♂Nathaniel Conant

Nathaniel Conant (28 July 1650 – 1732) was a yeoman of Bridgewater, in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, who brought his wife Hannah and their young family there from Beverly in the 1680s and farmed there for more than forty years. The will he made in 1712, twenty years before his death, divided his land among his sons and names eight children. He was the eighth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son Nathanael Conant (1680–1745).

Beverly

He was born at Beverly on 28 July 1650, entered in the town’s records as a son of Lot Conant, and was a grandson of Roger Conant^W. He learned the trade of a cordwainer^W, or shoemaker: when his father died in 1674 the inventory listed “a shop where Nath. Conant workes”, and the will left “vnto my sonn Nathanell the shop and tools”. He was baptized in Salem’s First Church on 26 May 1662, as Lot’s son.

He married Hannah, whom the genealogy names as a daughter of Andrew and Bithiah Mansfield of Lynn. Nathaniel and Hannah’s first children were born at Beverly, beginning with a daughter, Bithiah, on 8 November 1677; their eldest son, Nathanael, followed about 1680. By the genealogy’s account the two families were joined again in January 1681-2, when Hannah’s widowed father, Andrew Mansfield, married Nathaniel’s widowed mother, Elizabeth, so that Andrew became Nathaniel’s stepfather as well as his father-in-law.

Bridgewater

The family had moved to Bridgewater, in Plymouth Colony^W, by 1689: when their son Lot was baptized at Beverly that year, the record described his parents as of Bridgewater. Nathaniel had sold his Beverly house and six acres before he left, and when the buyer sold them on in April 1688 the deed recalled the land as bought of “Nathaniel Conant, cordwainer”. The genealogy, drawing on Mitchell’s history of Bridgewater, finds “Goodman” Conant in the town in May 1688, charged with repairing the road from South Brook. In January 1691-2 he sold twelve and a half acres at Beverly, towards Wenham, to his brother John.

He took his share of the new town’s duties. The genealogy has him serving on juries in the 1690s, and among the petitioners of 1715 for a second parish, incorporated the next year as the South Parish, where his homestead lay.

The will

As his sons came of age he settled land on them. The genealogy finds a deed of March 1711 giving fifty-three acres to his eldest son, Nathanael, and another of July 1712 giving the fifty-acre homestead to his youngest son, Lot.

On 3 July 1712 Nathaniel made his will, calling himself a yeoman of Bridgewater. He left Hannah a third of the homestead, two cows and household goods for her widowhood, and named her executrix together with their eldest son, Nathanael. The will names eight children: the eldest son, Nathanael, already settled on land his father had deeded to him; Josiah; Lot, the youngest son, who was to have the homestead; three married daughters, Bithiah, Hannah and Martha; and two younger daughters, Lydia and Rebekah, who were to share the movable goods left after their mother’s death. To each son and to the married daughters he added the same wish, that they “rest contented” with what they had.

Nathaniel died at Bridgewater before 2 August 1732, when the will was proved. He was buried in the Old Grave Yard at Bridgewater, now the First Cemetery, where a gravestone carries his name and the year 1732. On 18 August appraisers valued his estate, setting the fifty-acre homestead at £500 and the fifty-three acres where his son Nathanael lived at £160. A road laid out in 1763, the genealogy notes, still ran “by the west end of old Goodman Conant’s house”.

Notes

• The third figure of the year on the record copy of the will is hard to read; the genealogy prints 1712. The genealogy dates the deed of the homestead to Lot 8 July 1712, five days after a will that already calls it given; the records found do not explain the difference.
• The genealogy says the will was proved on 24 August 1735. The probate record gives 2 August 1732, and the inventory is dated 18 August 1732.
• The First Church records of Bridgewater give his death as 22 August 1732, which cannot fit a will proved on 2 August; the text keeps the probate date.
• An automatic transcription of the will online reads Josiah’s name as “Jonah”; the written page says Josiah.
• His birth is in the printed Beverly records, where the first letters of his name are lost (“[Nathan]iell, s. Lott, July 28, 1650”); the Salem baptism register of 1662 also names him as a son of Lot. His father’s will and inventory are printed in the records of the Essex County quarterly courts; a Conant family genealogy published in 1887 adds a legacy of £50. His jury service and his deeds are known here only from that genealogy, as is Hannah’s maiden name.
• The printed Beverly records name the children of Nathaniel and Hannah born there from 1677 to 1687, Nathanael’s own birth on 3 January 1679 among them, and Lot’s baptism in 1689; the Bridgewater records give the births of Lot, Lydia and Rebekah.