♂Nathaniel Blanchard

Nathaniel Blanchard (baptised 22 July 1631 – died before 27 August 1676) was a resident of Weymouth in the Massachusetts Bay Colony^W, where the births of four of his children by his wife Susan were recorded between 1660 and 1674. He was the eighth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through his son John Blanchard (1660–1733).

Life

He was baptized at Goodworth Clatford, Hampshire, on 22 July 1631, and so was born before that date; the register names his parents as Thomas and Elizabeth Blanchard. A nineteenth-century genealogical dictionary calls his father Thomas Blanchard of Charlestown, and names his wife as Susanna, daughter of Edward Bates of Weymouth. He married her at Charlestown on 16 December 1658; the Charlestown record places the marriage in that month, and no record names her father. He was living at Weymouth by 27 March 1660, when the town recorded the birth of his son John as “John, s. Nathaniell and Susan”. The town clerk entered the family under the name Blancher. The births of Nathaniel (1665), Edward (1668) and Mercy (1674) followed. The same dictionary adds a daughter Mary, born in 1662, and perhaps a Susanna, born in 1671.

He probably held a pasture at Weymouth by November 1665, when a town vote named it as a boundary.

Death and estate

No record of his death has been found in the Weymouth death records, but the Suffolk County probate records show that he died without a will. On 30 April 1679 the County Court at Boston granted administration of the estate of “Nathanael Blanchett late of Waymouth Deced intestate” to “Susanna his Relict widow”. She and Capt. John Holbrook, both of Weymouth, gave a bond of £200. The inventory of his estate, appraised on 27 August 1676, listed a house, an orchard, meadow and upland, cattle and “Childrens Beding”, and totalled £198 7s. The August 1676 date is that of the appraisal, so he is described as having died by then. The record names none of his children.

His widow sold part of his pasture at Weymouth to Joseph Dyar on 7 February 1678/9, and the deed was acknowledged on 13 July 1685 by “Susanna Bass (late Blancher)”. The dictionary says she remarried in 1680, probably to Thomas Bass, which fits that entry, although no record names her husband.

Lines of descent

Both lines pass through his son John (1660–1733) and his grandson John (1691–1752). They meet again in Wesley Blanchard (1844–1908), whose parents, Joseph Knapp Blanchard (1820–1885) and Elizabeth Trueworthy Blanchard (1825–1884), were both his descendants. From Wesley the descent to Nancy Jane Blanchard runs as one, through George Wesley Blanchard (1868–1939) and Kenneth Blanchard (1897–1975).

Notes

Place in the line

His place in the line rests on name and date alone. His son John, born in 1660, was the only John Blancher born at Weymouth in that generation, and he is taken to be the John Blanchard who married Abigail and died at Weymouth in 1733. No record joins the two, and the administration does not name John. A deed of 11 July 1685, in which John Blancher of Weymouth sold Joseph Dyar part of a parcel “formerly Nathaniel Blanchards pasture”, bounded on two sides by land of John Blancher, shows a John holding land beside Nathaniel’s homestead in the year his mother’s sale was acknowledged. It does not call him a son, so it is circumstantial support only.

Baptism and pasture

The baptism is entered in the Goodworth Clatford parish register (1538–1734), an original record. Earlier compilations (Wyman, 1879; Chamberlain and Little, 1909) gave his birth as about 1636, an estimate with no record behind it, and the 1631 baptism sets that aside. The pasture comes from the History of Weymouth, a compiled town history.