The Case for Grace Fairbanks as the wife of Ephraim Bullen
The mystery surrounding the surname of Grace _____, who married Ephraim Bullen of Sherborn before 1681 and bore 4 children before dying in 1689, has not been solved. There is a strong circumstantial case that she was Grace Fairbanks, born the 15th of the 9th month, 1663 (November 15, 1663) to Jonas Fairbanks and Lydia (Prescott) Fairbanks of Lancaster.
Grace Fairbanks was born in Lancaster Massachusetts Bay Colony on Nov. 15, 1663 to Jonas and Lydia (Prescott) Fairbanks. After this date, Grace has no further records that include both her maiden and married name. However, we know that Grace reached marriageable age and likely did marry because in 1696, her mother submitted an accounting of monies spent on behalf of Grace Fairbanks, deceased, daughter of Jonas Fairbanks, deceased. Included in the accounting were charges of £2-0-0 for “cash paid her at her marriage”, £0-10-0 “to making her weddin cloathes”, and £0-10-0 “to Doctor Georish.” We know from this document that Grace Fairbanks had died by 1696. We also know that she lived long enough to marry as evidenced by the notations for “making her weddin cloathes” and “cash paid her at her marriage”. Finally, the notation of payment to a Doctor Georish is intriguing. I have been unable to trace this person, but it certainly seems a promising avenue of inquiry.
The Fairbanks Family Genealogy does not include any additional information about Grace Fairbanks other than her birth date and location of birth. The Family Association believes descendancy is limited to the children of Jabez Fairbanks, Grace's brother.
In a privately printed book, May Philipps Train states that Ephraim Bullen married Grace Fairbank, daughter of Jonas and Lydia (Prescott) Fairbank. She further quotes the inscription on a gravestone said to be located near the home of Mr. Isaac Cozzens: “Here lyes Ye Body of Grace Bullen – Who Died August 11th 1689 in Ye 26th Year of Her Age.” This inscription suggests that Grace (Unknown) Bullen was born in 1663, the same year as Grace Fairbanks.
Additional research led the author of the present article to William Biglow’s History of Sherburne, Massachusetts, published in 1830, which might be the original source of Train’s citation. There, Biglow states:
A grave stone, found near the dwelling house of Mr. Isaac Cozzens, and preserved in a faced stone wall, which incloses his door yard, it is said was intended to be erected in the central yard, in memory of the person whose name it bears; but it was not procured till her friends had forgotten where they had laid her. It bears this inscription.
Here lyes ye Body
Of Grace
Bullen Who
Died August 11
1689 & in ye 26th
Year of Her
Age
From this inscription we might reasonably conclude that Grace (Unknown) Bullen, who died in August of 1689 in her 26th year would have been born after August 11,1663 and before August 11, 1664. These dates fit nicely with the known birth date of Grace Fairbanks, November 15, 1663, who would have been “in the 26th year of her age” from November 15, 1688 to November 15, 1689.
The home of Isaac Cozzens is undoubtedly the Bullen-Stratton-Cozzens House, a structure listed on the National Register of Historic Homes built by Samuel Bullen in 1689.
The Fairbanks-Bullen marriage was also referenced in “Notable Kin: Family Connections of Alva Smith Vanderbilt Belmont and Edith Dresser Vanderbilt Gerry. Again, no sources were cited.
Given the lack of clarity in the above-cited records, articles, and memorials, it seemed prudent to conduct a search of the young women named Grace that were living in Massachusetts Bay Colony and who were of the appropriate age to have married Ephraim Bullen to see if any of them were likely candidates for Grace (Unknown) Bullen. To be safe, I included women with the Fairbanks surname. These women were:
1. Grace (Smith) Fairbanck d. Dedham 1673 or 1676 (wife of Jonathan1).
2. Grace Fairbank, daughter of Jonathan and Deborah, b. 1656 d. Dedham 1673 or 1676.
3. Grace Fairbanck b. Dedham d. 1697 with her father Jonathan at Lancaster.
4. Grace Brooks b. 1660 Concord m. Judah Potter 1686
5. Grace Coolidge b. 1663 Watertown m. Jonas Bond 1688
6. Grace Davis b. 1658 Boston NFR
7. Grace Hedges b. 1659 Boston d. 1659 , daughter of Tristram & Ann
8. Grace Martin b. 1656 Southampton m. Nathaniel Phillips1676
9. Grace Morrice b. 1660 Roxbury m. Benjamin Child 1682
10. Grace Newcomb b. 1664 Boston m. James Butler 1684
11. Grace Phillips b. 1657 Scituate NFR (probably of the Phillips Family of Ipswich and Marshfield)
12. Grace Sherman b. 1659 Watertown m. Ebenezer Prout
13. Grace Shippy b. 1658 Charlestown m. Timothy Pratt
14. Grace Willowes (aka Willis, daughter of George & Jane) b. 1664 Billerica m. Stephen Hall
Based on these findings, we can eliminate the other Grace Fairbanks’s as candidates for the wife of Ephraim Bullen. The first Grace (included here simply for the sake of comprehensiveness) was Grace (Smith) Fairbanks, the wife of Jonathan Fairbanks. The second Grace died before Ephraim Bullen and Grace (Unknown) were married. The third Grace died unmarried in 1697 with her father, Jonathan. Of the remaining candidates, the only unaccounted-for women are Grace Davis and Grace Phillips. Grace Davis was from Boston and Grace Phillips was from Ipswich. While it is possible that one of these young women married Ephraim Bullen, the distance from their residences to Sherborn render them unlikely candidates for a marriage there, especially in light of the fact that no other connections between the families have come to light. Furthermore, their birth years, 1658 and 1657 respectively, would have meant they were about 31 or 32 years old in 1689, a good 5-6 years older than Grace (Unknown) Bullen.
In short, the case for Grace Fairbanks as the wife of Ephraim Bullen can be summed up as follows. The Fairbanks and Bullen families had known one another in Dedham, Massachusetts, where they had been neighbors from 1636-1649, at which point the Bullens moved to the adjacent town of Medfield. , In 1657, Jonas Fairbanks (Jonathan 1) removed to Lancaster where he married Lydia Prescott in 1658. Their daughter, Grace Fairbanks, born in Lancaster in 1663, was of age to marry in 1681. She married someone after her father’s death in 1676. She died before 1697. There is no record of her death under her maiden name. Ephraim Bullen married Grace (Unknown) in about 1681. Grace (Unknown) Bullen died in 1689. Her epitaph notes that she was in her 26th year. No other woman of appropriate age named Grace can be convincingly identified as the Grace (Unknown) who married Ephraim Bullen, and in any case there are only two possible candidates in the Bay Colony, both of who lived far away and whose families had no known close relations with the Bullens. Grace Fairbanks, on the other hand, is a quite likely candidate. Thus, while we cannot say with absolute certainty absent more conclusive evidence, the logic points to Grace Fairbanks as the wife of Ephraim Bullen.
Citations available upon request.