Abigail (Cadwell) Fox (1730)

Born 1730 in Wethersfield, Hartford, Conn.

Ancestors

Wife of Vaniah Fox — married about 1749 in Connecticut Colony

Descendants

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Biography

This profile is part of the Cadwell Name Study.

Abigail was born about 1730 to John Cadwell and Dorothy Kilbourn.

She is mentioned in the probate records of her father John as one of his daughters. When the court appoints John's wife Dorothy as guardian of the minor children in 1747, she is not named among them, so she must have either no longer been a minor at that time, or she was already married.^[1]

Abigail is widely assmed to have married Vaniah Fox in 1749 in Connecticut. However, this information is based on an electronic database (U.S. and International Marriage Records, 1560-1900. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com) compiled by genealogist Bill Yates, which is itself based on family group sheets, pedigree charts, family history articles, queries, letters, Bible records, wills, and manuscript genealogies. It is difficult to judge how reliable that information is. A primary source for the marriage is still missing.

If the marriage between Vaniah Fox and Abigail Cadwell is correct, then she was not his only wife as one of Vaniah's children was recorded as the daughter of Vaniah and Jerusha Fox. It is likely that Jerusha was the second wife, married in 1764, as she "owned the covenant" on the same day as the baptism of her daughter Jerusha. Without that step she would not have been allowed to baptize her child.

Though it is most likely that Vaniah remarried because of the death of his first wife, the possibility of a divorce does exist: New England Puritans did not believe in the sacramental nature of marriage and were therefor not opposed to divorce: almost a thousand divorces were granted in Connecticut alone between 1670 and 1800.^[2]

The following children of Vaniah were baptized in East Hartford between 1753 and 1777, the first three of which are likely to be Abigail's children^[3][4]:

• Stephen, baptized 30 Sep 1753
• Ashbel Fox baptized on 17 Aug 1755 (no father named)
• Susanna, baptized 17 Apr 1763
• Jerusha, 28 Jul 1765 (recorded as daughter of Vaniah and Jerusha!)
• Abigail, 15 Mar 1767
• Sabra, baptized 16 Oct 1768
• Sabra, baptized 1 Oct 1775
• Francis, 5 Oct 1777

Sources

1. ↑ A Digest of the Early Connecticut Probate Records: Hartford district, 1729-1750; Charles William Manwaring, R. S. Peck & Company, printers, 1906. Free e-book at Google Books.
2. ↑ Grounds for Divorce – Who Knew?
3. ↑ Connecticut, U.S., Church Record Abstracts, 1630-1920 database on-line. Ancestry.com; Original data: Connecticut. Church Records Index. Connecticut State Library, Hartford, Connecticut.
4. ↑ Baptisms and births from records of First Congregational Church (East Hartford, Connecticut) and deaths from cemeteries handwritten original transcript compiled by Joseph O. Goodwin, town clerk.

See also:

• Ancestral File (TM): Author: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: Ancestral File Number: JGXF-D8: Publication: June 1998 (c), data as of 5 JAN 1998: Master Listing Source: Y