♀Abigail (surname unknown)

Abigail (died after 1735) was the wife of Ebenezer Allen (1650–1725) of Dartmouth, in what was then Plymouth Colony^W, whose will left her the use of “the biggest and best room” in his house for as long as she remained his widow. She was the sixth great-grandmother of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through her son Philip Allen (1684–1752).

Marriage and children

No record of her marriage to Ebenezer Allen has been found; a compiled index of New England marriages places it at Dartmouth before 1682. The Dartmouth town records list eight children of Ebenezer Allen born between 1682 and 1703: Mary, Philip, Zebulun, Ebenezer, Sarah, James, Hannah and Seth. Those entries name only the father, and it is her husband’s will that names her. Ebenezer Allen signed it on 18 April 1725. He called her “Abigail my loving wife”, gave her the room for her widowhood, and named her executrix together with their son Philip as executor. By 24 April 1726 Ebenezer was dead, and on that day Philip swore to his account of the estate, which was inventoried at £1,162; the account sets aside “mother Allen her Third”, her widow’s share.

Second marriage

Within a few years of her husband’s death she married again. On 22 June 1728 she made an agreement with John Whitely, and her sons-in-law David Akin and Thomas Briggs each gave her a bond for her support; Akin’s bond was later fixed by an arbitration award at seven pounds ten shillings a year for the rest of her life. The Dartmouth town clerk had entered the couple’s intention to marry on 23 April 1728, and they were married at Dartmouth on 4 July 1728: she as Abigail Allen, he as John Whitely, a clothier of Dartmouth. On 8 July 1735 she and John Whitely, “Abigail his wife”, brought suit at the Bristol County Inferior Court of Common Pleas against the executors of Thomas Briggs on the 1728 bond, which had named her “Abigail Allen” and a widow. She was still living then. No record of her death is known.

Notes

The birth date long given for her, 16 November 1651 at Salem, is the date on which Zebulon Hill married Elizabeth Dike at Gloucester, and appears to have been copied across from his family. Her eldest recorded child was born in October 1682 and her youngest in 1703, which places her own birth roughly between the mid-1650s and the early 1660s. The date of death carried in the family record, 27 March 1729 at Dartmouth, is supported by no record, and her being alive in July 1735 contradicts it. A pedigree chart compiled in 1994 gives the same day and month in 1699, which cannot be right, since she was alive in 1735.

Parentage

No record of her parents has been found, and her maiden name is not known. Family compilations have called her Abigail Hill, a daughter of Zebulon Hill of Salem, and a standard index of New England marriages prints that surname only in brackets, as the editor’s own addition. The Hill family’s records point elsewhere. Zebulon Hill’s daughter Abigail was born at Salem on 21 September 1670, too late to be the mother of a child born at Dartmouth in 1682. An agreement of 1708 settling the estate of her uncle John Hill of Beverly names “Joseph Allen with Abigail his wife”, and in a deed acknowledged on 13 January 1728/29 Joseph Allen, joiner, with Abigail Allen and Elizabeth Marston, “all of ye Town of Salem”, conveyed land “descending from Our hon[oure]d Father Zebulon Hill”. That Abigail was the wife of Joseph Allen and living at Salem, while Ebenezer’s widow was at Dartmouth. The one name in Ebenezer and Abigail’s family that echoes the Hills is their son Zebulun, born in 1687, and a name alone does not establish kinship. Neither Ebenezer’s will nor the executor’s account names her family.

Second marriage

The Dartmouth town book has the intention entered on 23 April 1728, and the Dartmouth vital records print the marriage as “Abigail and John Whitly, both of D., July 4, 1728”, from the Friends’ records, which give the names as “Whitely and Abigail Allea”. The register spells the husband’s name Whitly; this biography follows the Suffolk County court papers, which use Whitely. The arbitration award of 2 April 1733 in those papers, settling the bond David Akin gave her, calls her “Abigail Whitely but then Widdow & Relict of Ebenezer Allen of Dartmouth deceased”. The 1735 suit is the latest record of her life.

A compiled genealogy of the Beekman Patent settlers (Doherty) suggests that her maiden name was possibly Smith or Slocum, and notes four Smith witnesses at the 1728 marriage. That is a compiled suggestion only, and no record yet confirms it.