♂Nathanael Conant

Nathanael Conant (3 January 1679-80 – 8 September 1745) was a settler of Bridgewater, in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, who raised two families there: three children with his wife Margret in the first years of the 1700s, and four more with Elisabeth Hains, whom he married at Bridgewater on 17 December 1716. He was the seventh great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his daughter Margaret Conant (born 1722).

His father

Nathanael was born at Beverly on 3 January 1679-80, the second child and eldest son of Nathaniel Conant and his wife Hannah. A Conant family genealogy published in 1887 names Hannah as a daughter of Andrew and Bithiah Mansfield, and says that the father appears to have moved to Bridgewater as early as 1687. His father made his will there on 3 July 1712 and died in 1732; it was proved on 2 August of that year. The will leaves “my Eldest Son Nathanael Conant that tract of Land whereon he now dwelleth”, which the father had already conveyed to him by deed, and asks that he “rest himself contented” with it; the younger son Josiah received about twenty pounds, and Lot, the youngest, the homestead. Nathanael and his mother Hannah were named executors. The land is most likely the South Bridgewater farm that, according to the genealogy, his father gave him in 1711 and where he built the house he lived in; the inventory of the estate lists fifty-three acres where his son Nathanael lived.

First family

The same book gives him three wives. The first, Mary, died without children. The second was Margaret Laughton of Lynn, whose intention of marriage was published at Lynn on 5 June 1701. The printed Bridgewater birth records name three children of Nathanael and Margret, born in the Province of Massachusetts Bay: Thomas in 1704-5, Nathan in 1706 and Bithia in 1709.

Second family

On 17 December 1716 Nathanael married Elisabeth Hains at Bridgewater. Four children were born to Nathanael and Elisabeth at Bridgewater between 1720 and 1727, and the town’s printed birth records name them all as Nathanael’s: Jeremiah, Margaret, John and Elisabeth. Their daughter Margaret married Abel Edson of Bridgewater; the Conant genealogy, following Mitchell’s history of Bridgewater, puts the marriage in 1739.

The farm divided

The Conant genealogy follows his land through the Plymouth County deeds. In 1718 he sold nine acres to Josiah and John Aldrich, and in 1732 he sold thirty-six acres to his son Thomas. On a single day, 20 November 1741, he sold land to three of his sons: sixteen acres with a house and barn to Jeremiah, lying between Jeremiah’s house and his own; six acres more to Thomas; and to John, his youngest son, forty acres with “the dwelling house where I now live and the barn and malt house”.

His will

Nathanael made his will on 17 March 1742-3, being weak of body, and died on 8 September 1745, the genealogy says. The will names his wife Elizabeth, who outlived him by eleven years, and his sons Thomas and Jeremiah, to each of whom it leaves five shillings.

Three daughters are named: Elizabeth, who was to have £50; Bethia, the wife of Elkanah Richard; and Margaret, the wife of Abel Edson. For Margaret the will makes a further provision on top of the fifty pounds he had already given her. It is the record that names Margaret as Abel Edson’s wife, the marriage through which the line to Nancy Jane Blanchard runs.

Notes

• The printed Bridgewater birth records give Margaret’s birth as 3 January 1722. The Conant genealogy gives 3 June 1722; for every other child its dates agree with those records, and this page follows them.
• The printed birth records call Elisabeth Nathanael’s “second w.”, while the Conant genealogy makes her his third wife, after Mary and Margaret Laughton. The Bridgewater records cited here do not mention a wife named Mary.
• The Conant genealogy places Nathanael in the fourth generation of the family of Roger Conant^W, as the son of Nathaniel Conant, grandson of Lot Conant and great-grandson of Roger. The probate record of the father’s will supports the first step; the identification of its “Eldest Son Nathanael” rests on the land and on there being only one Nathanael Conant of that age at Bridgewater, and the descent beyond the father rests on the genealogy alone.
• The printed Beverly town records enter “Nathaniell”, son of Nathaniel and Hannah, on 3 January 1679, which the genealogy gives as 3 January 1679-80 (the year changed on 25 March). The genealogy prints the father’s will as proved in 1735; the probate record itself reads 2 August 1732, with the inventory dated 18 August 1732.
• The deeds of 1718, 1732 and 1741 are known only from the Conant genealogy’s summary of them.
• The opening of Nathanael’s own will, its date and the line naming “Margret Edson the wife of Abel Edson” are given in the Plymouth County probate register. The remaining provisions come from an automatic transcription of the register. Bethia Richard is probably the Bithia born to Nathanael and Margret in 1709, but the will does not say so.