Nathaniel Oake Jr. and Kezia: from Westborough to Bolton

On February 20, 1726/7, Marlborough recorded the marriage of "OKE [Oak, c.r.], Nathanel and Tabatha Rice." The groom was probably Nathaniel Oake Jr., the eldest son of the Westborough farmer who had died in 1721; the Marlborough records enter his birth, "Natthaniel, s. Natthaniel and Mary," on January 7, 1703/4 (the 1906 register gives June 7, 1704, p. 9). If so, he was twenty-three. He married again in 1736, raised children at Westborough and Bolton, and left a trail of baptisms, a church transfer and a probate docket that leads to a grandson.

Tabitha Rice, 1727 to 1736

The Westborough church admitted "Tabitha Oake, (the wife of Nathaniel Oake)" to communion on November 5, 1727. On April 21, 1728, the record reads, "Nathaniel Oake ownd ye Covt & William his Son was baptized." The town recorded a second son: "Born unto Nathaniel Oak and Tabitha his wife the first Day of April 1733 a son named Seth Oake," baptized April 8.

The town chose a Nathaniel Oak, with no Jr. or Sr., probably this man, as a surveyor of highways at Westborough on March 5, 1732/3 and March 15, 1735/6, and in June 1733 it abated his rate "for one head in the year 1731." The register adds that he was a tithing man in 1736-42, and that "In 1740 with Capt. James Eagar and others he 'perambulated' the boundary between Westboro and Bolton"; in 1745 he moved his family to "a farm on Long Hill" in Bolton (p. 9).

Westborough's minister, Ebenezer Parkman, called him "Neighbour Nathaniel Oake." On January 22, 1736, while the Parkman household lay ill, Captain Eager "with his Team and Neighbour Nathaniel Oake and his Team" and seven other neighbors brought the minister nineteen loads of wood, which Parkman called "a valuable Kindness." The diary gives no parentage, but this neighbor was probably the son. On December 25, 1738, "Neighbour Oak came with a Team," probably Nathaniel again, along with John Oake and other neighbors, to get the minister's wood. No other record of Tabitha has been found.

Kezia Maynard, 1736

The church record says Nathaniel Oake married Kezia Maynard on June 7, 1736. Her father was David Maynard: his will, dated August 14, 1755 and allowed November 18, 1757 (Worcester probate files, case 39457), leaves "to my Dauter Kezia the Wife of Nathaniel Oake the sum of Twelve pounds Lawfull Money," to be paid by his son Nathan, and names her sisters Ruhamah (widow of Deacon Josiah Newton), Martha (wife of Daniel Mason), Hannah and Mercy and brothers David, Ebenezer, Nathan, Jesse and Jotham. Westborough's records give their children: Tabitha, born September 2, 1737 and baptized September 11; Ebenezer, baptized, ill, on September 28, 1738; Thankfull, baptized August 19, 1739; Nathaniel, born January 12, 1742 and baptized April 18; and Beriah, born November 22, 1743 and baptized December 18. Ebenezer did not live. Parkman wrote on October 2, 1738 that he attended "the Funeral of Mr. Nathaniel Oakes young Child."

Meetings at the Oake house, 1741 to 1744

Westborough's north-side families lived a long way from the meeting-house. About 1741, the town's 1891 history says, they "began to absent themselves from public worship in the town meeting-house and to hold services by themselves in the house of Mr. Nathaniel Oake," by then the son's house on the old home farm, where the register says he lived until 1745. Parkman "opposed the division tenaciously from first to last." In 1743 he was asked "to baptize seven persons at Mr. Oake's house, 'where ye Publick Assembly of that Corner of y Town was Commonly held.'" After "much hesitation and consultation" he did so on April 3, once the north-side church members had told him their reasons were "not from Negligence, Disgust, &c., but because of ye inconvenient Distance, and Difficulty of their and their Children's Travelling to ye Meeting House." The book does not name the seven. On October 20, 1744, the north side was made a separate precinct and parish; it was more than twenty years before it became a town of its own, Northborough.

Bolton, 1745 to 1749

Bolton's records enter "Mindwell, d. Nathaniel and Keziah, March 23, 1746," placing the family in Bolton by then. On February 26, 1749, the Westborough church transferred "Kezia (the wife of Nathaniel) Oake" to the church at Bolton; Parkman's diary dates the vote February 27. Mindwell is probably the Mindwell who married Caleb Gates of Stow at Bolton on March 10, 1776 (the register prints 1766). The register says the Gates family "became pioneer settlers of Johnson's Gore, later known as Acton 1801-41 now part of Townsend, Vt."; their farm was later "the Dennis Holden Place" (p. 17).

Two sons of the first marriage appear to have followed. A William Oak has children recorded at Bolton from 1753 and a daughter born "In Narragansett No. 6," now Templeton, in 1760; the Worcester probate docket enters William Oaks of Winchendon with a warrant of appraisal on October 26, 1774, so he died by then, and "Relief Oak appointed Administratrix." A Seth Oak married Elizabeth Shevally of Stow at Bolton on May 25, 1757. Their lives are traced on Where Nathaniel Oak's family went.

Beriah

Beriah Oak of Bolton was probably the Beriah born at Westborough in 1743; the name is rare and his parents lived at Bolton, though no record ties them together. Bolton records the marriage of Beriah Oak and Tabitha Fosket on December 31, 1767 and the births of seven children: John, March 30, 1768; Elisabeth, February 6, 1770; James, October 30, 1772; Abraham, March 29, 1773 (the printed records give both dates, five months apart); Asa, December 6, 1774; Daniel, June 17, 1776; and Eunice, March 14, 1778. The probate distribution adds two more, Phebe and a younger Beriah, both minors with guardians in 1795; Bolton's printed records enter no birth for either.

Beriah marched on the Lexington alarm: "Oak, Beriah, Bolton" was a private in Capt. Robert Longley's company of Col. Asa Whitcomb's regiment (not the Col. John Whitcomb whose regiment included Capt. Benjamin Hastings's Bolton company that April) and served ten days in April 1775 (Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors, vol. 11, p. 597); his service is on Oak-line military service. The 1906 register says he was "a prosperous man; but died before the age of 40," and keeps one tradition of his widow, Tabitha Fosket: in Shays' Rebellion, "when neighbors were hiding their weapons, she declared (traditionally) that she would break her gun on the rebels' heads!" Of the family it adds that his children and grandchildren "were nearly all workers in wood as well as farmers. It was said that an Oaks' house could be recognized by the chips and shavings."

The town records follow the children: John married Mary Eaton at Sudbury on December 12, 1793 and James married Sarah Walker there on September 12, 1797 (Vital Records of Sudbury, p. 244); Asa married Patty Robbins at Stow on July 29, 1794 (Vital Records of Stow, p. 179); and Bolton records the intentions of Abraham Oak and Joanna Walker of Rindge (1797) and of Daniel Oak and Hepsabah Bachelder of Fitchburg (1800), the marriage of Pheba Oak and Samuel Danforth of Stow (June 19, 1800), the intention of Beriah Oak and Eunice Ames (1804), and the marriage of Eunice Oak and Ebenezer Randal of Stow (October 25, 1809) (Vital Records of Bolton, pp. 122, 157, 163).

The Worcester probate docket enters No. 44100, "Oaks, Beriah, Bolton": "1781 Tabathy Oak appointed Administratrix. Feb. 28 Bond £1000 Jesse Walcutt & Oliver Barrett Jr., sureties."

The account was allowed on April 1, 1783, and a partition was ordered on October 6, 1795. The distribution lists receipts from Elizabeth Oak, Asa Oak and John Oaks, evidently his children, and from guardians for minor heirs: Bezaleel Hale Jr. for Beriah and Eunice, and Elnathan Polley for Daniel and Phebe. In 1820 the docket enters No. 44133, "Tabitha Oaks, Bolton," with "Beriah Oaks appointed Administratrix." "Administratrix" is probably the clerk's printed form; the administrator was presumably the younger Beriah, a minor ward in 1795.

Bolton's records follow the next generation too. James and Sarah (Walker) had Silvia, born April 17, 1798; Amery, April 19, 1801; Elmera, July 5, 1803; Thomas Jefferson, April 17, 1805; Mary Harris, December 21, 1806; Gardner, March 11, 1808; Albert, March 20, 1810; and James, May 28, 1814. Abraham and Joanna (Walker) had Ira, February 27, 1797; Pheby, January 3, 1799, who died on October 13, 1801, "a. 2 y. 9 m. 10 d."; and Abigail, March 26, 1802. The town's deaths list also enters, with no names or days, a child of Beriah in 1808, a son of James in 1811, children of Beriah in 1817 and 1827, a daughter of Beriah in 1820, and a widow Oak in 1820, probably Tabitha. A Marsilvia Oak married Joel Gleason of Marlborough at Bolton on October 22, 1822; she may be James and Sarah's Silvia, but the record does not say (Vital Records of Bolton, pp. 64, 157 and 216).

Their last years

The 1906 register says Nathaniel and Kezia were "aged and poor" in 1781 and were supported from Beriah's estate, and gives June 5, 1783 as a death date for one of them. No other record found supports either statement: Bolton's records show no death for them, and the docket for Beriah's estate doesn't mention them. The probate file, the Worcester County record books and Bolton's church records might show what became of them.

The register also counts his family: "His registered descendants number about 2,500" (register, page 10).

The earlier generation is told in Mary Holloway: three marriages and a working widow, and the searches made for the family are summarized on the research log.

Sources

• Vital Records of Marlborough (births, p. 142; marriages, p. 293).
• Westborough church records, November 5, 1727; April 21, 1728; June 7, 1736; baptisms 1737 to 1743; February 26, 1749; Vital Records of Westborough, p. 80; Westborough town records, vol. I, pp. 32, 33 and 39.
• Ebenezer Parkman, diary, January 22, 1736; October 2, 1738; December 25, 1738; February 27, 1749 (Ebenezer Parkman Project). diary.ebenezerparkman.org/1736/01/22/
• Vital Records of Bolton, Massachusetts, to the End of the Year 1849 (Worcester: F. P. Rice, 1910): births, p. 64; marriages, p. 157; deaths, p. 216; read on the page images. archive.org/details/vitalrecordsofbo00boltonm
• Worcester County probate dockets, 1731-1881: Nos. 44100, 44101, 44103, 44133 and 44138, read on the page images.
• Heman Packard DeForest and Edward Craig Bates, The History of Westborough, Massachusetts (Westborough: the Town, 1891), pp. 109-112, read on the page images. archive.org/details/historyofwestbor01defo/page/109/
• H. L. Oak, Oak-Oaks-Oakes: Family Register (1906), pp. 9-17. Public domain; read the whole book: PDF, from the Internet Archive.