Abigail Blodgett Greeley Lived To 94 - 52 Ancestors #16

For this week's 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks writing challenge from blogger Amy Crow Johnson of No Story Too Small, the theme is Live Long.

I figured out how to look at the age at death for my direct ancestors by creating a custom report in Family Tree Maker. No centenarians in my direct ancestry, but there are several who lived into their 90s.

The one direct ancestor who lived the longest (for whom I have relatively good records) is my 5th great-grandmother, Abigail Blodgett, who was born in Dunstable, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, as the middle of seven children of Joseph and Dorothy (Perham) Blodgett, who were originally from Chelmsford, Massachusetts, a town just to the southeast of Dunstable.

Dunstable Vital Records show Abigail's birth date as February 18, 1723/24.

Courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Town boundaries, county boundaries, and state boundaries changed during Abigail's lifetime. The image at left, from the Wikipedia page on Hudson, New Hampshire, shows where the current Hillsborough County, New Hampshire, is located within New Hampshire, and where Hudson is located within Hillsborough County. According to Wikipedia, the community was known as Nottingham West from 1741-1830.

From Wikipedia: "In 1830, after the better part of a century, the name was changed to "Hudson" to avoid confusion with the older town of Nottingham. The name apparently comes from an early belief that the Merrimack River had once been thought to be a tributary of the Hudson River, or that the area had once been explored by Henry Hudson; both proved to be entirely apocryphal stories, but the name of the town remains today."

At 20 years old, Abigail married Samuel Greeley (see my Greeley line here) on May 27, 1744, in Nottingham West. Their six children were all born in Hudson, New Hampshire:
Nathaniel (1744-1819)
Hannah (1747-1839)
Abigail (1750-1763)
Samuel (1752-1798)
Joseph (1756-1840)
Mary (1760-1851)

This long-lived ancestor of mine survived two of her six children, as well as her husband, dying on March 29, 1818, in Nottingham West, New Hampshire. The death record, which can be found at Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org notes her age as 95, but her gravestone, which can be found at FindAGrave, notes that she died "in her 95th year," which is more accurate since she was born early in a double-date year.

I calculate her age at her death as 94 years, one month, 11 days.

I descend from Abigail (Blodgett) Greeley as follows:

Abigail (Blodgett) Greeley (1723/4-1818)

|

Samuel Greeley (1752-1798)

|

Samuel Greeley (1783-1861)

|

Samuel Sewall Greeley (1824-1916)

|

Ethel May Greeley (1875-1931)

|

Lowell Townsend Copeland (1900-1974)

|

my mother

|

me.