Attaquin, Ezra, 1823 -

Ezra Attaquin, Jr. was born circa 1823, the son of Ezra and Sarah Jones Attaquin.  Ezra, Jr., age 11, was enumerated with his parents and nine siblings in a 1834 Mashpee census and was a signatory on the January 1834 Mashpee petition written by William Apes.  Ezra Attaquin, Jr. signed along with 288 other Mashpee residents and community members outlining a number of longstanding grievances against the overseers and the Congregational missionary to the tribe.

Like many other Mashpee men, Ezra Attaquin, Jr. was employed, at least for a time, in the maritime trades. In  December of 1844, at the approximate age of 21, he boarded the ship Mary out of the busy port town of Edgartown on the island of Marthas Vineyard, MA, bound for whaling grounds in the Pacific, the ship returning nearly four years later in April of 1848. 

In his last will and testament, dated April 18, 1876, Ezra Attaquin, Sr. bequeathed 6 acres of land to his granddaughter Euphrasia Ockney, at the west end of his homelot, near "penny pond", and the remainder of his estate to his son Ezra, Jr., with the stipulation that he pay a sum of $200 to Rhoda Conet, the elder Ezra's daughter and sister to Ezra Jr., and that he care for his mother, Sarah, as long as she is a widow. He left nothing to his other six surviving children. Massachusetts, Town and Vital Records, 1620-1988, Vol. 1.  Ancestry; Petition of the Mashpee Indians to the Senate and House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1834.01.29.00; Crew Lists, New Bedford Whaling Museum; Whaling Voyages, Mystic Seaport; Massachusetts, Wills and Probate Records, 1635-1991,Vol 111-114 Ancestry.com