♂Rodolphus Elmes

Rodolphus Elmes (27 May 1668 – 6 December 1749) was a man of Scituate, Massachusetts, who married Bithiah Dodson there in 1696 and had three children entered in the town’s register of births between 1696 and 1700, the youngest of them a son who carried his name. He was the seventh great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his daughter Katharine Elmes (born 1698).

Marriage and family

He married Bithiah Dodson at Scituate on 20 February 1696; the register writes the year “1695-6”, because under the Old Style calendar^W the year then began in March. Their daughter Mary was born on 8 November 1696, Katharine on 22 March 1698, and a son Rodolphus on 6 July 1700, all at Scituate. A printed genealogy of the Carver family, into which Katharine married, calls him “Rhodolphus Elmes, Jr., of Middleborough (formerly of Scituate)”, and the Middleborough vital records hold later Elmes births, among them an Ignatius on 8 April 1706 and a Bithiah, which appear to belong to the same family. The name carried on: Katharine named a son Rodulphus, born at Bridgewater on 20 June 1735, and a daughter Bethiah, after her father and her sister.

Death

He died at Middleborough on 6 December 1749. His headstone in the Cemetery at The Green reads “In Memory of Mr Rodulphus Elmes who Died Decembr ye 6th 1749”, and a footstone is marked “R ELMES 1749”; a Find a Grave memorial gives the cemetery as his burial place.

Notes

The Scituate register records the death of a Rodolphus Elmes on 19 March 1711/12 without saying which of the two men it was. This man died on 6 December 1749, so the entry must be his father’s: the elder, a father since 1645, would then have been about ninety-two.

The same Carver genealogy calls Katharine “probably” his daughter and a granddaughter of “Rhodolphus Elmes of Scituate”, citing Samuel Deane’s history of Scituate; the claim rests on the compiled account alone. The Scituate birth register names her father only as “Rodalphus”; that she was the younger man’s daughter rests on the dates, since her sister Mary, born two years before her, is entered under “Rodolphus Jr.”

Identification

The printed Scituate vital records hold two men of this name. The elder had children entered from 1645 to 1668, the last of them “Rodulphus, s. Rodulphus, May 27, 1668”; the younger is called “Rodolphus Jr.” at the birth of his daughter Mary in 1696. The 1668 birth is his: the entry names his father, the elder Rodulphus, and the 1696 entry calling him “Rodolphus Jr.” ties father and son. The register does not name his mother, and he had eight older siblings in the same household.

Probate date

The will is dated 25 June 1744 and was proved on 25 January 1749/50. The probate clerk wrote the year as 1748, though the volume the entry sits in spans 1749 to 1752; that slip is why an earlier account of the probate seemed to rule out a death in December 1749.