Ebenezer Foster

From the Hyten family archive; subject is Ebenezer Foster (1710–1769), a 7× great-grandparent of the compiler on the paternal-grandfather (PP) line. This entry covers his Salem, Massachusetts birth and death, his parents Ebenezer Foster and Anna Wilkins Baxter Foster, his marriage to Lydia Felton, and his son Ebenezer. Era context: post–Salem witch trials colonial Essex County.

Ebenezer Foster (1710–1769) was born on the 23rd of August, 1710, in Salem, Essex County, Massachusetts, and died in that same town in 1769, having passed the whole of his fifty-nine years within the bounds of his native community. He was the son of Ebenezer Foster (1677–1718) and Anna C. Wilkins Baxter Foster (1681–1773), his father having died when Ebenezer the younger was but eight years of age, while his mother long survived him, living to the remarkable age of ninety-two.

The Salem of Ebenezer's youth was a town still living in the long shadow of the witchcraft trials of 1692, scarcely a generation removed. Through his mother's Wilkins line, the family was rooted in the old Essex County stock whose names appear among both the accusers and the accused in those grim proceedings. By the time of Ebenezer's adulthood, however, Salem had matured into one of the foremost maritime ports of colonial New England, its wharves crowded with vessels engaged in the West Indies trade and its fortunes rising on the strength of cod, timber, and shipbuilding.

Ebenezer married Lydia Felton, joining two families of long establishment in Essex County. Of their union is recorded a son, Ebenezer Foster (1732–1811), who would carry the paternal name into a third generation and live to see the founding of the American republic. The Felton connection further anchored the family within the dense web of intermarried Salem households that characterized New England's colonial gentry and yeomanry alike.

The whole of Ebenezer's life unfolded under British colonial rule, in the decades preceding the Revolution he did not live to witness, his death in 1769 coming just six years before the first shots at Lexington and Concord.

Ebenezer Foster was the compiler's 7× great-grandfather on the paternal-grandfather (PP) line.