Adam Mott

"Adam Mott built the earlier part of this low-beamed, two-story, shingled house (shown above) still standing a few hundred yards from the shore, and there his children were born and there he died, leaving a well stock farm of nearly six hundred acres of land.

"He married when he was nearly 60 years old, at the meeting house at Westbury. His wife, Phebe Willets, was already for several years a Minister in the Society of Friends. Adam died just seven years after this marriage leaving a will dated Nov 3, 1738 and probated Feb 28, 1738/9.

"His will leaves a competence to his widow, and a handsome dowry for a farmer's daughter to his eldest child Elizabeth, and a large farm with a farmer's outfit to each of his two sons." (*)

"Thoughtful to keep the young children with their mother, and on their place, he directed that she should have the use of his houses and of his lands 'until my son Stephen cometh to be twenty-one years of age, for the bringing up and maintaining of my children, and giving them good school learning, that is English fit for country business.' And then foreseeing the probability that after his death, the mother of his children might take another husband, he went on to direct that -- 'If my wife should marry again before my children come of age, then my will is that she may live with her husband on the farm till they are of age, and she then have nothing to do with it longer' -- and then he adds a precaution -- 'If a husband come to live with her there, they shall not cut any wood to sell of the farm nor clear any land, -- but if my wife shall remain a widow after my children come of age, she shall have equal third part of all my housing and land during her widowhood..' " (*)

Phebe did remarry four years later and when her youngest child came of age, she and her husband moved off to his farm.

All three children married children of Samuel Willis and Mary Fry

(*) Adam and Anne Mott by Thomas C. Cornell