♂Richard Thayer

Richard Thayer (baptised 10 February 1624/5) was an English-born settler of Braintree, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony^W, who was baptised at Thornbury in Gloucestershire and was living at Braintree by 1648, the son of a Boston man of the same name. He was the eighth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through his son Nathaniel Thayer (1658–1728).

Thornbury and Braintree

He was baptized at Thornbury on 10 February 1624/5, the son of Richard Thayer and most likely of Dorothy Martimore, who had married there in April 1624. The parish clerk named only his godparents: “Richard Tayer Willm Martimore & Bridgett Tayar”. The family is said to have crossed to New England about 1640 and settled at Braintree.

By September 1648 father and son lived in different towns. An indenture of that month, entered in the Suffolk County deeds, was made between “Rich: Thaire of Boston” and “Rich: Thaire of Braintry sonn of the sajd Richard of Boston”.

Marriage and family

On 24 December 1651, at Braintree, Richard Thayer married Dorothy Pray; the marriage was performed by Mr. Thomas Flynt of Concord. The town clerk recorded three children born to them at Braintree between 1653 and 1658: Dorothy, Richard and Nathaniel.

He probably died at Braintree on 4 December 1705, and his wife a week after him, on 11 December, although a Braintree Thayer genealogy gives his death as 27 August 1695.

Lines of descent

Nathaniel was most likely the Nathaniel Thayer who married Hannah Hayden at Braintree in 1679. Their son Hezekiah Thayer was the father of Noah Thayer (born 1745), and Noah’s daughter was 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 Richard Thayer through both parents.

Notes

The Thornbury baptism

The Thornbury register of those years records godparents, never parents, so the baptism is tied to this Richard by the family’s origin rather than by a name in the entry. A Braintree Thayer genealogy places the baptism and makes him the son of Richard Thayer the emigrant, and the Thornbury register has the marriage of Richard Tayer and “dorothy Martimore” on 5 April 1624, ten months before it. A dictionary of New England marriages gives the elder Richard’s first wife as Dorothy Mortimer of Thornbury. A history of Bridgewater published in 1840 says that the elder Richard Thayer “arrived in this country from England a. 1640, and settled in Braintree 1641, with 8 children”, Richard the first of them.

His father

The indenture is dated, in the reckoning of the time, the 5th of the 7th month 1648; the year then began in March, so the seventh month was September. It is the record that makes the Braintree Richard the son of Richard Thayer of Boston.

The marriage and the children

The town clerk dated the marriage “(24) (10) 1651”, the tenth month being December. The dictionary of New England marriages prints 3 December 1651, most likely a digit lost from 24. The same 1840 history of Bridgewater adds a son Cornelius, born in 1670.

His death

The Braintree town records enter “Richard Thayer dyed ye fourth day of December 1705” and, a week later, “Dorathy Thayer dyed ye 11th. day of December 1705”. The dictionary of New England marriages, the 1840 history of Bridgewater and a lineage book of the Daughters of the American Colonists all give 1705 as the year both died. The Braintree Thayer genealogy instead gives his death as 27 August 1695, at the age of 71, from a gravestone in the Hancock Cemetery at Quincy; that age is within a year of what a baptism in 1624/5 implies. Braintree had more than one Richard Thayer by then (a son was born there to Richard Thayer and his wife Rebecca in May 1703), so which of these dates belongs to him is not settled.