♂Wesley Blanchard

Wesley Blanchard (11 May 1844 – 9 April 1908) was a store clerk of Lewiston, Maine, who in 1900 became an executor of his sister Ida Alice Blanchard’s estate and in 1902 sold her two houses on Pierce Street at public auction. Ida’s will left him a thousand dollars and, in a line she changed on the face of the document, her “chair for the sick”, which she had first left to the police matron of Lewiston. He was the great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son George Wesley Blanchard (1868–1939) and George’s son Kenneth Blanchard (1897–1975).

Early life

Wesley was born on 11 May 1844 at Freeman, Franklin County, Maine, the son of Joseph Knapp Blanchard (1820–1885) and Elizabeth T. Blanchard (1825–1884). Family charts make his parents first cousins, both Blanchards by birth. He was the second of their five children and the eldest son. In 1850 the family was living at Mount Vernon in Kennebec County, and by 1860 his parents had settled at Lewiston in Androscoggin County. His elder sister Adaline died in 1861. His younger brother Frank Leroy later moved to New York City.

Marriage and family

On 5 August 1866 he married Eldora M. Webster (1846–1913), of Kingfield, at Freeman. The ceremony was performed by J. R. Masterman, a preacher of the gospel. Eldora was a daughter of Benjamin Webster and Harriet Clough. Their son George Wesley was born at Kingfield in July 1868, but by 1870 the couple was living in the second ward of Lewiston, where the census of that year lists Wesley as a clerk in a store. They had four children, born between 1868 and 1880: George Wesley, Addie, Edith Florence and William Channing. Addie died at Lewiston in October 1874, aged four. The family was still at Lewiston in 1880, and in 1900, married thirty-three years, Wesley and Eldora were living in the city’s first ward with their son Channing.

A Webster family genealogy published in 1904 describes Eldora as a leader in the temperance movement: state treasurer of the Maine Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, president of its Lewiston branch, founder of “The Star in the East”, a director of the Young Woman’s Home, and a charter member of the Woman’s Hospital Association, which became the Central Maine Hospital. These roles are known only from that book.

George became a physician and practised at Highland Falls, Orange County, New York. Edith married John G. Coburn Jr. of Lewiston in 1896. William Channing married Lillian Anderson in 1903. The state return of that marriage calls Wesley retired, living at Lewiston, and born at Freeman.

His sister’s estate

Ida Alice Blanchard died at Lewiston on 29 October 1900. In December the probate court at Auburn proved her will and issued letters testamentary to Wesley and William M. Chamberlain. As well as his legacy and the chair, the will left $300 each to three of Wesley’s children, Channing, George and Edith Coburn, together with her books to Channing and her piano to Edith. “Mrs. Wesley Blanchard of Lewiston” received Ida’s old-fashioned dishes and three pieces of her fancy work. Wesley’s daughter Addie is not mentioned. She had died twenty-six years before.

The will named only 42 Pierce Street, but the property at 42–44 Pierce Street was two dwelling houses on one lot. One of them was a two-tenement house, and both were let to tenants. The will directed that they be sold. The executors advertised an auction in the Lewiston Daily Sun, signing the notice together, and the houses went to Armanda Martel for $3,550. The estate did not quite cover the legacies, so each was reduced slightly, and Wesley signed for $975.71 at Lewiston on 16 October 1902. His part of the paperwork shows that he was also in Orange County, New York, where his son George lived, at some point that year. He swore the executors’ final account before a notary in Orange County, New York, and he wrote from Highland Falls asking his co-executor to pay any money due to him to a “Mrs. E. M. Blanchard”. The letter does not say who she was, though the initials match his wife’s.

Death

Wesley Blanchard died on 9 April 1908 at Highland Falls, Orange County, New York, and was buried that month in Riverside Cemetery at Lewiston. He had served in the Civil War as a private in Company H, 24th Massachusetts Infantry, and was later detached as a hospital surgeon’s assistant; he was discharged in January 1866, a few months before his wedding. He drew a pension, and his widow Eldora applied for it after his death. He died of Bright’s disease complicated with heart trouble, at his son’s home. Eldora, by then a widow, headed her own household at Lewiston in 1910, and the census records that she had borne four children, three of them still living. She died in 1913.

Notes

The date of death, 9 April 1908, is given by his Civil War pension payment card and by the New York State death index, which places it at Highland Falls, and by a 1942 application to the Sons of the American Revolution filed by his grandson Kenneth. The 11 April date appears only in the cemetery index and in some online trees. Some online trees give his birthplace as Lewiston and his marriage as 23 July 1866 at Lewiston. The town’s marriage return and the 1904 Webster genealogy both give 5 August 1866, and the return places the wedding at Freeman. The 1903 marriage return also gives Freeman as his birthplace.