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In 1796, Grandpa Benjamin Smith referred in his will to his daughter, our Grandma Rebecca Smith, as the wife of Daniel Hurd. Rebecca lived to see all their daughters grown up, but Grandpa Daniel seems to have remarried in his sixties, with half a dozen years left to live.
Or so we must conclude from a very peculiar gravestone in the Sandisfield Center Cemetery, close to the resting places of our Smiths (Rebecca’s folks) but a good six miles from Beech Plain, where Daniel and Rebecca lie. Our step-grandma “Frelove” (Kibbe Smith) Hurd (already the widow of Grandpa Benjamin Smith’s son Joshua) seems to have been Daniel’s junior by only seven years or so, but she outlived him by a quarter-century. And when she died, she (or somebody) apparently wanted her to be remembered as his “relict,” or widow.

Did Grandpa Daniel leave his second spouse a wealthy woman? Not if I’m reading his probate documents1 correctly. They didn’t waste much time: he died 14 March 1814; the court sat 5 April and assigned administration of his estate to lawyer Roderick Norton of neighboring Otis. No mention of a will, nor of a widow. Norton noted for the record that in his opinion Daniel Hurd’s assets wouldn’t pay his debts. The court gave the lawyers six months to run an inventory, to receive claims, and to report back.
1Probate records, 1761-1917 Massachusetts Probate Court, Berkshire County, Vol. 18 Page 235 1813-1815 [FHL 876296]

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