Mary Noonan Wood

From the Hyten family archive; subject is Mary Noonan Wood (1796–?), a 3× great-grandmother of the compiler on the paternal-grandmother (PM) line. This entry covers her birth, marriage to John Nunan Noonan, motherhood of Edward D Noonan, and general era context of women born in the late eighteenth century. Notable: her son Edward D Noonan (1840–1920) carried the line forward through the nineteenth century.

Mary Noonan Wood, born in 1796, occupied a place in the compiler's paternal-grandmother line as a 3× great-grandmother. Her year of death has not been preserved in the family record, leaving the close of her life unmarked in the archive, though the line she helped found endured well into the twentieth century through her descendants.

Mary entered the world in the closing years of the eighteenth century, in an age when the young American republic was still defining its borders and its character. Women born in 1796 came of age during the early national period, a time when households were the principal sites of economic production, when religious revivals were beginning to stir across the countryside, and when the daily rhythms of life were governed by agricultural seasons and the bonds of extended kinship. Whatever the particular circumstances of her upbringing, Mary belonged to a generation that witnessed remarkable transformations in transportation, communication, and the geography of American settlement.

In the course of her life Mary was united in marriage to John Nunan Noonan, a union that joined her to the Noonan name and produced the line through which her memory is preserved in this register. The shared surname "Noonan," appearing in both her recorded name and her husband's, suggests the close-knit character of the communities in which such matches were often made.

Of Mary and John's children, the family record preserves the name of Edward D. Noonan, born in 1840 and surviving until 1920. Edward thus came into the world when his mother was approximately forty-four years of age, and through him the line of descent flowed onward to the compiler. That Edward lived a full eighty years and saw the dawn of the modern age stands as a quiet testament to the durability of the family Mary helped establish.

Mary was the compiler's 3× great-grandmother on the paternal-grandmother (PM) line.