♀Abigail (surname unknown)

Abigail (died 19 September 1724) was the wife of John Blanchard of Weymouth, Massachusetts, and the mother of the seven children whose births were recorded there between 1686 and 1711. She was the seventh great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through her son John Blanchard (1691–1752).

Life

Her surname and her parents are not known, and the date and place of her birth are not known. Family trees give her surname as Phillips and her birth as 1662, but no record confirms either. She probably married John Blanchard in about 1684, at Weymouth. She was living at Weymouth by 19 August 1686, when the town recorded the birth of her daughter Sarah, the first of the couple’s children. The town clerk entered the family under the name Blancher. The births of Mary (1689), John (1691), Samuel (1697), Nathaniel (1701), Jonathan (1704) and Abigail (1711) followed, John’s entered as “s. John and Abigaill”. A son Nicholas, whose birth was not recorded, died on 19 January 1733, entered in the town record as “Nicholas, s. John and Abigail”. He was a grown man with an estate of his own, which his brothers divided together with their father’s a few months later. That division, dated 25 April 1733, also names a son Thomas, whose birth is not recorded either.

She died at Weymouth on 19 September 1724, entered in the town’s death record as “Abigail, w. John”. Her husband survived her and died there on 10 March 1733.

Lines of descent

Both lines pass through her son John (1691–1752). They meet again in Wesley Blanchard (1844–1908), whose parents, Joseph Knapp Blanchard (1820–1885) and Elizabeth Trueworthy Blanchard (1825–1884), were both her descendants. From Wesley the descent to Nancy Jane Blanchard runs as one, through George Wesley Blanchard (1868–1939) and Kenneth Blanchard (1897–1975).

Notes

Marriage

The marriage date comes from George Walter Chamberlain’s compiled History of Weymouth, Massachusetts (1923), which gives it as “probably m. near 1684” and names no authority for it. The date and place rest on that history alone, so they are graded compiled only.

Surname

The online family trees that name her father give Nicholas Phillips of Weymouth, whose will of 1671 names an unmarried daughter Abigail. Chamberlain’s history lists her as probably married to John Blanchard, without naming a source, and no deed, probate or church record joins her to the Blanchards. A 1939 query and reply in the Boston Transcript argued for a Boston merchant’s daughter instead; a second reply in the same exchange questioned that conclusion. Neither father is confirmed.