Ebenezer Hemingway

Notes:

Also called Ebenezer Hemenway. He served in the Revolution on the Massachusetts line. His gravestone, evidently in error, gives the date of his death as 22 Oct 1839.

Ebenezer married Ruth Gates in Jun 1786 in Framingham, Middlesex, Massachusetts. Ruth (daughter of Amos Gates and Mary Trowbridge) was born on 12 Feb 1768 in Framingham, Middlesex, Massachusetts; died on 18 Oct 1854 in Marlborough, Cheshire, New Hampshire; was buried in East Cemetery, Marlborough, Cheshire, New Hampshire. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

1. Luther Hemingway was born on 2 Jan 1787 in Marlborough, Cheshire, New Hampshire; died on 13 Feb 1872; was buried in Meeting House Cemetery, Marlborough, Cheshire, New Hampshire.

Notes:

Also called Samuel Hemenway.

Samuel married Hannah Rice. Hannah (daughter of Richard Rice and Hannah Bent) was born on 10 Nov 1735 in Framingham, Middlesex, Massachusetts; died on 19 Sep 1814 in Framingham, Middlesex, Massachusetts. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Also called Ebenezer Hemenway.

Ebenezer married Hannah Winch on 17 May 1711 in Framingham, Middlesex, Massachusetts. Hannah (daughter of Samuel Winch and Hannah Gibbs) was born on 16 Jan 1688 in Sudbury, Middlesex, Massachusetts; died on 27 Apr 1737 in Framingham, Middlesex, Massachusetts. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Richard married Hannah Bent in 1734. Hannah (daughter of John Bent and Hannah Rice) was born on 10 Jul 1714; died on 21 Sep 1774. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Also called Joshua Hemenway.

Joshua married Mary between 1678 and 1679. Mary died on 5 May 1703 in Roxbury, Suffolk, Massachusetts. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Samuel married Hannah Gibbs on 11 Feb 1672 in Sudbury, Middlesex, Massachusetts. Hannah (daughter of Matthew Gibbs and Mary Bradish) was born in 1654 in of Framingham, Middlesex, Massachusetts. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Jonathan married Elizabeth Wheeler on 12 Feb 1691. Elizabeth (daughter of Richard Wheeler and Sarah Prescott) was born on 22 May 1669 in Lancaster, Worcester, Massachusetts; died on 26 Oct 1744 in Sudbury, Middlesex, Massachusetts; was buried in Church Hill Cemetery, Framingham, Middlesex, Massachusetts. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate birth: 24 May 1669, Lancaster, Worcester, Massachusetts

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate birth: of Sudbury, Middlesex, Massachusetts

Notes:

Regarding the identity of the mother of this John Bent: was it the first wife of his father John Bent (1636-1717), Hannah Stone, or his second wife, Martha Rice?

Alicia Crane Williams's entry for John Stone (1618-1683), the father of his father's first wife, Hannah Stone, in the Early New England Families Study Project, says of Hannah that she was born 6 Jun 1640, and died between 9 Jun 1683 and about 1691, "between when Hannah Bent participated in the deed by heirs of John Stone and the estimated year of birth of youngest child, David, who died at age 39 in 1730." After Hannah's death, her husband John Bent (1637-1717) married Martha Rice; Williams places this second marriage as taking place "aft. abt. 1691."

The evidence Williams cites for placing those particular bounds around the death of Hannah (Stone) Bent is Allen Bent's 1894 NEHGR article "The Bent Family" (volume 48, page 288) and his subsequent 1900 book The Bent Family in America (citation details below), both of which say that John Bent (1637-1717) was twice married, first on 1 Jul 1658 to Hannah Stone, then (no date given) to Martha Rice, and that he had three children, all by his first wife Hannah Stone: Hannah, born 6 May 1661; John, born 29 Nov 1689, and David, born about 1691, a date no doubt estimated based, as Williams says, on the fact that David died in 1720 and was said at the time to be 29.

But given the dates of these three children's births, and the fact that all we actually know about the death date of Hannah Stone is that she was alive on 9 Jun 1683, Allen Bent's assignment of all three children to Hannah seems...unlikely! A man is married twice, to a first wife in 1658, and then to a second wife at an unspecified date. And he has three children, one born in 1661, one born twenty-eight years later, and a third born two years after that. Which is likelier? That his first wife suddenly bore two further children after a break of nearly three decades? Or that the second two children are by the second wife, and that the first wife died sometime not at all long after 9 Jun 1683, rather than after 1691?

Finally, the record of the birth of the younger John Bent, as found in the published vital records of Sudbury, quoting Middlesex County records at East Cambridge, clear gives his parents as John and Martha. "BENT, John, s. John and Martha, Nov. 29, 1689" (italics ours). This seems a reasonably clear indication that John Bent was a son of his father's second wife. (And if this was the case, then his younger brother David must have been as well.)

(It seems notable that James Savage in his 1860-64 Genealogical Dictionary of New England, volume 1, page 169, says that John Bent was born "prob. by sec. w. Martha, d. of Matthew Rice". And it seems also relevant that Clarence Almon Torrey's listing for the marriage of John Bent to Martha Rice dates it as taking place "by 1689", despite the fact that several of Torrey's listed sources assert otherwise. Conceivably both Savage and Torrey were perfectly well aware of the entry for the younger John Bent's birth in the vital records of Sudbury.)

John married Hannah Rice on 15 Nov 1711 in Framingham, Middlesex, Massachusetts. Hannah (daughter of Deacon David Rice and Hannah Walker) was born on 5 Jan 1692. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]