♀Jedidah Mayhew

Jedidah Mayhew (about 1656 – 6 January 1736) was a woman of Edgartown on Martha’s Vineyard, the wife of Benjamin Smith, whose name the town’s clerks wrote with the title “Esq.” She was the seventh great-grandmother of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through her daughter Dorcas Smith (1687–1730).

Early life

Her age at death on her gravestone places her birth about 1656, the year Charles Banks’s history of Martha’s Vineyard also gives.

The third volume of that history, a compiled genealogy published in 1925, lists her as the daughter of Thomas Mayhew and Jane Paine. A deed of gift her widowed mother made on 20 December 1664 names her, as “Jedida”, among “my children”.

Marriage and children

By Banks’s account, Benjamin and Jedidah married at Edgartown before 8 February 1683/84, probably in 1683. Their son Benjamin was born at Edgartown on 29 December 1691, entered in the town records as the son of “Benjamin Esq. and Jedidah”, and Banks gives the couple eight children in all, born between about 1685 and 1700. Their daughter Dorcas married Benjamin Hawes at Edgartown on 24 July 1705.

Widowhood and death

Benjamin died on 4 July 1720. His will, dated 14 February 1719/20 and proved at Chilmark on 17 August 1720, made her sole executrix. Jedidah lived on as his widow for fifteen years. She died on 6 January 1736 in her eightieth year, entered in the town records as “Jedidah, w. Benj[amin] Esq.”, and was buried at Tower Hill Cemetery, the Old Burying Ground of Edgartown.

Notes

Jedidah was Benjamin Smith’s wife by 1691, when their son was born, and Banks makes her the mother of all eight children, Dorcas among them. Her husband’s will names the two of them in one document: it makes her sole executrix, and names Dorcas, as “Dorcus Haws”, among his three daughters.

A family chart compiled in 1994 gives her birth as 1657 and her death as 1706; her gravestone gives 6 January 1736.

The marriage date

Banks’s second volume dates the marriage before 8 February 1683/84, citing the Edgartown town records and the Dukes County deeds (Banks 2:109). His first volume has it before April 1685 (Banks 1:130), and his third volume after 16 June 1684 (Banks 3:448). The second volume’s date is the one given here.

The 1664 deed

The deed is in the Dukes County deeds, volume I, page 206, and is printed by Banks (2:107–108). In it the widow Jane Mayhew names “my children” Matthew, Thomas, John, Jerusha and Jedida, the spelling the deed uses.

The gravestone

Her stone at Tower Hill Cemetery, which the town’s vital records call the Old Burying Ground, carries this inscription: “HERE LYES BURIED THE BODY OF Mrs. JEDIDAH SMITH WIFE TO BENJAMIN SMITH ESQr. DECd JANry. Ye 6th 1735/6 IN Ye 80th YEAR OF HER AGE.”

The will

Dukes County probate records, volume 1 (1690–1752), pages 113–114, hold her husband’s will, dated 14 February 1719/20 and proved at Chilmark on 17 August 1720. Banks’s second volume says the widow survived him sixteen years (Banks 2:109); the dates here give about fifteen and a half.