♀Hester Kelsey

Hester Kelsey (about 1636–1720) was a woman of Windsor, Connecticut Colony, who was widowed twice within three years and administered the estates of both her husbands. She was the eighth great-grandmother of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through her son John Eggleston (1659–1731).

Marriage and widowhood

She and James Eggleston were probably married by 1656, and they had nine children whose births were recorded at Windsor between 1656 and 1676; the first, a son named James, was stillborn on 1 January 1656. James Eggleston died suddenly on 1 December 1679, and a jury found that he had been “taken with a swond and so dyed”. On 4 March 1679/80 the court granted Hester the administration of his estate, with three men appointed to assist her, and on 21 April 1680 it divided the estate: £35 to her, £45 to the eldest son, £21 to each of six other children, and £36 to a child the court called “the defective child”.

Second marriage

On 29 April 1680 she married James Enno senior of Windsor, whose own wife had died on 7 October 1679. Grant’s record enters the bride as “Hester that was ye wif of James egelston”. The court then placed the Eggleston estate with “the Relict and her present husband, James Ennoe”, ordering security that each child’s portion would be paid when the child came of age. James Enno was dead by June 1682: his inventory, taken on 19 June 1682, came to £278, and on 19 July the widow brought it into court, with James and Hester Ennoe named as administrators. On 13 December 1682, told that Enno’s children had agreed on a settlement of their father’s estate, the court appointed distributors to lay out to “the widow Ennoe” her jointure^W of £20, the provision set aside for a wife’s support if she outlived her husband.

Third marriage and death

On 10 June 1686 she married her third husband, John Williams senior of Windsor, a widower about 70 years old. Her will, dated 17 January 1693, left the house and land she had from James Enno to her son Isaac Eggleston. She most likely died at Windsor on 10 July 1720, the widow of John Williams.

Notes

The probate entry that names James Enno as her “present husband” is dated 21 April 1680 in the printed digest of the court records, eight days before the marriage date given in both the Windsor town record and Grant’s record.

The first marriage

Anderson’s The Great Migration Begins reckons the marriage as before 1656, from the birth of the eldest child at Windsor on 1 January 1656 (possibly 1656/7). Woodruff (1935) gives “probably about 1654”. Both are compiled reckonings, so the body says “probably”.

The third marriage

The Barbour entries give “Easter, m. John WILLIAMS, Sr., b. of Windsor, June 10, 1686” (page 110) and “John, Sr., m. Easter EGELSTON” (page 381). The bride is given here as Hester, the widow of James Eggleston, which makes this her third marriage. The register’s name is close to that of her daughter Esther, born 1663, and the register does not settle which woman it means. Woodruff (1935) gives the husband’s age as about 70, a compiled figure.

The will

The will is printed in the Connecticut probate digest (Manwaring, vol. II, page 452) under the name Esther Williams, dated 17 January 1692-3 as printed. Woodruff gives the year as 1702/3; the date in the body is 17 January 1693, the year the printed double date gives. The inventory is given as £7 0s 6d.

The death

The Barbour Collection of Windsor vital records (page 380) gives the death on 10 July 1720 of “Esther, wid.,” formerly widow of James Eggleston. The same entry reports that she was the first female child born in Hartford, the report the nineteenth-century history gives below. The death is a compiled reckoning, so the body says “most likely”.

Identity

A compiled genealogy gives her surname as Kelsey and her father as William Kelsey of Hartford. The Windsor town records and Matthew Grant’s record of the Windsor church name her Hester, the wife and then the widow of James Eggleston; the will of 1693 and the Windsor death entry of 1720 call her Esther. A nineteenth-century history of Windsor calls her a sister of a Roger Williams and says she was said to have been the first girl born at Hartford; George E. McCracken (The American Genealogist 35: 21) pointed out that Williams was the surname she bore at her death, from her third husband, which undoes the Roger Williams claim. The Kelsey surname and the father come from Anderson’s The Great Migration Begins (volume II, page 1119), which follows a 1993 study by Gale Ion Harris in The American Genealogist, volume 68, pages 208–15.