♂Caleb Gilman

Caleb Gilman (1678 – 22 March 1766) was a landowner of Exeter, in the Province of New Hampshire^W, whose daughter Elizabeth married the future judge John Dudley. He was the sixth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his daughter Elizabeth Gilman (1727–1806).

Life

A history of the Dudley family published in 1886 gives his birth year as 1678 and calls him a “son of the first Moses Gilman” of Exeter; a history of the Gilman family published in 1869 and a genealogy of the Folsom family published in 1882 also make him a son of Moses Gilman. The will of Moses Gilman, dated 12 January 1701/2 and proved on 6 August 1702, is printed in the Probate Records of the Province of New Hampshire. It names seven sons, Moses, Jeremiah, James, John, David, Joshua and Caleb, and leaves “my beloved son Caleb Gilman my dwelling house and out housing which I now possess, together with the other half of my home lands, lying next to his brother Moses’s“. The will establishes that Moses had a son Caleb; that he is the Caleb of the later Exeter records rests on the compiled histories above. The 1869 history records a deed of 11 June 1712 in which “Elizabeth widow of Moses” conveyed a saw-mill to her son Caleb. According to the Genealogical Dictionary of Maine and New Hampshire, his brother David’s will of 1735 named Caleb as his chief heir. Charles H. Bell’s History of Exeter (1888) lists a Caleb Gilman among the town’s selectmen in 1725, 1730, 1731, 1736 and 1737, and the Genealogical Dictionary gives the same years to Caleb, the son of Moses.

He probably served in the Exeter town garrison from 26 October to 9 November 1696, aged eighteen. In 1725 the town divided its common land, and he was probably allotted 150 acres in the division voted on 12 April 1725.

The Dudley family history quotes several of his deeds from the county registry at Exeter. In one, dated 3 September 1762, “Caleb Gilman of Exeter, Gentleman” sold 27 acres to John Giddinge, bounded by land he had lately sold to John Dudley. The same book prints a deed of 1764 in which John Dudley sold land at Exeter that he had bought from his “father-in-law, Mr. Caleb Gilman”, and his daughter Elizabeth released her right of dower in it.

He died on 22 March 1766, aged 88 by the reckoning of the Dudley family history; the Gilman history of 1869 says that he was then “the oldest man in the town of Exeter”.

Family

Caleb’s wife was Susanna Folsom, a daughter of Lieutenant Peter Folsom of Exeter. The Gilman history of 1869 and the Folsom genealogy of 1882 both name her so, and the Folsom estate papers name Caleb and Susanna Gilman in an agreement of 20 July 1720 among the children of the late Lieutenant Peter Folsom, and name Caleb and his wife Susanna again in a second agreement of 16 April 1737. The Folsom genealogy names only two children of that marriage, David and Caleb, and does not list Elizabeth. Peter Folsom married in 1678, so a daughter of his would have been in her thirties or early forties in 1727; Susanna was probably Elizabeth’s mother, and no other wife of Caleb appears in the records of those years. The Genealogical Dictionary names a son David, about fourteen in 1735, and other children including Caleb, Susanna and Elizabeth; the Israel it also lists is, in David Gilman’s will of 1735, the son of Caleb’s brother Jeremiah. In 1848 Colonel Theophilus Lovering, then about eighty, told the author of the Dudley family history that Elizabeth had a sister Mary, whose second husband was Colonel Antipas Gilman of Gilmanton, and brothers Ezekiel and David.

Caleb’s son David was a minor in 1735. His uncle David Gilman, a brother of Caleb, left the boy the home place, house, orchard and adjoining land in his will of that year, and named Caleb sole executor of the will. On 22 May 1735 guardianship of the boy, then over fourteen, was granted to his father.

According to the Dudley family history, John Dudley and Elizabeth Gilman were married at Exeter on 22 June 1749.

Lines of descent

The published genealogies make Caleb’s father Moses and John Gilman (1624–1708) of Exeter brothers, both sons of Edward Gilman, and John Dudley was a great-grandson of John Gilman through his daughter Sarah Gilman (1667–1713). Caleb’s daughter and her husband were therefore second cousins once removed, so that their children descended from Edward Gilman by two lines.

Notes

The Gilman history of 1869 gives the dates 1678 and 22 March 1766 not to Caleb but to a son of his, also named Caleb, both in its list of his children and in a footnote which says that “Caleb’s son Caleb was born in 1678”. That cannot be right: Moses Gilman’s children were born from about 1660 onwards (Jeremiah in 1660, Elizabeth in 1663, John in 1668), so a grandson of his could not have been born in 1678. The Dudley family history gives the same dates to Caleb, the son of Moses, and those are the dates given here. The Genealogical Dictionary instead places his birth about 1682 and records him as aged 86 in 1768, which does not agree with a death in 1766. A probate record of 1770 for a Caleb Gilman late of Exeter, administration granted to a Sarah Gilman, widow, does not show whether it concerns this Caleb or his son.

Garrison service and common land

Both facts come from Charles H. Bell’s History of the Town of Exeter (1888), a compiled town history: the garrison service of 26 October to 9 November 1696, when Caleb was aged eighteen, and the division of common land voted on 12 April 1725, in which he was allotted 150 acres. Bell is a secondary work, so both sentences in the Life section carry a qualifier.