♀Susanna Mills

Susanna Mills was the wife of Lieutenant Peter Folsom (1649–1718) of Exeter, in New Hampshire, and before him the widow of Isaac Cousins of Wells, in Maine. She was the seventh great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her daughter Susanna Folsom. Widowed a second time when Peter died, by March 1718, she kept the house, barn and orchard at Exeter as part of her widow’s share, to hold for the rest of her life.

Wells

She was a daughter of Mary Wadleigh, who was herself a daughter of John Wadleigh of Wells, and her father was probably Thomas Mills, a fisherman of Saco and Wells, on the Maine coast. Her first husband was Isaac Cousins of Wells. Isaac Cousins is said to have been killed by Natives at Wells in 1675, in the first year of King Philip’s War^W.

A compiled genealogy lists her siblings as John, Mary, Sarah and Martha, and gives Martha’s birth at Saco on 18 June 1653. On 29 June 1693 Martha was baptised as an adult in the Catholic church of Notre-Dame in Montreal. The Quebec parish registers name her parents as Thomas Mills and “Marie Wadelo”, the register’s spelling of Mary Wadleigh. Coleman’s translation of the baptism act records that she had been carried off from Berwick in the French and Indian raid on Salmon Falls^W in March 1690, and that she had lived three years as a servant at Saint-François before her baptism.

Marriage to Peter Folsom

Peter Folsom and Susanna, the widow of Isaac Cousins of Wells, in Maine, were married at Exeter, probably on 6 May 1678. Peter’s house stood on the Hampton road east of the village. The couple apparently kept their ties to Wells: in 1685 Peter bought and sold shares of the farm there that had belonged to her grandfather John Wadleigh, and in 1689 he and his wife together sold half of that farm to William Sawyer.

They had six children: Elizabeth, Susanna, Mary, Peter, John and Benjamin, who was born in 1696.

Widowhood

Peter Folsom died at Exeter before 5 March 1717/18, without a will. On 4 March Susanna declined the administration and asked that their son John be appointed, and on 5 March it was granted to him. Their son Peter died in 1718 as well, leaving young children.

On 20 July 1720 Susanna and the heirs signed an agreement dividing the estate. She kept her widow’s third, valued at £289 6s 8d: the house, barn and orchard with part of the home lot, ten acres by the meadow, twenty-three and a half acres of salt marsh at Hampton and a sixteenth share of a saw mill on the Lamprey River, with land over the cove to make up the sum. The house, barn and orchard were to stay as they stood until her death, and only then be valued and paid for by the heir on whose land they lay.

She kept a share of her mother’s inheritance at Wells into her widowhood. On 16 February 1721/2, as “Susannah Folsham Widow & Relict of Leiv’ Folsham of Exeter”, she sold to Francis Sayer of Wells a quarter part of the land and marsh that John Wadleigh had given his daughter Mary Mills on 18 July 1664, which shows that she held it as her mother’s heir. She was still living in 1722, and the date of her death is not known.

Notes

Her parents

Elizabeth Knowles Folsom’s Genealogy of the Folsom Family (1938) calls her a daughter of Thomas Mills and Mary Wadleigh of Wells and rests this on deeds in the York County records of Maine, which it abstracts: in 1685 John Wadleigh sold Peter a third part of the Wells farm of his grandfather John Wadleigh, “bounded on land of uncle Thomas Mills”; in 1689 “Peter Folsham et ux” sold half of that farm to William Sawyer; and in 1721/2 Susanna, as widow, sold part of the land John Wadleigh had given his daughter Mary Mills in 1664. The Genealogical Dictionary of Maine and New Hampshire also lists her among the children of Thomas Mills and Mary Wadleigh, as the wife first of Isaac Cousins and then of Lieutenant Peter Folsom. The dictionary calls Thomas Mills a fisherman of Saco and Wells. The deed itself, recorded in the York County deeds (Book XI, folio 5, 1722), names the land as the 1664 gift of John Wadleigh to his daughter Mary Mills, which proves that Susanna’s mother was Mary Wadleigh, the Mary Mills of the deed. The father rests on the 1689 deed (Book VI, folio 148), whose land adjoins “the land of Tho’ Mills Dec’d”, on Martha’s 1693 baptism in Montreal, whose register names Thomas Mills as her father, and on the printed genealogies.

Her first husband and her surname

Isaac Cousins’s death at the hands of Natives at Wells in 1675 is given by two printed genealogies: the Genealogical Dictionary of Maine and New Hampshire, which also gives her second marriage, at Exeter on 6 May 1678, and Elizabeth Knowles Folsom’s Genealogy of the Folsom Family (1938), which says he “was killed by Indians, in Wells, in 1675”. Both are printed genealogies, so the death rests on compiled work, not on a record of the death itself. The Folsom genealogy of 1882 and James Savage’s Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England name her by her first married name, “Susanna Cousins, of Wells”; the 1882 genealogy adds that another writer gave her surname as Coffin. George Thomas Little’s Genealogical and Family History of the State of Maine dates her marriage to Peter Folsom “about 1675”.

Her sister Martha

The Genealogical Dictionary of Maine and New Hampshire lists the children of Thomas Mills and Mary Wadleigh as John, Mary, Sarah, Susanna and Martha, and gives Martha’s birth at Saco on 18 June 1653, citing “N. E. Captives”. The same entry says Martha was baptized in Canada, as its Catholic record shows. The Quebec parish registers record the baptism at Notre-Dame, Montreal, on 29 June 1693, of Marthe Mills, with father Thomas Mills and mother Marie Wadelo. The Quebec demographic database (PRDH) gives her age in that entry as forty. Emma Lewis Coleman’s New England Captives Carried to Canada (1925) prints the baptism, which calls her the widow of James Smith of Barwick (Berwick), captured there in March 1690 and in Monsieur Crevier’s service at Saint-François for three years; Coleman adds that her second husband, Christopher Grant, was killed in the attack or died in captivity. Coleman’s translation of the act gives her birth at Saco as 8 January 1653 (old style; 18 January new style), but the Genealogical Dictionary of Maine and New Hampshire and Coleman’s own heading give 18 June 1653.

Sources for her widowhood

Peter Folsom’s administration and the agreements among his heirs of 20 July 1720 and 16 April 1737 are abstracted in the probate records of New Hampshire (Provincial and State Papers, volume 32, pages 19–26). Her renunciation of 4 March 1717/18 and the terms of her widow’s third come from the same estate file as printed in the 1938 Folsom genealogy; the Genealogical Dictionary of Maine and New Hampshire agrees that the widow gave up the administration and that she was living in 1722.

Her name

In 1690 she and Peter signed an account as “Left Petr ffolsum” and “susanar ffolsum”; her deed of 1721/2 calls her “Susannah Folsham” and “Susannah ffolsham”, and its acknowledgment “Susanna Folsham”.