Benjamin Doane

Biography

Benjamin Doane left Cape Cod, Massachusetts, for a farm in the North Parish of Brookfield, farther inland in the same state, around 1791. The Doane genealogy names the seller as Bryant Foster. Benjamin was then in his fifties, with an established family and a second marriage; the move was a change in the setting of his adult life rather than the beginning of it.

He had grown up at Eastham, a son of Simeon Doane and Apphia Higgins. His first wife was Ruth Smith. Their children included Uriah, Joseph, Benjamin, Phoebe and two sons successively named William. The first William, born in April 1764, died in June 1765. Ruth died in August 1778, still in her thirties. Benjamin married the widow Hannah Cobb in April 1779.

Benjamin's name also appears among the sons in Simeon's 1784 will. By the following decade he had acquired the Brookfield farm. The genealogy places his death at North Brookfield, Massachusetts, on January 3, 1824 and preserves a small detail of the funeral: the new church bell was tolled for the first time on that occasion.

After his death Hannah returned to Cape Cod to live with a married daughter.

The chronology estimates Benjamin’s birth around 1737–1738.