Rebecca (Starr) Dibble (abt. 1696 - bef. 1733)

Born about 1696 in Danbury, Fairfield, Connecticut [uncertain]

Ancestors

Descendants

Died before 3 Apr 1733 before about age 37 in Danbury, Fairfield, Connecticut

Problems/Questions Profile manager: Michael Stills [send private message]

Biography

NOTE: There was no Hannah Starr. Burgess Pratt Starr made an error reading the distribution of Josiah Starr's estate.^[1]

Burgess Pratt Starr listed Hannah? as a child of Josiah Starr, saying she m. Ezra Dibble. The first page of the distribution of Josiah Starr's estate begins with the widows thirds. On the second page the first paragraph is part of the widows thirds. It begins with a scribble that doesn’t really look like Hannah, but it can be speculated that that is where Hannah came from and Burgiss Starr assumed the section for Rebeckah was for the widow, thereby eliminating the daughter Rebeckah. Mathematical analysis proves the error.^[2] There was no daughter Hannah, but there was a daughter Rebecca, who by process of elimination must be the wife of Ezra Dibble.^[1]

Rebeckah Starr was the daughter of Josiah and Rebecca (____) Starr, There are no birth, marriage or death records for Rebeckah, but she was named in the 1716 distribution of Josiah Starr’s estate.

It is estimated that she was born in the last few years of the 1600s or early in the next century.

Rebeckah married, say 1720, Ezra Dibble. Ezra married second, Elizabeth Burr, widow of John Wheeler and later wife of Ebenezer Beecher. Ezra and Elizabeth had two children, John and Elizabeth.^[3]

Rebecca Dibble died before 3 April 1733 at which time her husband remarried to Elizabeth Burr.^[3]

Children of Rebeckah and Ezra Dibble:^[1]

• Ezra Dibble, b. ca. 1721; d. before his father. His gravestone in the Granary Burial Ground in Boston reads: “Here Lies The Body / Of Ezra Dibble / Son of Ezra Dibble / of Danbury In Ye / Colony of Connecticut / Decd June ye 19th / 1738 Aged / About 17 Years.”^[4]
• Wakefield Dibble, b. before 1725 (over 14 in 1739); d., probably Danbury, between 4 Dec. 1758 and 4 Sept. 1759;^[5] m. Abigail Bostwick, b. Brookfield, Fairfield Co., Conn., 28 Sept. 1725, daughter of Ebenezer and Rebecca (Bunnell) Bostwick.^[6] In his 1758 will Wakefield called Comfort Starr his uncle.^[7]
• Rebecca Dibble, b. before 1725 (over 14 in 1739); m. _____ Taylor before 1747,^[8] perhaps Benjamin Taylor, son of Theophilus and Sarah (Gregory) Taylor.^[9]
• Freelove Dibble, b. after 1725 (under 14 in 1739); m. Danbury 27 Oct. 1747, Zadock Noble, b. New Milford, Litchfield Co., Conn., 17 Sept. 1723, son of David and Susanna (Sherman) Noble.^[10]
• Elisha Dibble, b. after 1725 (under 14 in 1739); living in 1747.^[8]

In 1767, her heirs received a distribution from her brother, Comfort Starr's estate.^[11]

Sources

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1 1.2} Bennett, Anne Selene. "The First wife of Ezra Dibble (1697-1739) was Rebecca Starr, Not Hannah Starr. New England Historical and Genealogical Register Vol 174 Spring 2020. pp. 155-159. pdf download available
2. ↑ See profile of Josiah Starr probate section
3. ↑ ^{3.0 3.1} Jacobus, Donald Lines, MA (compiler, editor.) History and Genealogy of the Families of Old Fairfield. (Fairfield, Conn.: The Eunice Dennie Burr Chapter of Daughters of the American Revolution, 1930.) vol 1 p. 127
4. ↑ Dunkle, Robert J. and Ann S. Lainhart, Inscriptions and Records of the Old Cemeteries of Boston (Boston: NEHGS, 2000), 569.
5. ↑ The dates of will and probate are from Danbury District Probate Records, 1:171–173, will of Wakefield Dibble of Danbury.
6. ↑ Danbury District Probate Records, 1:171–173, will of Wakefield Dibble, naming his father-in-law Ebenezer Bostwick; Ruth Cost Duncan, William Bunnell and His Descendants (Decorah, Iowa: Amundsen Publishing Co., 1986), 13; “Descendants of John Bostwick,” [www.bostwickfamilyhistoryandvalues.com/resources/DescendantReport%20for20John%20Bostwick. pdf], nos. 9 and 48; Jacobus, History and Genealogy of the Families of Old Fairfield [note 5], 1:92.
7. ↑ “Collected Source Material,” Donald Lines Jacobus, “I. Dibble, Danbury, Connecticut,” The American Genealogist 13 (1936):249, citing Danbury Probate Records, 1:170; Danbury District Probate Records, 1:170–172 [FHL 0,004,024], images 93–95.
8. ↑ ^{8.0 8.1} Fairfield District Probate, File 1939, Ezra Dibble, will dated 3 August 1739, proved 22 November 1739. Bequests were made to wife Elesebeth, Wakefield “my eldest son now,” sons Elisha and John, daughters Rebekah and Freelove. He also made provision for an unborn child. Distribution took place 2 February 1747/8 to the widow, Wakefield, John, Rebekah Taylor, and Freelove Noble. The unborn child was Elizabeth, who died as an infant, shortly after the death of her father. See also Spencer P. Mead, “Abstract of Probate Records at Fairfield, County of Fairfield, and State of Connecticut, 1703–1757,” (New York: 1934), 7:2172, database online at AmericanAncestors.org.
9. ↑ William Richard Cutter, Genealogical and Family History of Central New York . . . , 3 vols. (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Co., 1912), 2:790–791; only parents shown in Jacobus, History and Genealogy of the Families of Old Fairfield [note 5], 1:600, and Grant Gregory, Ancestors and Descendants of Henry Gregory (Provincetown, Mass.: the author, 1938), 72.
10. ↑ Lucius M. Boltwood, History and Genealogy of the Family of Thomas Noble of Westfield, Massachusetts . . . (Hartford, Conn.: Case, Lockwood & Brainard, 1878), 39–40, 50–51; Samuel Orcutt, History of the Towns of New Milford and Bridgewater, Connecticut, 1703–1882 (Hartford, Conn.: Case, Lockwood, and Brainard, 1882), 742; History of Litchfield County, Connecticut . . . (Philadelphia: J. W. Lewis, 1881), part 1, p. 466.
11. ↑ “Probate records v. 1-3 1744-1782”, database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-892K-TFT3 : 23 February 2023), FHL microfilm 007627321, image 312-321, Danbury, Fairfield, Connecticut, Vol 2, 1745-1775, Pages 215-232.

• Starr, Burgis Pratt. A History of the Starr Family of New England (Case, Lockwood & Brainard Co., Hartford, Conn., 1879) Page 269.