Parents - Stephen /BROWNELL/ and Mary /Coggeshall/

Husband - William Moore /MANLEY/

Abigail was the daughter of Revolutionary War Patriot Stephen Brownell of Rhode Island.

(I found a woman online who had mentioned Abigail and her children. I knew she had 16 children and so i wrote her and this was the reply)eb

Barbara,

Abigail was living in Tiverton, RI when she joined DAR in 1899. She was born April 20, 1813, in Little Compton, RI and died in Tiverton, RI. Vital Records of Westport, Massachusetts to 1850 lists Abigail B. Manley, her husband, and four of her sons in the Beech Grove Cemetery, Section C, Lot 118, in Central Village (Westport) Bristol Co., MA. DAR magazine: 15:235 (Aug. 1899?) states she was the mother of sixteen children – the mother of four pairs of twins; 35:658 (Sept. 1909).

I found Abby and her family listed in the Federal Census records for 1840-1900. On the 1900 census she stated that she was the mother of 16 children, 11 of whom were living. The only child not found on the various census records was their first son, Oliver, who died just before his first birthday.

If the ages in the census records can be believed, the 4 sets of twins were Judith & Mary (born abt 1834), William & Abigail (born abt 1835), Stephen & Daniel (born abt 1840), and Ephraim & Rachel (born abt 1845).
Other children were a 2nd Oliver (b abt 1837), Charles (b abt 1842), Seabury (b abt 1844), Sylvester (b abt 1847), Sarah (b abt 1848), Francis (b abt 1851), and Susan (b abt 1855).

However, there is a published transcription of early vital records from Little Compton, RI, available on the NEHGS web site, that gives a slightly different picture of the children.

1. Oliver Perry b 10 Dec 1831, d 9 Nov 1832
2. Judith Maria b 11 Aug 1833
3. Mary Elizabeth b 11 Aug 1833
4. William Moore b 12 Apr 1835
5. Abigail Niles b 12 Apr 1835
6. Oliver Perry b 11 May 1837
7. Stephen Wright b 24 Oct 1839
8. [unnamed] b 24 Oct 1839
9. Daniel Dwelly b 3 Oct 1841
10. Charles Howland b 14 Mar 1843
11. Seabury Turner b 1 Mar 1844
12. Ephraim Gifford b 1 Mar 1844
13. Rachel E. b 1 Mar 1845
14. Sylvester Cooley b 6 Sep 1845
15. Sarah Rickerson b 11 May 1848
16. Francis Napoleon b 21 Oct 1850
17. Susan A. b 29 Apr 1855

As you can see from this, the sets of twins are different....and one birth date is obviously wrong....#14 Sylvester could not have been born 6 months after #13 Rachel....so the transcriber may have made several errors. Plus this list has one too many children, unless the unnamed child died at birth and Abigail didn't count him/her. (Scans of the original records were not available on line.)

Hope this helps a bit. My interest in her was her DAR association.

Jerri McCoy
DAR Real Daughters Project