Eliza Smith was born 2 April 1805 in Brookfield, Orange County, Vermont, the daughter of Abraham Smith and Abigail Blanchard.¹ Her life can be followed through a series of land and vital records that document her movement from daughter, to wife and mother, and finally to a woman whose support in old age was secured by a formal legal agreement.

She married David Stiles Jr. at Brookfield on 12 April 1826.² Their known children included Wilbur F. Stiles, born in 1827, and Sarah M. Stiles, born about 1831.³ By 1836 Eliza and her husband were living in Northfield, Washington County, where her father conveyed land directly to her in her married name.

In that deed, dated 1 February 1836, Abraham Smith of Brookfield granted to “Eliza Stiles of Northfield” one-third of a two-hundred-acre lot. The conveyance specified that the land was for Eliza and “her descendants of her body forever,” and that neither she nor “David her now husband” were to be displaced during their lifetimes. If she left no descendants, the property was to pass to the heirs of her brothers and sisters.⁴ This transfer placed the land in Eliza’s own legal control and established a line of inheritance through her children.

By 23 March 1840 Eliza had married her second husband, Edmund B. Glidden.⁵ The record of her son Wilbur’s land transactions in 1850 provides the clearest evidence that she was still living at that time and had remarried. On 12 October 1850 Wilbur sold land that had been “deeded me this day by Edmund Glidden & Eliza Glidden his wife,” explicitly identifying Eliza under her second married name and confirming her residence in Northfield.⁶

That same day, Wilbur entered into a separate bond in which he obligated himself to support “my said Mother Eliza Glidden during her natural life.” The agreement required him to provide suitable food, clothing, nursing during sickness, and, at her death, “a decent Christian burial and suitable grave stones.”⁷ In exchange, a mortgage secured the performance of these conditions. This document establishes both the mother–son relationship and the arrangement made for Eliza’s care in later life.

These transactions form a clear chain of property:

• land granted by Abraham Smith to his daughter Eliza in 1836;
• land conveyed by Edmund and Eliza Glidden to her son Wilbur in 1850;
• Wilbur’s mortgage and bond for his mother’s lifetime support in the same year.

Through these records Eliza appears successively as daughter, wife, and mother, each role defined in legal terms.

Eliza was enumerated in the 1850 and 1860 censuses at Northfield in the household of Edmund Glidden.⁸ By 1870 she was living in Vernon, Tolland County, Connecticut, before returning to Northfield by 1880, where she again appears as Edmund’s wife.⁹ Edmund Glidden died at Northfield on 26 June 1884.¹⁰

Eliza died at Northfield on 28 October 1889 at the age of eighty-four years, six months, and twenty-six days. Her death record gives her name as Eliza Stiles, with her maiden name Smith in parentheses, and identifies her parents as Abraham Smith and Abigail Blanchard. The informant was her daughter, Sarah.¹¹ The use of the surname Stiles in the record created by her child reflects the name under which she had first established her household and borne her children.

The records of her life document the continuity of property and family across two marriages and into the next generation. From the land granted to her by her father in 1836, to the 1850 agreement that secured her maintenance in old age, Eliza Smith Stiles can be followed in the legal transactions that defined her place within her family and community.

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Sources

1. Vermont, Vital Records, 1720–1908, Brookfield, birth of Eliza Smith, 2 April 1805.
2. Vermont, Vital Records, 1720–1908, Brookfield, marriage of David Stiles Jr. and Eliza Smith, 12 April 1826.
3. 1850 U.S. census, Washington County, Vermont, population schedule, Northfield, household of Edmund Glidden; 1860 U.S. census, Washington County, Vermont, population schedule, Northfield, household of Edmund Glidden.
4. Orange County, Vermont, Land Records, deed of Abraham Smith to Eliza Stiles, 1 February 1836; transcription in author’s possession.
5. Vermont, Vital Records, 1720–1908, marriage of Edmund B. Glidden and Eliza Stiles, 23 March 1840.
6. Washington County, Vermont, Land Records, deed of Edmund Glidden and Eliza Glidden to Wilbur F. Stiles, and deed of Wilbur F. Stiles to Isaac P. Jenks, 12 October 1850; transcription in author’s possession.
7. Washington County, Vermont, Land Records, bond of Wilbur F. Stiles for the support of his mother Eliza Glidden, 12 October 1850; transcription in author’s possession.
8. 1850 U.S. census, Washington County, Vermont, population schedule, Northfield, household of Edmund Glidden; 1860 U.S. census, Washington County, Vermont, population schedule, Northfield, household of Edmund Glidden.
9. 1870 U.S. census, Tolland County, Connecticut, population schedule, Vernon; 1880 U.S. census, Washington County, Vermont, population schedule, Northfield, household of Edmund Glidden.
10. Vermont, Vital Records, 1720–1908, Northfield, death of Edmund B. Glidden, 26 June 1884.
11. Vermont, Vital Records, 1720–1908, Northfield, death of Eliza Stiles, 28 October 1889.