♀Agnes (surname unknown)

Agnes was the wife of John Kenniston of Greenland, New Hampshire, and was widowed in April 1677, when Indians burned their house and killed him. The year before, the county court at Portsmouth had heard a charge against “the wife of Jn° Kennestone” of “railing & revileing words”, found it proved and sentenced her to stand gagged for half an hour. She was the eighth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her son George Kenniston (died 1717-18).

Greenland

Her maiden name, her parents and the dates of her birth, marriage and death are not known. Apart from a few court and probate entries, what is known of her family comes from a genealogical dictionary of Maine and New Hampshire families, published between 1928 and 1939, which records that by 1665 John Kenniston had settled at Greenland, then part of Portsmouth. The dictionary names six sons of John Kenniston: William, Christopher, John, Alexander, George and James. It calls Christopher her son, but does not say whether she was the mother of all six.

The court that punished her sat at Portsmouth on 27 June 1676. Its entry is brief: “The wife of Jn° Kennestone being p’sented for railing & revileing words proved Sentence that she forthwith stand gaged halfe an hower: & ffees.” It does not give her first name or say at whom her words were aimed.

Widowhood

On 16 April 1677 Indians burned the Kenniston house at Greenland and killed John Kenniston. King Philip’s War^W, which had begun in southern New England in 1675, was still being fought on the northern frontier. On 1 August 1677 the commissioners of Dover and Portsmouth granted letters of administration^W on John Kenniston’s estate to his widow, Agnes Kenniston. An inventory of the estate of John Kenniston “who was lately slain by ye Indians”, signed by Samuel Haines and Philip Lewis and dated the same day, came to £65 3s 0d, and later that year Agnes swore to it as administratrix in the county court at Dover.

According to the dictionary, by 1681 Agnes had married again and was known as Agnes Magoon, and that year she and her son Christopher conveyed land at Greenland to George Huntress, who bought the Kenniston homestead. Its account of the Magoon family adds that Henry Magoon of Exeter, whose first wife had died in 1675, apparently married her between 1 August 1677 and 19 November 1681. When and where she died is not known.

Notes

The court entry of 1676 names her only as “the wife of Jn° Kennestone”; the dictionary identifies her as Agnes, John Kenniston’s widow, and says she “sat in the stocks for railing”, where the court’s own record has her sentenced to stand gagged. The court entries are quoted from the printed New Hampshire Court Records, 1640–1692 (1943), the inventory from the printed Probate Records of the Province of New Hampshire (1907). An online family tree gives her surname as Moody; neither the dictionary nor these records give her maiden name.