Eliza R. Cottle Tilton.

Eliza R. Cottle Tilton. According to family this is a wedding photo. The picture below is the wedding dress jacket seen in the photo. Eliza R. Cottle was born June 26, 1838. She married Owen H Tilton on July 31, 1859 in Chilmark MA. She died February 11, 1913.

Owen H. Tilton was born on February 16, 1836 in Chilmark MA. He died September 2, 1901.

The above photo was edited to clean up speckles, scratches and other aging marks.



A little mystery in these photos. I took two photos during our 2002 visit with the Tilton family. Both photos were taken with a digital camera (no negatives). Look closely at the two photos. Notice anything? To me it appears the buttons and the dark "stripe" are reversed.

Below are two additional photos.


The wedding photos as they are in the original frames.



This photo was digitally "flipped" by me to match the actual dress. My guess is that the original photo had a negative and it was reversed when the photo was printed.... or the old box cameras flipped the image. I'll have to do some more research about photographic technology in 1859. In either case I would guess this is what Eliza looked like on the day her photo was taken.

Gravesite of Owen H. Tilton and Eliza R. Cottle

Owen H. Tilton and Eliza R. Cottle


Great Grandson R. Tilton and great great granddaughter at the family grave site in Tisbury MA

These photos were taken in 2002. Thanks to the Tilton family members for making these photos possible.

Note: Click on images for a larger version.

A crew member returns. William L. Cone Jr.

Shortly after I started this blog I received an email asking if we had the crew list for the Tropic Bird 1876-1878. The emailer was hunting for information about her great grandfather William L. Cone.

A quick check of the crew list..... and there he was William L. Cone Jr. a crew member of the Tropic Bird 1876 voyage. See the crew list here.

What an exciting thing to find and to realize ..... that the great granddaughter of a crew member was now "meeting" the great great granddaughter of the Captain. "Meeting" one hundred and thirty three years later from the decks of a whaling ship to the world of the internet. From a voyage on a vast ocean to the world wide web.

Who in 1876 could have imagined that 133 years later two granddaughters would be peeking in on their shared experience aboard the Tropic Bird?

Could Jules Verne 1828-1905 or H.G. Wells 1866-1946 have imagined such a "meeting"?

Meet William L. Cone Jr.

Sandy the great granddaughter of William Lyman Cone Jr. tells us this about her great grandfather

Here's some info on my grandfather that I was able to find in a Cone genealogy book, published 1903, His [Wm. L. Cone] youngest daughter Catherine was my grandmother.

2946. William L Cone, b Oct 29 1854 married Anna L Gillette. Res Millington Conn.

William Lyman Cone, son of William L. Cone (2409) b. Millington, CT Oct 29 1854 married Bertha Burdick June 16 1883. She was born Dec 28 1866. He married 2. Anna Lee Gillette, daughter of Miner H. Gillette and Elizabeth Tiffany Lee, April 26 1889. She was born in East Haddam Dec 31, 1861. At the age of twenty-one he sailed on the bark "Tropic Bird" from New Bedford, on a sperm whaling voyage, and was gone twenty-seven months. Afterwards pursued and completed a course of musical study at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, and is at present a music teacher and piano-tuner, and holds the position of Postmaster at Millington.

Children:
3484. Florence, b. Dec 15, 1884
3485. Clarence, b. June 16, 1886
3486. Virginia Gillette, b. Apr 9, 1891
3487. Emily, b Apr 23, 1895
3488. Catherine, b. Jan 19, 1900

An ancestor to be proud of... a whaler, a music teacher, a Postmaster and a parent.

Meet Owen Hillman Tilton.

A special thanks to living members of the Tilton family of Vineyard Haven MA and their ancestors for preserving these and other family photos and documents and for providing access to them for this project.
Email: Capt.O.H.Tilton's gr-gr-granddaughter. Donna.

Owen H. Tilton life at sea.

To view a readable version of the data table above click here or on the image above.

The table above contains a list of the voyages on which Owen H. Tilton was aboard as either a crew member or the ship's Master. His earliest voyage was in 1852 at the age of 16 and his last voyage was aboard the Tropic Bird 1876-1878. Owen H. Tilton retired from whaling after the 1876-1878 voyage at the age of 42.

Key to data in the Citation column.
R.H.= Reginald B. Hegarty
Return Of Whaling Vessels Sailing From American Ports. 1876-1928, Reginald B. Hegarty, Published 1959, A Continuation of Alexander Starbuck's "History of the American Whale Fishery" Publisher The Old Dartmouth Historical Society and Whale Museum, New Bedford Massachusetts, 1959, 58 pages. Find "Hegarty" here.

A.S.= Alexander Starbuck
History of the American Whale Fishery, Alexander Starbuck, 1989, 767 pages. Find "Starbuck's" here.

Map of New Bedford waterfront 1851. Including harbor soundings of 1844.

Note the Taber's Wharf in the photo. See the contract below...Note the address of agent Wm Lewis at No.4 Tabers Wharf.



Click on each photo to see a larger more detailed version.


Entire length of waterfront showing all wharfs.

Maps of the New Bedford MA waterfront from a map owned by this website owner. The New Bedford area is an insert in a larger map of Bristol County MA published in 1851.

Contract of Owen H. Tilton to Master the Bark Tropic Bird 1876-1878.

The contract reads......

Office of William Lewis
Commission Merchant
No. 4 Tabers Wharf
New Bedford, March 27, 1876

This is to certify that I Owen H. Tilton of Tisbury have this day agreed to go as Master of Bark Tropic Bird for a two year whaling voyage in the Atlantic Ocean for the one fourteenth Lay. Should I get one thousand barrels of Sperm Oil in thirty months then I am to have the one twelfth lay of the whole cargo and I agree to take one one sixteenth or one eight[inserted] of said ???? at rates ??? as paid(r) I.H. Bartlett & Sons.

William Lewis

Captain Owen H. Tilton.

Read some history.

THE WHALING FLEET.--The New-Bedford Standard, of Saturday evening, says: The bark Tropic Bird, which arrived here last evening from a whaling cruise, brought in a most excellent voyage, She has been absent but eighteen months, and Captain DAVIS hails seven hundred barrels sperm oil and fifty barrels of humpback oil. The cargo will probably "turn out" a larger quantity of sperm oil than reported.

read here and here

Capt. Owen Hillman Tilton (1836 - 1901) was a whaler, the son of Benjamin Tilton of Chilmark. The log of his voyage on the bark Tropic Bird during 1876-78 can be found in the New Bedford Whaling Museum. He later became a Vineyard Haven merchant, dealing in lumber, lime, bricks, cement, and fencing. He married Eliza R. Cottle (1839 - 1913?), the daughter of Edmund Cottle and (probably) Elizabeth Ridgeway, and they were the parents of Ernest R. Tilton, Frank Owen Tilton (1864 - 1923), and Herbert L. Tilton (1869 - 1948). Frank took over the Tilton Lumber after Owen died in 1901. "Bert" ran the H. L. Tilton plumbing shop on Main Street, which later became Tilton's drugstore (and finally, Yates.) Some Tilton Family History here.

Additional Bark Tropic Bird history here.