HISTORICAL NOTE

These papers, fifteen deeds and sixty-five bills or receipts, were generated in the family of Obadiah Foster, 1741-1780, son of Captain John Foster and Mary Osgood Foster. These Fosters were in the line of Reginald, the original settler. His son William (2) moved to Rowley, where his son William (3) was born in 1670. By 1714, William (3) was “of Andover”. He died in 1757,leaving six children: Sarah, b. 1693, who married Nehemiah Abbott of Westown; John “Captain”, 1701-1772; Hannah, b. 1704, who married John Lovejoy of Woburn; Mary, b. c. 1696, who married Timothy Abbott; Lydia, b. 1708, who married William Blunt and Asa “Captain”, 1701-1787, who married successively, Elizabeth Abbott and Widow Lucy Rogers Wise of Ipswich. Lydia and William Blunt had a daughter Lydia who married, in 1728, Thomas Abbott, Junior. “Captain John (4), his eldest son, married in 1727, Mary Osgood. They had eleven children. Six reached adulthood. William (5), b. 1730, married Hanna Abbott, daughter of George: John (5), called “Ensign” John, married Hanna Ballard, daughter of William; Gideon, b. 1731, married Elizabeth Russell; Solomon, b. 1743, married Rebecca Brown of Lincoln and lived in Littleton and Lincoln; Obadiah, 1741-1780, who was responsible for most of these papers, married successively Dorcas Jewett and Anna Gray of Andover. He lived in Tewksbury.

Obadiah overextended himself financially. Basically a farmer, he invested in a privateer during the Revolution (the Brig Waxford, John Fletcher Commander) and owed money in Beverly and Marblehead. He died suddenly in 1780, insolvent, leaving Hannah with seven children and many debts. She was obviously a tough woman, who ran an auction of the family farm and with the proceeds was able to pay a portion of her husband’s debts. Many of the receipts are from Obadiah’s creditors to her settling this matter. In 1792, after having raised her children, she married Joshua (6) Chandler, son of Joshua, as his second wife and lived to be ninety. His son Joshua (7) by his first wife, married her daughter Dorcas Foster. He and Hanna Ballard Foster had one child, a daughter Hannah (7), b. 1793.

Another Foster, unrelated ot these, signed one document in the collection. Thomas Chandler Foster was a descendant of Edward Foster of Scituate. His descendants lived in Boston and Cambridge until in the fifth generation Timothy Foster married Elizabeth, daughter of John Dane of Andover. Timothy had four children of whom the most prominent was Thomas C. Foster (6), 1789-1875; selectman, assessor, overseer of the poor, state representative, town meeting moderator, auctioneer, commander of the Andover Light Infantry in the War of 1812.

The papers are divided in nine parts, by member of the Foster family in genealogical order. Deeds have been divided by Foster as grantor and grantee, bills by Foster as debtor and creditor. Estate settlements have been filed under the name of the deceased.

There is no record when this material was given to the society.

Used in writing these notes were the typed notes by Charlotte Helen Abbott, for the Foster, Chandler and Abbott families; the Genealogical Register of the Abbotts by Abiel and Ephram Abbott and the printed Vital Records of Andover.

Processed by Mary F. Morgan, January 1983.