WIREFRAME ONLY - NOT YET DESIGNED
1691 - 1772
On May 6, 1720 Abigail married Ebenezer Wells, when she and her new husband were 29 years old. They set up housekeeping in the house he had purchased three years earlier, within site of the house of Abigail's parents. Ebenezer became a prosperous farmer but the couple had no children. They needed additional labor to work on the farm and in the household. By 1735, baptismal records show that they had enslaved two people- a man named Caesar and a young girl named Lucy Terry. [i]
Abigail would have needed help in the house preparing meals and preserving food, making butter and cheese, cleaning, sewing, carding and spinning wool, laundering, making tallow candles, and other tasks. Outside she would have needed help milking the cows, collecting eggs, and there was the large vegetable garden to maintain as well. Lucy would be expected to perform most of these tasks from a young age, likely under Abigail's supervision, as well as working alongside her enslaver and other servants.[ii]
The Deerfield Church required all parishioners "…to send yr. children & Servants to Such Catachisim as their minister appoints until [yy] are 18 years old except married." The Wells baptized Lucy into the Christian faith soon after her arrival and provided religious instruction. Being able to read the Bible was extremely important in a Protestant Puritan household. Abigail Wells may have been the person who taught Lucy to read and write as women often taught younger children basic literacy. As early as 1642 the Massachusetts Bay Colony required all parents and masters to teach children "to read & understand the principles of religion and the capital laws of this country."[iii]
In about 1746, a fire completely destroyed the Wells's house. An observer noted the fire was so intense, the family silver melted in the blaze. By now well into middle age, the Wells decided not only to rebuild, but to construct a fashionable two-bay Georgian house. Like their silver and owning human property, the new house reflected the couple's well-to-do socio-economic status in their community. At the same time, Ebenezer received a tavern license, perhaps to earn extra income to help pay for the new house. Much of the work of running the tavern, including providing travelers food and lodging, fell to Abigail who likely put Lucy to work preparing and serving food and drink, and cleaning sleeping spaces. Ebenezer and Caesar were responsible for putting up and feeding horses of travelers. Abigail and Ebenezer operated their tavern for only two years (1747-49), suggesting it was not profitable, too much work, or both. [iv]
In June 1756, Deerfield Town Records recorded the marriage of "Terry, Lucey, servant to Esign Eben[ezer]r Wells and Abijah Prince, May 17, 1756." Elijah William, a Justice of the Peace, conducted the civil ceremony which likely took place in the parlor of the Wells' home following the common practice that of holding weddings at the home of the bride. The wording in the town record suggests that Lucy was still enslaved by Abigail and Ebenezer. It is not known exactly how or when Lucy emancipated but it seems likely that Abijah and Lucy negotiated an agreement with the Wells that may have involved exchanging work for her freedom and a dwelling place. By the following year, Lucy and Abijah were living on the east end of the Wells's large home lot where Lucy gave birth to her first child, Caesar, who was born free.
Only a year later, in 1758, Ebenezer Wells died at age 67. In his will, he left
"to Abigail my beloved wife my best bed with all the furniture thereto belonging, viz my best bed quilt three bed blankets & a good Suit of Curtains, also all my linen in the house whether wrought or unwrought and also all my pewter of any Sort also all my book & also my largest brass kettle & my two best Chests besides what is hereafter mentioned & I also give & bequeath unto my Said wife one half of all my Personal Estate of what Sort or kind Soever to her & her Heirs forever, & also the use & Improvement of one half of all my Real Estate with all the buildings & Edifices therein during her the Said Abigail’s natural life"[v]
Abigail's nephew Ebenezer Wells of Deerfield inherited the house and lot although under the terms of her husband's will, Abigail retained a legal right to half the house until her death. Abigail lived for fourteen more years before she died in the nearby town of Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1772.[vi]
[i] George Sheldon, A History of Deerfield, Massachusetts: The times When the People by Whom it was Settled, Unsettled and Resettled : With a Special Study of the Indian wars in the Connecticut Valley : With Genealogies (Deerfield, Massachusetts: Press of E.A. Hall & Co., 1895), 65, 358; Church Records, First Church of Deerfield, PVMA Library.
[ii] For an excellent exploration of the rhythms of life, household responsibilities, and religious and cultural expectations for New England women of the 17th and 18th centuries, see Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Good Wives: Image and Reality in Northern New England, 1650-1750. (NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982.)
[iii] Deerfield Church records; Eric R. Eberling, Massachusetts Education Laws of 1642, 1647, and 1648", in "Historical Dictionary of American Education, ed. Richard J. Altenbaugh. Greenwood Press, 1999.
[iv] Susan McGowan and Amelia Miller, Family & Landscape: Deerfield Homelots from 1671 (Deerfield, MA: Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, 1996) 119.
[v] Hampshire County, Massachusetts: Probate File Papers, 1660-1889. Case #156-59 https://www.americanancestors.org/databases/hampshire-county-ma-probate-file-papers-1660-1889/RecordDisplay?volumeId=40017&pageName=156-59:1&rId=1044411231
[vi] Sheldon, History of Deerfield, Massachusetts, Vol. II, 358.