♀Elizabeth (surname unknown)

Elizabeth (buried 23 July 1636) was the wife of Thomas Blanchard in the parish of Goodworth Clatford, Hampshire, England, and the mother of Nathaniel Blanchard, who was baptized there on 22 July 1631. She was the ninth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through her son Nathaniel Blanchard (1631–1676).

Life

Her parents, her birth and her maiden name are not known. Almost all that survives of her is two entries in the parish register of Goodworth Clatford, a village two miles south of Andover. The first is the baptism of “Nathanell Blanchard the sonne of Thomas and Elizabeth Blanchard” on 22 July 1631. The second, five years and a day later, is her burial: “Elizabeth Blanchard wife of Thomas Blanchard was buryed July 23th Day”.

She was probably also the mother of Thomas’s other sons: George and Thomas, born in the 1620s, Samuel, baptized at Goodworth Clatford on 30 August 1629, and David, baptized there on 2 February 1633/4. Her death left Thomas a widower with young children. He is said to have married again in May 1637 and to have taken several of the children to New England two years later, so George, Samuel and Nathaniel made their lives in the Massachusetts Bay Colony^W, far from the parish where she was buried.

Lines of descent

Both lines pass through her son Nathaniel, her grandson John Blanchard (1660–1733) and her great-grandson John Blanchard (1691–1752). 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

The register entries

Both entries are in the Goodworth Clatford parish register for 1538–1734, held by Hampshire Archives and Local Studies. The burial stands among the entries for 1636 after 26 March, so the year is 1636 in both the old and the modern reckoning. The Thomas Blanchard of the register is taken to be the Thomas who emigrated in 1639: a history of Weymouth (Chamberlain, 1923) places him at Clatford and abstracts his marriage licence of 15 May 1637, which calls him “yeoman and widower, of Clatford”; a son Samuel is said to have come over in 1639 aged ten, which fits the 1629 baptism; and his will of 1654 names Nathaniel and Samuel.

Her children

The register names her only at Nathaniel’s baptism; it gives no mother at Samuel’s (1629) or David’s (1633/4). The Weymouth history lists George (born near 1622), Thomas (born near 1625), Samuel and Nathaniel as children of Thomas’s first wife, whose name it did not know. It puts Nathaniel’s birth near 1636, which the 1631 baptism corrects.

Her surname

One family tree gives her as Elizabeth Hibberd, without a source. No record of a marriage between Thomas Blanchard and an Elizabeth Hibberd is known, so her surname is left blank.