In the last issue of the Newsletter, we
published the biography of Capt. Jabez from the GOFA. It stated that there is a document in the Massachusetts State
Archives that bears his signature, the only one known to exist. It was on a
petition by the residents in the settlement of Ware River to the General Court
to allow them to form their own Township or Parish so they could erect their
own church and call a minister. This summer I (COH) visited the Archives in the
Kennedy Center in Boston, and copied two pages from a microfilm of that
petition. And thanks to my second cousin, Betty L. Panzer, I have the text of
that Petition, which I retyped, and the next twenty-eight pages of the early
History of the Parish, which I have summarized, to include the references to
Capt. Jabez and his family. I scanned Capt. Jabez's signature, as well as the
signatures of two of his sons, Jeremiah and Isaac, and two of his sons-in-law,
Ephraim Marsh and Judah Marsh, who also signed the petition. The signature of
Thomas Marsh, the father of Ephraim and Judah, was also on the petition.