Mary "Polly" Williams
Mary Williams, called Polly, was born on 18 December 1806 in Essex County, New York, the daughter of Elias Williams and Mary Boynton, and the fifth or so of their ten children. She was fifteen when the family reached Sangamon County in February 1822 after eighteen years of moving west, and seventeen when she married Richard E. Barker in 1824. Their son Elias, born 14 October 1824, was her only Barker child.
Her husband did not stay. By the family's account he left in February 1825 for "business" in one of the lower counties of Illinois and never came back. Mary waited for him until 1827. Then she filed for divorce, on the ground that he had abandoned her and their son, and the family gives 4 October 1827 as the day it became final.
Six weeks later, on 18 November 1827, she married Andrew Johnson, a millwright from Dumfriesshire in Scotland, who built a mill on the South Fork of the Sangamon. The licence calls her Polly Williams. They had three sons: John, born in October 1828, Samuel, born in 1831, and Andrew, born in 1833, who died at twelve or thirteen. Johnson died soon after. On 9 January 1834 she married Greenberry Baker, the licence calling her Polly Johnson. A descendant's account gives them at least two children, William Moses, under five in 1840, and Effie.
The 1876 county history disposes of all three husbands in a single run of sentences, which is how a woman's life gets recorded when it is filed under her father's family rather than her own.
Her brother was the Reverend Samuel Williams, born in Vermont in 1800, who came out to Sangamon County ahead of the rest of the family in the autumn of 1821, taught school in Rochester between 1831 and 1837, and preached at the South Fork Christian church. The county historian, writing while Samuel was alive and seventy-six, reckoned that he had probably married one hundred couple.
She died on 22 May 1842, at thirty-five, as Mary Baker. She is buried in the old graveyard at Mottarville Cemetery in Rochester, in the family row beside her father and mother. Her stone reads "Mary, wife of G. B. Baker, died May 22 1842, aged 34 yr 5 mo 4 da". The months and days fit her birth on 18 December 1806 exactly, so the 34 is a slip for 35. The stone stood leaning against its base for years. It was cleaned in 2021 and 2022, and its footstone was dug out of the ground on 21 June 2022.
Sources
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Cite: Heirology, "Mary "Polly" Williams (1806-1842)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/mary-polly-williams-1806-1842-2b671b.