♀Sarah Smith

Sarah Smith (born 29 March 1760) was the eldest of the eight children of Obadiah Smith (born 1731) and Mary Leavitt, born at Brentwood, Rockingham, New Hampshire, then part of the Province of New Hampshire^W, in what is now the United States. She was the fourth great-grand-aunt of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), the sister of Anna Smith (born 1764), Nancy Jane’s fourth great-grandmother. A family history published in 1886 says that Sarah’s husband, Joseph Dudley, and Anna’s husband, Nathaniel Dudley, were nephew and son of Judge John Dudley, which makes the two husbands first cousins.

Early life

The Brentwood town records enter Sarah’s birth first among the children of Obadiah Smith and Mary Leavitt, who had married on 5 February 1756. Stephen followed in 1761, Jonathan in 1762, Anna in 1764, Mary in 1765, Timothy in 1770, Moses in 1772 and Jacob in 1774. The direct line to Nancy Jane Blanchard runs down through Anna.

Marriage

Dean Dudley’s History of the Dudley Family (1886) names Sarah in the entry for Joseph Dudley. The book gives Sarah as Joseph’s second wife, a daughter of Obadiah Smith and Mary Leavitt, and says they married at Raymond, New Hampshire, where he had settled as a young man. The book says Joseph’s first wife, Deborah Bean, had died after the family moved to Maine; he returned to Raymond, performing the long journey entirely on horseback. The book gives Sarah and Joseph five children, but no date for the marriage.

The book calls Joseph a Ruling Elder in the Free Baptist church at Raymond and says he was chosen a selectman and held other public posts; it places his house on the Deerfield road. The book gives his death as 28 October 1825, at the age of 75. It does not say when Sarah died.

Notes

Her birth year

The Brentwood town book, in a copy made by a later hand, enters “Sarah Smith march 29th 176[0/1]”; the last digit is hard to make out. Because her brother Stephen was born in July 1761, 1760 is the likelier year, and 1760 is the year used here.

The marriage

The marriage to Joseph Dudley rests on Dean Dudley’s book, which is also the source of the letter from John Gilman Dudley, so the two statements are not independent. The letter, dated 14 March 1865 and quoted in the book, has John Gilman Dudley write that his mother “had but one sister, who married Joseph Dudley, of Raymond, N. H.” The book’s wording, “Sarah Smith, sister to Anna, wife of Nathaniel Dudley”, and its later phrase “dau. of Obadiah and his wife Mary (Leavitt), daughter of Stephen of Brentwood”, match the Brentwood record’s parents.