♀Elizabeth Gross

Elizabeth Gross (died after 1752) was the wife of Deacon John Blanchard of Weymouth, Massachusetts, the mother of his eleven children, and, after his death, the administrator of his estate together with their son Daniel. She was the sixth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through her son Nicholas Blanchard (1736–1801).

Marriage and family

An intention of marriage between John Blanchard and “Elizabeth Gross of Hingham” was entered at Weymouth on 14 December 1719, but the Weymouth register records no wedding. The couple probably married at Boston on 4 April 1720. No record of her parents has been found. The only Elizabeth Gross of marrying age in the Hingham records is Elizabeth, born there on 13 January 1699/1700 to Edmund Gross, a cooper, and his wife Martha. Edmund’s will of 1727 names a daughter Elizabeth first among his seven children, but it gives her first name only, as it does for all his daughters, and no record has been found that ties the Weymouth wife to his family. A genealogy column in the Boston Transcript reached the same identification in 1922 on the same grounds, and it remains unproven.

The couple’s first child, John, was born at Weymouth on 16 March 1721. The town’s birth register names eleven children of John and Elizabeth, born between 1721 and 1744, but it never gives her maiden name, so her surname rests on the marriage intention alone. Three of the children died young: Joshua in 1729 and Nehemiah in 1738, each within weeks of birth, and Abner in 1751, at the age of nine.

In the autumn of 1740 she joined her husband in a deed by which he mortgaged fifty-five acres of their Weymouth land to the directors of the Manufactory Company, the “Land Bank” that issued paper money against its members’ land. The deed names her as “Elizabeth Blanchard wife to the said John Blanchard”.

Widowhood

John died at Weymouth on 15 May 1752 without a will. On 7 August 1752 the probate court at Boston granted administration of his estate to Elizabeth and their son Daniel, and she signed the bond by her mark, “Eliz[abe]th her mark Blancher”. Daniel’s later account of the estate records money “laid out in my mothers sickness”. The date and place of her death are not known.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through her son Nicholas (1736–1801). They meet again in Wesley Blanchard (1844–1908), whose parents, Joseph Knapp Blanchard (1820–1885) and Elizabeth Trueworthy Blanchard (1825–1884), were both her descendants. From Wesley the descent to Nancy Jane Blanchard runs as one, through George Wesley Blanchard (1868–1939) and Kenneth Blanchard (1897–1975).

Notes

Marriage

The wedding at Boston on 4 April 1720 is graded compiled. Chamberlain’s History of Weymouth (vol. 3, BLANCHARD no. 5) gives the date and place. A printed Boston volume, A Volume of Records Relating to the Early History of Boston (Record Commissioners, vol. 28, p. 86), has an entry for a “John Blancher of Weymoth” and an “Elizabeth Gross of Hingam”; in the printed text the names and the date are set apart, and an online index to the same volume pairs the entry with 4 April 1720 and gives “Sam. Checkley Esq. J. P.” beside it. The Weymouth register prints the intention of 14 December 1719 and no wedding.