♂Nathaniel Thayer

Nathaniel Thayer (1 January 1657/8 – 28 March 1728) was a yeoman of Braintree, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony^W, the town where he was born, married and died. He was the seventh great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through his son Hezekiah Thayer.

Life

He was born at Braintree on 1 January 1657/8, most likely the son of Richard Thayer and Dorothy Pray. On 27 May 1679, at Braintree, Nathaniel Thayer married Hannah Hayden, whose name the town register writes “Hannah Heiden”. He was twenty-one. Their children included Nathaniel, the eldest son, Hezekiah, a daughter Hannah born in the mid-1680s, and Zachariah and Ruth, born in 1688 and 1689.

Nathaniel Thayer died at Braintree on 28 March 1728. He is said to be buried in the Elm Street Cemetery at Braintree. On 16 December 1729 his eldest son Nathaniel, a yeoman of Braintree like his father, sold his share of the family land to his brother Hezekiah, a husbandman of the town; that land still carried, it appears, the dower^W of their widowed mother, Hannah. Hezekiah was most likely the Hezekiah Thayer who had married Christian, the widow of Moses Thayer, at Braintree a month earlier, on 3 November 1729.

Lines of descent

Hezekiah’s son Noah Thayer (born 1745) was the father of Mary Thayer (1770–1827). Two of Mary’s grandchildren, Joseph Knapp Blanchard (1820–1885) and Elizabeth Trueworthy Blanchard (1825–1884), married each other, so their son Wesley Blanchard (1844–1908) descended from Nathaniel Thayer through both parents.

Notes

Hezekiah as his son

No single record calls Hezekiah, the husband of Christian, the son of Nathaniel. The tie rests on three things. The deed of 16 December 1729 describes the seller as “eldest son of Nathaniel Thayer late of Braintree aforesaid Yeoman deceased” and the buyer as “his brother Hezekiah Thayer of Braintree aforesaid Husbandman”; it was acknowledged in 1730 but entered in the Suffolk County deeds only in 1765. This son is the only Hezekiah Thayer of age in Braintree in 1729, and a Hezekiah Thayer “with Christian his wife” sold land there in March 1729/30. A Braintree Thayer genealogy also abstracts a release of 25 August 1729 in which a son Richard Thayer gave up “to my youngest brother Hezekiah Thayer my right of settlement in my father Nathaniel Thayer’s estate”.

A Thayer genealogy published in 1874 instead makes Christian’s second husband a son of Cornelius and Abigail Thayer and a brother of her first husband, Moses. But Cornelius Thayer’s will, dated 2 August 1728, names no son Hezekiah, and the later Braintree Thayer genealogy corrects the 1874 book: Hezekiah was Moses’s cousin, their mothers Hannah and Abigail Hayden being sisters.

His parents

Under the date of his birth the town clerk entered “Nathaniel Thayre the sonne of Richard Thayre and Dorothy his wiffe”. The entry fits him because he is the only Nathaniel Thayer born at Braintree at about that time; an uncle of the same name, the husband of Deborah, was a generation older. The clerk wrote the date “the 11th. mo. 1, 1657”: under the calendar then in use the year began in March, so the eleventh month was January and the year is now written 1657/8. Richard Thayer and Dorothy Pray had married at Braintree on 24 December 1651.

Burial and children

The burial place comes from the Braintree Thayer genealogy and a memorial website. The mention of the widow’s dower comes from a transcription of the 1729 deed. Zachariah’s birth was entered in the town book only on 15 March 1739, “by his acct”, and names his father as “Nathaniel Thayer deceased”. The daughter Hannah’s birth stands among entries of 1685 and 1686 in the printed town records, and its year is not clear there. In 1718 the town chose a “Richard Thayer son of Nathaniel Thayer” as one of the men to see to the act about swine.