Chapter 1: Early Family Origins (1639–1704)

Abigail Goodrich was born on November 13, 1685, in the coastal town of Branford, nestled in New Haven County, Connecticut. Her world was one shaped by piety, permanence, and loss—a fragile frontier settlement still bearing the stiff collar of its Puritan founders. Her lineage was not just local but legendary: her grandfather, Richard Goodrich, had arrived in 1639 during the Great Migration, part of the wave of English dissenters who planted their faith in the rocky New England soil.