Chapter 1: Early Family Origins

Ann Staples entered the world in the cold weeks before Christmas, on December 10, 1813, in the riverside town of Berwick, York County, Maine. The air would have been sharp, the ground crusted with frost, and woodsmoke curling from chimneys along the Salmon Falls River. Berwick—one of the oldest European-settled towns in Maine—was already a century old when Ann was born. Her first cries echoed in a household tied deeply to the land and the rhythms of Protestant New England life.