1679, was also her son, and that Rachel died at, or near, date of his birth. Six months after the birth of Daniel, when William was probably left with these young children, we find William buying a horse of Samuel Martin of Wethersfield, and I believe it was about this time he married Hannah Hosmer, widow of Josiah Willard of Wethersfield.
Searches in Wethersfield yeilded the following:
Feb. 18, 1661. (Wethersfield Land Rec., Vol. II., pp. 44-45).
"Samuel Martin and Phoebe his wife, sold three acres of home lot to Josiah Willard."
There is another good reason for figuring Daniel was not a son of Hannah Hosmer.
In 1889, a group of children, including myself, and elder sister, were playing on the Old New Haven Green, by the old State House, and later wandered down amongst the very old tombstones close to Centre Church. Suddenly a friend exclaimed: "Look, here is a Maltby." It was a small gray slate stone, heavy in moss; my sister came up and said, "Why, it's two hundred years old!" Then on a closer examination, she said, "I was wrong, it's two hundred and ten years old." We could make out "Mrs." - and then a fairly long name, not a short name like Mary, and then alas, the spelling Maltbei (or Maltbie), I forget which. We went home and told my father and a few days later we drove down and I showed him the stone. He took one look, went back to the carriage and said to Mother: "Not our family, it's spelt differently."
In spite of this discouragement--I was only twelve years old, I went back alone and tried to copy it.
For years I never thought of it, but returning from Europe in 1897, I made a special errand to the Old Green to copy the Stone. Alas, in our two years abroad, all the stones had been moved to the Grove Street Cemetery--and that particular stone was not there! Undoubtedly the cracked slate had not stood the work of excavating, and the workmen had tossed it out. I firmly believe that this was the stone of William Maltby's first wife Rachel, and on figuring back, I found the date of her death must have been in the year of 1679. None of us had read the month.
It could not have been the stone of William Maltby's mother, Mary, as we all saw it was a longer name. As William Maltby's gravestone at Branford, 1710, has the spelling "Maltbei" it is very evident this stone was a Maltby stone. The child who discovered it was only twelve, but she at once said, "Here is a Maltby." My sister, who was fifteen, also considered the name was Maltby.
Regarding Hannah Hosmer. She married in 1657 Josiah Willard of Wethersfield. They had eight children. Josiah Willard died in 1674, so, insofar as dates go, it would be possible for her to have been mother of Elizabeth, b. 1676, and Daniel, b. 1679.
The first four children of William Maltby were: Jane, b. 1669, John, b. 1670, Mary, b. 1672, and William, b. 1673. I think it is usual to find that the younger children are born with an interval of two or three years, hence Elizabeth, three years after William, and Daniel, three years after Elizabeth. Were it not for the fact that Elizabeth names her eldest child Rachel, it might seem that Hannah (Hosmer) Willard were mother of Elizabeth and Daniel.
Thorough research has brought me record of Hannah as wife of William Maltby earlier that "27 Feb. 1685 where her father, Thomas Hosmer of Hartford, gives to his "Daughter Hannah Malby # 18, which is the
