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 a young woman of color, presumably his wife.  At the time of the 1830 census, the Dolbys were in their 20s-30s.  

By 1840, the Dolby family had moved to Winchester, NH where Charles worked in the field of agriculture.  A free Black girl under the age of 10 years also resided with them, possibly their daughter.  Charles Dolby moved again by 1850, according to the census.  In Chesterfield, he worked as a farmer and a laborer but lived alone. Mary A. Dolby, the young girl from the 1840 census, was 18 years old.  She had relocated to Keene, NH, to live and work within George A. Balch’s household as a domestic servant.

Four years following the 1850 census, Mary Dolby gave birth to a daughter named Mary E. Dolby  (father unknown) in 1854.  Caring for a child, Mary moved back home to Chesterfield to live with Charles Dolby. The 1860 census records 72-year old Charles as a head of household in Chesterfield, NH where he worked as a farmer.  Also in the household was 26-year old Mary and 4-year old Mary E. Dolby.  

Charles Dolby died sometime after the 1860 census. Information about his youth prior to his life in Southwest New Hampshire is unknown. 

See also:  “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).