♀Mary Dean

Mary Dean (15 June 1687 – 5 February 1770) was the wife of Samuel Edson, a gentleman of Bridgewater, in Plymouth County, in the Province of Massachusetts Bay. She was the seventh great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her son Abel Edson (born 1718).

Family

Mary was born at Taunton on 15 June 1687, entered in the town’s records as “Mary, d. Benjamin”, the daughter of Benjamin Dean and most likely of his wife, Sarah Williams. When her father made his will in 1722/3 he named her among his seven daughters as “Mary Edson”. She had married Samuel Edson at Taunton on 1 January 1707-8. Her son Abel was born at Bridgewater on 19 January 1717-18, entered in the town’s records as a child of Samuel and Mary; the church record calls the father “Samuel 3d”, to tell him apart from older men of the same name in the town. A history of Bridgewater published in 1840 lists the couple’s children, from Susanna in 1708 to Ezra in 1730. She died at Bridgewater on 5 February 1770, at 82, entered in the town’s register as “Mary, w. Samuel”. Her husband made his will on 23 August 1770, leaving Abel “the homestead where he now liveth”, and died on 27 December 1771.

Notes

Abel’s birth is in the printed vital records of Bridgewater, and Samuel Edson’s will in the Plymouth County probate records. The will’s first page names sons and a daughter; whether its continuation mentions her is not known. Her death is in the printed vital records of Bridgewater; the full run of the couple’s children comes from Nahum Mitchell’s History of the Early Settlement of Bridgewater (1840).

Maiden name and parents

Her birth and her marriage are in the printed vital records of Taunton; the birth entry gives 16 June, with 15 June as a second reading. Her father’s will, dated 2 February 1722/3 and proved in 1725, names his daughters one by one, Mary Edson among them. The records do not name her mother: Sarah Williams, who married Benjamin in 1680, is the mother given by J. B. Edson’s Edsons in England and America (1903), a compiled genealogy of the family. The Bridgewater births of her children name her only as Mary.