Capt. Phinehas Pratt
Phinehas Pratt was born at Hingham, Massachusetts, on 31 December 1709, by the Hingham record. His gravestone gives 1 January 1710. He was the first son of Aaron Pratt's second marriage, to Sarah (Wright) Cummings, a widow from Charlestown. He grew up in a crowded house in the second precinct of Hingham, the part of the town that later became Cohasset. Eleven half brothers and sisters were older than he was. His own full sister Abigail was born in 1708, and two brothers followed, Benjamin in 1711 and Nathaniel. His grandfather was Phineas Pratt, who had come to New England in 1622.
He was a housewright, a builder who framed and finished houses. On 28 July 1731, at Hingham, he married Sarah Lincoln, a daughter of Thomas Lincoln, a Boston tailor. Their first six children were born at Hingham: Bernard in October 1731, Jared, Constantine, Rhoda, Sarah and a second Jared in September 1739.
Then the family moved twice. His gravestone tells it: he "removed to Worcester on Dec. 1739 from thence to Bedford now Granville in May 1741". Bedford was the settlers' name for the place in the hills west of the Connecticut River that became the town of Granville. A daughter Olive and a son Phinehas, born 27 March 1743, were born or raised there. A daughter Sarah died at Granville on 23 September 1742, aged five.
Granville gave him its offices. He was a selectman in 1754, 1755, 1757, 1759 and 1760, and again from 1765 to 1769. The selectmen were the handful of elected men who ran a New England town between town meetings. The town records call him Captain, a militia rank.
His younger brother Benjamin took another road. He graduated from Harvard in 1737, became "a distinguished lawyer, and chief-justice of the Colony of New York", and died at New York on 5 January 1763.
On 19 May 1775 Phinehas made his will. He provided first for his wife: half the household goods, a cow of her choosing and half the dwelling. To his eldest son Barnard he left the fifty acres in the west of Granville that he held "by virtue of my first Deed from ... Samuel Kent late of Suffield". The children of "my Beloved Son Constantine Pratt Decd" got twelve pounds. His son Gerad got the lot he lived on. His daughter Olive, "the Wife of John Tibbals", got twenty five pounds. His son Phinehas got an English Bible. A granddaughter, Rhoda Macker, daughter of Benjamin and Rhoda, got twenty pounds. Barnard and Gerad had the rest and were the executors.
His wife died first. Sarah died at Granville on 1 October 1777, of what a private record calls camp distemper, the name then given to the fevers and fluxes that spread out of army camps. The same sickness killed two of their grandsons that year, Gerard's son Hiram and a child named Worthy, both about two.
Phinehas died at Granville on 5 September 1779, aged seventy. He is buried under a carved brownstone in the old burying ground at Granville. In 1929 the Massachusetts Society of the Sons of the American Revolution listed his grave, marker number 11, among the graves of Revolutionary soldiers and sailors in the town. His will was proved in Hampshire County in 1780.
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Cite: Heirology, "Capt. Phinehas Pratt (1709-1779)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/capt-phinehas-pratt-1709-1779-a9f4a4.