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Family
Marriage: Children:
  1. George Foster: Birth: 8 Dec 1831 in Pendleton, Anderson, South Carolina. Death: 9 Apr 1832 in of, , Georgia

  2. Catherine Stokes Foster: Birth: 8 Sep 1834 in Fort Covington, Franklin, New York. Death: 13 Jul 1890

  3. Martha Jane Foster: Birth: 23 Sep 1837 in Constableville, Oneida, New York. Death: 16 Mar 1844

  4. Elizabeth Leavitt Foster: Birth: 5 Mar 1840 in Constableville, Oneida, New York.

  5. Sarah Bancroft Foster: Birth: 14 Nov 1842 in Constableville, Oneida, New York. Death: 4 Jul 1929

  6. Marian Ashley Foster: Birth: 12 May 1846 in Cambridgeport, Middlesex, Massachusetts. Death: 13 Nov 1936 in Wappingers Falls, Dutchess, New York


Notes
a. Note:   Aaron Foster's father - a Quaker. Hillsboro, N.H. Dorothy Ashley - mother of Dorothy Ashley Leavitt. D.A. = born in Old Deerfield of Jonathan Ashley - a lawyer - son of Jonathan - a loyalist clergyman. D. Ashley m. Roswell Leavitt, M.D. of Coprnish, N.H. Roger Leavitt his brother - a farmer - moved to (Heath)which once included Charlemont. Aaron Foster went to Dartmouth and Andover Seminary where he conceived with Boughton the idea of Home Miss. Society driving back to Andover from a meeting. He went out as a home missionary to Pendleton, South Carolina. He drove in a buggy with a white horse. Jonathan Leavitt went to Dartmouth and met Aaron Foster, who visited him from college and lost his heart to Dorothy Ashley and wanted to marry her daughter Dorothy Leavitt. She was 11 years when he first knew her. He drove up from the South to marry her when she was 20 or 21. Driving to Savannah once his horse was struck by lightning. A third brother to Roswell and Roger Leavitt lived in Savannah. This brother read about the event in the paper and told him his suit was not hopeless so he came north and won her. George Foster was six (months or weeks) old when they started north on account of slavery antagonism and was buried on the banks of the Savannah River. They lived in Fort Covington, N.Y., near Canada, on a farm which he bought. He had always indigestion. Rented the farm always. Went to Plymouth, Mass. Health bad - moved to Charlemont - on invitation of Hooker and Hart Leavitt- to parsonage with $400 salary and 5 acres with help of farmer. Cut wood for his health. Catherine Stokes Foster Martha Jane - died when 6 yrs. Elizabeth Leavitt Sarah Bancroft Marion Ashley. b. in Cambridgeport, Mass. at Uncle George Beckwit(hs)-who had married Martha Leavitt while Aaron Foster was in Plymouth. Moved to Charlemont when M. was three - 1849. Stayed at Smiths - 3 bachelors + 3 old maids next to Parsonage. Parsonage across brook from Smiths - East of church - next came Smiths and next Parsonage. COMMENT: The above is from a handwritten account in an old notebook belonging to the Rev. Maxwell W. Rice. As most everything in this notebook is from 1921 - 1929 I assume this also was written in this time period. From its form it looks like notes taken hurriedly during a conversation. I didn't transcribe it verbatim, but completed sentences and added words to make it more readable, but I believe I have done this without changing the meaning. Only the first part is transcribed here. The rest concerns the Leavitt family and will be added to the database under the appropriate names. The source of this information isn't given, but was probably one of the Leavitts or else his mother, Marion Ashley Foster Rice. COMMENT: The following is transcribed from "The Home Missionary," date unknown, found pasted in an old scrapbook of Rev. Maxwell W. Rice's. It was written by Elizabeth Foster Kelsey about Aaron Foster. Aaron Foster was born in Hillsboro, New Hampshire, in 1794. He fitted for college at Kimball, Union Academy, and graduated from Dartmouth in 1822 and from Andover Seminary in 1825. In the autumn of that year he entered the service of the American Home Missionary Society, in whose creation he had so honorable a part, and was one of its first missionaries, sailing for South Carolina, where he ministered to two churches, Lawrence and Abbeville, forty miles apart. The third year, Pendleton being added to his charge, he rode sixty miles from end to end of his parish. In 1829 he rode north in company with his parishioner, Vice-President John C. Calhoun. From Philadelphia ha writes: "My average has been a little more than fifty miles per day and my horse is fulll of life." Purchasing a covered buggy in Boston he drove to Cornish, New Hampshire, and on August 12th, married Dorothy Ashley Leavitt. Their wedding journey was a drive of six weeks with this same horse to their parish in Pendleton, South Carolina. In 1832 they returned North. In connection with that event Mr. Foster writes: We left the South after a residence of seven years, coming away from the midst of more tears than I have ever seen on any other occasion at the pareting of pastor and people. Eighteen slaves were received into the church on the last Sabbath. My influence there was much broader than it has been any place in the North, and I am reconciled at the idea of not having spent the ministry of my life there, only when I consider the condition of slavery in which to leave my children." His health being greatly impaired he went on a farm in Northern New York, but directly continued his ministry in Fort Covington and Constable. After ten years he went to the Robinson church in Plymouth, Massachusetts, where the last twenty-two years of his long ministry of fourty-four years were passed. Here he was known as the beloved "Father Foster" of all Franklin County. In 1851 he was sent by the American Peace society as delegate to the World's Peace Congress in London. In 1855 he was sent to Boston to the convention called to amend the constitution of the state, where he devoted himself successfully to secure for women their property after marriage. His acquaintanceship with the statesmen and public men of his time, both in this country and Great Britain, was extensive. For many years he was a correspondent of Seward, Sumner, and Dawes, but most of his life was passed in small country parishes from choice, "because," he said, "having a small property he could afford to preach the gospel for little pay where other men could not." After coming North he was not again in the employ of the Home Missionary Society, but he preserved through life an unflagging interest in its weelfare. He was a man of great energy, of broad views and wide interests, of intrepid faith in God and His providences, and in Jesus Christ his Saviour. He died April 10, 1870. COMMENT: The following is the introduction to the above article: At the end of eighty years of home missionary history it is a grateful duty to call up to memory the men who, with prophetic wisdom, laid foundations on which their successors have been building for fourscore years. Three names deserve special mention: Nathaniel Bouton, Aaron Foster and John Maltby, all of them students at Andover in 1825. The"stage coach incident" is familiar in which Bouton, Foster, and Hiram Chamberlain, also a student at Andover, took part. Without doubt the idea of a national home missionary society was conceived in that conference between these three earnest young men on the way from Andover to Newburyport. To one of them, however, Aaron Foster, belongs the special honor of having first outlined the scope and function of such a society. This he did in an address delivered before the Porter Rhetorical Society in the winter of 1825, in which he advocated earnestly the necessity of a national missionary society for sending out missionaries, and especially for the settlement of pastors in distinction from itinerant workers. A few days later the Andover Society of Inquiry held a special meeting at which John Maltby of the senior class read an essay on the "Necessity of increased exertion to promote missions in our Western states," and pleaded especially for the unification of all agencies of philanthropy, patriotism and Christian endeavor "into one vast reservoir from which a stream shall flow to Georgia and to Louisiana, to Missouri and to Maine." In these two addresses by Aaron Foster and John Maltby the idea of a home missionary society was first embodied in speech, and under the providence of God the minds of many home missionary leaders had been prepared for the message. We are pleased to present to the readers of the HOME MISSIONARY a sketch of the career of Aaron Foster, the father of national home missions, prepared by his daughter, Mrs. Elizabeth Foster Kelsey. Mrs. Kelsey remarks in a private letter: "Dr. Bouton was a frequent visitor at my father's house in East Charlemont during my girlhood, and the American Home Missionary Society and its beginning were often the theme of conversation. Dr. Bouton, there, always attributed to my father the conception and first suggestion of such a society." -Ed. Aaron Foster's father - a Quaker. Hillsboro, N.H. Dorothy Ashley - mother of Dorothy Ashley Leavitt. D.A. = born in Old Deerfield of Jonathan Ashley - a lawyer - son of Jonathan - a loyalist clergyman. D. Ashley m. Roswell Leavitt, M.D. of Coprnish, N.H. Roger Leavitt his brother - a farmer - moved to (Heath)which once included Charlemont. Aaron Foster went to Dartmouth and Andover Seminary where he conceived with Boughton the idea of Home Miss. Society driving back to Andover from a meeting. He went out as a home missionary to Pendleton, South Carolina. He drove in a buggy with a white horse. Jonathan Leavitt went to Dartmouth and met Aaron Foster, who visited him from college and lost his heart to Dorothy Ashley and wanted to marry her daughter Dorothy Leavitt. She was 11 years when he first knew her. He drove up from the South to marry her when she was 20 or 21. Driving to Savannah once his horse was struck by lightning. A third brother to Roswell and Roger Leavitt lived in Savannah. This brother read about the event in the paper and told him his suit was not hopeless so he came north and won her. George Foster was six (months or weeks) old when they started north on account of slavery antagonism and was buried on the banks of the Savannah River. They lived in Fort Covington, N.Y., near Canada, on a farm which he bought. He had always indigestion. Rented the farm always. Went to Plymouth, Mass. Health bad - moved to Charlemont - on invitation of Hooker and Hart Leavitt- to parsonage with $400 salary and 5 acres with help of farmer. Cut wood for his health. Catherine Stokes Foster Martha Jane - died when 6 yrs. Elizabeth Leavitt Sarah Bancroft Marion Ashley. b. in Cambridgeport, Mass. at Uncle George Beckwit(hs)-who had married Martha Leavitt while Aaron Foster was in Plymouth. Moved to Charlemont when M. was three - 1849. Stayed at Smiths - 3 bachelors + 3 old maids next to Parsonage. Parsonage across brook from Smiths - East of church - next came Smiths and next Parsonage. COMMENT: The above is from a handwritten account in an old notebook belonging to the Rev. Maxwell W. Rice. As most everything in this notebook is from 1921 - 1929 I assume this also was written in this time period. From its form it looks like notes taken hurriedly during a conversation. I didn't transcribe it verbatim, but completed sentences and added words to make it more readable, but I believe I have done this without changing the meaning. Only the first part is transcribed here. The rest concerns the Leavitt family and will be added to the database under the appropriate names. The source of this information isn't given, but was probably one of the Leavitts or else his mother, Marion Ashley Foster Rice. COMMENT: The following is transcribed from "The Home Missionary," date unknown, found pasted in an old scrapbook of Rev. Maxwell W. Rice's. It was written by Elizabeth Foster Kelsey about Aaron Foster. Aaron Foster was born in Hillsboro, New Hampshire, in 1794. He fitted for college at Kimball, Union Academy, and graduated from Dartmouth in 1822 and from Andover Seminary in 1825. In the autumn of that year he entered the service of the American Home Missionary Society, in whose creation he had so honorable a part, and was one of its first missionaries, sailing for South Carolina, where he ministered to two churches, Lawrence and Abbeville, forty miles apart. The third year, Pendleton being added to his charge, he rode sixty miles from end to end of his parish. In 1829 he rode north in company with his parishioner, Vice-President John C. Calhoun. From Philadelphia ha writes: "My average has been a little more than fifty miles per day and my horse is fulll of life." Purchasing a covered buggy in Boston he drove to Cornish, New Hampshire, and on August 12th, married Dorothy Ashley Leavitt. Their wedding journey was a drive of six weeks with this same horse to their parish in Pendleton, South Carolina. In 1832 they returned North. In connection with that event Mr. Foster writes: We left the South after a residence of seven years, coming away from the midst of more tears than I have ever seen on any other occasion at the pareting of pastor and people. Eighteen slaves were received into the church on the last Sabbath. My influence there was much broader than it has been any place in the North, and I am reconciled at the idea of not having spent the ministry of my life there, only when I consider the condition of slavery in which to leave my children." His health being greatly impaired he went on a farm in Northern New York, but directly continued his ministry in Fort Covington and Constable. After ten years he went to the Robinson church in Plymouth, Massachusetts, where the last twenty-two years of his long ministry of fourty-four years were passed. Here he was known as the beloved "Father Foster" of all Franklin County. In 1851 he was sent by the American Peace society as delegate to the World's Peace Congress in London. In 1855 he was sent to Boston to the convention called to amend the constitution of the state, where he devoted himself successfully to secure for women their property after marriage. His acquaintanceship with the statesmen and public men of his time, both in this country and Great Britain, was extensive. For many years he was a correspondent of Seward, Sumner, and Dawes, but most of his life was passed in small country parishes from choice, "because," he said, "having a small property he could afford to preach the gospel for little pay where other men could not." After coming North he was not again in the employ of the Home Missionary Society, but he preserved through life an unflagging interest in its weelfare. He was a man of great energy, of broad views and wide interests, of intrepid faith in God and His providences, and in Jesus Christ his Saviour. He died April 10, 1870. COMMENT: The following is the introduction to the above article: At the end of eighty years of home missionary history it is a grateful duty to call up to memory the men who, with prophetic wisdom, laid foundations on which their successors have been building for fourscore years. Three names deserve special mention: Nathaniel Bouton, Aaron Foster and John Maltby, all of them students at Andover in 1825. The"stage coach incident" is familiar in which Bouton, Foster, and Hiram Chamberlain, also a student at Andover, took part. Without doubt the idea of a national home missionary society was conceived in that conference between these three earnest young men on the way from Andover to Newburyport. To one of them, however, Aaron Foster, belongs the special honor of having first outlined the scope and function of such a society. This he did in an address delivered before the Porter Rhetorical Society in the winter of 1825, in which he advocated earnestly the necessity of a national missionary society for sending out missionaries, and especially for the settlement of pastors in distinction from itinerant workers. A few days later the Andover Society of Inquiry held a special meeting at which John Maltby of the senior class read an essay on the "Necessity of increased exertion to promote missions in our Western states," and pleaded especially for the unification of all agencies of philanthropy, patriotism and Christian endeavor "into one vast reservoir from which a stream shall flow to Georgia and to Louisiana, to Missouri and to Maine." In these two addresses by Aaron Foster and John Maltby the idea of a home missionary society was first embodied in speech, and under the providence of God the minds of many home missionary leaders had been prepared for the message. We are pleased to present to the readers of the HOME MISSIONARY a sketch of the career of Aaron Foster, the father of national home missions, prepared by his daughter, Mrs. Elizabeth Foster Kelsey. Mrs. Kelsey remarks in a private letter: "Dr. Bouton was a frequent visitor at my father's house in East Charlemont during my girlhood, and the American Home Missionary Society and its beginning were often the theme of conversation. Dr. Bouton, there, always attributed to my father the conception and first suggestion of such a society." -Ed.


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