e ladies. Sarah Le Baron was not
sixteen years of age when she married William Hazen. Hannah Peabody
had not passed her seventeenth birthday when she married James
Simonds. Elizabeth Peabody was about seventeen when she married James
White and her sister Hephzibeth somewhat younger when she married
Jonathan Leavitt. In most cases the families were large and the "olive
branches" doubtless furnished sufficient occupation for the mothers
to keep them from feeling the loneliness of their situation. James
Simonds had fourteen children. James White and Jonathan Leavitt had
good sized families, but the Hazens undeniably carried off the
palm. Dr. Slafter in his genealogy of the Hazen family says that
William Hazen had sixteen children; possibly he may have omitted
some who died in infancy for Judge Edward Winslow writes on Jan'y
17th, 1793, to a friend at Halifax, "My two annual comforts, a child
and a fit of the gout, return invariably. They came together this
heat and, as Forrest used to say, made me as happy as if the Devil
had me. The boy is a fine fellow--of course--and makes up the number
nine now living. My old friend Mrs. Hazen about the same time
produced her nineteenth!"[89]

[89] The following inscription on the monument of Mrs. Sarah Hazen
was written by her grandson, the late Chief Justice Chipman:

Sacred to the Memory of
MRS. SARAH HAZEN,

Widow of the Honorable William Hazen, Esquire; who was
born in the Province of Massachusetts-Bay on the 22d
February, 1749; and died in the City of St. John on the
3rd April, 1823.

Exemplary for Christian piety and benevolence and the
exercise of every female virtue. She bears to her Grave
the fond recollections of a numerous host of Descendants
and the esteem and respect of the community.

While the presence of young children in their homes may have served to
enliven the situation of Saint John's pioneer settlers it added
greatly to their anxiety and distress in the ensuing war period. More
than this the absence of church and school privileges was becoming a
matter of serious consequence to the little community at Portland
Point and their friends across the harbor. We shall in the next
chapter say something of the religious teachers who endeavored to
promote the spiritual welfare of the inhabitants upon the St. John
river at this period.

CHAPTER X