♂Benjamin Dean

Benjamin Dean (died between 1723 and 1725) was a landholder of Taunton, Massachusetts, who married Sarah Williams there in 1680 and left a sawmill on Three Mile River among his property. He was the eighth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his daughter Mary Dean (1687–1770). His will named seven daughters, three of them wives of Richmonds.

Family

He was probably a son of Walter Deane of Taunton and his wife Eleanor Cogan. Benjamin Dean and Sarah Williams were married at Taunton on 6 January 1680. Twelve children were born to Benjamin there over the next twenty-seven years, from Naomy in 1681 to Josiah in 1707, and Sarah was most likely the mother of them all. Their daughter Mary, born in 1687, became the wife of Samuel Edson of Bridgewater.

Will and death

Benjamin made his will on 2 February 1722/3. To his eldest son, Israel, he gave “that Tract of Land on which his Now Dwelling house standeth”, bounded on the west by land of Benjamin’s own brother, most likely Ezra Dean. His sons Ebenezer and Benjamin also received land, and the will disposed of the sawmill on Three Mile River. He named his daughters one by one: Hannah, Elizabeth and Mehitabell, all three married to Richmonds; Mary Edson; Damaris White; Sarah Danforth; and Lidia, not yet married. He also named “my beloved wife Sarah Dean”. He died at Taunton before the will was proved on 14 April 1725.

Notes

Parents

His parentage rests on compiled accounts. William Reed Deane’s “The Deane Family” in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register (1849) lists him among the children of Walter Deane of Taunton, and James Savage’s Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England calls him “s. of Walter”. The will fits this: the land given to Israel was bounded by that of “my Brother E[…] Dean”, the given name partly illegible but most likely Ezra, whom Deane lists as another of Walter’s sons.

Marriage date

The printed Taunton vital records and the records of Plymouth Colony^W, to which Taunton belonged until 1691, both give the marriage as 6 January 1680. Under the Old Style calendar^W the year then began on 25 March, so the same day is 6 January 1681 by modern reckoning: Savage gives 1681, and Deane’s 1849 account writes 1680-1. The town records spell the name both Dean and Deane.

The will

The will is in the Bristol County probate records, volume 5. Its date and the date it was proved come from the published Bristol County probate abstracts, Savage and Deane. The Mayflower Society’s Mayflower Families Through Five Generations (the Thomas Rogers family) identifies the three Richmond husbands as Joseph Richmond Jr., husband of Hannah, and the brothers Edward Richmond Jr. and Josiah Richmond, husbands of Elizabeth and Mehitabell; on 2 February 1727/8 they and the other children of “Benjamin Dean late of Taunton deceased” quitclaimed land of their father. The same series, in its John Alden volume, gives Lidia’s marriage at Dighton in 1729.