Dolby, Charles
Charles Dolby
Chesterfield, NH; Walpole, NH; Keene, NH
BACKGROUND SUMMARY
In 1925, Frank B. Kingsbury wrote History of the town of Surry, Cheshire County, New Hampshire. He recounts the story of a man of color named “Dolby”, who lived on the Surry/Keene town line. The area in which ‘Old Dolby’ resided became known by locals as “Nigger Hollow” by the turn of the 20th century. References to this section of town can be found in town histories as well as the Keene Sentinel newspaper. Research by citizen archivists in the 2020s has pieced together parts of the Dolby story.
Charles Dolby was presumably born in Vermont c.1788. He moved to the Monadnock region of New Hampshire around the late 1820s, residing in Walpole with his wife Ann, a young woman of color. At the time of the 1830 census, the Dolbys were in their 20s-30s. Charles and Ann had a daughter, Mary Ann Dolby, in 1834.
By the 1840s, the Dolby family had moved to Winchester, NH and then to Chesterfield, NH by 1850, possibly after the death of Ann Dolby. In Chesterfield, Charles Dolby worked as a farmer and a laborer. His daughter Mary A. Dolby relocated to Keene to live in the George A. Balch household and, most likely, work as a domestic servant.
Four years after appearing in the 1850 census, Mary Dolby gave birth to a daughter (father unknown). She named the baby Mary E. Dolby in 1854. Now caring for a child, Mary moved back home to Chesterfield to live with her father. The 1860 census records 72-year old Charles Dolby residing and farming in Chesterfield, NH. Also in the household was 26-year old Mary and 4-year old Mary (jr).
Charles Dolby died sometime after the 1860 census.
For more on Mary Dolby, see “Dolby, Mary”
SOURCE MATERIALS
Kingsbury, Frank B. History of the town of Surry, Cheshire County, New Hampshire. (1925)
U.S. Federal Census, 1830, 1840, 1850, 1860- Ancestry.com
GENEALOGICAL SUMMARY
CHARLES DOLBY (b.1788c., VT) married Ann __. They had MARY ANN DOLBY (1834-1898).
MARY ANN DOLBY (1834-1898) had a daughter in 1854 named MARY E. DOLBY (b.1854, NH). She married JAMES H. WILLIAMS in Rutland, VT in 1878. James had children from his previous marriage to Martha Brooks (d.1870s) including: Nancy Williams (b.1864), George Williams (b.1866), Hattie Williams (b.1868), Mary E. Williams (b.1864) and Wallace Williams (b.1871).