Ruhamah Jones
Wife of Joseph Nickerson of Harwich, Massachusetts, and probably the mother of John Nickerson, as the Nickerson family history has it; it gives her father as Teague Jones. By family tradition she was a great beauty of disagreeable nature whom her neighbours feared to provoke, and lived to a great age. Harwich ordered her care in 1735, the last record of her.
Life
- c. 1650Bornc. 1650
- bef. 1677Married Joseph Nickersonbef. 1677
Probably at Yarmouth.
- aft. 1735DiedHarwich, Massachusetts
In 1735 the town of Harwich was ordered to pay for her care in the home of John Eldredge.
Family
- Father
- Teague Jones
- Spouse
1 child
Pedigree
Notes
Great-grandmother of Sarah (Cole) Holdershaw, wife of Joseph Nickerson of Harwich. The family history has a story of her that it calls tradition, and it is worth keeping as that: she was “a ‘great beauty’, but ‘of a disagreeable nature’” and “delighted in harassing others, so that both her Indian and white neighbors tried not to offend her. It is said that, if provoked, she would play havoc with their washing, their choice plants, and the fruits of their harvest.” She was suspected when Edward Bangs’s barn burned after a quarrel, and was said to be too ill to attend the trial. “Ruhamah lived to a ‘great age’, and had remained sitting for so many years that, at her death, it was thought best to bury her in ‘the same crooked position’,” on Burial Hill south of Ryder’s Cove, where many of the early Nickersons lie (source). The town’s order of 1735 for her care is the last record of her.
Research: research/ellingwood/Ellingwood_Cape_Cod.md.