Notes for: Dorothy M. Willey
DOROTHY M. WILLEY (DOLLY) HEATH
By Betty Gillespie Pollack
Copyright August 2005
Permission to reproduce with credit granted
DOROTHY M. (DOLLY) WILLEY was my great, great, great, great grandmother. She was born in late April or early May 1765 possibly in Barrington NH (then in Stafford Co, now Carroll Co). This date is calculated from her gravestone, which reads that she was 85 years, 3 months of age at death and that she died on July 31, 1850. However her pension settlement papers say she died on July 29, 1850. The Bureau of Vital Records, State of New Hampshire has no record of Dorothy's birth or death. I have a certified report to this effect. Also the Barrington NH Town Clerk has no record of her birth. During my visit there in 2001 the Town Clerk told me that most of their early records were destroyed in a fire.
Fortunately Dolly and Benjamin’s marriage record survived that fire. Their official marriage certificate says they were married on Sept. 15, 1786 and that they were both “from Barrington”, NH, but that is possibly because they were married in Barrington. There is no definitive evidence that either Dolly or Benjamin was actually born in Barrington. However, there were 28 other Willey's in Barrington in the early days according to the Barrington Town Records, Index and Names p. 161, but I do not have enough information to know if any of them were related to Dolly. Family oral history claims that she was related to the Willeys of Willey Slide fame, though this is not yet documented. An unpublished document “Genealogy of the Willey Family; Ancestors of Samuel Willey of ‘Willey Slide’ Fame” on file at the Conway Historical Society does not reveal any link to Dolly.
Dolly and her family lived all of their married life in the Conway NH area, with perhaps a few years in Rumford ME. See my biography of Benjamin for details which are not repeated here.
Her probate court record available in Ossipee and at the Conway Historical Society files reads: " I Timothy Bean and I Jonathan W. Heath of Conway... depose and testify that I was acquainted with Dolly Heath in her life time that she was the widow of the same Benjamin Heath who was a Revolutionary pensioner and that she the said Dolly Heath deceased on the twenty ninth day of July AD 1850 one thousand eight hundred and fifty and that she left children whose names are Susan Haley, Adaline (sic) Burbank, Sarah Stevens, Benjamin Heath, and Oliver G. Heath." Signed and then witnessed by the JP I have a handwritten copy. Dolly did not leave a will, at least none is on file in Ossipee, NH.
Dolly Willey Heath is buried beside her husband Benjamin in Green Hill cemetery, East Conway NH.