♂Joseph Benson

Joseph Benson (died before 31 December 1705) was a yeoman of Hull, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, who inherited his father’s home lot and houses there, and who in 1679 stood in at the probate of his father’s will for his mother, who was too lame to leave the house. He was the eighth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through his daughter Joanna Benson (died 1735).

Early life

Joseph was the son of John Benson and his wife Marah. He was probably born at Hingham about 1640, a few years after his parents had settled there. The family is said to have moved to the neighboring town of Hull about 1657, where his father served as a selectman.

His father’s estate

On 16 April 1678 John Benson, “being but weake”, made his will. He left his lands, commons and orchard at Hull to his sons John and Joseph, and to Joseph alone he gave “my home lott that I bought with the dwelling houses on it”. The movable goods were to go to the two sons after Marah’s death, John taking a double share, and each of Joseph’s married sisters, or a dead sister’s children, received five pounds. Marah was to have the use of the whole estate for her life and to act as sole executrix.

John Benson died on 13 January 1678/79. When his will came before the court in March 1679, it was Joseph who presented the inventory, on 25 March, “Affirming that his mother the Exec[utri]x was lame and unable to come abroad”, that is, unable to go out of doors. Marah did not live long as a widow. By 29 December 1681 she too was dead, and the court made Joseph and his brother John administrators of their father’s estate.

Family and death

Joseph spent the rest of his life at Hull, where the deeds of his children later call him a yeoman. The deeds do not name his wife; she is said to have been called Sarah. At least six of his children grew up: two sons, Joseph and John, and four daughters, Joanna, Mary, Susanna and Sarah. The daughters married men of Weymouth and Bridgewater, and John became a weaver at Bridgewater.

Joseph Benson died at Hull before 31 December 1705. His eldest son and namesake, a cordwainer (a shoemaker) of Hull, then bought out his brother and sisters one at a time, paying most of them ten pounds ten shillings for their shares in the houses and lands at Hull that had belonged to their father. Sarah and her husband Joseph Pratt of Bridgewater released theirs first, on 31 December 1705, in the earliest deed to call their father dead. Joanna and her husband Ebenezer Hovey, a Weymouth blacksmith, signed on 2 January 1706/07, Mary and Zachariah Gurney the next day, Susanna and John Randall a week later, and John in March 1708. Through those deeds the Hull property, most likely the same home lot Joseph had inherited, passed whole to his eldest son.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through his daughter Joanna, her son Samuel Hovey (1718–1796), Samuel’s daughter Sarah Hovey (1747–1805) and Sarah’s son Nicholas Blanchard (1766–1849). They part with two of Nicholas’s sons, Noah Blanchard (1797–1875) and Alexander Blanchard (1799–1850), and meet again when Noah’s son Joseph Knapp Blanchard (1820–1885) married Alexander’s daughter, his first cousin Elizabeth Trueworthy Blanchard (1825–1884). Their son Wesley Blanchard (1844–1908) descended from Joseph Benson twice, and from Wesley the descent to Nancy Jane Blanchard runs as one.

Notes

Birth and parents

His father is named by the will itself, which calls him “my Son Joseph” and leaves him the home lot at Hull, and his mother by the note on the inventory, where Joseph calls the executrix, the will’s “wife Marah Benson”, “his mother”. No record of his birth or baptism is known. The birth at Hingham about 1640 comes from The Benson Family Records (1920) and from a typescript family history, A Pioneer Family (1938), which also give the move to Hull about 1657 and his father’s service as selectman. Both books identify his father with John Binson of Oxfordshire, a husbandman who sailed from Southampton in the Confidence in April 1638 with his wife Mary and two small children; no known record ties the two men together. Online family trees, citing a 2003 family history, give his mother’s maiden name as Williams, and no record of that name is known.

His wife

None of the deeds by which his children settled his estate names their mother. A history of Weymouth published in 1923 gives his wife as Sarah, and online family trees call her Sarah Bass; no record has been found for either.

Dates

The 1938 typescript has him die at Hull in January 1706, but his daughter Sarah’s release of 31 December 1705 already calls him deceased. No probate of his own estate has been found. The same typescript dates his father’s will 1677; the probate register’s copy reads 16 April 1678. The court’s entry proving the will is dated 26 March 1679, the day after Joseph presented the inventory.