Elizabeth Pitkin Porter

Elizabeth Pitkin Porter's wedding dress

Elizabeth Pitkin was born in 1719. She was the daughter of Nathaniel Pitkin of Hartford. In 1743, Elizabeth married Moses Porter and moved up the Connecticut River to join him in Hadley. The couple apparently lived within the town stockade, where Moses is said to have built a small house for them near his parent's home. In 1747, at the age of 28, Elizabeth Porter gave birth to a baby girl, also named Elizabeth.

Family stories suggest that Elizabeth became unhappy with life in the crowded Hadley stockade and persuaded her husband to move north and build a new house on "Forty Acres." The family moved in 1752, but Elizabeth supposedly remained unsatisfied, now finding herself far from town.

In 1755, her husband went to fight in the French and Indian War as Captain of a town regiment. Letters to Moses at this time tell of her fears that he would not return, and on September 8, 1755, those fears came true. Elizabeth was left alone with her eight-year-old daughter on their large farm, distant from town. They spent the winter with family in Hadley, discussing whether to return to the farm in the spring. Ultimately, Elizabeth chose to do so and hired a kinsman named Worthington to manage the farm. In 1768 she hired Charles Phelps Jr. as a farm manager and a few years later Charles married her daughter. Elizabeth and Charles Phelps took charge of running the farm, but Elizabeth Pitkin Porter continued to live in the house until her death.

Widow Porter never remarried, despite having been a wealthy woman of 36 years old when Moses died. It is said that she never recovered from the loss of her husband, and there is some evidence that she developed an addiction to laudanum that despite the efforts of her daughter and various doctors she was never able to shake. In 1798, Elizabeth passed away at the age of 89.