I am about to give up. Seriously!! This poor woman!!!

Question

Working on Connecticut cemeteries, and I've had a heckuva time with Hannah, wife of Moses Betts. Died 24 Dec 1782 in the 22nd year of her age. She was buried at the Old Congregational Burying Ground, Stratford, Connecticut, the only person named Betts I've found buried in that cemetery; no records for any other cemetery in the town of Stratford that I've found either. So maybe that's where the young bride's parents lived?

I've worked through Orcutt's Bridgeport & Stratford, Jacobus's Familes of Old Fairfield, and Frederic Betts' volume "Thomas Betts of Guilford & Norwalk, and his Descendents." I've also reviewed Connecticut Church Record Abstracts & the Barbour collection's CT volume. I could have missed something, but I have done a lot of looking.

I won't repeat here what's on her profile. Two men called Moses Betts have been eliminated as her spouse, and a list of Hannahs born in the area in the right time window that aren't ruled out. (No reason our Hannah has to be one of those, either.)

I've run out of things to do. And this is just one of a few thousand tombstone photos from the area I have on deck to process. I give up! But I do hope someone else can come up with something. Since the tombstone was broken that record could be lost soon, so I didn't want to neglect her.

Can anybody find anything to add to poor Hannah? One thing for sure: I don't know how to do the "Connecticut Unconnected" category label. If someone could help with that?

Comments

[[Category: Connecticut Unconnected Profiles]]

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Thanks, Anne! Maybe because she's "Unknown" I cannot even get her to come up on searches. I hate leaving her 100% unconnected, but I don't know what else to do. The tombstone is absolute proof that she existed. A reminder of how incomplete even "good" sets of records are.

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You're right about the unknown and searches.

Answer 1

Hi

Ancestry.com lists a Hannah Betts of Norwalk, Conn.  I've loaded it to her profile, along with the image, which indicates she is the wife of Silas.  This may be the person you are seeking.

Regards, Janine

Comments

Probably not: Her tombstone says right on it that she was the wife of Moses Betts. And she only lived to 22, so there probably were not multiple husbands.

I imagine she died at first childbirth. And maybe the bereaved husband went off to somewhere and started over. At that time, the destinations were mostly western Massachsuetts, Vermont or upstate New York from Connecticut.

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There was a Silas Betts of who married a Hannah Smith, but she lived from 1759 to 1740.

Silas Betts

 

Birth:	Oct. 27, 1753 Connecticut, USA
Death:	Feb. 25, 1842 Connecticut, USA
S/O Mary and Seth H/O Hannah Smith ( Married 22 Jun 1780)    Family links:   Spouse:   Hannah Smith Betts (1759 - 1840)    Children:   Hannah Betts Aiken (1782 - 1876)*   Martha Betts (1792 - 1880)*   David Betts (1794 - 1875)*   Jonathon Betts (1794 - 1874)*   Ellis Abigail Betts Crissey (1796 - 1863)*   *Calculated relationship
Burial: Norwalk Union Cemetery  Norwalk Fairfield County Connecticut, USA GPS (lat/lon): 41.12601, -73.41638
Created by: Emile and Charlotte Record added: May 02, 2015  Find A Grave Memorial# 145941310 Added by: Erik Andersen   Cemetery Photo Added by: Jan Franco

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Hey Frank: Don't I wish! Her husband was Moses, so Silas is not the man I'm looking for. Furthermore, 24 Dec 1782 death is the one hard fact that remains of Hannah.

However, I have decided to rethink Moses Betts-1712. His oldest child, per his will was Joseph P. Betts. Joseph Peck Betts was baptized in May 1783 at Shelton, CT, father Moses Betts and a reasonable date for the oldest son of a man born in 1754. That's only a few months after Hannah died. Unfortunately, there's no other church records in Shelton for the Betts family. Middle names were uncommon then, so perhaps that middle name was used to commemorate a young mother who died in childbirth?

I found one Hannah Peck born in Boston, MA in 1761. Maybe she could be our Hannah? Shelton wasn't actually a town of its own till the 1800s, and was originally part of the colonial settlement of Stratford, so perhaps a burial at Stratford is not totally outrageous. Also: Thinking out loud. People moved around a lot during the revolution; a meeting between a young woman from Boston and a man from Connecticut could have been more likely than at other times.