Jabez Dow

Biography

Jabez Dow's work repeatedly brought him into arguments over land and taxation at Hampton, on the New Hampshire coast. A son of Captain Henry Dow, he married Esther Shaw on March 24, 1693. Their seven recorded children were born between December 1693 and October 1708. The family history identifies Jabez himself as a captain.

In December 1720 he was appointed with two other men to hear complaints from proprietors who said they had lost shares in the North Division. Further committee work in 1722 concerned the town's remaining common land: how it might be divided and whose claims were valid. These were practical questions about who could occupy and use land as settlement spread.

Jabez also helped prepare the property assessment certified on April 12, 1732. It counted houses, livestock, and acreage, but also assigned taxable values to enslaved African and Indigenous people held by several townsmen. His administrative role therefore formed part of an economy in which human beings were assessed as property.

Esther died in March 1739. Jabez survived her until January 1752. His surviving record combines family life with years of consequential work over the town's land, claims, and taxable wealth.

The chronology places Jabez’s birth in 1671 or 1672, without establishing a particular day.