♂Joel Beach

Joel Beach was a man of the Connecticut Colony^W who was of Winchester and married a Torrington widow in 1757. On the family tree’s reading, he was the second husband of Abiah Millington (1711–1766), who was the fifth great-grandmother of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007); the Barbour entry names the bride only as Abiah Filley.

Marriage

The Barbour Collection of Connecticut vital records gives the marriage at Torrington, in Litchfield County, on 18 October 1757, and describes the groom as “Joel, of Winchester” and the bride as “Abiah Filley, of Torrington”. She was the widow of William Filley, who had died at Torrington on 16 June 1756, sixteen months before. Joel Beach was her second husband.

If the Torrington death entry of 7 August 1766 is right, the marriage lasted nine years. The Torrington records, entered under the Beach family, give the death of “Abiah, w. Joel” on 7 August 1766. No children of the couple are named in the Torrington records. His birth, his work and his own death are not recorded.

Notes

Which Abiah Filley

The marriage entry names the bride only as Abiah Filley. The Windsor birth entry, as abstracted, gives the birth of William and Abiah Filley’s daughter Abiah as 11 March 1743, which would make her fourteen in October 1757, so the name alone fits either woman. The family tree takes the bride to be the widow, Abiah Millington, and the 7 August 1766 death is the one entered for her. The Winchester death of Abiah Mott on 19 October 1784 belongs to the daughter, not to Joel Beach’s wife.