Mary Smith daughter of Nehemiah Smith

There is a very faint documentary trail for Mary the daughter of Nehemiah Smith and his wife Sarah Anne Bourne. We have previously published her baptismal record from New Haven. From the family histories we are told that she married Samuel Raymond the brother of her sister Elizabeth’s husband Joshua. We have not found a marriage record. In the volumes that make up the collective documentary history for the early New England towns we find the history for our ancestry recorded in the birth, death and marriage records of their children. We find notations and hints in a variety of places. In the history of the ladies society that note, Mary the daughter of, etc. The Smith family histories hint that Samuel and Mary did not have any children. As a result the usual documentary sources are silent. There are no great grandchildren to publish the collective family memory. What we do have is Samuel’s will. In several places in the will we see references to his widow Mary. The last item on the last page of Samuel’s will is a paragraph that is in essence her will. She apparently passed away during the time frame in which her husband’s estate was being adjudicated. By contemporary standards it was a large estate. We see scattered in its pages Samuel’s nieces and nephews. On the final page we see the name of Nehemiah Smith Jr. My favorite page is captioned “The Widows part of the Movables”. This page in a quiet way provides a commentary on a women’s role in the Congregational world of the 1600 and 1700’s. Women were defined as their husbands’ wife. Even though most of them were referred to as, my beloved, or in other such terms the estate did not automatically fall to them. They were instead left a portion, which then reverted to the children on their death. Nevertheless in Samuel’s will we indeed find a documentary trail for Mary Smith. You may click on the documents to enlarge.