Hannah Hunt Plant was one of the community of Quakers affiliated with Junius Monthly Meeting in Waterloo. Like many of these Friends, she signed the Declaration of Sentiments with other family members, including her brother and sister-in-law (Richard P. and Jane Hunt), her sister (Lydia Mount), and her niece (Mary E. Vail).
Hannah Hunt Plant was born about 1795 in Westchester County, New York, oldest living child of Richard and Mary Pell Hunt. She married Henry Plant and had a daughter, Henrietta Matilda, born about 1826-7. Henry Plant died in Batavia, New York, in 1843, leaving Hannah as the administrator of his estate. An inventory of their possessions indicated a comfortable but not wealthy lifestyle. They owned a horse and buggy worth $100, a mahogany table worth $12, a mahogany side board worth $30, a $25 "sopha," and a dining set worth $25. Henry's gold watch was valued at $75, and cash on hand at his death amounted to $165. The total value of their possessions, not including land, amounted to $663.06.
By 1850, Hannah Hunt Plant and her daughter were living with Hannah's sister, Lydia Hunt Mount, Lydia's two teenaged daughters, and a thirteen-year-old Irish-born girl, Mary Hackett. In 1862, they occupied a house at 100 Williams Street in Waterloo. Although Hannah Hunt Plant came from a Quaker background, on August 1, 1858, she and her daughter joined St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Waterloo.
Hannah's daughter Henrietta Matilda never married and died March 2,
1883, aged 57.
Sources:
- Files of Betty Auten.
- 1850 Census.
- Weltha Bacon Woodward, Bacon-Woodward, Pedigree of Paternal Branch Vol. I Series VI, 409, typescript (1968)) Waterloo Historical Society.
- Henry Plant, Inventory, 8/18/1843, Surrogate's Office,
Seneca County.
- Rochester Daily Democrat [?], July 21, 1843. Notice of Henry Plant's death.
-Judith Wellman, Historian
Historical New York
