Old Lyme’s prominent families traditionally used marriage ties to extend their property, wealth, and status. William Ely Coult (1797–1877) ignored that precedent when at age 65 he married the young German woman who worked as his household servant.
Margaret Mather (1787–1866), called “Peggy” by her family and in Lyme’s birth records, moved to Albany when she reached the marriageable age of 21. Just half a year after she became the wife of William Nicoll Sill (1786–1844) and settled into a grand brick mansion house overlooking the Hudson River, her father died in Lyme, leaving each of his nine children a substantial bequest.
The pastel portrait of Abigail Leverett Noyes drawn by itinerant British artist James Martin ca. 1798 lets us picture a young woman from Lyme who moved as a bride to the Hudson River Valley. The marriage contributed one strand to an expanding web of connections linking Albany and Lyme.
