♀Phebe Fabyan

Phebe Fabyan (baptized 1 July 1750 – 16 February 1818) married Nicholas Dennett, a farmer of Pepperellborough, the town in York County, Maine, now called Saco, and raised ten children there, born between 1769 and 1790. She was probably the fourth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her son John Dennet (born 1769).

Scarborough and Pepperellborough

Phebe is said to have been baptized on 1 July 1750, a daughter of Joseph and Mary (Brackett) Fabyan of Scarborough. Her father was one of the original signers of the covenant of Scarborough’s Second Parish Church when it was organized in 1744, and her mother was a prominent member of that church.

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.

Widowhood

When Nicholas made his will on 28 July 1814, 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. Phebe outlived him by more than three years and died at Saco on 16 February 1818, entered in the town book as the widow of Nicholas.

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 baptism on 1 July 1750, the parents Joseph and Mary (Brackett) Fabyan and the marriage on 2 December 1767 come from the Fabyan family account in George Thomas Little’s Genealogical and Family History of the State of Maine, vol. 4, which also describes Joseph Fabyan as an original signer of the Second Parish covenant at Scarborough on 20 March 1744 and Mary (Brackett) Fabyan as a prominent member of that church. Maine Families in 1790, vol. 6 (1998), pp. 108–111, places the baptism at the Second Church of Scarborough, citing a copy of that church’s records, and takes her mother’s maiden name from a study of Newington, New Hampshire, families; it gives the marriage only as about 1768, reckoned from the birth of the first child.

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”. Her death on 16 February 1818, as the widow of Nicholas, is on p. 225 of the same book.

The covenant and baptism of 2 July 1769 and the terms of Nicholas’s will are from Maine Families in 1790, citing the Pepperellborough church records and the York County probate records. The daughters’ deaths in the family section are from the same volume, p. 110, which cites the church records for Phebe, gravestone inscriptions for Sarah, and the town book for Olive (p. 215) and Mary (p. 218).

Her 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 and names him John Fabian Dennett. The names of his own children 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.