Baldwin, about 1797, carried his mother's maiden name and lived in Chemung County. Justice, about 1799, lived in Rensselaer County. Ruby, about 1801, married Peter Ross of Tioga County. Harvey, the youngest, was born in December 1802 and became a justice of the peace at Turin, in Lewis County.

His grave has not been found. A William R. Nolton, who died in 1840 aged about nine, lies at Apalachin in Tioga County, and the family may have buried its dead there.

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Cite: Heirology, "Nathan Noulton (1764-1829)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/nathan-noulton-1764-1829-6679c5.