As I said in the brief story of Sarah last month, she was a widow in her 50s with young and unmarried children still in her care when she left Nantucket and migrated to Cincinnati.\u00a0 While I don\u2019t know the path she followed, she must have had crates of household goods with her since she was leaving her home to establish a new one.\u00a0 It is likely that she and her family traveled in a group of fellow Nantucketers who were also migrating to Ohio, and that they traveled much of the way by water finishing by coming down the Ohio River to Cincinnati.<\/p>\n
Sarah was born on Nantucket on the 28th of June 1761 to Christopher and Abigail Barnard Folger.\u00a0 She was only 2 years old when her mother died, and her father remarried twice more before dying at sea in 1774 when she was only 13.\u00a0 In all likelihood Sarah lived with her father\u2019s 3d wife, Susanna, and several younger half brothers and sisters until she married Isaiah Coffin at age 18.\u00a0 She was born into and raised in the Society of Friends and kept to this her entire life.<\/p>\n
Sarah married Isaiah Coffin on the 29 of March 1780.\u00a0 Their first child, a daughter named Mary, was born the following December and in all 13 children were born to this marriage.\u00a0 Eight of the children survived to adulthood including my g-g-g-grandfather Cyrus Coffin who was their second child.\u00a0 And all but one of the 8 surviving children either migrated ahead of or with Sarah to Cincinnati in 1814.<\/p>\n
Sarah was received into the Miami Monthly Meeting on 31 Aug 1814, and became a member and an Elder of the Cincinnati Monthly Meeting.\u00a0 While Cyrus Coffin offered the use of his house in the very early days of the Cincinnati Meeting before they had a Meeting House, he did not become a member and that was the place in the Coffin family line that my direct ancestors stopped being Quakers.<\/p>\n
I have found a will that Sarah wrote, dated 2 Sept (\u201cninth month called September\u201d)1816, which referenced the \u201cuncertainty of this mortal life\u201d as her reason for a will allthough she was not sick or dying at that time.\u00a0 In fact, in 1817 she married again, to Oliver Martin who was also a Quaker.\u00a0\u00a0 I haven\u2019t had much luck finding out anything about Oliver Martin, although I do find him in the 1820 federal census living, presumably, with Sarah and 3 younger people including 1 male under 16, 1 male between 16 and 26, and 1 female between 16 and 26.\u00a0 These were likely to be Sarah\u2019s children: Christopher, age 14, Reuben, age 24, and Eliza, age 18, all of whom had been received in the Miami Monthly Meeting with their mother.<\/p>\n
Sarah did not live many years with Oliver; she died 14 Sep 1822 at age 61.\u00a0 So far I have found no regisration or other official evidence of her death so I don\u2019t know the cause.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As I said in the brief story of Sarah last month, she was a widow in her 50s with young and unmarried children still in her care when she left Nantucket and migrated to Cincinnati.\u00a0 While I don\u2019t know the …<\/p>\n