♀Susannah Lincoln

Susannah Lincoln (born 19 September 1688) was the wife of John Colson of Weymouth, Massachusetts, and the mother of his twelve children, nine of them born at Weymouth, where the town recorded each as a child of John and Susanna. She was the seventh great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through her daughter Elizabeth Colson (1723–1798).

Early life

Susannah was born at Hingham on 19 September 1688, the daughter of Thomas Lincoln and his wife Sarah. Her mother was born Sarah Lewis, at Barnstable. The same register records an older sister, Sarah, born in 1685, and younger siblings Thomas, Ebenezer and Mary, born in 1692, 1694 and 1696.

Marriage and family

A 1923 history of Weymouth records that John Colson and Susannah Lincoln were married at Hingham on 29 May 1706. She was seventeen, and her husband, by a family account the history prints, had been born on the island of Bermuda and had come to Weymouth about 1700. The couple lived at Hingham until 1 February 1711/12, when John bought “a house and land at a place called Mutton Lane in Weymouth” for £140.

The couple had twelve children between 1707 and 1732: the history places the first three at Hingham, and the town of Weymouth recorded the other nine as children of John and Susanna, from Thomas in January 1712/13 to a daughter born on 12 March 1732. Two daughters named Sarah died as children, according to the same history, and the name was given a third time to the youngest.

Widowhood

Her husband made his will on 3 May 1749; it was proved at Dorchester on 24 July 1752, with their son Ebenezer as executor. As the 1923 history abstracts it, he left her the use of his estate for life, after which it was to be divided among their three sons, Thomas, Ebenezer and Josiah. Two other sons, John and Brackley, are missing from the will; both, according to the history and a family account by her grandson Thomas Vinson, died in an Indian war. John Colson died at Weymouth on 4 July 1752, in his seventy-first year. The printed Weymouth vital records hold no death entry for her, and the history gives no date for her own death.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through her daughter Elizabeth, her daughter Sarah Hovey (1747–1805) and Sarah’s son Nicholas Blanchard (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 descended from John Colson and Susannah Lincoln. From Wesley the descent to Nancy Jane Blanchard runs as one.

Notes

Name and birth

Her first name is on record in the Weymouth births of her children, written Susanna. The Hingham register of births, marriages and deaths (page 78) gives her entry as “Susanna Lincolne daughter of Thomas Lincolne and of Sarah his wife was born the 19th of September 1688”. A transcribed birth listing gives 12 September 1688 with no parents; the register gives the 19th.

Parents

The register names her mother only as Sarah. Her maiden name Lewis comes from a compiled history, the History of the Town of Hingham (1893), volume 3, page 17. That history makes Thomas Lincoln (born 22 December 1652) marry on 6 January 1684/85 Sarah Lewis, daughter of James and Sarah (Lane) Lewis of Barnstable, born there 4 March 1660/61, and gives their children as Sarah (1685), Susanna (1688), Thomas (1692), Ebenezer (1694) and Mary (1695/6). Transcribed listings of the Hingham births of Thomas (30 August 1692) and Mary (14 June 1696) name the same parents. The maiden name is confirmed by two records: Sarah, widow of Thomas Lincoln, married Robert Waterman at Hingham in 1699, and the will of her father, James Lewes of Barnstable, dated 8 May 1713, names among his four daughters “Sarah Waterman”.

Surname and marriage

Her surname and the Hingham marriage also appear in the 1923 history of Weymouth (Chamberlain, History of Weymouth, Massachusetts). Her grandson Thomas Vinson’s family account, printed there, agrees on the name, calling her “Susannah Lincoln, daughter of Thomas Lincoln of Hingham”, but puts the marriage “about 1705”.

Death

The printed Weymouth vital records hold no death entry for her. An online family tree gives 12 March 1732; it cites no source, and that date is the birth date of her youngest daughter, Sarah Colson, so it is not used.