Elizabeth Cogswell

Wife of John Cogswell, with whom she came from Westbury, Wiltshire, with eight children on the Angel Gabriel, wrecked at Pemaquid in August 1635 (Jameson). The Westbury register records her marriage, “Johes Cogswell et Elizabeth Thomson,” 10 Sept 1615 (transcribed on WikiTree Cogswell-72); Jameson makes her a daughter of Rev. William Thompson, vicar of Westbury from 1603 to 1623, and his wife Phillis.

When her husband died without a will, the court in March 1670 gave her the administration, “she to enjoy the whole estate during her life.” The same day her grandson Samuel declared he “was willing to dwell with his grandmother Cogswell” until he turned twenty-one (Probate Records of Essex County 2:180-181).

In a paper filed in the 1676 lawsuit she certified that she and her husband had received £10 from their son John “for nursing and maintaining his young child which he put to them in 1652 before their said son went to England.” John died at sea on the way back in 1653 (Essex Quarterly Courts 6:153; Jameson p. 13). Her daughters Abigail Clarke and Sarah Tuttle testified in June 1676 that her dying daughter-in-law had given her “one gold ring, a silver spoon, a small silver heart and a small bundle of childbed linen” for the grandchildren, and that she delivered them all “but the silver spoon which was lost, she knew not how nor where” (6:154-155).