FAMILY AND BACKGROUND: FRAMINGHAM, EAST SUDBURY, 1768-1790 EZRA AMES, portrait painter, was born on May 5, 1768, at Framingham, Massachusetts; and died on February 23,1836, at Albany, New York. This information is inscribed on the handsome memorial to him, his wife, and two sons, in the Albany Rural Cemetery. Ezra was the fourth child and third son of Jesse Emes and his first wife, Betty Bent, who married Jesse in 1761.1 She was born on May 1, 1743,2 and died on February 14, 1776.* She was the daughter of John Bent of Framingham, Massachusetts, and his wife, Betty Read of Sudbury/ Although Ezra's father signed his will "Jesse Emes," and his name is thus spelled on his own and on other gravestones in his family plot at Staatsburg, New York, his name and that of his forebears is frequently recorded as "Eames" and "Emmes," and only rarely as "Ames." Other variations in the spelling of the name are "Eamms," "Earns," "Emms," and "Ems." Ezra himself, early in Ufe, showed a preference for spelling his own name "Ames." Thus, he wrote "Ezra Ames" several times along the front cover and the flyleaf of his first Account Book (1790— 1797). Inside the same booklet under the year 1792, he signed his name "Ezra Eames," but when he reverted to his earlier spelling and wrote "Ezra Ames" on the cover of his third Account Book (1804—1834), he never again deviated from this spelling of his name. Ezra, a fifth-generation American, was descended in a direct line from Thomas Emes, apparently the first of the family in XMS Ames Family. [All short-title ci- Eames," Ezra's mother; and ibid., 23, re- tations in these footnotes will be de- cording the births of two children of scribed in full in the "Bibliography."] John and Betty Bent, named Betty. The 'Framingham V. _.., 23; cf. Framing- first presumably died young, ham V. R., 424, for gravestone record s Ibid., 424. giving inferential birth date of "Bettey *Ibid., 239.