Ezekiel Bates
On this day, 2 July 1844, one of my paternal 5th great-grandfathers, Ezekiel Bates, passed away. Born on 30 Aug 1778, he was several weeks shy of his 66th birthday when he died. The family lived in the town of Cohasset in Norfolk County, Massachusetts. The Bates family had been living in Massachusetts since Ezekiel’s third great-grandfather, Clement Bates, had immigrated to Plymouth Colony (modern-day Massachusetts) from Lydd, Kent, England in 1635.
Ezekiel was the eighth of ten children born to Abner and Elizabeth (Vinal) Bates. His birth was in the midst of the American Revolutionary War, in which his father fought.
Presumably, before 1798, Ezekiel married Tabitha Dwight. The couple had two known children, Elizabeth Marietta (1798 – 1884) and Josiah Bates (1802 – 1879). Tabitha preceded her husband in death in 1837; Ezekiel passed away in Pittsfield, Berkshire, Massachusetts at the age of 66 and was buried in the Pittsfield Cemetery.
Ezekiel Bates’ gravestone in the Pittsfield Cemetery.
Whence We Come 