Holbrook line: Ebenezer Thayer 1672-1723

Oh my!  This man has been difficult to place.  He is not, as far as I know, Captain Ebenezer; that man lived later than our ancestor.  The same goes for Reverend Ebenezer Thayer.  He's not our ancestor either.  It's been amazing to find so many Ebenezers, and so many Thayers, and so many Ebenezer Thayers, in Mendon, Massachusetts.  I'm glad I've been able to unravel our ancestor from some of the other men, and I'm especially glad that I found first his will (on Ancestry) and then his estate papers (on americanancestors.org).  Without those papers, we'd know a lot less about Ebenezer than we know now. 

Ebenezer is the son of Ferdinando and Hulday Hayward Thayer.  He was born in either 1672 or 1674, possiblly in Braintree, Massachusetts Bay Colony.  He was one of at least six children.  At some point, when Ebenezer was still a child or youth, the family moved to Mendon, Massachusetts, at a time that Mendon was considered to be on the frontier.  If they had already moved by the time of King Philip's War, this would have been a very tense time for the family.  It was probably still tense in 1690, when Huldah is though to have died in Mendon, for there had been some kind of a military call up just the year before, perhaps due to intelligence about native American attacks.  Short and uneasy were the periods of truce between the whites and the natives.

We get a sense of how much this was frontier by noting tht Ebenezer Thayer killed a wolf in 1694, and that the constable cut off its ears in front of some of the selectmen.  There was probably a bounty for the wolf head, as that is usual in frontier towns.

Regardless of the date that Ebenezer arrived in Mendon, he stayed there the rest of his life.  He married Martha Thomson or Thompson there on June 13, 1695.  She was the daughter of John and Thankful Woodland Thompson.  Ebenezer describes himself in his will as a husbandman, meaning he farmed his own land.  Ebenezer and Martha had eight or perhaps nine children, enough to keep the two of them busy.  His name is on rate lists for 1694 and 1699, and he was given land in the town allotments in 1707 and 1713, if not sooner.  He acquired quite a significant holding before his death.

Mendon eventually grew to the point that it needed to be divided into one or more town, and Ebenezer's name is on a 1719 petition requesting division of the lands.  It was granted by the general court, and Ebenezer's land straddled the line between Mendon and Bellingham.  He may not have moved at all, but his death is sometimes shown as having happened in Bellingham.  Note: up to the point that "Ebenezer's land straddled the line..." the information for this post has come from "Annals of the Town of Mendon' by John G. Metcalf.  I've not seen this source quoted in on line summaries of his life, but there is this much information in the book.

The next we find of Ebenezer is his death.  It occurred in either 1722 or 1723.  It was an illness of some kind that took him because he described himself, in the will, as "being very sick".  He left 68 acres of land to his son Ebenezer, laid out in various parcels in various years.  To Uriah, he left several pieces of land in Mendon, to be held by the executor until he came of age.  Then he left more land in Bellingham to Ebenezer.  His homestead in Bellingham, not previously disposed of, was to be divided between his three sons, but his wife was to live on it and have the improvements until his son Daniel was of age.  His wife was to be provided for in her widowhood out of the gifts he had made to his sons.  His daughters Martha and Hannah were to have 10 pounds each when they reached the age of twenty one, out of his "personal estate".  More was to be given to each of his four daughters, who also included Deborah and Abigail, and his sons were to provide for his wife's care, in one end of the dwelling house, in equal shares.  She was to have corn and firewood, a cow and a horse, to lead a "comfortable subsistence". 

The inventory is categorized rather than itemized, so we don't know about the little things that would tell us more about Ebenezer.  He had about 16 head of cattle, including two oxen, three horses, 34 sheep and lambs, and 7 swine,.  He also had a sword, belt, and ammunition, but there is no specific mention of a gun or other weapon.  Interestingly, he also had four spinning wheels, which perhaps means his daughters were already working in a cottage industry.  The estate was valued at about 826 pounds, due mostly to the many parcels of land that he owned.  Funeral and other expenses reduced the estate by 15 pounds.  It seems that Ebenezer left his family in decent financial shape, much sooner than he had planned.  Martha is believed to have married Joseph Wight in 1724, and to have lived until 1759.

There are still many questsions I'd like to have answered.  What was his military experience?  Was he a Baptist, or a Congregationalist?  Was he literate?  His will was signed with an "X" but since he was "very sick", that may not mean anything.  We can at least conclude that he was a successful farmer, at a time and place when that was difficult.  Thank you, Ebenezer, for being part of our family!

The line of descent is:

Ebenezer Thayer-Martha Thompson
Deborah Thayer-John Rockwood
Joseph Rockwood-Alice Thompson
Levi Rockwood-Deborah Lazell
Susanna Rockwood-Nahum Holbrook
Joseph Holbrook-Mary Elizabeth Whittemore
Fremont Holbrook-Phoebe Brown
Loren Holbrook-Etta Stanard
Gladys Holbrook-Richard Allen
Their descendants