Sarah Cole

“mary Cole and Sarah Cole Daughters of Joseph and Sarah Cole was born at Eastham on ye 9th day of September 1738” (record). The intention of “John HolderShaw & Sarah Cole,” both of Eastham, was entered on 4 April 1760, and they married that December. John joined the Eastham church in 1773, served as a corporal and sergeant in 1775-76, and about 1787-90 took the family to Bald Hill Cove, Frankfort, on the Penobscot, where they dropped “Holder” and were called Shaw. He died there before May 1807, when “widow Sarah (X) Shaw” asked for an administrator of his estate. Two of their daughters, Hope and Delilah, married the Ellingwood brothers Richard and Ralph.

Through her mother she descends from Nathaniel Bassett of Yarmouth, and through her father from the Coles of Eastham and, it is believed, from Stephen Hopkins of the Mayflower by way of Ruth Snow (research/ellingwood/Ellingwood_Cape_Cod.md).

That the Sarah Cole who married John Holdershaw is this Sarah, born 1738, is Ruth Gray’s identification (probable): Hope’s brother and sister Joseph and Mary carry the names of this Sarah’s father and twin, and the families intermarried again on the Penobscot (“Rachel Cole m Joseph Holdershaw Nov 25 1790” at Orrington). The marriage is recorded on John Holdershaw’s page.

Open questions

• Her father’s probate (Barnstable, 1795), or any Eastham record naming Sarah Holdershaw or Shaw as his daughter, would prove the identification.