remarriages were frequent, both on the part of the men and the women.
Colonel Thomas Swann of Surry County had five wives as did Major Joseph
Croshaw of York County. Women frequently married three or four times.
Upon the decease of their husbands, they often found themselves in
possession of large isolated plantations. Often, there were indentured
white servants, some negroes, and generally a number of children under
age. How to manage alone, and thus encumbered, was the problem, and they
solved it frequently by marrying shortly a neighbor. He, probably a
widower, took charge of the first husband's holdings, settled the
involved estate, and gave much needed protection to the woman in a
sparsely settled area. This was the case with Mrs. Elizabeth Hansford of
York County, who, at the death of her husband, faced the task of
managing a plantation, seeing to cultivation of the land, disposing of
his maritime interests, and at the same time, seeing to the interests of
seven children. Overwhelmed with possessions, and already having her
hands full with her domestic affairs, she knew not where to turn for a
solution except to a second husband. Ere long, she married the York
County merchant Edward Lockey, who at once began the settlement of her
late husband's estate, entering an inventory in York County Court
records, 1667.

In the very early period of the colony, the grief of the widow was of
short duration, for a suitor usually stood at her doorstep almost as the
funeral procession ended. The most generally known, of such incidents,
was the pursuit of Cicely Jordan, upon the death of her husband Samuel.
Within two days Reverend Greville Pooley pressed his suit. The widow
tentatively agreeing, but evidently pregnant with the unborn child of
her deceased husband, insisted that she would marry no man until she was
"delivered." In the meantime, William Farrar, named administrator of her
deceased husband's estate, also pressed his suit and gained favor;
whereupon, the cleric entered in the Court a suit for breach of promise.
The contest over the widow finally was referred to the authorities in
London, who declined to pass upon "so delicate a matter." Mr. Pooley,
probably then finding his cause hopeless, withdrew his case in Court,
and by 1625, the charming widow had married William Farrar.

Custom frowned upon the ladies of the seventeenth century going into
Court. While the law required that they sign or give assent to their
husb