♂Abel Edson

Abel Edson (born 19 January 1717/18) was a yeoman of Bridgewater, in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, who came into the homestead where he lived from his father. He was the sixth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his daughter Bathsheba Edson (1742–1836).

Early life and inheritance

Abel was born at Bridgewater, the son of Samuel Edson and his wife Mary. On 23 August 1770 Samuel Edson made his will, and left Abel “the homestead where he now liveth”, about thirty-four acres lying between the land of Isaac Willis and the land of Solomon Ames. The will also names, among others, Abel’s brothers Samuel, Nathan, Ezra, John and Ebenezer and a sister Susannah.

Marriage and children

Mitchell’s history of Bridgewater (1840), followed by a Conant family genealogy (1887), says that Abel married in 1739 Margaret, daughter of Nathaniel Conant. No marriage entry has been found in the printed vital records. Those records do list eight children of Abel and “Margrett”, born in the Province of Massachusetts Bay between 1744 and 1765: Rachel, Abel, the twins Bethia and Levi, the twins Dan and Elisabeth, Keziah and Rufus.

An unnamed child of Abel and Margaret died at Bridgewater on 10 August 1742, two years before the first of the recorded births.

Bathsheba, who married John Carver at Bridgewater in 1762, is not among them. Her birth is not in the records either, and a published family history puts it in 1742, before Rachel’s. Margaret is the only wife recorded for Abel in these years, so she is probably Bathsheba’s mother, but no record says so.

Militia service

Abel probably served in the militia in 1759 and 1760, in Capt. Lemuel Dunbar’s company. He enlisted on 6 April 1759 in Col. John Thomas’s regiment for the Canada campaign, was sent to Halifax, and was discharged on 1 November 1759. On 1 January 1760 he re-enlisted in Col. Nathaniel Thwing’s regiment, on duty in Nova Scotia, and was discharged on 20 July 1760. His brothers Samuel and Obed were in the service with him.

The deed of 1784

In a deed recorded at Plymouth in 1784, “Abel Edson of Bridgewater in the County of Plymouth in New England yeoman” conveyed one acre of land in the southerly part of Bridgewater to “my beloved Daughter Bathsheba the wife of John Carver of said Bridgewater husbandman”, in consideration of his love, good will and affection for her. The deed does not name Bathsheba’s mother. It is the record that ties her to Abel, and so ties this line to the Edsons of Bridgewater.

No record of Abel’s death has been found, and no probate for him has been identified.

Notes

• Mitchell and the Conant genealogy list seven of the eight children and leave out Bethia; the Bridgewater vital records give all eight, each as a child of Abel and Margrett.
• The Conant genealogy takes its list of Abel’s children from Mitchell, so the two are one witness, not two.
• The death of the unnamed child on 10 August 1742 is in the printed Bridgewater vital records, which take it from a family death record kept later by Oliver Alden. The record does not give the child’s name.
• The pages of Samuel Edson’s will that follow the bequest to Abel are not yet transcribed.

Militia service, 1759 and 1760

The service comes from J. B. Edson’s Edsons in England and America (1903) and Genealogy of the Edsons, both compiled family genealogies, which give the company and regiment names and the dates in the body. The original muster and pay rolls have not been confirmed against them, so the service rests on compiled sources, not on a record of the rolls themselves.