Staggs Family History

My ancestors in the United States

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      Hulda Sprague (1765-1849)

      BIRTH: 1765, Massachusetts, USA
      DEATH: 16 Apr 1849, McGraw, Cortland, New York, USA
      FATHER: Unknown1
      MOTHER: Unknown1
      SPOUSE: Zebulon Keene (1765-1810)

      The life of Hulda Sprague

      A Massachusetts Birth, a Frontier Life, and the Quiet Strength Behind a Pioneer Family

      Hulda (Sprague) Keene was born in Massachusetts in the mid‑1760s, a daughter of the old New England world of small farms, meetinghouses, and tightly knit families whose roots reached back to the earliest colonial settlements. Though no record survives naming her parents, the Sprague surname places her within one of the region’s long‑established families, and her early life would have been shaped by the rhythms of rural Massachusetts—seasonal labor, household industry, and the communal life of a town where every family knew the others by name.

      In the late 1780s, Hulda married Zebulon Keene, a young cooper and stone cutter from Pembroke, Massachusetts. Their first child, Sprague, was born in 1788, and over the next fourteen years she bore five more children. These early years were spent in Massachusetts, where Hulda managed a growing household while Zebulon worked in the trades that would later sustain them on the frontier. Like many young families of her generation, Hulda and Zebulon looked westward as land in coastal Massachusetts became scarce. Opportunity lay in the interior of New York, where new settlements were forming on former Military Tract lands.

      Around 1793–1795, Hulda undertook the most demanding journey of her life: the migration to Homer, New York, deep in the wilderness of what would become Cortland County. Her son Sprague later wrote that when the family arrived, only “twelve or thirteen families” lived within miles. Hulda entered a world of dense forest, rough cabins, and long distances between neighbors. Here, her daily labor—largely unrecorded but essential—sustained the family through the difficult first years of settlement. She cooked over open hearths, raised children in isolation, tended gardens carved from newly cleared land, and supported Zebulon’s cooperage and stone‑cutting work in a community that depended on every settler’s skill.

      As the settlement grew, Hulda’s children grew with it. She saw the early deaths of some—such as her daughter Sally, who died in 1798—and the survival and success of others. She lived through the transformation of Homer from a scattering of cabins to a thriving agricultural town. After Zebulon’s death in 1810, Hulda remained in the region, living long enough to see her children marry, establish homes of their own, and begin the westward migrations that would carry the Keene family into Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Indiana. She died in McGraw, New York, on 16 April 1849, having lived more than half a century on the New York frontier.

      The following is an excerpt from Staggs Genealogy – Harold Wareham Staggs – His Book

      The third son was Grandfather Zebulon (1763) who wed Huldah. We do not know her last name. They had six children. Zebulon was a cooper and a stone cutter and owned a cooperage in McGrawville, New York. In 1793 the family moved to Homer, Cortland Co., New York, and located in this, then sparsely inhabited, area to farm.

      Their first son was Grandfather Sprague (1788) who moved to Valparaiso, Indiana. He married Chloe Higgins (1808), and they had nine children.

      The following is an excerpt from The John Keen(e) (1578-1649) and Associated Families, by Mr. and Mrs. Archie Timothy Keene, 1971

      Zebulon, son of Isaiah and Ruth Bisbee Keen, b 9-12-1765, d 8-10-1810. Born in Pembroke, Mass., a cooper and a stone cutter; owned a cooper shop at McGrawville, N.Y., d in Cortland Co., N.Y., married Huldah, b 1765, d 4-1.6-1849 in McGraw, N.Y. Moved to Homer, Cortland Co., N.Y. in 1795 and located on a farm now owned by Mr. Sheffeld; this was an area sparsely inhabited as stated by their son Sprague in his Account Book. They had six children:

      Sprague, b 10-6-1788 in Mass, d 5-21-1866 in Valparaiso, Ind. He m Chloe Higgins 1-24-1808. Sally, born 7-31-1791, died 12-28-1798. Cyrus, born 11-1795, died 9-16-1864. Samuel Bisbee, b 6-11-1797 in N.Y., d 2-10-1880 in Wis. Seven children. Polly (Mary Bailey) b 1-19-1800 in Homer, N.Y., d 9-19-1885 at Mt. Morris, N.J. Oliver, b 9-10-1802, Cortland Co., N.Y., wife, Parmelia; Children: C. A. Keen and Jane Keen who married Jonathan Thorp. Oliver was a resident of Huron Co., Ohio in 1859; ‘rec’d a grant of land for 127 acres in Monroe Co., Mich. Sold land in 1865 for a lot in the village of Vienna, Mich. This lot sold in 1868. No further record.

      Legacy of Hulda Sprague

      The legacy of Hulda (Sprague) Keene is woven into the lives of her children and the communities they helped build. Her eldest son, Sprague, carried the family name into Indiana, where his descendants became part of the early settlement of Porter County. Her sons Cyrus, Samuel Bisbee, and Oliver helped shape the expanding frontier of New York and the Great Lakes region. Through her daughters, the Keene family intertwined with other pioneer families, strengthening the social fabric of the communities that emerged from the wilderness she once entered as a young wife and mother. Though few records preserve her voice, Hulda’s life stands as a testament to the quiet endurance and steady labor of the women who sustained early American families. Her legacy lives on in the generations who followed the path she helped forge from Massachusetts to the heart of New York’s frontier.

      Parents

      FATHER: Unknown1
      MOTHER: Unknown1

      Married

      Zebulon Keene (1765-1810)

      Children

      • Sprague Keene (1788-1866) married Chloe Higgins (1790-1864)
      • Sally Keen (1791-1798)
      • Cyrus Keen (1795-1864)
      • Samuel Bisbee Keen (1797-1880) married Lydia Shattuck (1801-1839)
      • Polly (Mary Bailey) Keen (1800-1885) married Adino Bailey (1788-1843)
      • Oliver Keen (1802-1876) married Permelia Oaks (1812-1904)

      Documents

      Footnotes

      1. No primary record has been found that identifies the parents of Hulda (Sprague) Keene, wife of Zebulon Keene (1765–1810). A comprehensive search of Massachusetts vital records, including the published Pembroke, Duxbury, Kingston, Marshfield, and Bridgewater town registers, reveals no birth or baptism for a Hulda or Huldah Sprague in the appropriate time period (ca. 1763–1770). Likewise, no marriage record survives for her union with Zebulon, and no probate file in Plymouth, Bristol, or Barnstable Counties names a daughter Hulda who could be her. Early New York records—tax rolls, census schedules, land transactions, and local histories—consistently identify her only as “Huldah,” without a maiden name. Although the 1971 John Keen(e) and Associated Families genealogy preserves the family tradition that her surname was Sprague, it provides no parental identification, and no contemporary document corroborates a specific Sprague lineage. In the absence of any direct evidence and with no indirect evidence sufficient to establish a reliable parental link, her parentage must be regarded as unknown.

      Relation of Hulda Sprague to Steven Barry Staggs: 5th great-grandmother

      Page last updated June 27, 2026

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