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Margaret Stephens Smith

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(1734-1812)

BIRTH

1734

PLACE

New York

NAME

Margaret Stephens

DEATH

1812

PLACE

Lebanon, Madison County, New York

FAMILY

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MOTHER

William Stephens Smith

(1755-1816)

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HUSBAND

John Smith of New York

(fl. 18th century)

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CHILDREN

Sarah Smith Adams

(1769-1828)

HOMES

RELIGIOUS VIEWS

RELIGION NOT DOCUMENTED

DENOMINATION NOT DOCUMENTED

MEMBERSHIPS

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AWARDS

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Margaret Stephens Smith was the wife of New York merchant John Smith and mother of ten children, including William Stephens and Sarah, called Sally. Abigail Adams’s 1788 letters describe Margaret’s practice of giving her daughters weekly turns managing the household. William married Adams’s daughter Abigail, bringing the families together. The letters support these relationships, while Margaret’s reported 1734–1812 lifespan still needs independent confirmation.

EARLY LIFE

Margaret Smith was born 1734. Surviving structured biographical sources provide limited detail about childhood, education, household routines, or the economic circumstances in which this person grew up. Those matters are therefore not reconstructed here without documentation. The secure information preserved in this entry is the person’s identity and place within a family network connected to individuals represented in HistoryGPS. Such family links are historically useful even when an independent narrative biography has not survived: they help distinguish people with similar names, establish generations, and clarify the kinship networks through which property, education, occupation, political allegiance, and social influence often passed. Birth and parentage records also provide a starting point for understanding the communities in which a person’s early experiences unfolded. A household’s location could shape access to schooling, churches, markets, trades, military service, and extended kin, but no particular experience is attributed to this person without supporting evidence. Likewise, a family name or titled status alone is not treated as proof of wealth, political belief, social standing, or personal opportunity. These cautions are especially important when the surviving record was compiled retrospectively or preserves only dates and relationships. The absence of fuller childhood evidence should not be read as evidence that these experiences were unimportant; it reflects the uneven survival of records, especially for women and for people whose public lives were recorded chiefly through relatives. Additional claims about schooling, upbringing, religion, migration, wealth, or household status have been omitted unless they appear in the consulted external record. Future research in probate files, parish registers, family papers, land records, and contemporary newspapers may permit this early-life account to be expanded with greater specificity.

No distinct public profession or office for Margaret Smith is established by the structured external record used for this entry. The surviving information is primarily genealogical and documents family identity rather than an independently recorded public career. Margaret Smith died 1812. Additional claims about employment, officeholding, military service, or accomplishments have been omitted where the consulted record did not support them.

CAREER

DEATH

Margaret Smith died in 1812, in Lebanon, Madison County, New York. Margaret Stephens Smith was the wife of New York merchant John Smith and mother of ten children, including William Stephens and Sarah, called Sally. Abigail Adams’s 1788 letters describe Margaret’s practice of giving her daughters weekly turns managing the household. William married Adams’s daughter Abigail, bringing the families together. The letters support these relationships, while Margaret’s reported 1734–1812 lifespan still needs independent confirmation. The available account does not establish a medical cause or a dependable sequence of final symptoms and care.

POPULAR BIOGRAPHIES

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