♂Samuel Edson

Samuel Edson (1645 – 10 April 1719) was a yeoman of Bridgewater, in Plymouth County, in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, whose wills left land in Connecticut Colony^W to a grandson and named two people he held in slavery, George and Sarah. He was the eighth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, through his daughter Elisabeth Edson (1684–1716) and his son Samuel Edson (1689–1771).

Family

Samuel was born in 1645, probably at Salem. The Bridgewater church record gives the year but not the day or the place, and calls him “Samuel 2d”, between an older Samuel Edson who died in the town in 1692 and his own son, “Samuel 3d”.

He and his wife Susanna were probably married at Bridgewater in 1678, when the town was in Plymouth Colony^W. Their daughter Susanna was born there on 15 January 1678/9, Elisabeth on 29 August 1684 and Samuel on 14 January 1689/90, all three entered in the town’s records as children of Samuel and Susanna. Elisabeth married Samuel Packard on 24 May 1705 and died on 19 June 1716, leaving four young children. Susanna had become Susannah Brett by 1717.

The wills

On 3 December 1717 Samuel made a will that left “my beloved Son Samuel Edson” the homestead. To his wife Susanna he gave, for her life, “my Negroe slave George” and “my Negroe Slave Sarah”; after her death it left George to the son “and to his assigns for ever”. Elisabeth’s family was provided for: the will names a meadow lot “which my Son in Law Samuel Packard is now in the possession of”, and leaves bequests to “my Two Grandsons Paul & Job Packard” and to “my Grand Daughter Bethiah Packard”. Five hundred acres in Connecticut Colony, which he had bought of Thomas Snell Jun., were to be shared equally between his daughter Susanna Brett and his grandson Samuel Packard, and half a purchase right in the West Cedar Swamp went the same way.

On 16 March 1718/19, less than four weeks before his death, he made a new will as “Samuel Edson of Bridgewater in the County of Plymouth in New England yeoman”. It repeated the bequests to his grandson Samuel Packard and his daughter Susannah Brett, and left his wife “my negro woman Sarah”. He signed it with his mark. He died at Bridgewater on 10 April 1719, at 74, and the witnesses swore to the will on 27 July 1719.

Lines of descent

Samuel and Susanna are ancestors of Nancy Jane Blanchard twice over. One line runs through their daughter Elisabeth, who married Samuel Packard, down to Joseph Knapp (1763–1839); the other runs through their son Samuel, the father of Abel Edson (born 1718), down to Eunice Carver (1763–1845). Joseph Knapp and Eunice Carver married, and the two lines meet in their daughter Polly Knapp (1798–1863).

Notes

Birth and parentage

The printed vital records of Bridgewater enter his birth from the church record as “Samuel 2d, h. Susannah, , 1645”, with the day left blank, and give his death as “Samuel, h. Susanna, Apr. 10, 1719”, the church record adding “a. 74”. The same church record numbers three generations: “Samuel 1st, h. Susannah”, who died on 20 July 1692 at 80, Samuel 2d, and Samuel 3d, who died in 1771. The birthplace Salem comes from Jarvis Bonesteel Edson’s compiled Edsons in England and America and Genealogy of the Edsons (1903), which also gives the death date of 10 April 1719 and makes him a son of Samuel Edson and Susanna Orcutt. James Savage’s Genealogical Dictionary names a deacon Samuel Edson of Salem and Bridgewater, with sons Samuel, Joseph and Josiah, and calls Samuel “perhaps eldest”. The 1717 will mentions “my brother Josiah Edson”. These parents rest on compiled works alone.

Marriage

The year 1678 and the place, Bridgewater, come from the 1903 Edson genealogy; the first child’s birth in January 1678/9 fits it.

The two wills

The will of 3 December 1717 is in Samuel Edson’s estate file in the Plymouth County probate records, its cover dated 1719; its witnesses were Samuel Brown, John Field and John Ames Jun. It is an earlier will. The one that was proved is recorded in volume 4 of the county’s probate register: the register dates it the sixteenth of March “in the year of Our Lord 1719”, which under the Old Style^W reckoning, with the new year beginning on 25 March, was 1718/19. Its witnesses, Benjamin Allen, Samuel Washburn Jun. and Benjamin Leonard, swore to it on 27 July 1719 before Isaac Winslow, judge. The 1903 Edson genealogy dates this will the same and gives its probate as 1 February 1720.