A Short Life of Loss - Mary (Branch) Read (1685-1718)
Hannah Lincoln's eldest
Loss is something you get used to looking past when writing about vital records. Death is just a point on a timeline when you’re looking at people who have been gone decades, let alone hundreds of years. But sometimes, the lack of life between the birth and death dates really stands out. Especially when it is one sibling after another.
This was the case with the family of Mary (Branch) Read, the eldest child of Hannah Lincoln, the sister of my 8x-great-grandfather in my Lincoln lineage.
Mary Branch was born June 28, 1685, in Preston, Connecticut, to Peter Branch (1659-1713) and Hannah Lincoln (1663-1731). She married John Read (or Reed, Reid) (~1685–1735) March 14, 1711, in Windham, Connecticut.
In seven years they had five children, only two of whom potentially survived.
1. Nathaniel Read born March 2 and died March 12, 1712, in Windham, Connecticut.
2. Mary Read born August 7, 1713, in Windham, Connecticut. Many believe she is the Mary Reid who married Samuel Massey July 23, 1735, in Salem, Massachusetts.
3. Elizabeth Read born September 18, 1715, in Windham, Connecticut.
4. John Read born January 10, 1716/7, and died in November 1717 in Windham, Connecticut.
5. Nathan Read born September 1 and died November 11, 1718, in Windham, Connecticut.
Mary died October 8, 1718, in Windham. She wasn’t even 35.
Her husband remarried in 1721 to Hannah Palmer (d. 1755) and went on to have more children. He died in 1735.
See also: Emily Wilder Leavitt. Palmer groups: John Melvin of Charlestown and Concord, Mass., and his descendants. David Clapp & Son: Boston, 1901–5. p. 66.