Elisha Holbrook

Born at Scituate, he married Sarah Mayo at Eastham in 1742 and spent his life at Wellfleet, then still the North Precinct of Eastham. "Elisha Holbrook of Wellfleet in the County of Barnstable, Mariner" in a Middlesex County suit of December 1766.

He was a deacon of the church at Wellfleet, gathered in 1730 as the North Precinct of Eastham, and for decades the only church in town. The precinct records call him plain "Elisha Holbrooks" in 1747 and 1760 and "Mr" in 1762, while giving other deacons their title, and the Newcomb genealogy calls him "Dea. Elisha Holbrook" at his second marriage in 1771. So he was probably chosen deacon between 1763 and 1771 (inferred).

On 20 Aug 1747, with his father-in-law Daniel Mayo as moderator, the precinct chose "Zoheth Smith and Elisha Holbrooks agents to petition the General Court to abate our part of the province tax ... more Especially by reason of the present Spreading of the Small pox amongst us" (MD 11:75-76). He looked after the meeting house: in 1760 the precinct "voated that Elisha Holbrooks Should have four Pounds old Tennor for Sweeping and Looking after the Meeting house this year," and again the next year (MD 13:212-214). When it was enlarged with a porch and steeple in 1765, he contracted "to provide all the bricks, lime and other materials, to underpin and pave round the house, for £16" (Pratt; Freeman 2:662). In 1762 he was on the school committee and on the committee of seven that helped Capt. Elisha Doane get the North Precinct set off as the District of Wellfleet, incorporated in 1763 (MD 13:216-217).

An Elisha Holbrook of Wellfleet served in Capt. Winslow Lewis's company at Cambridge in 1775-76 and as a gunner and bombardier in Crafts's artillery regiment in 1776-77 (Mass. Soldiers and Sailors 8:76-77). The deacon would have been about 60, so this is probably his son Elisha, born about 1748 (inferred). His estate (1779-1780) was administered by his widow Priscilla. The creditors' accounts call him "Deacon Elisha Holbrook late of Wellfleet," and Priscilla complained that his son Eliphalet was holding five bushels of salt and other goods of the estate. On 11-18 June 1779 she was made guardian of the minor children Daniel, Sarah, Joseph and Ezekiel, and Eliphalet Holbrook of Wellfleet, yeoman, of the youngest, Jeremiah. Only about two pounds remained after debts.

No guardianship was found for Gideon, who would have been about 13 or 14 in 1779.

Mollie's typescript (pp. 1-17) runs the line Thomas of Braintree > Peter (m. Alice Godfrey) > Eliphalet (m. Hannah Rockwood) > Elisha, and gives Elisha a wife "Mary Mayhew." The records place Elisha as the son of Capt. John Holbrook and Sarah Chittenden of Scituate, and his first wife as Sarah Mayo. The Leland, Godfrey, Rockwood, Mayhew, Skiff, Newcomb, Bayes and Wetherell lines in her Books 1-3 are therefore not ancestral.

Open questions

• Records that might name Gideon as his son and close the Elisha-to-Gideon step (about 80-85%): The Mayflower Descendant 29:13 (an index entry for Elisha and Sarah Holbrook) and the Holbrook entries in vols. 26-34, which are not on archive.org; the Wellfleet First Congregational Church records, 1730-1786, and the Wellfleet book of births from 1763; and Eastham and Wellfleet deed copies naming his heirs (the county's own deed books burned in 1827).