♂Samuel Edson

Samuel Edson (14 January 1689/90 – 27 December 1771) was a gentleman of Bridgewater, in Plymouth County, in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, whose will of 1770 settled his land on his sons. He was the seventh great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son Abel Edson (born 1718).

Family

Samuel Edson married Mary Dean at Taunton on 1 January 1707-8. Their son Abel was born at Bridgewater on 19 January 1717-18, entered in the town’s records as a child of Samuel and Mary; the church record calls the father “Samuel 3d”, to tell him apart from older men of the same name in the town. A history of Bridgewater published in 1840 lists the couple’s children, from Susanna in 1708 to Ezra in 1730. The town’s register records Mary’s death on 5 February 1770, at 82.

Samuel was born at Bridgewater on 14 January 1689/90, the son of Samuel Edson Senior and his wife Susanna, whose surname Byram comes from a compiled genealogy. On 3 December 1717 his father made a will that left “my beloved Son Samuel Edson” the homestead. The will put the enslaved man George, named in it as “my Negroe slave George”, at the widow’s disposal for her life; after her death it left George to the son “and to his assigns for ever”.

The will

On 23 August 1770 Samuel Edson of Bridgewater, gentleman, made his will. His son Nathan had already been given thirty acres in his father’s lifetime. Abel received “the homestead where he now liveth”, about thirty-four acres lying between the land of Isaac Willis and the land of Solomon Ames. The will also names his sons Samuel, John and Ebenezer and his daughter Susannah, and makes his son Ezra one of its executors. He died at Bridgewater on 27 December 1771, at 82, the register calling him “Samuel 3d” once more; the history of Bridgewater records that his will was proved in 1772.

Notes

The will is recorded in the Plymouth County probate records; its first page names six sons and a daughter, and the pages that follow may name a wife and other daughters and give the date of probate. The marriage is in the printed vital records of Taunton, which enter the bride under Dean. Abel’s birth is in the printed vital records of Bridgewater. Samuel’s and Mary’s deaths are in the printed vital records of Bridgewater. The probate year and the full run of the couple’s children come from Nahum Mitchell’s History of the Early Settlement of Bridgewater (1840).

The father’s will of 1717

The will of Samuel Edson Senior is dated 3 December 1717 and is in the Plymouth County probate records; its cover is dated 1719. A later will, of 16 March 1718/19, was the one proved, on 27 July 1719. The quoted words are the will’s own. The will names the father’s wife as Susanna; her surname Byram, and his own parentage, as a son of Samuel and Susanna (Byram) Edson, come from the compiled 1903 genealogy The Edsons in England and America.