Ancestors
Sarah Baldwin
1777-1868
Born 1777, Connecticut Farms, Essex County, New Jersey
Died 1868
Father: Gabriel Baldwin
Mother: Rebecca Littell
Children include Susannah
Sarah Baldwin, called Sally, was born at Connecticut Farms, in Essex County, New Jersey, on 3 May 1777. Her father Gabriel Baldwin was a blacksmith who also made steelyards, and her mother was Rebecca Littell. Sally was one of at least nine children. The family moved north into Morris County, to Long Hill above the New Providence church, and her mother died in 1794, when Sally was seventeen.
She married William Wright, and their daughter Susannah was born on 5 March 1800. In 1808 the Wrights left New Jersey for Butler County, Ohio, where her brother Samuel's family was also settling. The 1899 Morris County history remembers her in one line, as the daughter who "married William Wright and removed to the west."
In October 1828 the family moved again, by wagon, to La Grange Prairie in Michigan Territory. The county history of 1882 names her in the same breath as her husband: William R. Wright and his wife Sarah Baldwin, from Butler County, Ohio, who had come there from New Jersey. She kept the household through the first winter at La Grange, when the family lived on corn meal and potatoes and the stock lived on tree bark. She outlived her husband by eighteen years.
Children
Susannah Wright (1800-1890)
Sources
History of Cass County, Michigan (1882), in the chapter on La Grange township. 'In the month of October, the Wright family arrived, and located on Section 21, where Stephen D. Wright now lives; and about the same time came Eli P. Bonnell and his wife (Elizabeth Wright). William R. Wright and his wife Sarah (Baldwin) were from Butler County, Ohio, and had come there in 1808, from New Jersey. They came across the country from Southwestern Ohio in wagons, and had a dreary ride ... After leaving Fort Wayne, Ind., they saw no human beings, until they arrived at Edwardsburg; but encamped nights in the most favorable places they could find in the dreary woods. On arriving at their destination, they bought two acres of standing corn from Abraham Loux, and this was all they had with which to feed five horses and twelve head of cattle they had brought with them.' The same chapter records that they cut hackberry trees and stripped the inner bark to feed the stock through the winter, that the family lived on corn meal and potatoes, that Squire William R. Wright married the first couple wedded in the township in 1829, and that the Cassopolis plat was acknowledged before him on 19 November 1831. Of a neighbour it adds that Isaac Shurte 'emigrated to Butler County, Ohio, where he married Miss Mary Wright,' born in New Jersey 11 June 1801.
The Baldwin Genealogy from 1500 to 1881, by Charles Candee Baldwin (Cleveland, 1881), pages 520 to 521 and the entry for Ezekiel Baldwin (archive.org baldwingenealogy00bald).
Biographical and Genealogical History of Morris County, New Jersey (New York and Chicago, 1899), sketch of Samuel Baldwin of Chatham, page 406 (archive.org biographicalgene00unse).
History of Cass County, Michigan (1882), chapter on La Grange township; The Baldwin Genealogy from 1500 to 1881, by Charles Candee Baldwin (Cleveland, 1881), pages 520 to 521 and the entry for Ezekiel Baldwin (archive.org baldwingenealogy00bald); Biographical and Genealogical History of Morris County, New Jersey (New York and Chicago, 1899), sketch of Samuel Baldwin of Chatham, page 406 (archive.org biographicalgene00unse).
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Cite: Heirology, "Sarah Baldwin (1777-1868)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/sarah-baldwin-1777-1868-58ca4c.