Jane Valentine (1724-1763)

Sometimes a person in your tree exemplifies what you don’t know about someone. The basics just aren’t enough to understand that person’s life.  My sixth great-grandmother Jane Valentine is such a person for me.  I know vitals but very little more about her or her life.

She was born on the 27th of January 1724, probably in Yonkers, Westchester County, New York, although she may have been born in Yorktown Heights, also in Westchester County.  Her parents were Matthias and Anna (Ryche) Valentine. 

Queen Anne Flag First “national flag” of the colonies Courtesy: Flags Unlimited

In 1742 she married Reuben Fowler in Scarsdale, Westchester County, New York. 

Various other people’s trees indicate all kinds of things, one person’s tree says she had 17 children, one after she died. Another says she had 21, but there are clearly duplicates of children with the same name and overlapping lives. So I really don’t know how many children she had. I am sure of two, Phoebe and Reuben.  Reuben (Junior) was born to Jane in 1753 at Yorktown, Westchester County, New York, and is my fifth great-grandfather.  

She died in 1763, apparently in Eastchester, Bronx, New York, which is today a neighborhood in northeast Bronx, not to be confused with Eastchester town in Westchester County.  Although, I suspect she may have died Eastchester town and my source got the wrong place as everything else about her life was in Westchester County.  

So, I have the vitals, born 1724, married 1742, Died 1763, but not much else. Her life is clearly one that I need to do much more research on.

I honor and remember Jane Valentine on this, the 289th anniversary of her birth.