♂Lot Conant

Lot Conant (about 1624 – September 1674) was a yeoman of Marblehead and Beverly, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and a son of Roger Conant^W, who led the settlers who founded Salem in 1626. He and his wife, Elizabeth Walton, had ten children, among them twins. When he died at about fifty his youngest child was three, and his will kept the estate whole in his widow’s hands until the children came of age. He was the ninth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son Nathaniel Conant (1650–1732).

Early life and Marblehead

Lot was born about 1624, most likely at Nantasket or Cape Ann, a son of Roger Conant and Sarah Horton. In July 1654 he testified on oath that about seven years before, “going eastward” along the coast as a young man, he had carried a letter to a trader at Blue Point, on the coast of Maine, over a debt for goods from a trading house in which his father had been a partner. He is said to have been living at Marblehead by 1657, and to have served as one of its selectmen in 1662.

Lot and Elizabeth were probably married about 1649, for their eldest son, Nathaniel, was born on 28 July 1650. They had ten children in all between 1650 and 1671, among them twins, Sarah and William, born on 19 February 1666/7. Their four eldest children were baptized together at the First Church of Salem on 26 May 1662; Martha and the twins followed there in 1664 and 1667.

Beverly

According to the family genealogy, Roger Conant deeded Lot the homestead at Beverly in November 1666, with 32 acres beside it and 72 acres elsewhere in the town, and on the same day Lot leased the house and three acres back to his parents for a yearly rent of “one Indian corn”. It was a token rent, like the peppercorn^W of an English lease: the land became Lot’s, while Roger and Sarah kept their house. Lot seems to have built his own house close by: at his death his estate held a dwelling house and orchard of about four acres “wth an old dwelling house of his fathers”.

When Lot sold their house at Marblehead in March 1669/70, it was with Elizabeth’s consent, and she signed with him in 1671, when “Lott Conant of Beverly, yeoman” sold another house there. That year he and his brother Exercise signed their father’s petition asking the General Court^W to rename the town Budleigh, after the Devon market town where Roger had been born. The Court declined.

Death and will

Lot made his will on 24 September 1674, “sick and weak”, and died within the next five days. He left each of his five sons £50 and each of his five daughters £20, with the shop and tools over and above to Nathaniel, and ordered that the estate “lye whole unbroken” until the children came of age or married, resting meanwhile in Elizabeth’s hands for their bringing up. She was to be executrix, to have the house and orchard for life, and to see that the land was never “disposed off from the children”; his brother Exercise, the minister John Hale^W and Captain Lathrop were to help her. A cow or heifer was set aside for his “kinswoman Leech”, to be hers when she married or left Elizabeth’s household. His father and Exercise witnessed the will.

On 29 September his estate was valued at £782 16s. Besides the farm, three oxen, ten cows and twenty sheep, it held a shop “where Nath. Conant workes”, an eighth share in a ketch^W, a third part of a river house, a small house and land at Marblehead, two muskets and three swords, and spinning wheels with wool, cotton and flax. Elizabeth swore to the inventory at the Salem court on 26 November 1674, when the will was proved. Roger Conant, who outlived his son by five years, remembered “my sonne Lot his ten children” in his own will. On 10 January 1681/2, at Lynn, Elizabeth married Andrew Mansfield.

Notes

Sources

• His age (“about fifty years”), the will and the inventory are printed in Dow’s Records and Files of the Quarterly Courts of Essex County, volume 5, pages 431-432. The children’s births are entered in the printed Beverly town records, and the baptisms of 1662, 1664 and 1667 in the records of the First Church of Salem. Roger Conant’s will is printed in Dow’s Probate Records of Essex County, volume 3. The Lynn records give Elizabeth’s second marriage.
• His testimony of 1654, the deeds of 1666, 1669/70 and 1671, the petition of 1671 and Elizabeth’s oath to the inventory are known from transcriptions printed in A History and Genealogy of the Conant Family (1887), which took them from the Essex court files, the Essex deeds and the Massachusetts Archives.
• His birthplace, his living at Marblehead by 1657 and his service as selectman in 1662 rest on the 1887 genealogy alone. It also says he was among those dismissed from the First Church of Salem in July 1667 to form the church at Beverly.

Marriage date

No record of the marriage is known. A compiled history of Maine families gives about 1649, which fits the birth of Nathaniel in July 1650.

Date of death

The 1887 genealogy gives his death as 29 September 1674, the day the inventory was taken. The will of 24 September and the inventory place it between those two days. The printed Beverly records have no entry for his death.

Readings

Dow’s transcription of the will reads “my kinswoman Leech”; the 1887 genealogy reads “mari Leach”. The Great Migration Begins suggests she was a daughter of Lot’s sister Sarah, wife of John Leach. Dow gives the inventory total as £782 16s; the genealogy prints £782 4s.