Nancy Trumbull (1792-1852)
By Freda Trumbull (1894-1990)
born February 14, 1792
died October 10, 1852
Very little is known about the second daughter in the Robert Trumbull family. Nancy was born on February 14, 1792. Since she never married, it is likely that she remained in her father’s house until his death in 1840.
There is no record of her being a member of her brother James’ household when he moved to Canada in the spring of that same year. By that time she could have become a member of her brother John’s family. John also moved to Canada probably in the same area into which his brother had settled as he is also mentioned in some of Aunt Penelope’s memoirs.
When the two brothers moved to Ohio, Nancy came with them and lived in turn with each one, including the younger brother Robert, who taught for a time in the Ladie’s Seminary, located in the village of Northwood.
A grand-niece relates that many stories were told concerning Aunt Nancy – one recalled the sad fact that she was a morphine addict.
Since drug addiction is in such bad repute, in all fairness to Aunt Nancy, it should be explained that doctors, whose medical knowledge was decidedly limited, even in the 19th Century, distributed morphine as medicine, rather liberally, to quiet pain. Soon, the patient was “hooked” and the only remedy was more morphine.
When Aunt Nancy’s supply of medicine was depleted, a brother or a nephew saddled his horse and rode off to town to purchase a new supply. If he was detained for any length of time, those in charge of Aunt Nancy feared she would die, so great was her misery.
She died in the home of her brother John in 1852, a few years after the Trumbulls had come into the Northwood community. Her grave is in the Northwood cemetery near the graves of her two brothers, Robert and James.
(When Susan Trumbull visited us in 1983 she had a copy of the marriage license (?) of Nancy aged 11 years to a boy who lived about 50 or 60 miles away farther south in Vermont. Aunt Annie never knew of this “scandal”. It is doubtful that Nancy never lived with him.)