“Liberty to remove with her sd. family to her husband”

Ideally I would have quoted today’s documents earlier in this series about Sarah and John Cochran, but I hadn’t find them yet.

As described back here, the Cochrans were separated in 1775, forced to communicate by letters between independent Londonderry, New Hampshire, and British-held Long Island, New York.

In early 1777 one of those letters was intercepted alongside a letter from John’s patron, royal governor John Wentworth. Gov. Jonathan Trumbull of Connecticut sent copies to the New Hampshire government and to Gen. George Washington, and an extract was printed in the New-Hampshire Gazette in April.

About a year later, Sarah Cochran gave up trying to stay. She petitioned the New Hampshire government:

To the honble The Committee of Safety for said State now sitting at Exeter — The Petition of Sarah Cochran, of Portsmouth in the County and State aforesaid humbly sheweth that your Petitioner’s husband John Cochran lately of said Portsmouth has for several years past been absent from his family and is now at Long Island without the least prospect of being likely to return to this State —

and your Petitioner having a large family which she finds extremely difficult to support in the absence of her said husband and as he has frequently written to her to come with her family to him —

your Petitioner humbly prays your honors wd grant her liberty to remove with her sd. family to her husband for which favour your petitioner as in duty bound, will ever pray —

Portsmouth April 23d 1778.

Your Petitioner further begs that your honors would grant her liberty to carry her household furniture with her

Five days later, the committee granted Sarah Cochran and her children to go to New York “after having advertized her Departure three weeks Successively in the New Hampr. Gazette.” State leaders didn’t want her to run out on any creditors.

On 27 October, this notice appeared in that newspaper:

The Subscriber by Permission
Of the Committee of Safety for the State of New Hampshire, being about to depart the same, gives this Notice thereof, That all Persons who have Accounts open with her Husband John Cockrin, lately of Portsmouth, may within three Weeks from this Date, appear and settle the same.

Oct, 27, Sarah Cockrin.

That spelling of the family name meant it took me forever to find this ad.

Together these sources suggest that Sarah Cochran and her children traveled from New Hampshire to New York late in 1778. Thus, when the New Hampshire legislature confiscated John Cochran’s property in June 1779, it didn’t have to worry about resistance from his wife.

TOMORROW: Back to that property.