♂William Hersey

William Hersey (died 22 March 1657/8) was a husbandman of Hingham, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, who made his will “being now sicke” about two weeks before his death. He was the eighth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his daughter Elizabeth Hersey.

Hingham

He was probably a native of England, perhaps of Hingham in Norfolk, the home of many of the first settlers of the Massachusetts town of the same name; when and where he was born is not known. According to the town’s history, he came to New England in 1635 and early that autumn settled at Hingham with others who had crossed on the same ship. On 3 July 1636 the town granted him a house lot of five acres on what is now South Street, nearly opposite West Street. He was made a freeman^W in March 1638, served as a selectman in 1642, 1647 and 1650, and joined the colony’s artillery company^W in 1652.

The same history records that he was assessed a heavy fine for supporting the Rev. Peter Hobart, Hingham’s minister, and his friends in the trouble of 1644–1645 over the election of officers for the town’s train band^W. The quarrel over the militia company’s captaincy set Hobart’s party against the colony’s magistrates, and it ended with the deputy governor, John Winthrop^W, tried and acquitted on their complaint and the complainants fined.

Family

William and Elizabeth had three sons, William, John and James, and three daughters, Frances, Elizabeth and Judith, all of whom are named in his will. Their daughter Elizabeth probably married Moses Gilman of Exeter, New Hampshire, and the line to Nancy Jane Blanchard runs through her.

Will and death

He made his will on 9 March 1657/8. To his son William he gave “ye house and home Lott that he now Lives in”, with the lot he had bought of Matthew Chafey and a great lot at Nuttey hill; to John and James he gave a lot each at Nuttey hill, and to each of his daughters £5, to be paid at their mother’s death or remarriage. Two grandsons, John Croade and William Hersie, were to have 40 shillings each when they reached four years of age. Everything else went to his wife Elizabeth for as long as she lived as his widow, and he made her his only executrix. His overseers were “cousine John Farrington”, Thomas Marsh and his son-in-law Richard Croade, the husband of Frances.

He died at Hingham on 22 March 1657/8. Moses Collier and Thomas Marsh appraised his estate there on 28 April 1658 at £419 13s. 6d., including land at the rotten tree, at Hockley, at Conahasset and at Ware Neck.

Notes

Date of death

The 1893 History of the Town of Hingham gives his death as 22 March 1657/8. The abstract of his inventory printed in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register in 1854 calls him “deceased the 24th day of March”. The will was proved on 29 April 1658. Under the Old Style calendar^W, which began the year on 25 March, the will’s date of 9 March 1657 falls in 1658 by the modern reckoning.

The Hingham years

His likely English origin, the crossing of 1635, the house lot of 1636, the freeman’s oath, the selectman’s terms, the artillery company and the fine of 1644–1645 come from the second volume of the History of the Town of Hingham (1893), which calls him a “Husbandman” and says that the place and date of his birth “have not as yet been definitely ascertained”. The Genealogical and Family History of the State of Maine repeats its account. The will and the inventory are known from the abstract in the Register (1854), which the Hingham history also quotes.

His daughter Elizabeth

The will names a daughter Elizabeth but not her husband. That she is the Elizabeth who married Moses Gilman rests on the 1893 Hingham history, which lists “Elizabeth, m. Moses Gilman of Exeter, N. H.” among his children, and on a history of the Gilman family published in 1869, which calls Moses’s wife a daughter of William Hersie, senior. The 1893 history makes Frances the wife of Richard Croade, married on 29 April 1656, which fits the will’s “sonne in Law”, Richard Croade, and its grandson John Croade.