Confession of Catharine Broaders, [July 23, 1786]
    1

    Introduction

    Catherine, daughter of John and Abigail Fessenden, was born in Westborough on September 20, 1764, and baptized on September 6, 1767, a week after her mother was admitted to full communion.

    2 Just short of her fifteenth birthday, Kate Fesenden married Jacob Broaders, with Ebenezer Parkman noting that “Mr. Jacob Broaders was married to young Katharine Fessenden.”
    3 Less than five months later, on February 1, 1780, their son Jacob was born and two more children were born before their father’s death in late 1785.
    4 Catharine Broaders was admitted to the church on July 23, 1786, and presented her three children, Jacob, Katherine, and Barnabas, for baptism on September 10.
    5 Her confession is undated, and the church records do not mention a confession. It is assumed that the confession and her admission were on the same date. At this writing, there is no further information about Catherine Broaders’s later years.

    The Confession

    I desire with all Humility to take the place of a penitent this day, and with shame, to confess my sins before an offended God and before you his people. I acknowledge my self to be guilty of the sin of Fornication, for which I am heartily Sorry and asham’d, and ask forgiveness of god, whom I have dishonord, and of you his people whom I have offended. I promise for the future to behave my self Soberly, and pray you to restore me to your Christian Charity—Sign’d

    Catharine Broaders

    1 Link to digital images of Broaders’s confession: https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search/commonwealth:z316s983p (images 41–42).

    2 For her birth, see Vital Records of Westborough, Massachusetts, to the End of the Year 1849 (Worcester, MA: Franklin P. Rice, 1903), 43, hereafter cited as WVR. For her mother’s admission to the church, Aug. 30, 1767, and Catharine’s baptism, Sept. 6, 1767, see the Westborough Church Records, https://www.colonialsociety.org/node/3967.

    3 WVR, 150; Parkman Diary, Sept. 16, 1779,

    4 WVR, 29. His death is not in the WVR; in the probate of his estate, the earliest document is dated Dec. 7, 1785. See: Worcester County, MA: Probate File Papers, 1731–1881. Online database. AmericanAncestors.org. New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2015. (From records supplied by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Archives.) https://www.americanancestors.org/DB1635/i/26968/7572-co1/521947539.