By Muriel Bristol | September 28, 2024
Margaret “Peggy” Palmer was born in Rochester, NH, August 29, 1749. She was a daughter of Barnabas and Elizabeth (Robinson) Palmer of Rochester, NH, and sister of William Palmer of Milton, NH.
She married in Rochester, NH, in August 1769, David Copp. Col. John Gage, J.P., of Dover, NH, performed the ceremony. Copp was born in Rochester, NH, December 11, 1738, son of Jonathan and Esther (Dow) Copp. He was a veteran of the French & Indian War (1754-1763).
Lt. Col. David Copp died in Wakefield, NH, March 13, 1817, aged seventy-eight years.
I Margaret Copp of Wakefield in the County of Strafford and State of New Hampshire, widow, aged eighty-eight years, wife and widow of David Copp of said Wakefield, Esqr, Deceased, make this application for a Pension under the law of the seventh of July, 1836 ~ for that in August of the year of our Lord 1769 I was married to David Copp in Rochester, N.H., by Colo Gage of Dover, a Justice of the Peace within and for the Colony of New Hampshire ~ that in 1775 my husband and myself lived in Wakefield aforesaid, that when the alarm of the Battle of Bunker Hill spread through the Country, my husband, David Copp, who was an officer in the old French War, raised a Company of Volunteers in this vicinity and in the latter part of July or the first of August same year marched to Portsmouth, N.H., and helped Mr. Sullivan and John Langdon remove the Cannon from that town ~ that soon after they had removed the Cannon from Portsmouth, my husband marched the company to Winter Hill near Cambridge in Massachusetts and remained there till the latter part of May in the year 1776. I am positive my husband was absent till some time in May 1776 as we had planted considerably before he returned. The particulars above were related to me many times and oft by my late husband ~ and I recollect of his telling me that when the Companies were ordered to go from Portsmouth to Winter Hill, there were offered three Guineas to the Captain, who would march his Company there first, and my husband and Company arrived there two or three hours before either of the others, and the bounty was paid to him. I have often heard him relate the above and that his Company had one hundred and thirty men in it and many of them without guns, so anxious were they to defend the Country and achieve their independence ~ I further state that my husband David Copp died at Wakefield in March 1817 and that I have remained his widow from that time till now ~ that I am in the Eighty-ninth year of my age and am quite infirm. Margaret Copp.
Margaret (Palmer) Copp died in Wakefield, NH, August 15, 1839, aged ninety years.
DEATHS. In Wakefield, Mrs. Margaret Copp, relect of the late David Copp, Esq, aged 90 (NH Gazette, August 27, 1839).
References:
Find a Grave. (2012, June 14). Margaret “Peggy” Palmer Copp. Retrieved from www.findagrave.com/memorial/91925387/margaret-copp
Wikipedia. (2023, May 1). 2nd New Hampshire Regiment. Retrieved from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2nd_New_Hampshire_Regiment
Wikipedia. (2024, September 27). French and Indian War. Retrieved from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_and_Indian_War
Wikipedia. (2024, July 17). John Langdon (Politician). Retrieved from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Langdon_(politician)
Wikipedia. (2024, August 4). John Sullivan (General). Retrieved from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Sullivan_(general)
Wikipedia. (2024, July 9). Siege of Boston. Retrieved from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Boston
Milton Observer 