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- Said to have been a daughter of Rev. John Brooks and Margaret Osbourne.
"Martha (Brooks) Baker's will was made April 20, 1759, and proved May 8 of that year. The inventory of her estate shows 2 Bibles; one Testament; one Papist and Protestant; one Thomson's Explication of the Shorter Catechism; one Thomson's Orphan's Legacy; one Young Man's Companion." [Eggleston, citation details below.]
The Thomson referred to is John Thomson (1690-1753), Presbyterian minister of Pennsylvania and Virginia. Discussing the question of whether Thomson was the author of Orphan's Legacy, his biographer John Goodwin Herndon cites the above inventory of Martha Baker, and notes that "a careful recheck of that inventory shows that the word 'Thomson's' does not appear in the record before Orphans."
Herbert C. Bradshaw's "The Settlement of Prince Edward County" (Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 62:448, 1954) also refers to this inventory, and calls Martha Baker a "daughter" of John Thomson. This is presumably an error. Thomson had a daughter Mary who married a Robert Baker, Jr. (d. 1759) in Lancaster County (possibly a son of PNH ancestor Robert Baker who died in Lancaster County in 1728), and another daughter Elizabeth who married a Samuel Baker (d. 1759); the Rev. Thomson is said to have died in the house of the latter Baker. But there appears to be no proof that Martha Baker, wife of Caleb Baker, whether or not she is the woman whose inventory contained one or more works by the Rev. Thomson, was one of his daughters.
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