Mary (née Fox) (Burts) Patrell (c.1753 – 1834-12-25) was my 5th-great-grandmother through her first marriage to Benjamin Robert Burts and her son Jedediah Burt. She was one of the early residents of Canaan, New Hampshire, later moving to Norwich, Vermont. She married twice, to Benjamin and to Joseph Patrell, having several children by both husbands. Her parents and origin are unknown.
A friend Sally Johnson of Norwich said of her,
Mrs. Burt came to our house to live as a nurse. She then informed me that she was a widow, and came from Canaan, New Hampshire, and that she had several children then living; that she was married and resided in said Canaan and that she had suffered greatly during the revolutionary war, having several small children to provide for during the time her husband was in the service.
Her death record was forged by her attending physician and an accomplice to collect a war pension for her husband, giving her death as 1839 instead of 1834. See Benjamin Burts for the case.
Roberta Jean (née) Stokes Smith (1929-03-23 – 2001-12-19), who is a great-great-great-granddaughter of Mary through her mother Fern (née Patrell)⟮1⟯Fern ← Henry Ward ← William Paige ← Isaac ← Mary Fox, compiled a lifetime of research into a book The descendants of Joseph Patrell⟮2⟯, edited by genealogist Melinde Lutz Sanborn (now Melinde Lutz Byrne). Smith died just as it went to press. While focused on the Patrell family, the book includes some coverage of Mary and the Burts.
Smith writes, “Her ancestry has not been ascertained despite diligent search.”
However, the early records of Canaan show a William Fox Jr., as an original settler in 1761 and on a property transfer in 1768. No one else with the name of Fox is found in these early decades of the town. So, a reasonable guess is that William was Mary’s father, and furthermore he was likely the son of a William Fox Sr. There is no Fox on the 1776 signatories siding against the British, which all adult men in the town signed, so by that time William had either left or died.
There is DNA evidence suggesting a connection to a known⟮3⟯Find a Grave memorial for Johannes Fuchs. Fox family, but it is ambiguous.
Mary likely had 12 or 13 children by her two husbands.
Mary married Benjamin Burts (c.1751 – 1788-08-08) possibly in 1774.
Her husband’s war pension file includes a damaged list of all of her children by Benjamin. It is creased and torn, and missing crucial information, particularly final digits of the years of birth. It also might not be complete. It lists six children, none named Jedediah (my ancestor). No trace of most of these children has been found, and an 1846 deposition by neighbor Susan Root stated “[t]hat most of Mrs. Pattrell’s Children by her first husband died when they were quite young”. Putting this together, we have these children:
Given the typical two-year gaps, excepting three years during Benjamin’s service, one might guess Seth, Dean, and William’s birth years to be 1783, 1785, and 1787. But a three-year gap or more is possible in there, as between Mary and Lucy. But if Jedediah was born around 1783, and is not any of these people, it throws a monkey wrench into these guesses. A neighbor Sally Johnson said she believed Benjamin Jr. to be the oldest child, which, besides Jedediah’s absence from the list, makes it hard to believe he could be an earlier child. The missing digits are tantalizingly crucial to making sense of this.
I have a recollection of seeing this list without missing digits, perhaps another copy made before it was damaged, but I could be mistaken and have been unable to find it if it exists.
Mary married Joseph Patrell (1754-08-09 – 1829-10-29) on 1790-08-25 in Norwich, Vermont. Smith (2001) assembles this list of children, all born in Norwich, Vermont: