When we hear the term spinster we think Miss Havisham: the older and unmarried woman. However, in colonial records spinster does not necessarily mean unmarried or never married. On 9 October 1762, William Wallis of Greenland, New Hampshire, yeoman for and in consideration "of the love and natural affection that I have and do bear towards my daughter Jane Moses of Epsom in said province, Spinster" have given and granted to her a certain parcel of land in Epsom containing 30 acres. William Wallis signs by mark and the deed is recorded on 2 March 1785. [Rockingham County Deeds 119:15].
Jane Moses was the Jane Wallis who married as his second wife, Mark Moses at Portsmouth on 12 March 1735/36. [Births, Marriages, and Deaths in Portsmouth, NH, NEHGR 25 (1871):122.] Mark Moses was alive at the time of this deed and died at Epsom on 2 February 1789 [Genealogical Dictionary of Me. and N.H., p. 496]. This is clearly a case where spinster means older woman. It was an anomaly for a woman to be given property in her own right and many deeds of this time period would actually have a father giving the land to the husband and daughter. Why William Wallis chose this method of conveyance is a mystery.
There's no denying this is who she is. She is called Jane Moses in the will of her father in 1772. [Rockingham County Probate #3944, Helen F. Evans, Abstracts of the Probate Records of Rockingham County, N.H. 1771-1799 (Batimore, Md.: Heritage Books, 2000) II:983.] She cannot be the Jane Moses Wallis baptized at Epsom on 1 January 1769 daughter of William, even as an adult, since Simeon Wallis is baptized at the same time, indicating they were both children [and of a different William].
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