Benjamin Balch and Sarah Gardner
Husband Benjamin Balch
Born: 1628 - Salem, Essex, Massachusetts Christened: Died: 31 Jan 1715 - Salem, Essex, Massachusetts Buried:
Father: John Balch (1579-1648) Mother: Margery Lovell (Lovett) (Levitt) (1581-1682)
Marriage: 1650 - Salem, Essex, Massachusetts
Other Spouse: Grace Mallet ( - )
Wife Sarah Gardner
Born: 1630-1631 - Salem, Essex, Massachusetts Christened: Died: 15 Apr 1686 - Beverly, Essex, Massachusetts Buried:
Father: Thomas Gardner (1591-1674) Mother: Margaret Frier (1589- )
Children
1 M Samuel Balch
Born: May 1651 - Beverly, Essex, Massachusetts Christened: Died: 14 Oct 1723 Buried:Spouse: Mary or Martha Newmarch ( - )
2 M Benjamin Balch
Born: 1653 - Beverly, Essex, Massachusetts Christened: Died: 1698 Buried:Spouse: Elizabeth Woodbury ( - )
3 M John Balch
Born: 1654 - Beverly, Essex, Massachusetts Christened: Died: 19 Nov 1738 Buried:Spouse: Hannah Veren (Denning) ( - )
4 M Joseph Balch
Born: 1658 - Beverly, Essex, Massachusetts Christened: Died: Buried:
5 M Freeborn Balch
Born: 4 or 8/9/1660 - Beverly, Essex, Massachusetts Christened: Died: 12 Jun 1729 - Beverly, Essex, Massachusetts Buried:Spouse: Miriam Moulton (1658-Abt 1688) Marr: Fall 1682 - Beverly, Essex, MassachusettsSpouse: Mallis ( - ) Marr: 20 Feb 1688-20 Feb 1689 - Beverly, Essex, MassachusettsSpouse: Elizabeth Fairfield (1666-1737)
6 F Sarah Balch
Born: 1661 - Beverly, Essex, Massachusetts Christened: Died: Bef 1717 Buried:
7 F Abigail Balch
Born: 1663 - Beverly, Essex, Massachusetts Christened: Died: 20 Apr 1706 Buried:
8 F Ruth Balch
Born: 1665 - Beverly, Essex, Massachusetts Christened: Died: Buried:
9 F Mary Balch
Born: 1667 - Beverly, Essex, Massachusetts Christened: Died: 12 Mar 1736-12 Mar 1737 Buried:Spouse: Nathaniel Stone ( - )
10 M Jonathan Balch
Born: Abt 1670 - Beverly, Essex, Massachusetts Christened: Died: Abt 1670 - Beverly, Essex, Massachusetts Buried:
11 M DAvid Balch
Born: 9 Jul 1671 - Beverly, Essex, Massachusetts Christened: Died: 17 Apr 1690 Buried:
General Notes (Husband)
Benjamin inherited one-half of his father's property. When his brother
Freeborn disappeared (he is thought to have returned to England, but
noone knew what happened to him), he inherited another 1/4, after
Freeborn was declared dead. When his brother John died and John's wife
remarried, and their daughter died, the original court order having been
to divide the estate between mother and child, Benjamin went to court and
got the order changed so taht the eventually ended up with the property.
But Mary and her new husband contested the notion that Mary wasn't
entitled to any part of her dead husband's estate. This time Benjamin
lost. He wouldn't admit defeat. He appealed three times, and lost
three times. Eventually, he won.
An author on this found Benjamin overly grasping. It gets better. John
Balch father of Benjamin left certain resources including the right to
an upper area in the family home to his second wife, Annis Patch, and
responsibility for caring for her to BEnjamin. I guess the father
expected the son would do this out of duty. When Annis died, she left
a will for her little bit of property. Benjamin went to court, "somehow",
in the words of everyone who has written about it, got he will declared
illegal, presented a detailed bill for the "costs", wages due, etc., for
caring for her, and produced neighbors, as witnesses that the costs he
and his wife had born in caring for her far outweighed her assets, and
ended up with her estate. The only "neighbors" he had in the BAss River
area were the Raymonds, the Bishops, and the Conant family.
It really seems as if all six or so ancestral families who lived at the
head of the BAss River between Salem and Beverly spent half of their lives
in court suing each other for this and that and testifying in each others'
behalf. The only pattern to the lawsuits is the entire group of families
behaved like this, and they were usually efforts to obtain property,
assets, services, etc form one of the others. The neighbors would line
up on either side as witnesses, and there was no consistency to who
allied with who when or about what. The families who acted this way
included Balch, Raymond, Bishop, and Conant. Sometimes it was a petty
issue, like a broken fence. ONe gets the idea that these people were
both excessively grasping with no apparent morals about how one should
act, and hotheaded people who had a great deal of enjoyment out of
continually suing each other and fighting it out in court. IT brings one
back to what sort of person was William Raymond to have wanted to marry
a daughter of Edward Bishop.
William Raymond's testifying for Dr. Griggs, having been
in his home one day, is another example; the Bass River people were hardly
friends of Puritan fanatics like Griggs! What was Raymond doing in his
home OR testifying for this head member of the witch conspiracy? While
Elizabeth Balch testified against two members of the Bishop family,
helping to get Bridgette executed and one of only three people who ever
spoke against Sarah and Edward Jr. She testified that Bridgette Bishop
had appeared as an apparition and tormented her son while he was ill
with the fever that killed him. She had thought nothing of her son's
delirious mumblings at the time, but now she thought about it...
Most interesting, Elizabeth was born Woodburie and was closely
related to Christian Woodbury Trask who tangled with Sarah,
committed suicide with scizzors, which was blamed on witchcraft
by Sarah.
It is written about Benjamin Balch that he was religiously moderate
because he allowed most of his children to attain adulthood and choose
for themselves whether to be baptized or join the church, and because
he didn't go along with the most severe excesses of the Puritan community.
This is the view taken by the man's descendants; the Balch family evolved
into a prosperous middle class, highly intelligent, and socially liberal
in an always politically correct sort of way, family. It is true that
John Balch and his son Benjamin after him were hardly the fanatical
breed of Puritan that took control of and took over the colony not long
after the original settlers who included John Balch, founded it. One
piece of evidence cited to support this notion is that Benjamin and his
best friend, another original settler, who also kept a lantern lit and
a horse saddled to help people escape the witch trials, got into trouble
for entertaining and putting up a stranger to the community in their
house, which was against the rules of the Puritan villagers of medieval
Salem. It looks as though the Balch's were individualistic and at their
best no cowards. But it also looks very much like they had a cranky
streak, and the disappearance of Benjamin's brother who seems to have
taken off without saying a word to anyone under circumstances that
caused people to think he had gone back to England, hints at both family
trouble and instability. They showed such a streak back in England, too;
a BAlch ancestor who was staunchly pro-Catholic refused to provide his
required light horseman for the war with Spain tha England fought under
Elizabeth I, and eventually his line of the Balch family was ruined when
the Puritans triumphed and his lands and assets were seized, about when
John, whose actual parentage is uncertain, came to Massachusetts.
But John Balch, father of Benjamin, was "staunchly Puritan", a member of a
religiously motivated enterprise run by Puritan merchants and clergy, some
of them connected with the royal court, which came over before the
Massachusetts bay Puritans who took over Salem from its founders, which
failed, leaving about half a dozen people with their families, who then
trekked overland to found Salem. But Puritan was a big movement that
could mean more than one thing. John Balch was a sort of Puritan that
wanted to clean up the Church of England, and a member of the Church of
England. The Massachusetts Bay Puritans weren't overtly separatist, but in
practical terms, they were separatists. They founded new churches run
individually on the Congregationalist model, not Anglican churches, and
they admitted to the inner membership of these churches and to Communion
only those who could satisfy the governing board that they were among the
Elect.
The Salem Puritans were Congregationalists; they were Evangelical and
children normally did not become church members. One had to "find Christ"
and be born again, and convince the church elders that one had been born
again. During one's teenage years one was expected to find Christ and be
born again and be admitted to the church. Children like all members of
the community had to attend meeting, but only a select few were full church
members. The Puritans were staunchly Calvinistic, they believed in
Predestination and that most people, even most Christians, were not among
the favored few Elect who were destined from the beginning of time to
be saved.
About the time Benjamin Balch was deciding how to handle the baptism of
his children, the Baptist controversy arose. The Baptists felt that since
children couldn't commit themselves to Christ nor their spiritual status
be known, they should not be baptized before they as teenagers or adults
found Christ and committed themselves. Most Puritans took a rather
ambivalent stance that required children to be baptized and even went so
far as to claim the children of the saved inherited some spiritual
advantage from their parents.
Benjamin Balch was no nut, he to all appearances went along with the
status quo on most things, participated actively in his church and in
political affairs of his town and his colony. But he also clearly was a
man who strongly thought for himself - and he may have far from having not
pressured his children to be Puritans, to adopt Evangelical Christian
beliefs, and to become members of the church, have put ALOT of pressure on
them - but quietly refused to have them baptized before they were adults.
I am not the first person to think that it is quite remarkable how ALL of
his children found Christ at the same time and were baptized as a group
all on the same day. If he had said anything out loud about how he felt
on this subject, he would have been driven from the colony as a heretic;
and quite possibly dragged back later and condemned as a witch, which
happened to one individual.
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