♀Elizabeth Trueworthy Blanchard

Elizabeth Trueworthy Blanchard (also given as Elizabeth Thayer Blanchard; 26 September 1825 – 6 April 1884) was a Maine woman of Freeman and Lewiston who married her first cousin, Joseph Knapp Blanchard (1820–1885), and so was a Blanchard both by birth and by marriage. She was the great-great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her son Wesley Blanchard (1844–1908), Wesley’s son George Wesley Blanchard (1868–1939), and George’s son Kenneth Blanchard (1897–1975).

Early life

Elizabeth was born on 26 September 1825, at Freeman in Franklin County according to family sources, the daughter of Alexander Blanchard (1799–1850) and Sarah Dudley (1795–1839). Her parents had married at Phillips, a neighboring Franklin County town, on 29 June 1822. Her father is proven by a probate record: an 1857 Norfolk County petition for the partition of the estate of Capt. Alexander Blanchard of Weymouth, master mariner, names six heirs, each owning a sixth - Alexander, Marcellus, Mary Ann Cushing, “Elizabeth Blanchard wife of Joseph K. Blanchard of Readfield Maine”, Nelson and Westly - and a widow, Susan Blanchard. Her mother is named by her sister’s record rather than her own: the Weymouth marriage entry of 11 December 1845 for Mary Ann (Maryanna S.) Blanchard and Thomas W. Cushing, known from the town’s index, gives her parents as Alexander Blanchard and Sarah Dudley. Dean Dudley’s 1886 history of the Dudley family says Sarah had two daughters, both married, and the dates fit; the 1857 petition does not name the mother. Her father was a native of Weymouth, Massachusetts, and is called “Capt. Alexander Blanchard” in the records. Her mother died at Freeman on 20 February 1839, when Elizabeth was thirteen. On 29 September 1839 her father married again at Weymouth. His second wife, Sarah Hovey Thayer, died at Freeman on 24 May 1840, eight months after the wedding. Alexander later returned to Weymouth, where he died in September 1850.

Marriage and family

Her husband, Joseph Knapp Blanchard, was a son of Noah Blanchard (1797–1875), her father’s elder brother; both men were sons of Nicholas Blanchard of Weymouth and Mary Thayer. Noah’s baptism at Weymouth in 1797 and Alexander’s entry in the Weymouth register of deaths in 1850 each name their father as Nicholas. Marriages between first cousins were legal in Maine. A family chart dates the wedding to 12 April 1840, but no record of it has been found. The census ages suggest she was born a year or two before 1825, so she was probably about sixteen when she married. Their first child, Adaline, was born about 1841 or 1842.

The couple had five children, born between 1841 and 1868: Adaline, Wesley, Frank Leroy, Minnie and Ida Alice. In 1850 the family lived at Mount Vernon in Kennebec County, the town where her mother had been born. By 1860 they had moved to Lewiston in Androscoggin County, where they were still living in 1880. Her eldest daughter, Adaline, died on 16 August 1861, aged about twenty. Wesley became a store clerk at Lewiston, and Frank moved to New York City.

Death

Elizabeth died at Lewiston on 6 April 1884 and was buried that month in Riverside Cemetery there. Joseph died the following year. Of her children, Minnie died in December 1891 and Ida Alice in October 1900. The state’s record of Ida’s death names her parents as Joseph K. and Elizabeth T. Blanchard.

Notes

The records name her only as “Elizabeth T.” - the 1880 census, the cemetery index, her daughter Ida’s death return and her son Frank’s marriage records. The death certificate of her son Frank Leroy Blanchard (Brooklyn, New York, 30 May 1936) gives his mother as “Eliz. Truworthy” in the maiden-name box, evidently her middle name, Trueworthy, a given name used in her mother’s Dudley family: her mother’s great-grandfather James Dudley had a brother Trueworthy, born in 1700, named with him in their father Stephen Dudley’s will of 1734/5. A family descendancy chart likewise gives “Elizabeth Trueworthy Blanchard”. The middle name Thayer, her grandmother Mary Thayer’s surname, rests only on a memorial website and online trees. No record spelling out the name in full has been found.

Her age

The birth date of 26 September 1825 comes from a compiled source. The census gave her age as 26 in 1850, which points to 1823 or 1824, and about 1825 in 1860 and 1880. In 1850 her daughter Adaline was eight and her son Wesley six.