GenMassachusetts-L Archives

From: "Jerry Lovejoy" <>
Subject: No. 38: Lovejoy Neighbors-Transcribed From C.H. Abbott's The Townsman- Andover Historical series
Date: Sun, 18 Jul 1999 15:01:38 -0400

The following article was transcribed faithfully from a Xerox copy of the
original on 7/16/1999 by Jerry Hersey Lovejoy from:The Townsman Andover
Historical Series by Charlotte Helen Abbott. Interesting Andover
MA Genealogical data to be viewed with some caution.

No. 38
Lovejoy Neighbors

(A.T. 7/31/1896)

The inter marriages with the Lovejoy family sons numerous in both the lines
of George of the North and South Parishes, seem to show some relation
between the Osgoods and Abbotts and the first John Lovejoy who married Mary
Osgood, daughter of Christopher of Ipswich, and appeared on the list of the
first seventeen of the pioneers. He signs the 1658 petition that has the
autographs of seventeen of our fathers. I think the first Lovejoy farms
will prove to be on or near the site of the present Downing place, and the
second best location near the Snow farm or better still on the site of the
Moses Foster estate. These farms lay on the circumference of the Lovejoy
grants at any rate, along the oldest roads.

The youngest son Ebenezer was heir to the homestead proper and married into
the Foster line of Andrew; while the eldest grandson John whose bounds are
near him, married the daughter of William Blunt who owned along "Missionary
Ridge." South parish farmers married neighbors daughters almost without
exception and so we are all double and twisted cousins over here .

Mary Osgood's life was a quiet one so far as the records and probably one of
hard work as she died in 1675, while John was still acquiring acres for his
boys. Mary, her eldest, had married John Wilson down at the "Corners", but
the rest had yet to be placed. Hanna Pritchard came in 1675 to live with
John "thirteen comfortable years" as he relates in the will of 1690 when the
prematurely old man is ready to leave this "vale of tears" where grief
waited upon him. Three years after Mary Osgood left her baby Ebenezer to
Hanna's care, Sara married William Johnson, one of the active, almost
turbulent spirits that seemed to animate the boys of the John Johnson line
from Ipswich. John Lovejoy, eldest son, married that same year Naomi Hoyt
from Newbury or Amesbury, daughter of the emigrant John and his second wife
Frances. She was probably a woman of great beauty without moral backbone to
balance. In 1667, her sister Dorothy famous as a "new woman" having rashly
"put on men's clothes." Father Hoyt and all the neighbors swarm to the
Norfolk court where Amesbury people were disciplined and "manifested the
great appearance of said Dorothy's repentance." But the hard hearts agree
to whip her when she comes back into the county, if 40 shillings fine in
corn and money is not paid immediately. The neighbors help out and Dorothy
settles down in feminine fashion.

John and Naomi live together only three years when he leaves her a widow
with a small estate, and a young Frances, and infant John to manage. Four
years later, the sorrow of a great social tragedy broods over the two
homesteads on the hill side, and cuts deep scars into the memories of two
other allied families. Frances is taken into her grandfather's home to
rear, young John remaining with his mother. The simple entry on the Town
Records is all we catch of what was only one, perhaps of many such tragedies
falsely called "romances," that shadowed the Puritan life in the backwoods
as it does all frontier life everywhere. But the standard at Andover and
even at Newbury and the older towns was high compared with that of the old
court circles and middle class life of England as the nickname "Puritan"
testifies. Public sentiment was slowly educated into decency, but the
frantic, efforts of the "powers" in 1670 had little effect further.
Generations of homes must come and pass before we even of today get far
beyond our parents' methods and failures.

John's will does not mention widow John or grandson John except to allude to
bounds, - but tells Frances to stay with grandmother and young uncle
Ebenezer then seventeen till her marriage, when she will be well provided
with clothes. Thomas Osgood the Ipswich brother-in-law, who settles here,
is the adviser and friend of these older brothers William and Joseph ,who
are to help Ebenezer to make bargains during his "nonage," to exercise a
parent's care over Frances and to do naught to grieve the mother in her old
age "as you expect the blessing of God." Ben, his fifth son, had just died
a soldier at Permaquid and the father buys his land for Nathaniel now of
age, who in 1694 goes to Amesbury or Haverhill for the daughter Dorothy
Hoyt, of Sergeant John Hoyt of the second generation. Her sister Naomi Hoyt
also comes to marry John Barnard, and as wives and mothers do honor to the
Hoyts. Sergeant Hoyt loses his home by fire and plunder in the Indian raid
of 1696 and is killed on the way from Andover to Haverhill with young Peters
in August.
In the next generation, our young Ebenezer finds over at John Barnard's a
worthy daughter Naomi. Amy Barnard the mother lived to be 90, dying in
1762, Amy Lovejoy to 98 dying In 1795 both outliving their husbands and
administering estate with credit.
I
Readers tell me that I keep back everything wrong in the lives of the
ancestors. Although as a rule, it is best to put by the errors, sometimes
it is well to see at a distance the Lord's way of managing men in training.
One of my own grandsires on the family tree was an actor in this early
episode and the Lord dealt to him, a family of sons without a daughter to
brighten the home, and he was followed for years by the enmity of a woman
with unsparing tongue and unfailing memory.

Christopher, Nathaniel, William, Joseph, and Ebenezer, the five Lovejoys who
helped to build up the South Parish having sixty members in the Church
before the West was set off and a good dozen in the volunteers in 1776.
These must none in for a later sketch when the probate papers have sorted
out the heirs and filled the serious gaps in our worn town books. Of all
these iron workers, tanners, lumbermen and farmers I have only traced fully
two lines now resident, Ebenezer and Mary Foster, John and Hanna Foster.
Anna Lovejoy the only heir in her family married George Abbott, Capt., who
died in 1776, leaving his son John Lovejoy at 19 with a young brother, four
sisters and his widowed mother to care for and well he did it.

The other line is that of William and Mary Farnum. Capt. William and Sarah
Frye with only two heirs, Anne who married Zebadia Abbott, trader,
represented by Joseph Abbott and his late brother Herman, so well known in
the South Parish, and Phebe her sister who married the Isaac Abbott of the
last sketch and now including the daughters and grandchildren of Henry W.
Abbott; also the children of Mary Fiske Abbott and Nathan Shattuck
represented by Mrs. Omar Jenkins of High Street. An estate of interest just
brought to notice is that of Orlando Lovejoy grandfather of John Holt, who
still lives on Lovejoy land near Plato Eames's estate. Orlando, who married
Abia Gray, is in the line of Isaac 3rd and Ruth Davis, Isaac jr. and widow
Mary Wardwell, Christopher and Mary Preston, Christopher and Mary Russe, all
the mothers dwellers between the two Parishes with the Lovejoys from the
first. Mr. Holt's sister Ellen we all recall as the one true blonde Lovejoy
in this family of the brunette strain from Gray and Davis ancestors.

C.H.A.

Jerry Lovejoy

http://home.ici.net/~bennabre/bennabre.htm

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• No. 38: Lovejoy Neighbors-Transcribed From C.H. Abbott's The Townsman- Andover Historical series by "Jerry Lovejoy" <>