♀Bridget Keniston

Bridget Keniston was the second wife of Jonathan Smith of Exeter, in the Province of New Hampshire^W, and the mother of the thirteen children entered for the couple in the town records between 1720 and 1741. She was the sixth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her son Obadiah Smith (born 1731).

The Exeter town records, as printed in a history of the town published in 1888, give her marriage to Jonathan Smith on 11 August 1719. His first wife, Mary Ames, had died on 21 December 1717, and the records list two children of that first marriage. The records list thirteen children of the second marriage, from Abraham, born 1 June 1720, to Nathan, born 7 May 1741; Elizabeth and Abigail are entered under the same date, 25 February 1725-26, and Obadiah, born 26 March 1731, is the eighth name. A daughter named Bridget was born on 16 February 1738-39. A family history published in 1886 by Dean Dudley, a great-grandson of Obadiah, makes Obadiah “a son of Jonathan Smith, of Exeter, and his wife Bridget Keniston”, in agreement with the town records. A supplement to that history, published in 1898, places George Keniston of Brentwood, New Hampshire, as her father. The genealogical dictionary of Maine and New Hampshire families published between 1928 and 1939 places George Kenniston at Greenland, where he died on 14 March 1717-18, before Brentwood was a separate town. Her birth date is not known. She died a widow before 17 September 1771, when administration of her estate was granted to her son Caleb Smith of Candia, a yeoman. A Brentwood deed of 1771 describes the dwelling house of Jonathan and Bridget Smith, “in which they did dwell”, with its meadow, as part of Jonathan Smith’s real estate.

Notes

Name on the 1771 bond

The bond of administration of 17 September 1771 gives, in its condition, “Bridget Clifford late of Brintwood … Widow Deceased”; its docket reads Bridget Smith. No marriage to a Clifford is set out in this account, and this page keeps her name as Bridget Keniston, wife of Jonathan Smith.

Residence, 1771

The deed is Rockingham County Deeds 108:379, for land in Brentwood. The deed’s own text is dated October 1771, while the residence entry is dated before October 1771; the body therefore gives only the year 1771.