Ancestors

Esther Brainerd

Esther Brainerd was born at Haddam, Connecticut, on 9 March 1748/9. The double year is the old calendar: before 1752 the English year began in late March, so a March birth could be written either way. She was the fifth child of Phineas Brainerd and Jerusha Towner, who farmed at Higganum in the north of Haddam.

On 6 October 1768, at nineteen, she married John Brooks of Haddam. He died before July 1770 and left her with a son, also named John.

On 4 September 1771 she married Ozias Bidwell, an East Hartford farmer whose first wife had died the summer before and left him four children. Esther bore him eleven more: Esther in 1772, Anna, Elizabeth, George in 1782, Heman, John in 1785, Abigail in 1788, the twins Hannah and Huldah in March 1789, Fabadus in 1792 and Jerusha in 1796.

She died on 3 November 1801, in her fifty third year. The notice of her death, as the Brainerd genealogy prints it, reads: "The amiable consort of Ozias Bidwell. She was left a disconsolate husband and 14 children to mourn her loss." Her father was still alive at Haddam, and outlived her by sixteen months.

Her family name stayed in use. Her daughter Huldah married Asa Cowles in 1809 and named her first son Henry Brainard Cowles.

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Cite: Heirology, "Esther Brainerd (1748-1801)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/esther-brainerd-1748-1801-c71392.