♀Elizabeth (surname unknown)

Elizabeth, whose surname is not known, was the third wife of Samuel Dudley (1608–1683), minister of Exeter, New Hampshire. She was the eighth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, through her son Stephen Dudley and her daughter Dorothy Dudley.

A family history published in 1886 says that within a year or so of Mary Byley’s death, about 1651, Samuel Dudley married a third wife, Elizabeth, whose surname it does not give, and that she bore him four sons and four daughters. A genealogical dictionary published in 1860 names the same eight children of “third w. Eliz.”, Stephen among them, and gives birth years for only two of them. According to the family history, several of her children were still minors when her husband died at Exeter on 10 February 1683. On 1 March 1685 she renounced administration of his estate, leaving it to Theophilus Dudley, whom the record calls her son-in-law, and agreed with Samuel’s children on her dower. In 1702 she was living with her daughter Dorothy, the wife of Moses Leavitt of Exeter. Neither book gives her parents or the date of her death.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through her children with Samuel Dudley. According to the published family history and genealogical dictionary, one runs through her son Stephen Dudley, by way of James and John Dudley to Nathaniel Dudley (1763–1844); the other through her daughter Dorothy and Moses Leavitt of Exeter, whose son Stephen Leavitt was the father of Mary Leavitt, the mother of Anna Smith. Nathaniel Dudley and Anna Smith were therefore third cousins, both great-great-grandchildren of Samuel Dudley, and the two lines meet again in their marriage.

Notes

Renunciation of administration, 1685

The probate volume for Samuel Dudley (1682/3) in the Probate Records of the Province of New Hampshire, vol. 1, 1635-1717, holds her renunciation of 1 March 1685, which gives the words “Leave it to my sonn in Lawe theophelus dudley”. The register spells his name “theophelus”. The word “son-in-law” is the register’s own. A will of Theophilus Dudley dated 1713 refers to Rebecca Dudley’s married name with the words “my sister Lyford”, which would make him her brother rather than a son-in-law, so the two words are left as the records give them.

Living with Dorothy, 1702

The deed of 16 November 1702, by the children of Rev. Samuel Dudley to Moses Leavitt of Exeter, says: “our mother Dudley doth live with her sonn in law Moses Leavitt”.