♀Sarah Hovey

Sarah Hovey (19 January 1746/47 – 8 August 1805) was the wife of Nicholas Blanchard of Weymouth, Massachusetts, and the mother of five children born or baptised there between 1766 and 1785. She was the fifth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through her son Nicholas Blanchard (1766–1849).

Family and marriage

Sarah was born at Weymouth on 19 January 1746/47, the daughter of Samuel Hovey and Elizabeth Colson, who had married there on 2 September 1741. She had five brothers and sisters: Joanna, Ebenezer, Elizabeth, Chloe and Samuel. Her father’s will, recorded in the Norfolk County probate register, reads “I give and bequeath to my daughter, Sarah Blanchard, to her heirs and assigns four pounds, at the decease of my wife.”

The intention of marriage of Nicholas Blancher and Sarah Hovey was entered at Weymouth on 11 August 1764, and they were married there on 6 March 1765. The town recorded the marriage twice, once under each surname. She was about eighteen. The town’s entries for her children and for her own death give only her first name, so the marriage entries and her birth record are what carry her maiden name.

The couple’s eldest child, Nicholas, was born at Weymouth on 26 July 1766. On 27 November 1768 Sarah and her husband renewed their covenant with the Second Church of Christ in Weymouth, the South Parish, and their son Nicholas was baptized the same day. A daughter, Sarah, followed in 1769. A daughter Cloe was baptized in 1774 and a son, Noah, was born in April 1777. A second daughter named Cloe was baptized in 1785, which suggests that the first had died young. Noah died in September 1791, in his fifteenth year, and the younger Cloe died in October 1802, aged 18.

Widowhood and death

Her husband died at Weymouth on 29 January 1801 without a will. When the Norfolk County probate court ordered his estate divided on 5 April 1803, Sarah, as his widow, received one third. The rest went to the surviving children: Nicholas, Sarah, by then the wife of Demetrius Thayer of Braintree, and the estate of Cloe, who had died since her father. Sarah Thayer’s daughter, Sarah Hovey Thayer (1802–1840), later married her cousin Alexander Blanchard, a son of Nicholas; both were grandchildren of Sarah Hovey.

Weymouth’s death register gives her death as 8 August 1805, “Sarah (Blanchard), w. Nicholas”, aged 58. Two lines above it on the same printed page is the entry “Sarah, wid., Aug. 8, 1803, a. 58”. The day, month and age are the same, and she was a widow in both years, so the two entries are almost certainly one death entered twice. Her birth in January 1747 settles the year: she was 58 in August 1805, but would have been 56 in August 1803. She was most likely buried at Lakeview Cemetery in South Weymouth, by the side of her husband and their daughter Sarah Thayer.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through her son Nicholas (1766–1849). They meet again in Wesley Blanchard (1844–1908), whose parents, Joseph Knapp Blanchard (1820–1885) and Elizabeth Trueworthy Blanchard (1825–1884), were both her great-grandchildren. From Wesley the descent to Nancy Jane Blanchard runs as one, through George Wesley Blanchard (1868–1939) and Kenneth Blanchard (1897–1975).

Notes

Her birth is printed in the Vital Records of Weymouth: “Sarah, d. Samuel and Elizebeth [dup. Elizabeth], Jan. 19, 1746-7.” The printed Weymouth volumes also give her parents’ marriage and the births of four of her five brothers and sisters. The 1923 history of Weymouth gives the same birth date and parentage, and the history dates her father’s will 8 April 1793; the page of the will in the probate register does not show the date.

Church covenant, 1768

The Genealogical Advertiser (vol. 2, no. 4, December 1899, pp. 113–118) and Chamberlain’s history of Weymouth both give the entry: on 27 November 1768 Sarah, with her husband Nicholas Blanchard, renewed the covenant of the Second Church of Christ in Weymouth (the South Parish), and their son Nicholas was baptized the same day.

Burial at Lakeview Cemetery

Chamberlain’s history of Weymouth places her grave at Lakeview Cemetery in South Weymouth, beside her husband’s and their daughter Sarah Thayer’s. That is a secondary statement, not a burial record. The 1910 Weymouth vital records print a Lakeview gravestone for her husband and two children, but none for her, so the placement is stated with a hedge.