Sarah Packard Wendell
by
Stefan Bielinski


In 1795, twenty-three-year-old Sarah Packard became the wife of sixty-one-year-old miller and property holder Philip Wendell. The forty year difference between marriage partners is unmatched in early Albany history. Sarah gave birth to ten Wendell children before her husband died in 1808. That family is represented by the nine people listed in her household on the census of 1810.

Sarah was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts in 1772. She was the daughter of house carpenter Isaac Packard and his wife Eunice Rawson. By 1790, these Packards had relocated to Albany and were living near Wendell's home in the first ward. Philip Wendell was actually older than his future father-in-law!

By the terms of Philip Wendell's will, the widow continued to live in the family home at 112 State Street. By the 1820s, her son, Philip Wendell had taken over as the head of their household.

Widow Sarah Wendell died in April 1830 at the age of fifty-eight and was buried from the Albany Dutch church.

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notes



the people of colonial Albany Sources: The life of Sarah Packard Wendell is CAP biography number 955. This profile is derived chiefly from family and community-based resources. Chief among the family resources is "Family Records of Isaac Packard of Albany," contributed by Robert F. Gibson III and published in NYGBR 127:1 (January 1996), pp. 16-21.



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first posted: 04/30/03; last revised 6/4/03