♀Elizabeth (surname unknown)

Elizabeth (died 8 October 1671) was the wife of William Hersey (died 1657/8), a husbandman of Hingham, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, who named her his only executrix and left her the rest of his land, houses and goods for as long as she lived as his widow. She was the eighth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her daughter Elizabeth Hersey.

Marriage and children

Her surname, her parents and the date and place of her birth are not known. She probably came to New England with her husband in 1635, the year he settled at Hingham. William and Elizabeth had three sons, William, John and James, and three daughters, Frances, Elizabeth and Judith, all of whom are named in his will. Their daughter Elizabeth probably married Moses Gilman of Exeter, New Hampshire, and the line to Nancy Jane Blanchard runs through her.

Widowhood

William made his will on 9 March 1657/8 and died about two weeks later. He left her everything he had not given to the children, to hold during her life or while she remained a widow. If she married again, she was to divide it among the children as she saw good, and he added that no restraint was to be laid on her “for matter of time” in giving any of them what she thought fit. Each daughter’s legacy of £5 was to be paid at “ye decease of their mother”, or on the day she remarried. As executrix she swore to the inventory of his estate, which had been appraised at £419 13s. 6d. According to the town’s history she outlived him by thirteen years and died at Hingham on 8 October 1671.

Notes

Her name

The 1893 History of the Town of Hingham says only that “The chris. name of his w. was Elizabeth”; the will calls her “my wife Elizabeth”. No record gives her maiden name.

Dates and the will

Her death date comes from the second volume of the 1893 Hingham history. The will and the inventory are known from the abstract printed in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register in 1854. It dates the appraisal 28 April 1658 and her oath to the inventory 28 April 1659, a year later to the day. That she came over with William in 1635 is an inference from the Hingham history, which says that their son William “prob. came to New Eng. with his parents in 1635”. That the daughter Elizabeth is the wife of Moses Gilman rests on the 1893 Hingham history and on a history of the Gilman family published in 1869.