Polly Sargeant Buswell was my great-great grandmother.

She lived in Rockingham County, New Hampshire, in the 1800s. Polly was what she preferred to be called, tho’ she was named Mary.

Polly was in school at Pembroke Academy in the early 1820s, and probably graduated c. 1825. She married Jacob Buswell on 11 December, 1827.

I don’t think she ever came to Dakota Territory, but her son did. He was James Murdock Buswell, my mom’s grandfather, who came “out West” after serving in the Civil War.

1827 Jan. 11th, for my time & trouble for keeping accounts & settling debts… $2.50

Recently, I have found archival family items about her, the most recent being a list of expenditures from 1818 to 1827. (At that time, young women were not allowed to manage their own money; for some, their property went as dowery from their father to their husband, and was never theirs.) In this document, the man who kept her funds is itemizing and settling the account.

Here’s a PDF of the scan I made. It’s fairly high resolution, so you should be able to zoom in quite a bit to make it easier to read. (If you download, file size is about 25 megs).

pollySdebts1818