Heirology

Ancestors

Caleb Fobes

b. 1750 · Bridgewater MA
Born 1750, Bridgewater, Massachusetts
Father: Joshua Fobes Jr.
Mother: Esther Porter

Caleb Fobes was born at Bridgewater, in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, on 24 August 1750. The town clerk entered him as "Caleb, ch. Joshua Jr. and Esther." His father was Joshua Fobes the younger and his mother was Esther Porter, a daughter of Nicholas Porter of Abington. He was the sixth of eight children: Azariah, who died young, Daniel, Ruth, Abigail, Joshua, Caleb, Robert and Solomon. His great-great-grandfather John Fobes had been one of the original proprietors of Bridgewater.

On 11 December 1776 he married Susanna Keith at Bridgewater. Mitchell's history of the town calls her a daughter of Ebenezer Keith, and ends the entry in one line: "Caleb m. Susanna D. of Ebenezer Keith 1776, and went to Lyme, Con." Their son Cyrus was born at Bridgewater on 9 July 1777.

The Lyme they went to was not in Connecticut. It was Lyme in Grafton County, New Hampshire, on the east bank of the Connecticut River. The Rev. William Conant of Bridgewater had become its first minister in 1773. A Conant family history says that "through his influence, in the course of ten years some thirty families removed from Bridgewater to Lyme." The Fobes household was one of them. The censuses of 1800 and 1810 find Caleb Fobes at Lime.

The Lyme records show a working farmer. On 24 September 1803 he sold Zephaniah Waterman a third of the easterly half of lot 10 west of the East Street. In October 1806 he sat with James Cook, Isaac Perkins and Caleb Conant on the committee that set off the widow's thirds of Caleb Alden's farm, which his own land adjoined. Widow's thirds were the third of a dead man's land that his widow held for her life. At the vendue that followed, his son Caleb Junr bought eleven acres of the Alden land.

On 6 October 1815 he sold Isaac W. Perkins eighteen acres in the ninth lot of the first division for $900. The deed opens "I Caleb Fobes of Lime ... Yeoman". His wife added her consent in a line of her own, "Consented to by me Susanna Fobes", and their son Caleb Fobes Junr signed as a witness. It is the last record of either of them. Neither death has been found, and the early town records of Lyme are said to have been destroyed.

The children known come from records at Lyme rather than from a family list, so the set is probably incomplete: Cyrus F. Fobes, born 1777, who married Sarah Conant and died at Lyme in 1838; Caleb, born 1784; Solomon, an adult at Lime by 1810; and Stella, who married David Conant of Lyme.

Sources

Nahum Mitchell, History of the Early Settlement of Bridgewater (1840; reprint 1897), p. 164, archive.org historyofearlyset00mitcch, leaf 182
Vital Records of Bridgewater, Massachusetts, to the Year 1850, vol. I, births (1916), Fobes births, archive.org vitalrecordsofbr01bost, leaf 117
Vital Records of Bridgewater, Massachusetts, to the Year 1850, vol. II, marriages and deaths (1916), Fobes marriages, archive.org vitalrecordsofbr02bost, leaf 137
Mitchell, History of the Early Settlement of Bridgewater (1840/1897), archive.org historyofearlyset00mitcch, p. 216, leaf 234
Vital Records of Bridgewater, Massachusetts, to the Year 1850, vol. I, births (1916), archive.org vitalrecordsofbr01bost; Vital Records of Bridgewater, vol. II, marriages and deaths (1916), archive.org vitalrecordsofbr02bost; Mitchell, History of the Early Settlement of Bridgewater (1840/1897), archive.org historyofearlyset00mitcch, p. 164; the Conant family genealogy (1887), archive.org historygenealogy00cona; 1800 and 1810 censuses, Lime, Grafton County NH; Grafton County NH deeds and probate (FamilySearch full text 3:1:3Q9M-CSVT-7S9D-5, 3:1:3QS7-89WH-2S9Z, 3:1:3Q9M-CSLR-433C-S); Find a Grave 90711073; Mitchell p. 164, entry 11; FamilySearch 1:1:XHR3-8PH; Grafton County deeds, FamilySearch full text 3:1:3Q9M-CSVT-7S9D-5; Grafton County probate, FamilySearch full text 3:1:3QS7-89WH-2S9Z; Grafton County deeds, FamilySearch full text 3:1:3Q9M-CSLR-433C-S; FamilySearch 1:1:QG2M-Q7MX, QG2M-F919

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Cite: Heirology, "Caleb Fobes (b. 1750)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/caleb-fobes-1750-c90531.