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MARY WOOLVERTON BRAY<br />
She was 15 and he was 20 when Mary Woolverton<br />
married Daniel Bray at Ringoes in 1772. Her first home<br />
was a log house he built in Kingwood. When the<br />
Revolutionary War broke out, she was expecting their<br />
second child; he was away on various "tours" of military<br />
duty. Like so many of her contemporaries, Mary<br />
Woolverton Bray was only a teenager with a husband<br />
who went to war for a cause that proved to be just. She<br />
bore his children -- 13 of them, and took care of the farm<br />
chores while he fought, no doubt fearing possible<br />
reprisals from bands of marauding Redcoats or Loyalists.<br />
After the war, Daniel built her a larger stone house<br />
down the road in Kingwood. In her petition for a widow's<br />
pension in 1838, she listed his "tours" in Princeton,<br />
Paramus, Woodbridge, <strong>New</strong> Brunswick and Monmouth.<br />
But it was that icy Christmas night when her young husband retrieved the boats he had<br />
hidden for George Washington's fabled crossing of the Delaware River that must have<br />
strained her nerve and character to the fullest.<br />
She lived until 1840 and is buried next to her husband in the Rosemont Cemetery.<br />
Mary Woolverton Bray personifies the strong character of the women whose husbands<br />
left home to fight for liberty. The women took care of the children, the farm, the crops<br />
and the animals, and maintained great courage in the face of uncertainty.<br />
They too were heroes.<br />
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