2. Ebenezer Cleveland2 Jackman (Benjamin, #4);15,16,17,18 born 1 Nov 1784 at Byfield, MA;19 married Abigail Barker (see #3), daughter of John Barker and Mary Jackman, 23 Sep 1817;20,21,22 died 17 Oct 1843 at Bethel, ME, at age 58;23 buried after 17 Oct 1843 at South Byfield cemetery, Georgetown, MA; Possibly actually buried in Maine. Gravestone reads "He died at Bethel, Me while on a visit", also "Reader remember that thou art mortal, And prepare to meet thy God."24
According to Eleanor, Ebenezer and Abigail bid against each other at auction, for the secretary in her living room. "About Ebeneezer Jackman, your great great great grandfather, he was a plain man, a cordwainer by trade. He was born in Byfield, and his tombstone is beside Abigail's in South Byfield cemetary. I'm not sure he is buried there for his stone reads "Died on a visit to Bethel Maine". Does it mean something like
"Lost at Sea"?
We have the correspondence between him and Abigail. He hadn't been to finishing school and his spelling was original, and his phrasing earthy. There is, however, a liveliness and humor in his letters that hers lack.
As I have said before, Abigail was a great one for saving souls (she said of the children she taught they were so many souls to save). She could hardly bear to believe that dear Ebeneezer was destined for hell fire and brimstone.
Something else, more down to earth, held up their marriage. She would have to come and live with Ebeneezer's parents, her aunt and uncle. She wanted a home of her own. Ebeneezer felt duty bound to care for his parents. Abigail put him off and put him off. Finally when she was twenty seven and he was thirty odd, he wrote her. The haying, he said, would be over in August, and he could come to Bethel. He suggested that she get Brother John to get the preacher. He did not say, but strongly implied, that he had had enough of shilly shallying. Brother John got the preacher.
Maybe Ebeneezer, who died long before Abigail, doesn't seem brave to you, but he was, I think a man of integrity. More than this, he just wouldn't pretend that on some given moment the Lord had said, "Ebeneezer, you're one of the Saved." Surely in New England in those days it would have been easier to give in, to pretend for the sake of peace.
Ebeneezer, given the odds, preferred going to Hell. Personally, I find him a faviorite ancestor."25 He was a cordwainer (leather worker) after 1800. He lived after 1817 at South Byfield parish, Georgetown, MA.
Children of Ebenezer Cleveland2 Jackman and Abigail Barker (see #3) were as follows:
3. Abigail2 Barker (John, #6);34,35,36,37 born 29 Oct 1790 at London Derry, NH;38,39,40 married Ebenezer Cleveland Jackman (see #2), son of Benjamin Jackman Jr and Ruth Jackman, 23 Sep 1817;41,42,43 buried after 18 Nov 1878 at South Byfield Cemetery, Georgetown, MA; Her gravestone reads "THEY REST FROM THEIR LABORS AND THEIR WORKS DO FOLLOW THEM;"44 died 19 Nov 1878 at age 88; Rolfe said on 18th, which is on the grave stone.45,46
She was educated at Byfield Female Seminary.47 "If people try to sell you a bill of goods about poor down trodden women in New England you say "who are you kidding" You should have known my great great great grandmother, Abigail Barker Jackman."
She was, for her times, a tall woman. Someone, so the story goes, teased her once about her height. She replied loftily (no pun intended) "I can stoop as low as anyone and reach a great deal higher."
She was born, as you must have heard, for it is one date we are sure of, in 1790, in Londonderry, New Hampshire. When she was about ten, her mother (and she was another woman of independence) loaded up her children in a covered sleigh, and in the dead of winter drove though Pinkham Notch down the Androscoggin River to join her husband in Bethel, Maine. He had, with thier oldest son, gone ahead to take up a claim on the rich intervale land along the river. You've been there with me, I think... To get back to Abigail, when the proper time came, she was sent to Byfield to attend Byfield Female Seminary. An before you snort FEMALE SEMINARY one of her fellow students was Mary Lyon who founde Mount Holyoke College, and another married Adoniah Judson the missionary to Hawaii, two women who can be safely said to have changed American thinking.
Abigail just influenced us, for she married her cousin Ebeneezer Jackman, an by him had two daughters, Mary and Elizabeth. Then Ebeneezer died, and she became the Widow Jackman.
She managed the broad acres behind the Peabody Place profitably, for somewhere there was enough money to send her daughters to boarding school, buy one of the earliest pianos in Essex County, send her daughter Elizabeth to Boston for music lessons, and Mary to her old school for art.
She sent at last to Bethel for a farmer, George Washington Sanborn, to come and help. He did and married her younger daughter, Mary.
Your own grandmother, who is fascinated by New England religous history, was delighted to find her Declaration of Faith. She lived in the age of the so called Great Revival and she believed in saving People's souls. She tried to save Ebeneezer, but he had a mind of his own."48 She was Sent for to Bethel ME for G W Sanborn to manage her farm after her husband Ebenezer died after 17 Oct 1843.49 As of after 17 Oct 1843, she was also known as Widow Jackman.