♂Ebenezer Hovey

Ebenezer Hovey (5 November 1680 – 1756) was a deacon of Weymouth, in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, where his children were born and where he married a second time. He was the seventh great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through his son Samuel Hovey (1718–1796).

Early life and marriage

He was born at Hadley, on the Connecticut River, on 5 November 1680; the town register enters him as “Ebenezer Son of Joseph & Hannah Hovey Borne Novemb 5 1680”. A Hovey family genealogy published in 1913 gives his mother as Hannah, a daughter of Richard and Mary Pratt of Malden, and a history of Weymouth published in 1923 makes his father Joseph a son of Daniel Hovey. The same history has him marry, about 1702, Joanna Benson, and settle in Weymouth’s South Parish by 1703. Joanna was a daughter of Joseph Benson of Hull. On 2 January 1706/7 Ebenezer, a blacksmith of Weymouth, and Joanna released to her brother Joseph Benson of Hull, a cordwainer and the eldest son of their late father, all their share in the houses and lands their father had left at Hull, for ten pounds ten shillings.

Weymouth and family

The 1923 history describes him as a blacksmith. He also held land, and the history cites the county deeds by which he sold 25 acres in Weymouth to Nathaniel Searle for £90 in June 1710, and 50 acres on the “Pond plain”, on the south side of Pond River, to Thomas Hunt in April 1739.

The couple had five children, Hannah, Martha, Susanna, Samuel and Ebenezer, the eldest born in 1703 and the youngest baptized in 1724. Susanna died in June 1717, and the younger Ebenezer, by the history, was baptized at the South Church in December 1724 and died young.

By the 1730s Ebenezer Hovey was a deacon: the town clerk gave him the title when Joanna died and again when he married a second time. The records do not name the church he served.

Later life and will

Joanna died at Weymouth on 26 March 1735. On 13 November 1735, at Weymouth, he married the widow Sarah King of Norton. He made his will on 9 July 1744, calling himself “Ebenezer Hovey of Weymouth … Yeoman” and leaving bequests to “my well beloved Daughter Hannah Snow” and “Daughter Martha Pettengall”, who had married at Weymouth in 1741 and 1731/32. As the 1923 history abstracts it, he mentioned his wife, though not by name, and his son Samuel, the only son named. A genealogy of the Alden family’s descendants, which cites the probate file, gives Hannah’s legacy as £12 10s. “with what she has had already”. The Suffolk County probate decree at Boston on 16 April 1756 committed the estate “unto his son Samuel Hovey Sole Executor in the same Will named”. The will was proved on that date. He died before it, most likely at Weymouth and at about seventy-five. The records do not say whether Sarah outlived him.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through his son Samuel, Samuel’s daughter Sarah Hovey (1747–1805) and her son Nicholas Blanchard (1766–1849). They meet again in Wesley Blanchard (1844–1908), whose parents, Joseph Knapp Blanchard (1820–1885) and Elizabeth Trueworthy Blanchard (1825–1884), were both descended from Ebenezer Hovey and Joanna Benson. From Wesley the descent to Nancy Jane Blanchard runs as one.

Notes

No record gives the day of his death. The probate file dates it only by the proving of the will on 16 April 1756, so it falls before that day, and the 1923 history places it at Weymouth, shortly before that date, at about seventy-five. His birth and his parents’ first names are on the Hadley town register; his mother’s surname comes from the 1913 genealogy, and his descent from Daniel Hovey from the 1923 history. His first wife’s maiden name and her father’s Hull estate are on the 1706 deed (Suffolk Registry of Deeds, book 26, pages 181 and 182), which also calls him a blacksmith. Her mother’s name, Sarah, comes from the 1923 history of Weymouth alone, and his land sales come from the same history. His will is recorded in the Suffolk County probate register, which supplies its date, the bequests to Hannah and Martha, the title yeoman and the naming of Samuel as executor; the legacy amounts, the mention of his wife and Samuel as the only son named are the history’s and the Alden genealogy’s. The year of death is the year his will was proved. The history calls him a blacksmith, while the will describes him as a yeoman.

The Weymouth town records name him with his wife Joanna at the births of Hannah and Samuel, give him the title of deacon at Joanna’s death and at his second marriage, and record the marriages of Martha and Hannah. The town clerk wrote Hannah’s mother as Johannah.