ancestor, why was his name recorded in the 1698 deed(11) as a three-syllable
name? And why, instead of
“c” was it initialed
“g” in the deed (1723) which
notes the sale of this property? And what of the claim in the above quoted
article that the surname of the Philip of this Beverly home (1698-1723) was
sometimes recorded as
Codie, Lecodie and
Lagody?
Finding no other
Philip in the Beverly records of that time whose surname
at all resembled our family name, and in the light of the Chapman claim that
our ancestor Philip lived in Beverly during a period which was practically
covered by the dates 1698-1723(12), we sought answers to the above questions
by a further reading of Beverly records of that time. For this we turned
first to the index of the Essex County registry of deeds to see whether any
deeds recorded the surnames
Codie, LeCodie or
Lagody, by which, as the
above quoted(13) antiquarian stated, the Philip of the Beverly home (1698-
1723) was variously known. Only one of these was in this index and that
with a slightly different spelling, having
“e” instead of
“a” in the first syllable,
making it
Legody instead of
Lagody. And since the given name here was
Philip we turned to the deeds which this name indicated. There were three of
these, of dates respectively 1708, 1710 and 1720. The first two recorded a
purchase of land by this
Philip Legody, while for the third, he was grantor. Upon
reading these deeds we learned that the grantor(14) deed did not dispose of
the property bought by
Philip Legody, as described in the deeds of 1708 and
1710. We surmised therefore (in the light of the above quoted article) that
he may(15) have sold these lands with his name recorded otherwise than
Legody. Accordingly we turned to the second of the
Gody deeds of the date
1725 (the first, of date 1723, being, as above stated, that for the sale of the
Beverly home purchased by him in 1698) and upon reading the description of
the lands conveyed by this deed, we found it practically to accord with that
of the lands bought by
Philip Legody as recorded in the deeds of 1708 and
1710. Thus we came upon specific evidence that the Philip who purchased a
home in Beverly, in 1698, which he sold in 1723, with his surname recorded as
Gody was for a period of years, while a resident of Beverly, recorded by the
surname
Legody.
Of the two other surnames,
Codie and LeCodie, given in the above quoted
article as those found in some of the records concerning this
Philip of the
Beverly home 1698-1723, neither was found in the registry of deeds index.
But in the meantime we had come upon these surnames in the Beverly church
records(16) of the period of our interest, to which we had turned to verify the
Chapman statement that there existed at Beverly the baptism-records of the
six children of our ancestor Philip and his wife Martha. In these church
records we looked not only for the surnames quoted as those found in various
records for the
Philip of the Beverly home 1698-1723, but we naturally looked
also, and at first, for our family name
Cody. We found this but once in these
Beverly church records and that with
John and not
Philip as the given name,
as was the case also in the one record where the surname was
Lecodie. But
though we found in these church records neither of the above surnames with
Philip as the given name we came upon the surnames
Lecody and
Codie and
with these, mainly baptism records, the given names of the parents were
Philip and
Martha. That the
Philip of these church records was our ancestor
Philip was evidenced by the fact, which our reading of these records soon
discovered, that the names of the children of these baptism records were those
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