Grace Fairbanks (1663-1689) (52 Ancestors 2020 Week 7) Theme: "Favourite Discovery"

Exploring family history for the past 23 years has led to many favourite discoveries. For at least a brief moment, each new discovery is my favourite! Recalling those early days of researching my family tree reminds me of the urgent sense of curiosity I had about the name "Grace Fairbank" hand-printed by my Uncle Bob as part of the family tree he had made for the family.

R.W. Anderson 1970s compiled Bullen Family Tree

Although 1997 was early days for the internet, simple searches could yield nuggets of genealogical information. My first searches were for John Bullen and Mary Morse in early New England, but that soon led me to see what I could learn about their children. I was particularly intrigued by the women who seemed to just marry into the family by dropping from the skies with no ancestral backgrounds of their own. Grace was wife to John and Mary (Morse) Bullen's son Ephraim Bullen (1653-1694) and mother to my ancestor John Bullen (1687-1757). She is my 7X great grandmother. 

There were some tantalizing online hints that perhaps our Grace was Grace Fairbanks, part of the family associated with the Fairbanks House. There was a fascinating description of some of the supposed exploits of Jonas Fairbanks who might be Grace's father.

Fairbanks House, Dedham MA
Photographed in 1999

This was before the days where sites like Familysearch and Ancestry provided digitized original source records. There were message boards and one early site called Genserv. As I recall, by providing them with your family tree file for use on the site, you were allowed a specified number of searches each hour or day. Often this was not enough and the results that came back were only as good as the uploaded family trees provided by other users. Frustratingly, many searches came back showing that Jonas Fairbanks and his wife Lydia Prescott did have a daughter named Grace Fairbanks who was born 15 September 1663 in Lancaster, Massachusetts. But there was no information on any marriage or children, where she lived out her life or when she died. My frustration seemed to go on for months, although I'm sure it was probably only a matter of days before enough documentation was found to convince me that our Grace was indeed Grace Fairbanks, daughter of Jonas Fairbanks and granddaughter of immigrants Jonathan and Grace (Smith) Fairbanks who had erected Fairbanks House. 

Grace was just 12 when her father and brother were killed during King Philip's War. Being in the middle of a pack of eight children in the now fatherless family no doubt meant she was called upon to help with her younger siblings. Fortunately, widowed mother Lydia's remarriage within a couple of years provided more security for the family.

Bullen Saward Bullard House
Sherborn Massachusetts
Photo taken 1999
(probably the home built by Ephaim and Grace Bullen)

At 16 Grace married Ephraim Bullen. They built their home on a beautiful hill overlooking rolling meadows and woods on Brush Hill Road at Sherborn, MA. At 17 she gave birth to daughter Mary. Sons Ephraim and John Bullen (my 6X great grandfather) followed over the next few years. Life seemed to be going well for the young family until the birth of her fourth child, a daughter (also named Grace), on 7 August 1689. Complications of childbirth are no doubt the cause of her death just a few days later at only 25 years of age. Baby Grace survived her mother by just 10 days.

At one time it had been reported that her gravestone was preserved in a stone wall in Sherborn, MA and read:  "Here lies Ye Body/ of Grace/ Bullen - Who/ Died August 11th/ 1689 in Ye 26th Year of Her/ Age." When we visited Sherborn in 1999, the local historian said she had been unable to locate this stone, but that it was probably located at the Brush Hill Road property.

The satisfaction of making this early discovery of Grace's family can largely be blamed for my ongoing obsession with family history.