♀Eliza Stone Wilson

Eliza Stone Wilson (4 July 1812 – 16 April 1881) was the wife of a Topsham, Maine, grocer. Her will, signed on 2 July 1880, left her daughter $5,000 “in consideration of the fact that she bears my name” and paid three grandchildren $2,500 each “in consideration of the fact that I named them”. The will gives the name itself as the reason for the gifts. She was the great-great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her daughter Francis E. Dennett (1846–1925).

Early life

She was born at Topsham, then in Lincoln County, on 4 July 1812, the daughter, as an index of Maine births records it, of Johnson Wilson and Hannah Walker. Her middle name, Stone, was the surname of her mother’s first husband, Capt. James Stone of Brunswick, whom Hannah Walker had married at Topsham on 29 December 1796; through that marriage Eliza had a half-brother, Daniel P. Stone. As “Mrs. Hannah Stone” her mother married Johnson Wilson at Topsham on 26 July 1807, and the town’s list of inhabitants in 1810 puts Hannah, aged thirty, and her daughter Mary Stone in Johnson Wilson’s household. Her mother’s maiden name reappears in that of her granddaughter, Anna Walker Merryman (1869–1942).

Marriage and family

On 19 September 1835 “Mr William Dennett and Miss Eliza S. Wilson both of Topsham” entered their intention of marriage in the town book, and the certificate was granted on 5 October 1835, the date the family record takes as the marriage. The book records no return of the ceremony itself, a common gap in town books of the period.

The couple made their home at Topsham, where the census of 1850 records the family as keepers of a grocery store. They had three children: Alfred William Dennett (born 1839), Valeria Goodenow Dennett (born 1842, later McDonnell) and Francis Eliza, born on 3 February 1846. The household in 1850 also included Eliza’s mother, Hannah Wilson, then seventy. The census of 1860 lists Alfred, born about 1840, and Valeria, born about 1842, still at home. Eliza was living in Maine in 1870 and at Topsham again in 1880. By then Alfred had a wife, Josephine, Valeria was living in New York State as Mrs. McDonnell, and Frances had married William Simpson Merryman and settled at Haverhill, Massachusetts.

Her will

Eliza signed her will on 2 July 1880 as “Eliza S. Dennett”. Its largest gift was the $5,000 to Frances, and the three grandchildren she named, Anna Walker Merryman among them, received $2,500 each. Another $2,500 went to Margaret Elizabeth McDonnell, “for her name”. Charles B. Dennett, one of her grandchildren, was left $2,000, and the Trinitarian Congregational Church of Topsham $1,000 for its ministry.

The smaller bequests give the household some texture. Her daughter-in-law Josephine, Ralph A. McDonnell and Millie McDonnell were left $500 each, as were two more Dennetts, Alice and George. Kate Taylor was left $500 on condition that she stayed with Eliza until her death, and Anna Merryman was left Eliza’s black walnut chamber set. The residue was to be divided equally among her children.

The will also settled accounts between the children. Valeria, it says, had already received in full the sum that Eliza’s half-brother Daniel P. Stone had left her, and Alfred and Frances had received only a part of what was due them. Eliza named her husband William and a William Merryman of Haverhill as executors.

Death and burial

She died at Topsham on 16 April 1881, and the Brunswick Times Record printed a death notice on 23 April. She was buried in Riverview Cemetery at Topsham. Her husband survived her by seven years and was buried in the same cemetery.

Notes

A family chart compiled in 1994 gave her name as “Eliza (Wilson) Stone”, treating Stone as the surname of an earlier marriage. The 1835 intention, which calls her “Miss” Eliza S. Wilson, and her birth entry, indexed as Eliza Stone Wilson, show that Stone was a middle name and that there was no earlier marriage. The parents’ names come from that index alone: the collection holds no image, and the town’s own record, printed in 1929, enters her birth among the Dennetts as “Eliza S. [—], w. William, July 4, 1812, in T.”, with no maiden name and no parents. Born five years after her mother’s second marriage, she cannot have been a daughter of James Stone, though his death is not on record. A 1905 genealogy of the Merryman family names her only as “Eliza S.” and leaves her surname blank.

The facing page of the register, with the witnesses’ attestation, is not quoted here. The will spells the granddaughter’s name “Anna”, as her own marriage record does, calls Frances “Frances Eliza Merryman” and gives Valeria’s home as Newburgh, New York, with the last letters of the place name uncertain. The executor’s middle initial is also uncertain, and he is taken to be Frances’s husband because he is a Merryman of Haverhill. The will calls him only “my brother”, writing the name “Danl P. Stone”; that he was a half-brother follows from the second marriage of her mother, who had been Mrs. Stone before she was Mrs. Wilson. Daniel Stone was born at Topsham in 1797, a son of James Stone and Hannah, and died at Malden, Massachusetts, in August 1878, aged eighty, two years before the will was made. The will does not say how Margaret Elizabeth McDonnell, Ralph and Millie McDonnell, or Alice and George Dennett were related to Eliza.

The 1850 census household is Hannah Wilson, aged 70, with the Dennett family, and Hannah is taken to be Eliza’s mother from her name and age, which fit; the census does not state the relationship. The same household lists a “William A”, 10, and a “William G”, 8, and a Susan Work, 23. “William A” is taken to be Alfred William, and “William G”, whom the index gives as male, is matched to Valeria only by age, since the census line itself does not say; the will, which names Valeria as a daughter, shows that she existed but does not tie her to that census line. The census of 1850 indexes the family under the surname “Jennett” and gives her as “Elisa L.”; the 1860 census also has “Elisa L.” Records made late in her life point to a birth in 1813 rather than 1812; the earlier date, from the birth entry, is kept here. A cemetery card gives her age at death as 68, which fits 1812. No town clerk’s return of her death has been found. An online memorial places her burial at a Riverview Cemetery in West Virginia; the cemetery card and her husband’s burial place put her at Topsham.