♂William Simpson Merryman

William Simpson Merryman (20 March 1840 – 9 August 1909) was a stone mason and later a street commissioner at Haverhill, Massachusetts, and the son of a Brunswick, Maine, mariner. He was the great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006): his daughter Anna Walker Merryman (1869–1942) married George Wesley Blanchard, their son was Kenneth Blanchard (1897–1975), and Kenneth’s daughter was Nancy Jane Blanchard.

Early life

William was born on 20 March 1840 at Brunswick, in Cumberland County, Maine, one of at least nine children of John Merryman (1808–1891) and Eleanor C. McManus (1808–1891). His father was a mariner, and by 1850 the household also included Eleanor’s father, Robert McManus, then about eighty-five and still farming in his daughter’s house. The brothers and sisters went different ways: Nathaniel went to California in the gold rush of 1850 and died a miner at Baker City, Oregon, and Augusta married a sea captain. William’s own road led south to Massachusetts. A printed Merryman family genealogy traces the couple’s other children for several generations, but its account of William breaks off mid-sentence at the foot of a page, and no continuation naming his children is known.

Marriage and family

William had settled at Haverhill by 1866. The next year, on 3 November 1867, he went back to Topsham, Maine, and married Francis E. Dennett (1846–1925), daughter of William Dennett and Eliza Stone Wilson of Topsham. The couple made their home at Haverhill. In 1870 they lived in Haverhill’s Ward 1, where he worked as a stone mason, aged 30, with Fanny and their daughter Anna Walker Merryman, born in 1869, and a second daughter, Maude Dennett Merryman, followed in 1874. By 1880 the family was at 24 North Street, Haverhill, where he was still a mason, with Fannie, Anna and Maude in the household. They were still living at Haverhill, in Essex County, Massachusetts, in 1900.

Public life

In time he left the trade for public work and served as street commissioner at Haverhill for several years. The Daily Item of Lynn, Massachusetts, on 10 August 1909 called him a former superintendent of highways and one of the largest real estate owners in the city.

Death

He died at Haverhill on 9 August 1909, at the age of sixty-nine, and was buried at Topsham, Maine. According to the Daily Item, he collapsed while talking over a business matter and died in the law offices of Ryan & Pingree, his attorneys, that afternoon; he had been attacked by acute indigestion two weeks earlier but had apparently recovered.

Notes

The 1850 census gives his father’s occupation as mariner. The Merryman genealogy of 1905 supplies the move to Haverhill in 1866, his service as street commissioner, the marriage and the siblings’ careers; the Maine vital records index and the genealogy agree on the marriage date. The family record carries his wife’s name as Francis E. Dennett, with birth year 1846; the Maine marriage index writes it Fanny E. Dennett, and the genealogy gives Frances Eliza Dennett, born at Topsham on 3 February 1850. Census ages (24 in 1870, 42 in 1880) fit 1846 only in 1870 and 1850 in neither, and no Topsham town record is cited to settle it. The Massachusetts death register gives his birthplace as Brunswick, Maine, and names his parents as John Merryman and Ellen McManners.