♂Samuel Packard

Samuel Packard was a man of Bridgewater, in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, who married Elisabeth Edson there on 24 May 1705. He was the seventh great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son Samuel Packard (1707–1774).

Marriage and family

The printed vital records of Bridgewater give the marriage of Samuel and Elisabeth Edson on 24 May 1705. The town’s births list a son Samuel, born on 16 September 1707, and a daughter Bethiah, whose entry gives no date but stands between births of 1707 and 1714, followed by sons Paul, born on 1 April 1714, and Job, born on 5 June 1716. Elisabeth died two weeks after Job’s birth, on 19 June 1716, recorded as “Elisabeth, w. Samuel”. The son Samuel married Susanna Kingsley at Bridgewater in 1729 and spent his life in the town.

The same records list further children born to Samuel and Anne Packard, from 1723 onward, but print no marriage of a Samuel and Anne. They may belong to a later marriage of this man or to another Samuel Packard of the town; the family tree does not record them. The records also give the death of a “Samuel, h. Elisabeth” on 22 December 1749, though they do not show that he was this man, and the family tree holds no death for him.

Notes

Parentage in compiled sources

A Mayflower genealogy, tracing the family of the younger Samuel’s wife, calls the younger Samuel a son of Samuel and Elizabeth (Lathrop) Packard. The town’s records point the other way: they name his mother as Elisabeth, who married this Samuel under the name Edson in 1705. A Bridgewater birth entry of 29 August 1684 for an Elizabeth, child of Samuel and Susanna Edson, is a candidate for her by name and age, but nothing ties the two together.

The Lathrop name most likely belongs a generation further back. A compiled genealogy of Mayflower descendants names a Samuel and Elizabeth (Lothrop) Packard as the parents of a Daniel Packard, who married Mary Harris at Bridgewater on 2 December 1713, and they may be this Samuel’s own parents; nothing shows that he was Daniel’s brother. An online family tree likewise makes him a son of an earlier Samuel Packard and Elizabeth Lathrop, and gives his own dates as born about 1680 and died at Bridgewater on 22 December 1748. His own birth, parents and death are not in the family tree.