Surname Saturday: Charles Allen ca. 1623-after 7 October 1705 of Greenland, N.H.

Charles¹ ALLEN, b. say 1623 [He deposed twice with ages: In 1667 he was 40 or thereabouts and in 1683 he was 60.] He first appears in records at Portsmouth, N.H. (then Strawberry Bank) in a distribution of land in the year 1657.  He was married first to a woman about whom nothing is known, but that she was the mother of his eldest child Mary.  He married about 1667, Susanna HUGGINS, the daughter of John and Bridget (---) Huggins.  He deeds land to her prior to their marriage and in said deed mentions his daughter Mary.

He appears in many other records, the last of which is a deed for life support dated 7 October 1705 [New Hampshire Provincial Deeds 7:175].  He had six children by Susanna: Daniel, Susanna, Martha, Charles, Jude, and John.

John² ALLEN, born say 1685, died before 10 August 1749.  He married about 1716, Mary³ BURNHAM, daughter of Samuel² (Robert¹) and Mary (---) Burnham of Durham, N.H.  She was born ca. 1689 and died before 10 July 1777.  John's birth year is arrived at by the fact that he was "not of age" in 1705, and therefore less that 21.  However, his mother has a known birth date of 6 September 1640 [Hampton, N.H., VRs, I:555], so he can't be born much later than her being 45 years old.  Likewise, Mary's birth year is derived from the average of her age at marriage (say 22) and her being 45 at the birth of her last child in 1729. The dates of her children's baptisms are from the Rev. Hugh Adams' records in Durham, N.H. reprinted in the New England Historical & Genealogical Register.

John lived in Durham from ca. 1717 to 1734 when he moved to Rochester.  He was dead by the time of a deed dated 10 August 1749, where Stephen Berrey, Jun^r and Mary Berrey, the wife of Stephen Berrey Jun^r of Rochester yeoman for the sum of 25 pounds paid by our brother William Allen of the abovesaid town, yeoman, quit claim all right to the sixth part of one hundred acres of land in Rochester aforesaid it being the estate of our father John Allen deceased which he died seized of Intestate.  [Strafford County Deeds 3:15].  This deed was recorded on 10 July 1777, some 28 years later.  I hypothesize that the length of time was because Mary (Burnham) Allen was still alive.  She doesn't relinquish her dower rights on the 1749 deed which notes that there are six children of John².  She probably lives with one of the them and then after her death, the deeds can be filed.

John and Mary (Burham) Allen had: William, Bridget, Nathan, Mary, Abigail, and Martha.  Their daughter Mary was baptized on 9 September 1724.  Her age at death was 92 years, 5 months, and 10 days on 22 July 1816 [New Durham Town Records (new p. 419, old p. 70) as reprinted New Hampshire Genealogical Record 11 (1994):170], giving her a birth date of 12 February 1724.  It is likely that date is off somewhat and that she was born more towards late August, early September of 1724.  She married Stephen⁴ (Stephen³ William^2-1) BERRY.

Additional Sources:

• "Charles Allen and Some of His Descendants" by Frank W. Allen, New England Historical & Genealogical Register 56 (1902):26-27.  This work was concurrently published as a monograph under the title, Charles Allen of Porstmouth, N.H., 1657 and Some of His Descendants (Boston, Mass.: David Clapp & Son, 1902).
• Genealogical Dictionary of Me. and N.H., p. 62.
• Descendants of William Berry of Rockingham County, NH for Four Generations: Book Three: William Berry and Jane ____ of Strawberry Bank by June Berry (The Author, Kearns, UT, 1993).
• Ancestry of Charles Stinson Pillsbury & John Sargent Pillsbury by Mary Lovering Holman (2 vols., 1938) [Burnham Family].