Sarah Knowles

Biography

Sarah Knowles was born in Eastham, on Cape Cod in present-day Massachusetts, on June 3, 1732, according to the family reconstruction published with her father's probate records. Her parents, Joshua Knowles and Sarah Paine, had previously given the same name to a daughter born in 1727/28 who died young. The later Sarah was the daughter who married Elkanah Higgins.

Their marriage intentions were recorded in July 1757. The Higgins genealogy places their children's births in Eastham: Abigail in 1758, Elkanah in 1760, Lydia in 1762, Jedidah in 1764 and Benjamin in 1767. These records locate Sarah's household within the same Cape community in which she had grown up.

Her identity is unusually well anchored by her father's will. In the probate abstract, Joshua names Sarah as the wife of Elkanah Higgins, alongside her sisters Rebecca Sparrow and Susanna Smith. The will was made in November 1778, after Sarah's mother had died and Joshua had remarried. Its family provisions therefore distinguish Sarah the daughter from both her late mother and her father's second wife, Phebe.

Sarah's daughter Lydia later married Uriah Doane. The Higgins and Doane records preserve that connection alongside the births of Lydia's siblings, keeping Sarah's family identifiable across the changing surnames of her married daughters.