Elizabeth Wadsworth

Biography

https://www.hwlongfellow.org/family_peleg.shtml

In 1784 Peleg and Elizabeth Bartlett Wadsworth, the poet's maternal grandparents, arrived in Falmouth, Maine, which was soon to be renamed Portland. Falmouth had been bombarded and burned by the British in 1775, but was being rebuilt from the ruins. Peleg, commanding general of American forces in Massachusetts's District of Maine during the war, had been wounded, taken prisoner, escaped, and continued the fight against British encroachment on the northeastern frontier. After the war, he, like so many other veterans, saw opportunity for a new, prosperous life in Maine. In 1785 he began building in the promising seaport. The house was completed in 1786. Peleg and Elizabeth moved to the new house with their six children: Charles, Zilpah (mother of the poet), Elizabeth, John, Lucia, and Henry (called Harry). Four more Wadsworth children were born there: George, Alexander, Samuel, and Peleg J

While Peleg pursued his political career and business enterprises in Hiram, Elizabeth ran the Portland household, guiding their children into adulthood. By 1797 Charles was married. Zilpah, age nineteen, and Elizabeth (called Eliza), eighteen, were cultured and refined young women whose favorite pastimes (when not helping at home) were reading, writing letters, playing the spinet, and drawing. John, age sixteen, would go on to Harvard College. Lucia, age thirteen, and Harry, twelve, attended school in Portland. The four youngest boys made up the rest of Elizabeth's charges.

Both Peleg and Elizabeth Wadsworth died in Hiram, Elizabeth in 1825 and Peleg four years later.

Family

http://genforum.genealogy.com/wadsworth/messages/452.html

daughter of Nathaniel / Samuel Bartlett

“ her mother's name was Elizabeth Lothrop, not Wetherell, Elizabeth Lothrop was the daughter of Thomas Lothrop and Experience Gorham.”

Peleg Wadsworth(1748-1829)married June 18,1772, Elizabeth Bartlett(-1825),d/o Nathaniel Bartlett, whose descent traces through Ebenezer Bartlett, Ebenezer Bertlett who married Sarah Brewster, d/o Elder William Brewster, to Robert Bartlett(b.16030, arrived at Plymouth 1623 and married, 1628 a d/o Richard Warren, a Mayflower Pilgrim

Children fo Peleg and Elizabeth:

• i. Alexander S. (1774-1775) buried within the defences of Dorchester Heights.
• ii.Charles Lee(1776-1848), sometimes called Captain, an infant in the household when Gen. Wadsworth was captured at Thomaston,started development of the land at Hiram while his father was in Congress.
• iv.Zilpha(1778-1851), married Stephen Longfellow,took up residence in the Wadsworth house on Congress Street, was the mother of the poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
• v.John(1784-1860), the Harvard student to whom the letters were sent, admitted to the bar 1808, an accomplished scholar and linguist.
• vi.Lucia(1783-1864), lived with her sister, Mrs. Longfellow, never married.
• vii.Henry(1785-1804), Called Harry,lieutenant in U.S. Navy at the age of 19. Killed in campaign against Tripoli.
• viii. George(1788-1816)resided at Hiram.
• xi.Alexander Scammell(1790-1851).
• Both he and his brother who died in infancy were named for Alexander Scammell,the college chum of their father. Alexander Scammell was a commodore in the U.S. Navy.
• x.Samuel Bartlett(1791-1874), born in Portland, d. in Eastport,Maine.
• xi.Peleg (1793-1875).general in the militia of Maine, kept a diary revealing facts about the latter years of his father's life, ran the place at Hiram.

  ---

GEDCOM Note

Wadsworth Cemetery, Hiram, Oxford Co. ME Findagrave memorial 10463337

Sacred to the memory of Mrs. Elizabeth Wadsworth, wife of Gen. Peleg Wadsworth, died July 20, 1825. AEt. 72. A woman of eminent piety. Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord. _______________________________

References

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peleg_Wadsworth
• https://www.hwlongfellow.org/family_peleg.shtml
• White, Elizabeth Pearson. John Howland of the Mayflower (Picton Press, Camden, ME, 1990) Vol. 1, Page 294-295. Archive.Org