♀Maria (surname unknown)

Maria was the wife of Joseph Webster of Kingston and Weare, New Hampshire. She was most likely the fourth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her son Joseph Goss Webster (1769–1831).

Marriage and family

She and Joseph are said to have married on 17 November 1747, and her maiden name is given as Goss, though no record of her lifetime names it. They were most likely the Joseph Webster and his wife Mariah whose children Hannah, Rachel, Abigail and Cotton were born at Kingston and East Kingston between 1749 and 1757. The family later lived in the east part of Weare, on the River road. A family memorial printed in 1904 calls Joseph, born at Plaistow on 31 December 1769, the “son of Joseph and Maria”; he settled at Wilton, Maine, and the family’s line runs through him. Another Joseph Webster was born at Weare that same month, on 3 December 1769, to John and Abigail Webster, so the link is not certain.

Notes

Her name

The Webster family memorial printed in 1904 records her husband’s marriage to “Maria Goss, Nov. 17, 1747”, and other family trees call her Mariah Goss and give her dates as 1724–1791. Her son is known as Joseph Goss Webster. No record of her lifetime is known that gives the surname Goss: the Kingston and East Kingston births name the mother only as Mariah (also indexed as Moriah). If she was born about 1724, as those trees have it, she was about forty-five when her son Joseph was born in 1769. A family genealogy compiled in 1991 gives the marriage as 26 November 1747.

Which Joseph

William Little’s History of Weare (1888) gives the east-Weare Joseph Webster four sons, Joseph, John, Abel and Cotton, and on the same page lists John and Abigail Webster of the west part of Weare with a son Joseph born 3 December 1769; the New Hampshire birth records give that birth too. DNA matches between a descendant of Joseph Goss Webster and descendants of John, Abel and Cotton Webster favor Joseph and Maria; none run through the other children of John and Abigail, though DNA at this distance could not tell the two households apart if they were close kin.