♀Adaline Blanchard

Adaline Blanchard (1841 – 1861) was the eldest child of Joseph Knapp Blanchard and Elizabeth Trueworthy Blanchard, and died at about twenty, before her family had finished growing. She was the great-grand-aunt of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), the sister of Wesley Blanchard (1844–1908), Nancy’s great-grandfather.

Life

Her birth is given as 1841, in Maine, and she was the first of the five children of Joseph and Elizabeth, whose later children were Wesley, Frank Leroy, Minnie and Ida Alice. In 1850 a FamilySearch index places the family at Mount Vernon in Kennebec County, where her father is listed as a farmer. That index writes her name Adeline Blancherd and gives her age as eight and her birth year as 1842, one year later than the 1841 date given elsewhere in this account.

A FamilySearch index of the 1860 census places the family at Lewiston in Androscoggin County, where her father later became a grocer and property owner. That index places Adaline in the Lewiston household, aged eighteen, again pointing to 1842. Frank, Minnie and Ida Alice were born after her, the youngest not until 1868.

Death

A family record gives her death as 16 August 1861, and her burial that month at Riverside Cemetery in Lewiston, where her parents were later buried. She was about twenty. Her father’s will of September 1885 names the children then living and does not mention her.

Notes

Her birth is given as 1841, while both census indexes give 1842. A family chart dates her parents’ marriage to 12 April 1840, which would have made her mother only fourteen at the wedding and fifteen or sixteen at Adaline’s birth. The marriage itself is undocumented.