♂Nicholas Dennett

Nicholas Dennett (June 1745 – 24 September 1814) was a farmer of Pepperellborough, the town in York County, Maine, now called Saco, where he and his wife Phebe raised ten children. He was the fourth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son John Dennet (born 1769).

Life at Pepperellborough

Nicholas is said to have been born at Saco in June 1745, and he spent his whole life there as a farmer. Nicholas and Phebe are said to have married on 2 December 1767. Their first child, John, was born on 2 February 1769, and that July the couple are said to have received the covenant of the Pepperellborough church and had him baptized. Ten children were born to them at Pepperellborough between 1769 and 1790, and all ten were entered together in the town’s book of records on 10 May 1800. The line of descent to Nancy Jane Blanchard runs through John, who is probably the John Dennet of Hollis, father of William Dennett (1803–1888).

In 1780, during the American Revolution, Nicholas is said to have served on Pepperellborough’s Committee of Safety and Correspondence^W.

His will

Nicholas made his will on 28 July 1814, describing himself as a yeoman of Saco. He is said to have left Phebe the use of half the dwelling house, his household furniture and a generous maintenance for the rest of her life, and to have divided everything else in six equal shares among his sons John, Samuel, Nicholas, Joseph, Joshua and Daniel, naming John and Samuel as his executors. He added a charge to his sons that they “shall exercise the brotherly love and Christian temper becoming brethren and that no self interest shall so blind their minds as to prevent them from apportioning the same amicably and with out bitterness and discord.”

The town book records his death on 24 September 1814, but his will is said to have been probated on 10 September, which would place his death some weeks earlier. Phebe outlived him by more than three years and died at Saco on 16 February 1818.

The family

According to a published genealogy of the family, all four of the couple’s daughters died before their father. Phebe died at Pepperellborough “of Canker Rash” on 27 July 1797, aged nineteen; Sarah, the wife of James Gray Jr., died in 1804 at thirty; and Olive died in 1806, three years after her marriage, as the widow of James Scamman Jr. Mary died at Saco on 24 September 1811.

Notes

Sources

The ten children’s births are entered in the First Book of Records of the Town of Pepperellborough, now the City of Saco (printed 1896), p. 116, under the heading “The following are the names of the Children of Nicholas Dennett and Phebe Dennett his wife born in Pepperellborough”, with the note “Recorded May 10, 1800”. The same book gives his death on 24 September 1814 (p. 221) and Phebe’s on 16 February 1818, as the widow of Nicholas (p. 225).

The birth in June 1745 at Saco is the date a WikiTree profile gives, citing the early vital records of Saco and Biddeford printed in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register (vol. 71). Maine Families in 1790, vol. 6 (1998), pp. 108–111, gives him as born in the Saco–Biddeford area in June 1745 and baptized at the First Church of Biddeford on 11 August 1745, a son of Samuel and Sarah (Frost) Dennett of Kittery and Pepperellborough; that parentage rests on its account. The same account is the source for the covenant and baptism of 2 July 1769 (from the Pepperellborough church records), the committee service of 1780 (from Folsom’s history of Saco and Biddeford), his life as a farmer, and the will, which it abstracts from the York County probate records; the quoted charge to his sons is the will’s wording as printed there.

The marriage date of 2 December 1767 comes from the Fabyan family account in George Thomas Little’s Genealogical and Family History of the State of Maine, vol. 4. Maine Families in 1790 gives the marriage only as about 1768, reckoned from the birth of the first child.

The daughters’ deaths in the family section are from Maine Families in 1790, vol. 6, p. 110, which cites the Pepperellborough church records for Phebe, gravestone inscriptions for Sarah, and the town book for Olive (p. 215) and Mary (p. 218).

The date of death

The town book gives 24 September 1814. Maine Families in 1790 states that he wrote his will on 28 July 1814 and that it was probated on 10 September 1814 (York County Probate 24:527), and calls the town book’s date an error. The town book’s date is the one given at the head of this page.

His son John

The line runs through John, the eldest son, born on 2 February 1769. That he is the John Dennet of Hollis, the father of William Dennett (1803–1888), is probable. Maine Families in 1790 makes the identification: it calls him John Fabian Dennett, has him marry at Pepperellborough on 26 July 1792 a woman entered as Jane “Mallana” (called Jane Woodward in a history of Hollis), buy land at Hollis that year, serve as a Hollis selectman and in the Maine House of Representatives, and die at Hollis in 1834. The names point the same way: seven of the nine children of John and Jane at Hollis share names with Nicholas and Phebe’s children, and a grandson was named John Fabian Dennett.