♀Katherine (surname unknown)

Katherine (living in 1608/9) was the second wife of John Coggeshall, a gentleman of Halstead in Essex, England, and the grandmother of John Coggeshall^W, who became the first president of the colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. She was the tenth great-grandmother of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through her son John Coggeshall (1576–1615).

Her son John was born at Halstead on 24 July 1576 and baptized there five days later. Her husband already had a son named John by his first wife, Elizabeth, who had died. So when he made his will on 27 December 1600, he called Katherine’s boy John “the Younger”, the son “which I had by my now wife Katherine”, and made the two of them his residuary legatees and executors. He died on 1 January 1600/1, and a week later Katherine and her son proved the will at Braintree. Her grandson John was baptized at Halstead that December. She was still living on 22 March 1608/9, when she and her son were taxed together in the subsidy rolls^W on goods worth £3. The roll does not name her. It lists “John Coggeshall and mother”.

The records do not give her surname, her parents, her birth or her death. The 1919 account of the family dates her marriage “probably about 1564 or earlier”. It places two daughters baptized at Halstead with her as well, Katherine in 1564 and Elizabeth in 1571/2, though it allows that Katherine may have been a child of the first wife. The will itself names only John as her son.