Mary Need
Mary Need was the wife of Jacob Need. She joined him in selling land three times. In 1791 they sold 318 acres on Ten Mile Creek in Washington County, Pennsylvania. In 1805, as "Jacob Need and Mary his wife of Morgan township Green County," they sold land on the South Branch of the creek. In 1818 they sold 196 acres in Harrison County, Ohio. A wife signed such deeds to give up her dower, her right to a life share in her husband's land.
She was his wife in 1791, when their son Jacob was about five years old, so she was probably the boy's mother. No record names her as such. A family sheet typed in 1983 calls the younger Jacob "son of Jacob Need and Mary Arnold," which would make her maiden name Arnold, but the compiler later crossed that sheet out and gave no source for it.
Two older records point toward the same family. The first is the name of the farm. A Pennsylvania patent carried a name for the tract, usually chosen by the settler, and the name followed the land through later deeds. The 318 acres the Commonwealth patented to her husband on 8 November 1787 were called "Arnold." A deed of 1825 for part of the land still recites "a parcel of land called 'Arnold' granted by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to Jacob Need by Patent and bearing date of November 8, 1787." The tract next to it, called "Ant," had been patented to Myles Harden, one of the neighbours named in her husband's survey of 1785.
The second is a militia roll. On 15 October 1781 her husband was enrolled in Captain Andrew Farley's company of the Washington County militia. His name stands in the second class next to Frederick Arnold's: "Jacob Need. Fredrick Arnold." Further down the same roll are a "Danniel Arnold" and a "Daniel Arnold, Senr." The roll of 22 April 1782 pairs "Jacob Need. Fredrick Arnolt." again. The same company held Solomon Grooms and Peter Benham, and Grooms and Benham land bordered the Need survey.
Frontier settlers usually named a tract after themselves, a home place or a family. A man named Need calling his land "Arnold," with an Arnold household serving beside him, makes the 1983 sheet's "Mary Arnold" considerably more likely. If she was an Arnold, the household of Daniel Arnold Senior is the likeliest to be hers. Still, no record says she was born an Arnold.
She is not in the deed of gift her husband made to their son on Christmas Day 1824, so she may have died before it. The record does not say.
Children
Sources
If Mary Need is in your family, start your own tree.
Cite: Heirology, "Mary Need", https://heirology.com/ancestors/mary-need-27007f.