♀Susanna Byram

Susanna Byram (died 12 March 1741/42) was the wife of Samuel Edson, a yeoman of Bridgewater, in Plymouth County, and outlived him by almost twenty-three years, dying at 93. She was the eighth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, through her daughter Elisabeth Edson (1684–1716) and her son Samuel Edson (1689–1771).

Family

Her parents were Nicholas Byram and Susanna, and her maiden name was Byram. Her mother’s will of 7 September 1698 names her as “my Daughter Susanna Edson”. She and Samuel Edson 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.

Widowhood

On 3 December 1717 her husband made a will that calls her his “beloved wife” and gave her, for her life, “my Negroe slave George” and “my Negroe Slave Sarah”, two people he held in slavery. The will he made on 16 March 1718/19, the one proved after his death, left her “my negro woman Sarah”. Samuel died at Bridgewater on 10 April 1719, at 74.

Susanna lived on in Bridgewater for more than twenty years. She is said to have made her own will on 4 October 1732, leaving her son Samuel the house she had built. She died at Bridgewater on 12 March 1741/42, at the age of 93, entered in the church record as the wife of “Samuel 2d”.

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

Maiden name and parents

Her husband’s wills call her only by her first name. Her mother, writing as “Susanna Byram Widdow of ye Town of Bridgewater”, names her in her will as “my Daughter Susanna Edson” (Plymouth County probate records, volume 1, page 332; dated 7 September 1698, proved 18 December 1700). Jarvis Bonesteel Edson’s Edsons in England and America and Genealogy of the Edsons (1903) makes her a daughter of Nicholas and Susanna (Shaw) Byram, born at Weymouth in 1648, and James Savage’s Genealogical Dictionary also marries Samuel Edson to a daughter of Nicholas Byram. George Walter Chamberlain’s History of Weymouth (1923) describes Nicholas Byram as a physician who lived at Weymouth from 1638 to 1662 and at Bridgewater from 1662 until his death there on 13 April 1688, married to Susannah, daughter of Abraham Shaw of Dedham, and lists among their children, born at Weymouth, “Susannah, m. Samuel Edson of Bridgewater”. Her age at death, 93, fits a birth about 1648. The will names no husband; it speaks of “my deceased husband” and makes a son Nicholas its sole executor. The husband’s name, Nicholas, rests on a Suffolk County court deed of 25 July 1698, which says that a purchase right “did belong formerly to Nicholas Byram now deceased”, and on the compiled works, which name him as her husband.

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.

Her will

The will of 4 October 1732 and the house she built come from the 1903 Edson genealogy.

Death

The town’s record enters “Susanna, w. Samuel, Mar. 12, 1741-2”; the church record adds “Susannah, w. Samuel 2d, Mar. 12, 1741, a. 93”, writing the year in the Old Style^W, when the new year began on 25 March. The 1903 Edson genealogy gives the same date.