On New Year’s Day 1771, Abigail Olmsted [GOFA # 9093, p. 397] married Nathan Hamilton in Brookfield MA. The same GOFA listed her parents as Jeremiah and Elizabeth (Litten) Olmsted [GOFA, p. 394-395], but did not give a source for this information, and incorrectly assigned her the birthdate of Jeremiah’s sister, also named Abigail [GOFA, p. 393-394].
The only support for this connection appears to be chronological. The birth records of Jeremiah and Elizabeth’s children are transcribed in JON 1:1:4-5, citing Ware MA VR. The children were all born two years apart in odd numbered years from 1735-1751, with a gap between 1743 and 1747. It is thus presumed that Abigail was an unrecorded child born about 1745. If this is indeed the case, then Abigail was about age 26 when she married Nathan Hamilton, 29 when her first child was born and 45 when her last child was born in 1790 [VR Brookfield, p. 112-116]. These ages are reasonable and consistent with someone born in the mid 1740s.
However, there are a number of issues with the identification. None of these issues disproves that Abigail was the daughter of Jeremiah. But they don’t help prove the case, either. They are as follows:
1. As stated above, the children of Jeremiah and Elizabeth were all recorded in Ware, with the first four also recorded in Brookfield [JON 2:2:5]. Jeremiah seems to have been meticulous in recording the births of his children, even going so far as to record some of his children in two different towns. Yet, there is no record of the birth of a daughter Abigail.
2. None of the children of Nathan and Abigail who were born in Brookfield were named Jeremiah or Elizabeth, nor were they named after any of the children of Jeremiah and Elizabeth. None were named Jabez, Thankful or after any of Jeremiah’s siblings.
3. Jeremiah and Elizabeth were residing in West Stockbridge MA by 1758 [JON 3:2:3], and two of their children were married in nearby Sheffield [JON 1:2:6]. Yet, Abigail was married in Brookfield, some 70 miles away. One would expect her to have married in the vicinity of West Stockbridge.
4. I was unable to consult probate records for Berkshire County. The land records, available at familysearch.org, do not seem to have any relevant land transactions. If a will or land record does exist that mention a daughter Abigail, it would go a long way in cementing the relationship.
Reference abbreviations:
GOFA: Henry King Olmsted and Rev. George K. Ward, Genealogy of the Olmsted Family in America [1912]
VR Brookfield: Vital Records of Brookfield, Massachusetts to the end of the year 1849 [1909]
JON: Jabez Olmsted Newsletter, available at
www.jabezolmsted.com, issues dated from 1997-2011
Comments welcomed.
Rick Turner
Bemidji MN