Elizabeth Wignall, Ingraham

Elizabeth Wignall, Ingraham is identified in the supplied family line as an ancestor in Barbara’s family. However, the supplied research notes state that Richard Ingram’s first wife is unknown and that the claim she was Elizabeth Wignall was published without documentation. Her reported dates, 1604–16 September 1668, therefore require verification.

Elizabeth Wignall, Ingraham is listed in the supplied relationship path as the mother of Elizabeth Ingraham and as the 10th great-grandmother in Barbara’s family branch. She is reported to have lived from 1604 to 16 September 1668.

The supplied notes associate her with Richard Ingram, who was born about 1600 and later lived in Massachusetts. Richard’s children are said to have included Elizabeth, born in 1628; Jared, born in 1635; Abigail, born in 1638; and John, born in 1642. Richard and his family reportedly emigrated to Massachusetts Bay between 1638 and 1642, settled at Rehoboth, and later moved to Northampton.

The identification of Richard Ingram’s first wife as Elizabeth Wignall is uncertain. The notes state that nothing is known about Richard’s first wife and that an account published by Raymon Meyers Tingley in 1935, which named Elizabeth Wignall as Richard’s wife and daughter of Alexander Wignall, was undocumented. New England Marriages Prior to 1700 reportedly records Richard Ingram’s two marriages but questions the name of his first wife and the date and place of that marriage.

Richard Ingram married Joan Rockwell Baker in 1668. He died in August 1683 at Northampton, and his widow died a month later. These later events belong to Richard’s life and do not establish the identity, death date, or parentage of his first wife.

Historical context

The Ingram family described in the notes was part of the migration from England to Massachusetts Bay in the mid-seventeenth century. Richard Ingram was a proprietor at Rehoboth in 1645 and later lived at Northampton. The notes also report that he contributed to the general subscription supporting Harvard College in 1672–1673.

Sources & research

New England Marriages Prior to 1700, by Clarence Almon Torrey.
Historic Homes and Institutions and Genealogical and Personal Memoirs of Massachusetts, Vol. 1, p. 171, by Ellery Bicknell Crane.
U.S., New England Marriages Prior to 1700.
The Great Migration Begins, Immigrants to New England, 1620–1633, edited by Robert Charles Anderson (NEHGS, Boston, 1995).
Tingley-Meyers 441, cited in The Great Migration Begins in reference to Raymon Meyers Tingley’s 1935 account of Alexander Wignall.