Mary Leffingwell
Mary Leffingwell was born at Saybrook, Connecticut, on 10 December 1654. The date comes from the Saybrook vital records, as printed in the 1945 Bushnell genealogy. Her parents were Thomas Leffingwell, then a sergeant, and his wife Mary. The Bushnell genealogy calls her mother Mary White. The 1904 Marvin genealogy prints the surname with a question mark.
She was about five when her family moved up the coast to found Norwich in 1659 and 1660. Her father's name stands first on the Norwich founders' monument, as "Sergt Thos Leffingwell." Her brother Thomas, born at Saybrook in 1649, was made a freeman in 1671 and later sat for Norwich in the General Court. In 1700 his house became the town's ordinary, the licensed public house, and it was also a place where the town's ammunition was kept. Her sister Rachel married a Parke.
In September 1672 her brother Thomas married Mary Bushnell. Fourteen months later Mary married Mary Bushnell's brother Joseph. The Norwich clerk entered it: "The maryage of Joseph Bushnell with Mary Leffingwell was upon the 28th of November Anno Dom 1673." She was eighteen.
She bore eleven children between 1675 and 1695: Mary, Joseph, Jonathan, David, who died as an infant, Deborah, Hariah, Nathan, Rebecka, Abigail, Rachell and Jerusha. Her mother died on 6 February 1710/11 and her father in 1714. Her eldest daughter Mary, who had married Elijah Brainerd of Haddam, died in 1735 at sixty.
Mary died at Norwich on 31 March 1745. The clerk wrote: "mrs mary Bushnell Died march 31th: in ye year 1745." Her headstone gives her age as "in the 92d yeare," which fits a birth late in 1654. Her husband outlived her by twenty one months, and they lie side by side in the Old Norwichtown Cemetery. Her epitaph reads: "A virtuous Woman A loveing wife / It was the habit of her life."
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Cite: Heirology, "Mary Leffingwell (1654-1745)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/mary-leffingwell-1654-1745-49f8ff.