♀Ruth Spaulding

Ruth Spaulding (15 December 1746 – 8 May 1790) was the first wife of Isaac Butterfield (1750–1812) and the mother of his first seven children, born at Dunstable and at Temple, New Hampshire. She was the fourth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her daughter Ruth Butterfield (1779–1854).

Early life

The Westford birth register records that “Ruth Spaulding daughter of Andrew Spaulding and Mehittable his wife was born December 15th 1746”. Her father was a weaver and a deacon of Westford’s First church. Her mother, born Mehitable Chandler of Andover, was the widow of Robert Crosby when she married Andrew in 1745. Ruth was the first child of that marriage, and she had half-siblings from her father’s first marriage. The same register records her younger brothers Solomon (1748) and Henry (1750) and her sister Abigail (1754), and eight older half-brothers and half-sisters from her father’s first marriage, to Hannah, born between 1729 and 1744. A Spalding family genealogy published in 1897 gives her baptism as 21 December 1746.

Marriage and family

The register of marriages at Westford records that on 3 December 1772 Isaac Butterfield “of Dunstable” married Ruth Spaulding “of Westford”, and the 1897 genealogy gives the same marriage under her own entry. The town and vital records of Wilton, Franklin County, Maine, hold a page headed “The Record of Isaac and Ruth Butterfields Family”. The page was entered in the Wilton town book, although the children on it were born in New Hampshire, most likely after the family had moved to Maine. It lists seven children of Isaac and his first wife Ruth: a son Isaac, born at Dunstable in 1773, and then Solomon, Ruth, Abraham, Joseph, Daniel and Hitty, all born at Temple between 1776 and 1787. Her son Solomon bore the name of her brother Solomon, born in 1748. The date the page gives for her daughter Ruth, 18 February 1779, matches the date family trees give. A note written above Joseph’s name reads “Died”.

Death

According to the Wilton register, “Ruth Wife of Isaac Butterfield Died May 8 1790”. A gravestone for her stands in the East Wilton Cemetery at Wilton, Maine, beside the stone of her husband Isaac, and gives the same death date, 8 May 1790. The family was probably still at Temple, New Hampshire, when she died, since Isaac was described as “of Temple” at his second marriage on 22 July 1790, so the stone was most likely set up after they moved to Wilton. The stone gives her birth as 15 May 1752, against the 15 December 1746 entered in the Westford birth register. Isaac married again; his second wife was also named Ruth, and the register sets her children apart under the heading “The Children of Isaac Butterfield by His Second Wife Ruth”. The register does not say where the first Ruth died or was buried.