Capt. Ebenezer Pulsifer, 1773

Born  on Dec 26, 1773 in Ipswich, Essex County, Massachusetts.
His sons, Joseph and Ebenezer surveyed Beaumont, TX land
His daughter Lucy Pulsifer Granger was my grandmother's great-grandmother.

Captain Ebenezer Pulsifer's birthplace, Ipswich, is located in central Essex County and is 11 miles south of Newburyport, 12 miles northwest of Gloucester, 13 miles north of Salem, and 28 miles northeast of Boston

I give all these geographical notes because he married in Boston, and died in Newburyport.

Ipswich riverbank, 1906

And he was known by the title Captain.  So it's likely that he was a seafaring man. The great Clipper ships were not built in Ipswich, but in the deeper ports of Salem, Boston and Newburyport.

John  Whipple house, Ipswich

The Pulsifer family consisted of  his wife, Elizabeth Dwelle, whom he married either on May  11 or Feb 13, 1794.  I can't get the original copies of records to come up on Ancestry, so will just be glad to know that it was definitely in that year. 

They had 5 or 6 children.  There are records for one son having lived to less than 7 years, and then  another son being named the same name.  (Horrible to keep track of for us genealogists, but I'm sure the family was happy about it, if indeed they named a second son after one who had died.) Young Joseph (born between 1798-1805) was replaced in 1805 by Joseph Perkins Pulsifer (1805-1861) who went on to fame (see below).  Elizabeth was born in 1800, and that's all we know about her.  Then Lucy Elizabeth Parsons Pulsifer (1807-?) and then Ebenezer Pulsifer (1808-?)  There was also an Ebenezer Pulsifer listed for a birth in 1801.  Is this duplicate listing of the same person, or another time when a family re-named a child after one who had died early?

At any rate, there's a great story I've finally found about two of Capt. Ebenezer Pulsifer's sons, Ebenezer Jr. and Joseph Jr. an excerpt from which I'm including here.

PULSIFER, JOSEPH PERKINS (1805–1861). Joseph P. Pulsifer, early Texas apothecary and a founder of Beaumont, the son of Ebenezer and Elizabeth (Dwelbee) Pulsifer, was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, on July 8, 1805. Little is known about Pulsifer's education, except that his letters show him to have been an extremely literate man. Probably through apprenticeship, he became an apothecary, and sometime after 1827 he opened a drugstore in partnership with his brother Eben in nearby Charlestown, now a suburb of Boston.

ON July 8 of next year, I'll publish the rest of this story about Joseph P. Pulsifer.  BIBLIOGRAPHY: Judith Walker Linsley and Ellen Walker Rienstra, Beaumont: A Chronicle of Promise (Woodland Hills, California: Windsor, 1982).

Captain Ebenezer Pulsifer died 7 Nov 1827 in Newburyport, MA.  Old Hill Burying Ground is perhaps where he was buried.

 

Ebenezer Pulsifer's great grandfather, Johathan had been born in Essex County, MA in 1687, and died in Ipswich. So the Pulsifers were probably among early families of the area, with the first Europeans having arrived in 1630.