♂Joseph Hovey

Joseph Hovey (1653–1693) was a settler of Hadley, on the Connecticut River, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony^W, where his children were born in the 1680s. He was the eighth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by three separate lines of descent, through two of his sons.

Ipswich and Hadley

Joseph Hovey was the son of Daniel Hovey and Abigail Andrews of Ipswich. A Hovey family genealogy published in 1913 gives his birth there in 1653, the fifth of Daniel’s seven children, and prints Daniel’s will, which names “my son Joseph”. By the same account, Daniel moved west to Quaboag in 1668 and on to Hadley, where he lived through King Philip’s War^W before going back to Ipswich in 1678. Joseph made his home at Hadley and stayed there until 1690.

The 1913 genealogy gives the marriage of Joseph Hovey and Hannah Pratt, a daughter of Richard and Mary Pratt of Malden, on 31 May 1677. Their son Ebenezer was born at Hadley on 5 November 1680, a daughter Hannah on 21 November 1682 and a son John on 22 August 1684, each entered in the town’s births as a child of Joseph and Hannah Hovey. The genealogy counts seven children in all: Joseph, born in February 1677/78, then Ebenezer, Hannah, John, Caleb and Thomas, and last James, born about 1691.

Milton

In 1690, by the 1913 genealogy, the family left Hadley for Milton, south of Boston. Joseph’s father died in the spring of 1692. Daniel Hovey’s will, which the genealogy prints from the original at Salem, gave Joseph a hundred rods of ground at Ipswich, next to Mr. Emerson’s land, and left it in the hands of the executor and overseers for Joseph’s children to share equally.

Joseph died at Milton before 9 June 1693, outliving his father by about a year. The Suffolk County court at Boston granted letters of administration on his estate to his brother John Hovey of Topsfield, and the bond is dated 9 June 1693. The inventory came to £11 12s 8d, all of it personal goods, £1 4s of it in “Things prized at Ipswich”. The estate was declared insolvent, and two Milton men, Thomas Holman and Nathaniel Pitcher, were appointed to examine the claims against it.

Lines of descent

Joseph Hovey and Hannah Pratt stand ten generations above Nancy Jane Blanchard on three lines. Two run through their son Ebenezer Hovey (born 1680) and meet again in Wesley Blanchard (1844–1908), whose parents, Joseph Knapp Blanchard (1820–1885) and Elizabeth Trueworthy Blanchard (1825–1884), were both descended from Ebenezer. The third runs through their son John Hovey (1684–1714) and comes down to Anna Walker Merryman (1869–1942). She and Wesley’s son George Wesley Blanchard (1868–1939) were the parents of Kenneth Blanchard (1897–1975), Nancy Jane Blanchard’s father, in whom all three lines meet.

Notes

The births of Ebenezer, Hannah and John are in the Hadley town records; Ebenezer’s entry reads “Ebenezer Son of Joseph & Hannah Hovey Borne Novemb 5 1680”. The 1913 genealogy, The Hovey Book of the Daniel Hovey Association, gives John’s birth as 21 August 1684; the town record has 22 August. Most of the rest comes from that book: his birth at Ipswich in 1653, the order of his parents’ children, his wife’s parents, the marriage date, the move to Milton, the four other children, the text of his father’s will and the inventory and settlement of his estate. His parentage rests on two strands: the Suffolk County letters of administration, which make John Hovey of Topsfield his brother, and Daniel Hovey’s will of 21 March 1691/2, printed in the genealogy, which names a son John at Topsfield and a son Joseph with children. Abigail Andrews is named as Daniel’s wife in the genealogy’s transcript of his certificate to the county court of 1683; she died between 1676 and 1683. A genealogy of Charlestown families published in 1879 also names Joseph Hovey of Hadley as the husband of Hannah Pratt.

The 1913 genealogy dates his death to the summer of 1693, but administration was granted on 9 June 1693, so he was dead by then. It lists all seven children under “born in Hadley”, although James, born about 1691, came after the move to Milton in 1690.