♂Richard Hildreth

Richard Hildreth (about 1605 – 23 February 1692/3) was an early settler of Chelmsford, Massachusetts, who came there from Cambridge and lived to the age of 88. By the time he made his will he had settled all his children in marriage and had neither house nor land to bequeath to them. He was the eighth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his daughter Mary Hildreth.

Cambridge and Chelmsford

Richard was probably born in England. He belonged to the church at Cambridge before he moved to Chelmsford, and he is said to have been one of the men who in 1653 petitioned the Massachusetts General Court^W for the grant of land on the Merrimack River that became the town. On 20 September 1663 he presented his letters of dismission from Cambridge to the Chelmsford church, whose minister, John Fiske, wrote his name “Richard Hildrich”. In April 1672 his daughter Mary, the wife of Jacob Warren, came before the same church as “the daughter of Richard Hildrich”, owned her baptismal covenant, and had her two children baptized.

Will and death

Richard made his will on 11 February 1686, “being aged, sick & weakly in body”. His sons and daughters, he wrote, were all “disposed in Marriage”. His son Ephraim already had the use of his estate and was bound to maintain Richard’s wife, Elizabeth; whatever estate remained was to be divided equally among all his children, with twenty shillings more for his eldest son, James. Richard died at Chelmsford on 23 February 1692/3, aged 88 by his gravestone, and the will was proved on 26 May 1693.

Notes

Dates and birthplace

The year of birth rests on the age of 88 at death that his gravestone gives, as entered in the printed Chelmsford vital records. The English birthplace comes from a WikiTree profile and from nineteenth-century sketches, one of which says he emigrated from England in 1643. Some of those sketches put his birth in 1612 and his death in 1688; the town’s death record of 23 February 1692/3 and the proving of the will in May 1693 rule out 1688. The Chelmsford church book counted its months from March, so its “7t.” month of 1663 is September and its “2d.” month of 1672 is April.

The 1653 petition

The petition is described in a 1909 compiled genealogy of Maine families, which names Richard Hildreth among the petitioners; an 1864 memoir in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register calls him a sergeant and one of the grantees of Chelmsford.

His wives and his daughter Mary

The will names his wife Elizabeth. Torrey’s New England Marriages Prior to 1700 gives him an earlier wife, Sarah, who died about 1644, and makes Elizabeth (1625–1693) his second. The 1672 church entry names Mary’s father but not her mother, so which wife was Mary’s mother is not settled. The will names none of his daughters; Mary’s place in the family rests on the church entry.