♂Zacheus Clough

Zacheus Clough (died by 1757) was a millwright^W of Brentwood, in the Province of New Hampshire^W, who had married and raised his family at Salisbury, in the Province of Massachusetts Bay. His will of 1752 names his wife Sarah and the nine of their eleven children who were then living. He was the sixth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son Benjamin Clough (born 1740).

Early life

Zacheus was the son of Thomas Clough and Ruth Conner. The Salisbury vital records give his birth there on 17 February 1691/92, as “Zackeus, s. Thomas and Ruth”. On 28 September 1715 his father, Thomas Clough, a yeoman of Salisbury, made a deed of gift to “my son Zacheus Clough of Salisbury” (see Notes).

Marriage and family

Zacheus Clough and Sarah were married at Salisbury on 21 January 1713/14. The town’s printed records give the bride’s surname as Page, but in the county court book from which the entry was printed only part of her surname can be read with confidence, so Page is not certain. Their eleven children were born at Salisbury between August 1716 and May 1740, six daughters and five sons, two or three years apart. Two of the boys died young: the first Benjamin in January 1725/26, aged nine, and the first Zacheus in infancy. Each name was given again to a later son, and the second Benjamin, born on 25 May 1740, was the youngest of the family.

Brentwood and the will

By 1752 the family had moved north across the provincial line to Brentwood, a parish set off from Exeter in 1742; part of it became the town of Poplin in 1764, where his son Benjamin made his home. The 1952 genealogy says that the couple went first to Kingston, and that Zacheus also held land at Salem, New Hampshire. On 15 December 1752 he made his will as “Zaccheus Clough of Brintwood … Mill Wright”. He left Sarah half of his estate for life.

Jabez, the eldest surviving son and then twenty-nine, was given twenty shillings, and the estate went to “my other two sons Zaccheus & Benjamin”, both still under twenty-one, with legacies to be paid “when they arrive at the age of twenty one”. Each daughter was to have fifteen pounds: Hannah Whitcher, Betty Morrill, Sarah Sanborn, Ruth Brown, Judith Huntoon, and Tabitha, the only one still named Clough. The nine children the will names are exactly the eleven born at Salisbury less the two boys who had died, so the register and the will together account for the whole family. Zacheus died before 11 August 1757, when the will was proved.

Notes

Dates between January and March before 1752 are written with both years, as the records have them (Old Style and New Style dates^W); the marriage of 21 January 1713/14 fell in 1714 by the modern reckoning.

No record of his death has been found. The 1952 genealogy gives his death on 30 July 1757, and a family chart compiled in 1994 gives the same day; the chart gives his birth as 27 February 1692, against the 17 February of the genealogy and of the Salisbury record of Thomas and Ruth’s son. The will, made in December 1752 and proved in August 1757, brackets his death.

The printed Salisbury deaths date the first Zacheus’s death to 25 March 1725, eight months before his printed birth on 23 November 1725. The 1952 genealogy gives the death as 25 March 1726, which would make him four months old; that date comes from the genealogy alone.

The 1952 genealogy calls Sarah a daughter of Joseph Page. No Sarah appears among Joseph Page’s children in the printed Salisbury records, and with her surname uncertain on the original entry her parentage cannot yet be traced.

The genealogy’s abstract of the will also names a grandson, Moses, son of Jabez, who was to have fifteen acres beside land already given to his father, and names Sarah and the younger Zacheus to carry out the will. Those clauses rest on the genealogy’s abstract alone.

Origins

A Clough family genealogy published in 1952 makes him a son of Thomas and Ruth Clough of Salisbury, born on 17 February 1692 and baptized there on 5 August 1711. Salisbury’s printed records of births do include a Zackeus, son of Thomas and Ruth, born on 17 February 1691/92, the only boy of the name and of the right age in them. Four of that couple’s daughters were named Hannah, Judith, Tabitha and Ruth, the names Zacheus and his wife later gave to four of their own six daughters. The deed of gift of 28 September 1715, from Thomas Clough of Salisbury, yeoman, “unto my son Zacheus Clough of Salisbury”, is in the Essex County deeds, volumes 134 and 135, and was recorded in May 1776. The grantor is the elder Thomas Clough, husband of Ruth Conner: a younger Thomas Clough, whose children were infants in 1715, could not have had a son of age, and the Salisbury entries for Thomas and Ruth’s marriage (“Tho[mas], and Ruth Conner, [1688 or 1689]”) and for her death (“Ruth, w. Tho[ma]s, sr., Aug. 5, 1727”) show the elder Thomas as her husband.