♂Jacob Warren

Jacob Warren lived at Chelmsford, Massachusetts, in the later seventeenth century, where he married twice and had nine children, one of them the Abigail who married Deacon Andrew Spaulding. He was the seventh great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his daughter Abigail Warren (1683–1768).

Origins

The Weymouth town records enter the birth of “Jacob, s. Arthur” on 26 October 1642. That this boy is the man of Chelmsford rests on a compiled Warren genealogy published in 1890, which says that Arthur Warren’s children “removed to Chelmsford” and adds that Jacob came there in 1666 and became a freeman in 1674. The link is probable but not proved. An Arthur Warren, whom the same genealogy makes Jacob’s brother, lived at Chelmsford from 1668 until his death in 1671, and a birth in 1642 would make Jacob 24 at his marriage in 1667.

Marriages and children

Jacob married Mary Hildreth at Chelmsford on 21 June 1667. The printed Chelmsford records enter five children of the couple between 1670 and 1690, Joseph, Jacob, Elisabeth, Ephraim and Sarah, the last of them written as the daughter of “Jacob and Marah”. A 1915 publication of the Hildreth Family Association says that Mary had five children by him and died about 1689–90, and has him marry again about 1690; it does not name Abigail.

His second wife was named Sarah, and her family name is not known. The Chelmsford records enter three children of Jacob and Sarah between 1691 and 1696, Jacob, Elisabeth and David.

Notes

Abigail’s birth entry

The town book records that “Abigail the daughter of Jacob and Abigaill warren was borne the 23 Janewary 1682”, a date that falls in 1683 by the modern reckoning of the year^W. The entry stands at the foot of a page among the marriages, struck through with ink lines, and the printed Chelmsford vital records of 1914 left it out. Abigail’s age of 85 at her death on 12 May 1768 agrees with that birth.

The entry gives her mother’s name as Abigail, but Jacob’s wife at the time was Mary. She had borne his children since 1670, and she was still his wife when Sarah was born in 1689/90, so Abigail’s birth falls within her marriage. The only other Warren couple in Chelmsford with a wife named Abigail were Arthur Warren and his wife, and their household had ended in 1671: Arthur’s estate is in the Middlesex County probate index for that year, and the 1890 genealogy says his wife died that June. No other Chelmsford record names a Jacob and Abigail Warren, and the records show no other Warren father in the town in January 1682/3. The most likely reading is that the clerk wrote Abigail where he meant Mary, and Abigail’s mother is taken to be Mary Hildreth on that footing.

Death

No record of Jacob’s death has been found, and his estate does not appear in the Middlesex County probate index. The 1890 genealogy says that he moved to Plainfield, Connecticut, and died there on 3 September 1727. That death belongs to his son Jacob, born in 1691, who married Abigail Haines of Plainfield; the compiler appears to have run the father and the son together, and the father’s own death and burial place remain unknown.