Dorchester Atheneum

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Henry Joseph Gardner

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EZRA AND STEPHEN BADLAM:

BACKGROUNDS AND LIVES

By Wendell B. Cook, Jr.

The Badlam papers at the Dorchester Historical Society represent part of the legacies of the brothers Ezra and

Stephen Badlam, craftsmen, soldiers and public figures of Dorchester, Massachusetts. The careers of both me

developed early and were marked by distinction, but success visited them in very different ways. Achievemen

came early to each, but Ezra's fortune deserted him at crucial times, and at his death in his 42nd year, his

reputation was under a cloud and his estate was insolvent. Stephen's setbacks were fewer, perhaps less severe

and occurred at times when the economy was prosperous enough that he could recoup. At his death at the age

64, Stephen had retained the fruits of his successes and prosperity, and his heirs shared in a substantial estate.

The lives of each of the Badlam brothers was amply documented in public records and in the correspondence

and papers they gathered and created during their lifetimes.

COL. EZRA BADLAM (1746 - 1788)

Ezra Badlam, the second and eldest surviving son of Deacon Stephen and Hannah (Clapp) Badlam, was born

Dedham, Massachusetts, on 19 May 1746, and was baptized at the church in Milton where his father and his

grandparents were communicants. Soon after Ezra's birth Dea. Stephen moved his family to that part of

Stoughton now Canton where eventually Ezra's brothers and sisters all were born. There Dea. Stephen Badlam

ran an inn, worked as a joiner and cabinet maker, and farmed on land he acquired largely from his father, Cap

Stephen Badlam, a part of the land the latter had bought from the estate of the father of Roger Sherman who

eventually signed the Declaration of Independence for the state of Connecticut. In Stoughton, Dea. Stephen an

Hannah's five younger children were born: Hannah on 17 Aug. 1748; Stephen on 7 May 1751; Elizabeth on 20

Dec. 1753; am William on 9 March 1756.

Dea. Stephen Badlam was active in his community. Perhaps through the example of his father-in-law, Dea.

Nehemiah Clapp of Milton, he was active in the church at Stoughton, and on 15 Feb. 1749/50, at the age of 2

he was made one of its Deacons. In this office, he served on a committee of local churchmen to adjudicate

(unsuccessfully) the bitter and persistent meeting house quarrel of the early 1750' s in the then neighboring towof Easton. Later, perhaps as a result of the location of his dwelling, or possibly, his standing in the community

Dea. Stephen was one of the witnesses called to the hearings of the General Court in response to a petition of

Punkapaug Indians against their guardians, particularly Maj. John Shepard. Dea. Stephen's role in the

proceedings we have not yet learned. Shepard's career was ruined when provincial authorities found him guilty

of abusing his office.

On 16 March. a week after the birth of her youngest child and three days before her 35th birthday, Hannah

(Clapp) Badlam died. That November Dea. Stephen took Hannah Belcher as his second wife and step-mother

for his young family. This second marriage was childless, and lasted less than a year and a half; on 20 March

1758, in his 38th year. Dea. Stephen Badlam died. His widow did not remarry for 11 years. Stephen and his fi

wife lie side by side in the Canton cemetery under stones carved by the Foster family of Dorchester. At his

death, the oldest child, Ezra, was in his 12th year, and the youngest, just two.

Dea. Stephen Badlam's estate was placed under the guardianship of his father, Capt. Stephen. Though not largthe income from the estate seems to have been adequate to bring up the children and to keep them out of

involuntary apprenticeship. But it was not generous enough to provide them with more than a basic education

is not clear where each of the children was raised. Two-year old William was "nursed" at the home of his

step-father-in-law Jeremiah Belcher for some time, and the costs were charged against the estate. From passag

in young Stephen's diary, we know that he lived for a while with Capt. John Crehore of Milton, probably a gre

uncle by way of marriage to a sister of his grandmother Badlam, who had many relatives in the area.

Except for the period Ezra was to spend at Framingham, the Badlam children seem to have spent at least the

latter years of their youth, and perhaps their entire childhoods, in the Dedham-Milton-Dorchester Lower Mills

orbit of their senior relatives. All of them show up there when they assume adult roles: Stephen at Dorchester

with his brother Ezra; their sister Hannah who married Benjamin Pierce of Dorchester; Elizabeth at Dedham a

the wife of Samuel Doggett; and William at Milton when he and his brothers responded to the Lexington Alaru


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Precisely where and with whom Ezra Badlam learned cabinet-making and spent his teenage years is not entire

clear. He first surfaces in Framingham in the spring of 1764 just before his 18th birthday when he is one of th

youngest of two groups of young men who jointly petitioned the town for leave to build two pews in the

meetinghouse gallery. After some controversy, the town accepted the proposition, though we read further that

the young men seem not to have consistently fulfilled the conditions of their privilege. Several of the young m

with whom Ezra was associated in this petition entered trades allied to carpentry, or had descendants complete

who did. We must guess that at this time Ezra had completed or was about to complete some sort of training i

cabinet-making. Perhaps he was associated with Thomas Greenwood, the only cabinet-maker of the era in

Framingham noticed by the town's historians.

From this point forward, the outlines of Ezra's career grow clearer. In July of 1764, Ezra was a journeyman inthe employ of Timothy Stow, a cabinet-maker at Dedham. In October or early November of' 1765 he was

residing in Dorchester, for in February of 1766, after "three or four months" of living there, Ezra Badlam of

Framingham was warned. Ezra chose to work and settle at the Lower Mills village of Dorchester, across the

Neponset River from Milton. The community was a small but busy coastal port and manufacturing center bas

on power generated by the early dam there. About the time Ezra moved there, a saw mill was added to its mill

Another attraction of the neighborhood was Patience Capen, the daughter of local residents Edward and Patien

(Tolman) Capen. She and Ezra were married on 1 July 1766.

At about the time of the marriage, Ezra's father's estate in Stoughton was settled upon him, and he sold it to an

uncle. Perhaps the newlyweds dwelt for a time with her parents, and after her father's death in 1770, with her

mother. Late that year Ezra was well enough established to take into his home and employ his brother Stephen

then 19 years old, to "learn a cabinet makers trade". With his prosperity and his wife's legacy in 1771, Ezra an

Patience jointly bought from her brother John Capen Jr. the "mansion house" in which they lived at least until

Ezra's death. Ezra' s cabinet-making business flourished enough so that he could take his brother Stephen. whowas to become a truly distinguished cabinet-maker as a partner. We have so far not been able to learn how lon

the partnership lasted, but their close contacts as neighbors, war-time correspondents, and community leaders

suggests that they cooperated in business until Ezra's death.

Ezra probably became a member of the militia upon his settlement in Dorchester. On 19 April 1775 at the

Lexington Alarum he was a 4th Lt. in Capt. Daniel Vose' s train band co. which marched to Roxbury. The uni

was made up of men from the Dorchester Lower Mills area and from Milton, and included both his brother

Stephen, a sergeant, and his youngest brother William, a fifer. From the beginning of the Revolution until his

dismissal from the army in 1782, Ezra served as an officer, first in the Massachusetts Militia, and then in the

Continental Army. In the Militia, he served under Col. Lemuel Robinson and in Col. Richard Gridley's artillery

regt.

Ezra must have joined the Continental Line soon after its formation. He was a Captain in the 26th regt. under

Col. Loammi Baldwin when it was formed early in 1776. Early that year, he was detached from the forcesbesieging Boston and sent with his brother Stephen and others under Gen. Lee to prepare the defenses of New

York. Perhaps that spring he took some role in the rescue of the American forces defeated in Canada before

taking part in some of the battles in New York, and in the subsequent evacuation. That summer he was

promoted to Major--a copy of the promotion is the earliest item relating to Ezra in the Badlam Papers of the

John H. Blake collection.

In the early: winter of 1776-1777 Ezra took part in the battles at Trenton and Princeton, and he probably spen

much of the rest of that winter with the Continental Army headquartered at Morristown, New Jersey. Upon th

Army's reorganization, Ezra was assigned to the 9th Massachusetts regt. under Col. Thomas Wesson. In the

summer of 1777 he was with the 2nd Massachusetts regt. under Col. John Bailey, and was in charge of one of

the detachments sent early to the Northern Army under Gens. Schuyler and Gates. Ezra and his detachment

were dispatched to Ft. Schuyler under Col. Gansevort to reinforce the garrison there, and he took part in the

August raid on Col. St. Leger's camp, which though it came too late to draw the forces of the British and their

allies from the field at Oriskany, helped to break the siege. About this time, Ezra was promoted to Lt. Col., therank he held for the remainder of his career in the Continental Army.

Ill health kept Ezra from at least the first of the battles at Saratoga, but following the American victory there, h

returned with his unit to the lower Hudson Valley area, and thence made his way to Valley Forge. Once there,

Ezra took furlough for the rest of the winter of 1777-1778, and returned to the Boston area to help to arrange

supplies for the Army. During this leave he seems to have begun to keep for his files the drafts of his outgoing

correspondence--unless his letter for whom the addressee is not shown, dated 25 Sept. 1777, and which was

published in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register of Jan. 1848 was taken from a no longer

extant draft of his. Ezra' s earliest draft in the collection is dated in Feb. 1778, which is the year in which the

material in the collection begins in earnest. Ezra rejoined the Army in the spring of 1778 in time for actions in

New Jersey, including the Battle of Monmouth where he was injured by a fall from his horse, and where he


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contracted the "fever and ague" which afflicted him the rest of his life.

The winter of 1778-1779 found Ezra stationed in the Hudson River Valley where he continued to serve with th

8th Massachusetts regt., sometimes in the lines, but more often as military commandant of the Academy hosp

at Fishkill and the nominal commander of several smaller posts in the neighborhood, including those at the

important river crossing point of Fishkill Landing, now Beacon. During this period, Ezra was reporting to Gens

Alexander McDougall and William Heath, and to Col. Alexander Scammell. The year 1779 is one of the two

richest periods in Ezra' s surviving correspondence.

Ezra was on the lines in early 1780 when he was in charge of a detachment which was unable to relieve the

American patrol captured at Young's Farm, and mention of this action survives in his papers. For the rest of th

year and the next, Ezra continued to be stationed in the lower Hudson River Valley. In 1781 he transferred to t8th Massachusetts regt. under Col. Michael Jackson, the author of three letters which have survived in the

collection, two of which are among its most outstanding.

Late in 1781 about the time of the Yorktown campaign, Ezra returned to Dorchester, only to be reactivated in

April of 1782 when Gen. Benjamin Lincoln appointed him Muster Master of the Massachusetts (including

Maine) Continental Line. This year is heavily represented in the surviving papers largely as the result of an err

in Ezra's judgment. His first act as Muster Master was to forward uncritically a class of recruits which had bee

gathered by his predecessor, several of whom fell far short of standards for recruits to the Continental Line.

Although later classes of recruits seem to have been up to standard, Ezra was relieved as Muster Master and

ordered back to headquarters in early May. In late July he was court martialed and convicted of neglect of duty

and unofficerlike conduct and sentenced to be dismissed from the service. His separation took place on 1 Aug

1782. Ezra tried several avenues to have his conviction reversed or his sentence reduced, but even as he died,

had not succeeded. The sequence of events surrounding this incident generated a number of out-standing letter

to Ezra, drafts by him, and documents.

Upon his return to Dorchester, Ezra resumed cabinet-making and went into carriage-making, trades eventually

followed by one of his sons and four of his sons-in-law. Three clock cases Ezra made during the years

1783-1786 have survived, and several items of his business correspondence from this period likewise survive.

Some believe that Ezra was the linch-pin of the woodworking activities of this period centered at the Lower H

village, a role his brother Stephen clearly held after Ezra's death. Ezra also was an inn-keeper and seems to ha

kept a store during this period, and the Suffolk county Probate Court also tapped him to administer at least two

estates.

Though dismissed from the Continental Army, Ezra joined the Massachusetts militia and was a Captain in the

Suffolk co. regt. Following the outbreak of Shays Rebellion, he was elected the regiment's Colonel, in spite of

the objections of militia members from Stoughton, the town where he had spent much of his childhood. The

regiment was called up for one month's service, and Ezra led it to western Massachusetts to join the forces

assembled there by Gen. Benjamin Lincoln to suppress the insurrection. There the unit surely took part in thecelebrated night march of Feb. 3 and 4, 1787, from Amherst to Petersham which broke Shays' forces.

With the release of the Suffolk regt. upon the completion of its one-month tour, Ezra was named commander

the Hampshire co. regt. and remained in western Massachusetts until late in June of 1787. He was

head-quartered for a while at Northampton, but soon moved to Northfield. At least one of the communiques o

the Shays forces announcing that Medad Pomeroy and Jonathan Metcalf were held as hostages against the live

of the convicted Shaysites Henry McCulloch and Jason Parmeter made its way into Ezra's papers.

The surviving papers of the Shays Rebellion period, while not so numerous as those for 1779 and 1782,

represent a nice variety of letters and papers on military and civi1 matters, and letters from his family and from

his assistants in charge of running his business in his absence. It is ironical that this correspondence, especially

that from his future son- in-law Richard Trow (who had served the month with the Suffolk co. regt. and had

then returned to Dorchester), show that his business interests were suffering from the same problems of deflat

and illiquidity of the economy at large which had driven the Shaysites into rebellion.

Even after his return to Dorchester from western Massachusetts, business and health problems plagued him, a

are shown by the last letters to him in this collection. Ezra died in April, 1788, be fore his 42nd birthday. Five o

his children were younger than 13, and his youngest was only a little over two years old. Ezra's estate was

entered for administration at the Suffolk co. Probate Court on 14 April 1788, and his brother Stephen with his

brother-in-law John n Capen Jr. were named administrators. Ezra's estate was found to be insolvent, and after

his widow's dower was set off, the remainder of the estate was sold and the proceeds were distributed among

creditors, many of whom seem to have been fellow artisans, at about a quarter of the face value. Ezra's burial

site is unknown.

Ezra's widow Patience lived another 44 years in Lower Mills village. She managed to raise her family and to


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retain a small estate, and she left a will in which she named her surviving children or the surviving children of

three of her four daughters who predeceased her. She was buried in the tomb of her brother-in-law Stephen

Badlam in the Dorchester North Burying Ground.

Patience and Ezra had 10 children, nine of whom, four sons and five daughters, survived to adulthood. All her

daughters and three of her sons married and had families. Two sons moved to Chester VT, but the rest of her

children seem to have lived their lives in the Dorchester-Boston area, where her son Ezra and all her sons-in-l

except Shubael Mansfield were chaise-makers.

Susannah, the eldest child, was born on 10 May 1767. She married Samuel Crehore in 1786, and died on 31

Jan. 1804, after bearing him six children, only two of whom lived to be named in their grandmother Badlam' s

will. They lived at Dorchester where Samuel was a chaise-maker. Two of Samuel' letters to his father-in-law,written in 1787, have survived. Rebecca was born 5 Feb. 1769. She married about 1789 Richard Trow, her

father's sometime assistant, and died in 1831 at Boston; they had at least six children. They lived in Dorcheste

Brookline and Boston where he was at various times a chaisemaker, farmer, and harness-maker. Two of

Rebecca's letters to her father, and three from Trow, all written in 1787, have survived.

Hannah, their third child, was born 11 Sept. 1770. She married in 1791 Euclid Tileston and died 26 Aug. 1801

after bearing four children, three of whom lived to be named in her mother's will. Euclid remarried and had six

more children. He and his family lived in Dorchester where he was a chaise-maker. One letter to Ezra from

Hannah and one from Euclid, both written in 1787, survive in this collection,. Daughter Patience was born 17

Aug. 1772. In 1792 she married Shubael Mansfield; she died in 1840 after bearing at least four children. Shub

was a housewright who in middle life was declared non-compos and was twice placed under guardianship. Wh

they were together Patience and Shubael lived in Dorchester, and he lived also in Brookline and Scituate when

he was under guardianship.

The first son of Ezra and Patience named Ezra was born on 11 Dec. 1773; he died before the birth of their ne

son. Their second son named Ezra was born in May, 1775. He married in 1797 Mary Lovis and died after 18

They had six children, five of whom survived childhood. They lived in Boston and Dorchester where he was a

chaise-maker. Of the young Ezra's sons married a sister of Samuel Brannan, one of the founders of California

and his family was prominent in the affairs of that state late last century.

Another son, George Washington, was born on 5 Dec. 1778; he died in 1824. He seems not to have had a

family, and his occupation is unknown. Son Edward was born 13 Nov. 1781. He moved to Chester, VT wher

he married Mary Graham in 1808 and died in 1844. They had two children. He engaged in some sort of

manufacturing, probably related to woodworking. His son Edward eventually moved to Potsdam and

Ogdensburg NY, where he was a plane-maker and inventor, and held the American patent on the third pedal o

the piano.

The last son, William, was born 5 May 1784. He, too, moved to Chester VT J where in 1812 he marriedMelinda Gould; he died in 1845. They had four children. He was styled "Captain". His occupation is not clear

he may have been a store-keeper. He was a land-owner and a supplier of mortgage money. The youngest child

Betsee J was born 5 Dec. 1785. She married in 1805 Lemuel Shepard and died in 1808 after bearing one son

who was named in her mother' s will. Lemuel remarried and had 10 more children by his second wife. He live

Dorchester where he was a carriage-maker.

GEN. STEPHEN BADLAM (1751 - 1815)

Ezra's younger brother Stephen's papers are represented by 16 letters which appear to have come from his file

and by three versions of the journal he began. The original version of the journal is we believe currently in the

hands of one of Stephen's descendants. Stephen was born in that part of Stoughton now Canton on 7 May 175

His mother died before he was five, and his father, before he was seven. His journal tells us that after his fath

death, young Stephen went to live with Capt. John Crehore, probably a great uncle by way of marriage. At the

age of 15 he moved again, this time to the home of his grandparents, Capt. Stephen and Elizabeth Badlam ofDedham. In 1770 young Stephen moved to Dorchester to live with his brother Ezra and learn "a Cabinet Make

trade". By this time, Stephen must have received at least rudimentary schooling--both his military and civilian

careers include roles which suggest that he was adept at mathematics, especially geometry--but he is known to

have complained late in life of his lack of early schooling.

Stephen learned cabinet making quickly and well, and by 1773 he began a partnership with his brother Ezra. H

settlement at the Lower Mills village area must have put him in the local militia company, and his career as an

artisan was interrupted by the Lexington Alarum. On 19 April 1775 he turned out as a sergeant in Capt. Danie

Vose' s train band company with his brothers Ezra and William and marched to Roxbury. For a young man of

about 24 years, his rise in the military was rapid. In May he was made a 2nd Lt. of artillery; in mid-June, he w

promoted to 1st Lt. , and in July, to Capt. Lt.


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1775 was an eventful year for Stephen in another respect, for on 1 June he married his first wife and the moth

of his children, Mary Adams, the daughter and youngest child of John and Sarah (Swift) Adams of Milton. W

Stephen was at war, Mary seems to have lived with her parents in Milton and to have visited a brother living

near Wilbraham MA. Several items of correspondence between Stephen and his bride have made their way in

the Badlam papers.

1776 was the highpoint of Stephen's military career during the Revolution. In January, he was made a Captain

artillery in the Continental Line, and then was detached from the siege of Boston to accompany Gen. Lee to

New York to prepare its defenses. His brother Ezra seems to have gone to New York at about the same time,

and his brother William may: have accompanied them. Once there, Stephen set about preparing positions and

helping to organize military units. Among the local militia officers he interviewed was one Capt. (later Col.)Alexander Hamilton, whom he found to be capable. Hamilton of course went on to a distinguished career in th

Continental Army, and then in the politics of the new nation. Stephen is said to have admired Hamilton for the

rest of his life.

In April, Stephen was sent to the Northern Department, and probably his brother William went with him. In

May, at the age of 25, Stephen was appointed Major in command of the artillery of the Northern Department,

and simultaneously he was sent to Canada to reinforce and then to assist in the withdrawal of the defeated

American forces. He went at least as far as Chambly. and perhaps as far as Sorel. By July he was back at Ft.

Ticonderoga where he prepared its defenses against the British advance of that summer, and Burgoyne's

expedition of the following summer. Stephen's orderly book for this period is now in the manuscript collection

of the Boston Public Library.

In August of 1776, the epidemics which had decimated the American forces in Canada during the previous

winter struck Stephen. Though he recovered from this first bout, he was not so lucky when illness swept throuthe Army again. In October, shortly after his brother William died at Skenesboro, Stephen fell ill again, and thi

time he took a furlough to recuperate at the home of his wife's family in Milton. However, he returned to the

Army before he was fully recovered, and finally, in January, 1777, he resigned from the Army and went on

home for the rest of the war. The surviving correspondence between Ezra and Stephen, one of the highlights o

the Badlam Papers, begins with his return.

One source says of Stephen's arrival at Milton that illness had so altered his appearance that, though he was

received, not even his wife recognized him until he rose to leave. Though the account is surely exagerated--we

can discern no reason why Stephen would have played out such a drama--it does emphasize how illness had

ravaged him. That April Stephen moved his family to a house in Dorchester's Lower Mills village "hired of the

widow Rachel Blake". There he recovered his health and resumed cabinet-making. He was set back in

November when he "lost his stock and tools by fire". In 1778, Stephen resumed official participation in the

Revolution when he began a three year stint as Superintendent for Suffolk County, his initiation to civil office.

One of his duties seems to have been to serve as the county muster master. Later, in 1782, he was to help hisbrother Ezra during the latter's brief tenure as Continental Muster Master. On his resignation from the

Continental Army; Stephen probably resumed participation in the Massachusetts Militia, though he apparently

did not join Ezra in the expedition to suppress Shays Rebellion. But in 1799 he was named Brigadier General

Gen. Eliot's division. Thenceforth he was referred to as "Gen. Stephen Badlam".

In 1780, Stephen bought from his brother Ezra a three-quarter acre plot with a small house and barn at the

corner of the Dedham and Plymouth roads, now Washington and River streets, in the Lower Mills village. Th

next year, he built a large house for his growing family "in addition to and covering" the old one. There he and

his family, and after him, his widow lived. Before his house stood the "Badlam Pump", the local landmark and

gathering place which was the staging point for such events as Dorchester's bicentennial walk to the beach at

Nantasket where the town's first European settlers had landed.

During the 1790's, Stephen showed his interest in education by letting part of his house for the annual school a

the Lower Mills village. He expressed this interest again when, in 1803, he served on the Dorchester towncommittee to build four school houses. For his own intellectual and moral development, Stephen acquired a sm

library during his lifetime, many of the books of which are now in the possession of the Dorchester Historical

Society.

In 1791 Stephen was appointed a Justice of the Peace, first for Suffolk County, and then, upon its organizatio

in 1793, for Norfolk County. He was one of a committee of five charged with building the first county

courthouse for Norfolk County in Dedham. In 1805, his commission was enlarged to include membership in th

Quorum. In Stephen's time, the county Justices of the Peace performed as the administrative and regulatory

agency of county government in Massachusetts, in addition to their judicial duties. Stephen was tapped to

administer several estates in both Suffolk and Norfolk counties, including that of his brother, and that of his

father- in-law, John Adams of Milton. In 1798, Stephen was appointed principal assessor of the first division f


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the US direct tax census of 1798, and late in 1799, he was commissioned by the federal government as survey

of the revenue for the third district, fourth division. The district comprised the towns of Dorchester, Milton an

Quincy. In this capacity, Stephen served as the census enumerator for the second US census of 1800. Many o

the papers he generated as a Justice of the Peace and as a federal official are now at the New England Historic

Genealogical Society.

In the field of cabinet-making, Stephen became one of the animating forces of the industry centered at

Dorchester Lower Mills and Milton villages. He was able to overcome such setbacks as a second fire in

February, 1802, in which he lost a barn with $2,500 worth of goods. He probably, like his brother, ran a store.

During this period. he gradually accumulated land in the neighborhood much of which remained in the hands o

his descendants for many years. There survives from his cabinet work the Graven chest, so-called, a chest on

chest at the Yale University Art Gallery, as well as a mirror and a number of chairs and tables, most of whichwere in 1954 in private collections in the greater Boston area. Stephen's work has been the subject of two

articles in Antiques, and he is listed in Cabinet Makers of America. His diary is said to include entries on

apprentices who trained under him, and perhaps, contains more information on his work than the copies in the

Badlam Papers show. Stephen also drafted the map of Philip Withington's survey of Dorchester Neck which

eventually became the street plan for South Boston.

One of the most dramatic events in Stephen's life came late, and was connected with his church activities.

Stephen probably had been a member of either or both the churches in Milton and Dorchester before 1804 wh

he joined in the organization of Dorchester's second Parish and church. In 1808, he was elected its first senior

deacon. Having grown to distrust the liberal Unitarian tendencies of the early 19th century which were reflecte

in the program of Dorchester's First Church, Stephen was a leading supporter of the conservative Rev. John

Codman in his quarrel with his parish over pulpit exchange policies. Codman preferred more conservative gue

ministers than the parishioners had become accustomed to at the First Church and the Milton church, the

churches from which the new parish drew its membership. The quarrel came to a head in 1812 when the liberaparish party staged a "sit-in" in an attempt to gain control of the church's affairs. At this incident, Stephen was

the "friend", "senior deacon and Magistrate" who stood with the Rev. Codman when he tried to persuade the

occupying parishioners to leave the church building. Though the "sit-in" was successful, the victory was Pyrrh

for the Rev. Codman's party eventually won the contest. The triumph was not cheap, however; the church los

large part of its membership, including, it appears, several of Stephen's relatives, and, judging from Codman's

remarks at his funeral, Stephen lost some longtime friends.

Stephen's first wife Mary died in 1794 after bearing eight children, six of, whom reached adulthood and had

families. Two further children were born dead. Stephen remarried in 1797, to Elizabeth Turner. She survived

him and was for over 25 years the executrix of his estate, until she in turn died. They had no children. Stephen

himself died at Dorchester at the age of 64 on 15 Aug. 1815, a little over 15 months after a stroke. He was

buried in the older or North Dorchester burying ground in a tomb he had acquired for the use of his family.

Stephen's death closed a distinguished career in the civil, economic and military affairs of his time and

community, and his friend, the Rev. John Codman, preached an oration at his funeral which was subsequentlypublished.

The first child of Stephen and Mary Badlam was Sarah Adams, born 31 May 1776 at Milton. She married in

1787 James Blake Howe and died in 1819, probably in Boston, after bearing him six children. One of their

daughters, Sarah Ann, became the wife of John H. Blake, the principal collector of the material in the Badlam

Papers. Howe took as his second wife Mary White, by whom he had three more children. He was a teacher a

an Episcopal churchman, and lived in Dorchester, Boston and Claremont NH. The second child, Polly, also

known as Mary, was born 8 Dec. 1777 at Dorchester. She married in 1802 Edward Sharp, and died in 1841

after bearing eight children. Edward was a resident of Dorcheser, and worked as a banker. He, and then

eventually one of his sons, succeeded his father-in-law to the deaconate of the Second Parish Church. Stephen

and Mary's first son, Stephen, was born 2 Dec. 1779 at Dorchester; he died in Boston in 1847. He married

Nancy Clark in 1820; she bore him nine children. From 1811 to 1816 Stephen the younger lived in Buenos

Aires, Argentina, whither his brother John had gone in 1809. He returned to Dorchester only after the death of

his father. He lived his married life in Boston where he was city jailer for many years. Miriam B. Miller, whoprovided some of the material in the Badlam Papers, was a great granddaughter.

Daughters Abigail, born 4 Nov. 1781, and Nancy, born 30 Aug. 1784, died within a week of each other in 179

following inoculation for the small pox. Daughter Lucretia was born 1 July 1787. She married Eliphalet Smith

1811 and died at her home in Quincy in 1865 after bearing him two children. Eliphalet was a shipmaster and

merchant.

Stephen's youngest son, John, was born 31 March 1789 in Dorchester. He went to Buenos Aires, Argentina, in

1809. There in 1812 he married Maria de las Nieves Moreno de Valle, a sister of the Argentine patriot Marian

Moreno. John died in 1824. Their only child, son Esteban (Stephen) was assassinated in 1814 at the age of 21

by the Mazorca terrorists, supporters of the then ascendant dictator Gen. Rosas. John may have been a


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merchant. Stephen's and Mary's youngest child, Clarissa, was born at Dorchester on 10 May 1791. She marrie

in 1815 Ebenezer Dorr as his second wife, and died in 1857 after bearing four children. Ebenezer's first wife h

born at least four children. Ebenezer lived in Roxbury and Boston, and after his death, his widow lived in

Dorchester. He appears to have been a gentleman farmer.

Constraints of time have prevented us from listing and acknowledging the many sources we have tapped in ord

to prepare the sketches above. The practiced reader will, we trust, discern that, aside from the Badlam Papers

themselves, we have drawn most of our information from standard published and manuscript records, such as

vital, probate, land, census and military records, and published local histories and genealogies. The practiced

reader will doubtless notice, too, that some promising sources, such as military records in the National Archive

remain unexamined. Some time we hope to have the opportunity to broaden the sources we have examined in

connection with research on the Badlam family, and to complete a number of other projects in connection withour studies of them.

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Created:February 16, 2004 Modified: February 16, 2004

Dorchester Atheneum

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