Nathaniel Croade & Elizabeth Marshall

Nathaniel Croade, my wife's 5th Great Grandfather and father of Elizabeth Croade, was born August 4th, 1706 in Halifax which was part of Plymouth Colony until the late 1600's when the Massachusetts Bay Colony united with it to form the Massachusetts Commonwealth.  Halifax had a population of about 500 in the 1734 when it was incorporated as a town.  Nathaniel married Elizabeth Marshall on December 29, 1742.  Elizabeth was born Jan 2, 1718 in Halifax.  I believe she was married previously to Benjamin Carter and had a child, Benjamin.  That marriage was May 27, 1736.  What happened to Benjamin is unknown.  It's hard to imagine they were divorced in the early 1700's in puritan Massachusetts.  I assume that he must have passed away.  The evidence for her previous marriage is thin.  There is a record of Elizabeth Marshall marrying Benjamin Carter (1736), and an Elizabeth Carter marrying Nathaniel Croade (1742).  From those records it is not clear whether they are the same Elizabeth.  However I did find a fragment of a record from Plymouth that says:

Halifax: Nathaniel Croade "of Plimoth...Hatter [who] Came from Plimoth into ... Hallifax with his wife and one Son Nathaniel and his Wife's son Benjamin Carter and hath Since Resided in Said Town," and John Hicks, "a Transient Man Come from Duxborough," 12 June 1751

I have no record of what sort of work Nathaniel did, perhaps he was a hatter.  The above record is part of a list of "warnings" published at the time to give the locals a heads up that people who had no means of support had come into town.  So Nathaniel and Elizabeth may have been especially poor.

They had five children;  Elizabeth (b. May 31, 1743 d. Sept 17, 1744) , Nathaniel (b. Sept 5, 1745), Mary, John, and Elizabeth(1756-1846).  Benjamin Jr also lived with them.

Nathaniel died March 6, 1789/90.  He is buried in Tomson Cemetery in Plymouth.  Elizabeth died in October 28, 1798 and is buried in the North Burial Grounds in Warren Mass.

A word about Colonial life in Massachusetts....
A 1600’s or 1700’s American breakfast could consist of a mug of beer or cider, bannock or hoe cakes, and a bowl of porridge, and often a cornmeal pudding called mush, pap, Indian pudding or hasty pudding. The pudding would be eaten with milk poured over it or maple syrup or molasses. When butter became a possibility it was added too.
The pudding took hours to cook, it would be begun the night before, and left in a covered kettle, to simmer slowly. It had to be stirred often and the stirrers were called “porridge paddles”.
Although today we think of oatmeal porridge, there were many kinds of porridges in colonial days. Suppawn, samp, hominy and succotash came from corn. Suppawn was a thick porridge of cornmeal and milk cooked together. This was a favorite of the Dutch and southerners. Samp was a coarse hominy, made by crushing the kernels in the mortar, and boiling them up, and eaten cold or hot with milk or butter. 
A favorite in New England was bean porridge. It was cooked in bake ovens in large quantities, and some of it would be set aside for freezing. When taking a journey, the family would chop off a portion to carry with them.

It became a custom to eat bean porridge with a brown bread made from corn meal on Saturdays and Sundays. On Saturdays around noon time the village baker would go around the village gathering up the pots of beans and he would then cook them in his oven. On Sunday morning he’d return the beans with the brown bread to his customers. In some towns the pots were collected on Saturday morning, and returned in time for supper Saturday night.
Porridge could also contain meat or other vegetables. Gruel is what you ate when you were so poor that you had to water down your porridge to make it last longer......(for more go to link: http://colonial-american-life.blogspot.com/2009/08/early-american-food-and-drink.html )