Tryphena Marston Philbrick

Biography

Tryphena Marston was born in Hampton, on the coast of present-day New Hampshire, on December 28, 1663. The Hampton history places her as a daughter of the elder Captain William Marston, rather than of the younger William who also appears in the family's records. Her father died in 1672, while she was still a child.

She married Joseph Philbrick and became the mother of a large household. Their first recorded son Joseph died in February 1687, only a few months after his birth. The name was given again to a son born the following year. Other children followed over the next eighteen years, including Ephraim, Joses, and Elizabeth.

Tryphena died in 1729, while Joseph lived until 1755. Her surviving record is chiefly a family one, but it preserves a substantial arc: childhood bereavement in the Marston household, marriage into the Philbricks, an early infant loss, and two decades of births before her children established households of their own.

The family chronology places Tryphena’s death in November 1729; sources differ on the day.