Notes for: Robert FOSGATE

There is an incompatability between the marriage date of Robert Fosgate and the birth of the eldest child Lucy. It is possible that the marriage year for Robert could be incorrect.
For the sake of the purist who may be looking at this record, let us examine the relative dates of the marriage of Robert and hannah Sawyer and the birth of their elsest child, Lucy. The Vital Records of Bolton in the record of the marriage of Robert Fosgate and Hannah Sawyer and in the contra record of the marriage of Hannah Sawyer and Robert Fosgate sets forth the date as Dec 25, 1805. It is possible that there was an error in transcription to the printed record and that the year should have been 1803 or 1804.
There can be little doubt, however, that the birthdate of their oldest child, Lucy, was 24 Oct 1805 as evidenced by the following:
1. This is the date in the birth record at the NH Department of Vital Statistics.
2. Lucy Fosgate married Moses Thayer. The 1850 census of Winchester, enumerated August 1850, gives the age of Mrs Moses Thayer as 44 years. The 1860 census gives her age as 54 years. This age is compatible with the date of birth as stated in the town records. Lucy's widowed mother, Hannah Fosgate, was living in the Thayer household in 1850, 1860 and 1870.
3. The death record of Lucy Fosgate Thayer (NHVS) says that she died in Winchester in 1881 at age 76. Just for the record, her husband Moses Thayer died in Winchester in 1865 at the age of 73. Both are buried in Winchester.
So, either the Bolton records are incorrect or it was an early instance of a live-in girl friend. The former is preferred as the Sawyers seem to have been people who would frown on such a relationship.