Joseph Barnard family records 1695
“Joseph Barnard head of this family was wounded by ye Enimie August 15th 1695 and Dyed September ye 6th in ye same year.” (Joseph was my 8th great grandfather.) Click on the image to see it full size.
This is a 19th century copy from the “Old Book” of town records. It looks like the “Old Book” had a page for each family, probably in chronological order as each family unit was established. Joseph was the first Deerfield (Massachusetts) town clerk, which might explain why his family’s record is at the front of the “Old Book,” on Page 2.
The left column reads “Births in Joseph BarnardS Family”. The right column reads “BurialS in Joseph BarnardS Family.”
The handwriting is distinctive to the modern eye, and of course difficult to read. Notice the “s” at the end of the word (such as BarnardS or BurialS) is large. Weird. “The” is written as “ye” — the “th” of “the” was a single letter of the alphabet when the original record was written in the 17th century which looked something like a “Y,” but by time this copy was made, it was written as “ye.” Writing “the” instead of “ye” would have been the better translation, but of course the copyist was copying not translating.
One reason this record is interesting to me, is that it seems to be missing at least one known child of Joseph and Sarah Barnard — and the original page would have been written by Joseph himself. He was town clerk up to the day he was fatally wounded in ambush.
Hannah is missing from the list, who is buried at Deerfield. As is Thankful, however, the note to the right of Abigail’s name looks like it might be referring to Thankful. Ebenezer was born six months after his father’s death. I could be in error about Hannah, or, the town record could be incomplete.
Note that Thomas was born in 1683/2. That’s showing the conversion to Gregorian calendar notation.