Quincy – Hancock Cemetery (Ebenezer Hayden)

Back to my visit to the Hancock Cemetery in Quincy.

This is the grave of Ebenezer Hayden, who was the son of John and Susanna, and he was born in 1645 and died on 13 February 1717. Colonial American history doesn’t get much older than this and Ebenezer married Anna and had three children, Ebenezer jr (born 13 April 1679), Ruth (born 19 November 1681) and William (birthdate unknown, but he married Sarah Hobart on 26 December 1726). Hayden was made a freeman in Boston on 15 May 1690, but lived most of his life in Braintree (which was effectively the same place as Quincy then).

Hayden fought in the Suffolk Troop during King Philip’s War, also known as the First Indian War, which was a conflict lasting from 1675 until 1678. It was fought between the native Americans and the colonists, and although the numbers on each side were about even, the native Americans suffered greater losses. That time in the military meant that Hayden is now seen as a veteran of the US Army, hence the circular marker by his grave.

I do wonder what these seventeenth-century colonists would make of the Braintree and Boston areas today……