Monday is for Mothers: Love Palmer (1717-1796)

My paternal fifth great grandmother Love Palmer was baptized in the First Congregational Church in Stonington, Connecticut, on June 2, 1717. When she was actually born depends on which source you refer to, but it was mostly likely in March of that year.

[Stonington, CT: First Congregational Church Records, 1674-1874. (Online Database. AmericanAncestors.org, New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2008), Originally published as: History of the First Congregational Church, Stonington, Conn., 1674-1874 with the Report of the Bi-centennial Proceedings, June 3, 1874. Richard A. Wheeler, T. A. David and Co., Norwich, CT, 1875.]

On December 23, 1736, she married Jonathan Shepard in North Stonington.

[Ancestry.com. Early Connecticut Marriages [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012.

Original data: Bailey, Frederic W. Early Connecticut Marriages as Found on Ancient Church Records Prior to 1800. Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1997.]

In October of 1758 their tenth child, a daughter also named Love, was born to the couple and that's the end of the records we've found for Love Palmer Shepard.

Some accounts say that Jonathan and Love divorced around 1765 but I haven't found anything to either confirm or refute that assertion. In New England, divorce was a civil, not religious, matter and most common in Connecticut and Massachusetts. So it's not as unlikely as if these ancestors were living in Virginia or South Carolina.

Those same accounts declare that Love Palmer Shepard was married a second time to a man with the surname Hearick (given name unknown) and died in Alstead in Cheshire County, New Hampshire, on July 23, 1796. Once again, there's no documentary evidence to support these claims. There's certainly a gravestone in Alstead Center Cemetery with the name Love Hearick on it and many of Love and Jonathan's children settled in Alstead, but is this really the grave of my fifth great grandmother or did she die in Connecticut around 1765?

[Source: Find A Grave Memorial# 38144881; Photo by Kristin Jones (#47028934)]

Jonathan Shepard and Mary Underwood were married in Tolland County, Connecticut, on January 31, 1765, and by the first U.S. Census in 1790 was living in Vermont, where he died on March 26, 1798.


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