I find this family to be fascinating – an unusual name and descendants from one of “witches” arrested in the Salem witch trials. One son stayed in Massachusetts and one went to Maine. Those descendants are many and far flung. I started tracking them a while back but when in Maine last month had a finding!

I was driving into Etna/Dixmont talking with my cousin who was giving me directions to her house up the road. Suddenly, on the left, next to the elementary school was a sign for a Toothaker Cemetery. Didn’t know there was Toothakers in that area so came back later to find only a few graves that are Toothakers and no answer to the mystery as it was a wife of Jacob who died before 1850. I had no Jacob in that area so I was perplexed.

My cousin said that Eleanor Toothaker had died some years before. At her death she was the oldest resident of Dixmont but had never married. Before I left Maine, we were able to find out what cemetery Eleanor was buried in – just up the road and I cruised through the whole thing snapping pictures of all the Toothakers there.

The cemetery had not been well documented on findagrave.com so I had to rely on the groupings of the graves to put families together. The oldest was William Toothaker b. 1810 d. 1884. William is just such a common name in this family but I definitely didn’t have that line in my tree. It turns out I didn’t have his father’s line in my tree – another William.

Once I finally puzzled it all out, I had a small Toothaker family in Penobscot County, in Dixmont, Etna, Plymouth, Brewer and up into Banger. They all stayed there unlike most branches of this traveling family. They all married into other small families of the area such as the Simpsons, Sylvesters, Davis’s and Arnolds. Most are buried in the Simpson Corner Cemetery on a dirt road off the beaten path.

I added my photos and missing family members to findagrave.com to document them publicly.

Now I’m ready to hit the back roads of Maine and see who else I can find!