Individual Details
Martha Trotter
(1753 - 29 Jul 1803)
Events
Families
Spouse | Zebulon Potts (1746 - ) |
Child | Ann Potts (Putts) (1772 - ) |
Child | Joseph Potts (Putts) (1774 - ) |
Child | Esther Potts (Putts) (1777 - 1777) |
Child | Hannah Potts (Putts) (1778 - ) |
Child | Alice Potts (Putts) (1780 - ) |
Child | Esther Potts (1782 - 1875) |
Child | Martha Potts (Putts) (1785 - ) |
Child | William Potts (Putts) (1787 - ) |
Child | Robert Tower Potts (Putts) (1790 - ) |
Child | Daniel T. Potts (Putts) (1794 - ) |
Father | Joseph Trotter ( - 1761) |
Mother | Ann Bevan ( - ) |
Notes
Birth
“I have often heard his oldest daughter, Ann, tell of the stirring times during the British occupancy of Philadelphia; how they had their valuables hidden in a spring house across the river in Spring Mill hills; how, when her mother went for some things that were hidden and called to a man to ferry her across in the canoe, he telling her that the British were at Barren Hill; how she ran home and made up a lot of pies and put them in the oven; had the boy drive the cattle into the woods, and then waited for the British. They duly arrived, led by a neighbor, whom they had compelled to pilot them under penalty of death. Just as they arrived the man came in with the team. She ran and told him to claim the horses as his. He succeeded in begging off the shafter, the balance they took. When they arrived she met them with her first-born daughter, Ann, in her. arms. She told them she hoped they would not harm a defenceless woman with a babe in her arms. They told her they were not warring against women and wanted to know where the "damn rebel" was. She told them she did not know of any such person. If they meant her husband he was not at home. They asked her if she had anything to eat. She told them she had pies in the oven but that they were not quite ready to draw, so they waited until they were baked. She treated them and they left without harming her. She was fearful they might burn the buildings and that was the reason she tried winning their hearts by putting pies down their throats.“Her daughter, Ann Thomas, who lived at the west end of Sixth avenue, Conshohocken (the house is still there), has told me how her mother went to market in Philadelphia on horseback with the butter hampers swung across the horse's back. We can hardly realize the brave hearts of the women of those times, when there were only a few houses in Conshohocken and nearly all woods from there to Philadelphia. She was a remarkable woman. Every child named a daughter after mother, so that Martha became a family name. Martha Potts Mather, the mother of Isaac Mather, of Jenkintown, who celebrated his one hundredth birthday October 28th, was a daughter.”