Diadama (Chase) Briggs (1767 - 1822)

Born 1767 in Freetown, Bristol, Massachusetts Bay Colony

Ancestors

Wife of Ebenezer Briggs — married 3 Sep 1781 in Smithtown, Suffolk, New York, USA

Descendants

Died 1822 at about age 55 in Gagetown, Queens, New Brunswick, Canada

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Biography

Diadama (Diadamia, Diodamy or Damey) Chase was born about 1766 in Freetown in southeastern Massachusetts, the eldest child of James Percy & Elizabeth (Douglas) Chase.

As revolutionary politics heated up in Bristol County, many families who remained loyal to England's King George III suffered harassment at the hands of their neighbors which ranged from social slights to vandalism, destruction and confiscation of property, to impressing young men into local militias, to physical assaults, and murders.

Diadama's Chase family, with ancestors among the founders of the town, was forced to flee to New York, a British stronghold where the King's men could protect them from attacks.

Unsettled and uncomfortable, as refugees facing an uncertain future, Diadama and Ebenezer Briggs found each other. Ebenezer was also a Freetown native with old New England roots. On September 3, 1781, the couple was married by the Reverend Joshua Hart of Smithtown on Long Island.^[1]

The young couple kept heart with each other through the displacement and deprivation war. A son. Lemuel, was born on New Year's day in 1782 and died in May 1783, just as Diadama and Ebenezer arrived at Saint John, New Brunswick with boatloads of fellow refugees.

A second child, a daughter named Olive, was born that same year in October, and would live to marry and raise children of her own. Ebenezer and Diadama settled on land granted them in Sunbury County where they would raise 11 children.

Ebenezer died in 1807 and Diadama (Chase) Briggs continued on until 1822 when her children tenderly laid her rest with their father in the Babbitt Cemetery.

(After her husband's death, she and their 10 children moved to Grand Lake and settled at White's Cove.)

The couple earned the respect of subsequent generations for their pluck and persistence through years of trials, during the war, and afterwards, as they created a new life in the New Brunswick wilderness.

"EBENEZER BRIGGS, LOYALIST SOLDIER AND WIFE DIADEMA CHASE HOMESTEAD IN NEW BRUNSWICK AFTER THE PEACE IN 1783"^[2]

Sources

1. ↑ Ancestry.com : New York City, Marriages, 1600s-1800s. Rec. Date: 8 Jan 2016; Smithtown, Suffolk, New York Marriage ID: 2220331230; Source: The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record (quarterly), 1911, New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, New York, NY, Page: 134.
2. ↑ Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com : accessed 07 March 2021), memorial page for Diadema Chase Briggs (1767–1822), Find A Grave: Memorial #65578938, citing Babbitt Cemetery, Lower Burton, Sunbury County, New Brunswick, Canada ; Maintained by Carrie PARLER-GIBSON (contributor 46978018).

• FamilySearch Tree https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/LXWQ-MT4, with attached sources
• Provincial Archives of New Brunswick (http://archives.gnb.ca/ : accessed 2 Aug 2016); Briggs+; various documents from the Federated Database Search, including Daniel F Johnson's New Brunswick Newspaper Vital Statistics.
• D.G. Bells, Loyalists of New Brunswick. Ebenezer Briggs.