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As far as we know, Great-Great-Grandpa Jason Stillman continued to grow up in the family homestead, under the care of his widowed mother and his Uncle Robert Stillman, whom Grandpa Appleton’s will had named guardian of the minor children. Being already fifteen years old when his father died, he would have had immediate control of his share of the inheritance, whereas his younger siblings had to wait to turn fourteen.

On 20 September 1825, aged 23, Grandpa Jason married Great-Great-Grandma Harriet Elizabeth Seymour, of Hartford. I suppose he took Grandma Harriet home to one of the family properties; I don’t know how to find out which one, inasmuch as the transition wouldn’t necessarily generate a legal transaction that would leave a paper trail. They were the parents of three children:
  1. Lucia Minerva Stillman (b. 2 June 1827; d. 17 Jan 1890)
  2. Frances Mariah Stillman (b. 19 May 1830; d. 13 Sep 1903; our GGM, m. GGF Franklin Neff)
  3. Charles Truman Stillman (b. 1 Jun 1834; d. 16 Jul 1905)
According to family accounts,1 Jason and Harriet Elizabeth Seymour Stillman provided their children a loving home in Colebrook, Connecticut — one, as it turned out, in which the mother bore an unusual share of the work and responsibility. When Charles was five years old, [Jason] contracted tuberculosis, and the family decided that his health required a warm climate. “So, bidding his family goodbye, he packed a wagon with food and warm clothing and left never to return. He gave the children a ride to the gate where he let them off and waved until they could no longer see him. His plan to move his family to the warmer climate did not come to pass, as he died … before this could be accomplished.”

As far as I’m aware, the place and precise date of Grandpa Jason’s death and burial remain unknown. Various secondary genealogical sources2 assign him a date of death and assert that he died in Colebrook, but the Colebrook Vital Records and cemetery lists are consistent with the family story.3
1This family version of the story is excerpted from a biographical sketch on our Great-Grandma Frances Mariah Stillman Russell Neff, reproduced in Alfa Jean Carter Carter’s Big Neff Book, where it notes: “This history of Grandmother Frances M. Neff was taken from memories written by several granddaughters as told to them by their mothers. Scribe: Olive Fisher Evans, daughter of Rosella Seymour Neff Fisher.”
2E.g., The Stillman Family, Compiled by Francis D. Stillman, Jr., 1989, has Jason dying in Colebrook 25 Sept 1838.
3Another version of Jason’s story, published in A History of the Seymour Family, by Donald Lines Jacobus (New Haven, 1939) has Grandma Harriet “ dismissed on 9 Jan 1831 from the Church in Colebrook to the one in Westmoreland, Oneida County, N.Y. She joined the “Mormons” in 1837. Jason Stillman died in Westmoreland in 1878.” If that’s the case, the family may have met the Mormons in Westmoreland and, like so many other families, split over religion. One could imagine the “Mormon” family inventing the consumption story to conceal their father’s unwillingness to go with them into the new faith. The Manual of the Congregational Church, Colebrook, Connecticut, May, 1879 (Winsted: Dowd & Co) does list Jason Stillman as “dismissed by letter” in 1831 but doesn’t seem to mention Harriet.
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