Esther Sumner Damon

Esther was born in Bridgewater, Vermont.[2] The family had eight or nine children.[1] Esther's father was killed by a falling tree when she was eight years old.[1][2] Esther attended school during the winter and worked during the summers to help support her family.[2] At the age of seventeen, Esther became a school teacher in Plymouth.[2]

Esther Sumner married Noah D. Damon on September 6, 1835, in Bridgewater, when she was 21 and he was 75.[2] The couple had met two weeks prior.[2]

Noah Damon enlisted in the Continental Army on April 19, 1775, where he served under the rank of Private with the Massachusetts Troops[2] He was intermittently enlisted over the next five years.[1] Noah applied for a war pension, as a resident of Plainfield, New Hampshire on November 13, 1848.[3]

Noah was penniless, though Esther may have thought he was a hardworking landowner.[1] Esther supported him for three years before financial necessity forced him to move in with his daughter in New Hampshire.[2]

Esther supported herself by sewing and nursing.[2] She also leased a farm near Reading.[1]

After Noah's death in 1853, Esther applied for and received his pension from October 1855. The pension was increased to $24 a month by the United States Congress on February 28, 1905.[4]

Towards the end of her life, Esther received additional financial support from the Daughters of the American Revolution.[2]

Esther died on November 11, 1906, aged 92, and was buried at Plymouth Notch Cemetery in Plymouth, Vermont.[5] The gravestone was paid for by the Daughters of the American Revolution.[6]