Ebenezer Higgins

Biography

Ebenezer Higgins's responsibilities at Eastham, on Cape Cod in present-day Massachusetts, extended from roads and fences to the support of the local ministry. Katharine Chapin Higgins's family history records his selection as highway surveyor in March 1730/31 and fence viewer in March 1733/34. In 1747 he was appointed to help find a suitable preacher for the South Precinct, the part of Eastham that later became Orleans. Later assignments included obtaining firewood for ministers, and in 1758 he was elected assessor.

The account also preserves particular land transactions. In January 1732/33 Nathaniel Smith conveyed land on the Nauset flats to Ebenezer. Later that month Isaac Pepper Jr. conveyed an upland lot between two roads, one leading from David Doane's place and the other running toward Billingsgate from Nathaniel Higgins's house. These descriptions place Ebenezer's holdings within a working landscape of neighbors, roads and marshland.

He married Abigail Cole on October 5, 1721. A published transcription of the Eastham record names Joseph Doane as the officiant. Their six recorded children included Elkanah. The Higgins history gives Ebenezer's birth as April 15, 1701 and describes him as a lifelong resident of Eastham.

The same history records two later marriages, to the widow Content Harding and then to the widow Phoebe Snow in 1776. It could not establish an exact death date, suggesting about 1778–79.