BIRTH: Unknown
DEATH: Unknown
FATHER: Unknown
MOTHER: Unknown
SPOUSE: William Higgins (1719-1822)
William Higgins (1719–1786) of Eastham, Massachusetts, married a woman named Deborah, though her maiden name remains unknown.1 Their marriage is supported by birth records of their children in Medfield, Massachusetts. Deborah had one son and two daughters with William Higgins between 1738 and 1740.
Her story
In the windswept reaches of Cape Cod, where the Atlantic shaped both land and life, Deborah was born around 1717, likely in or near Eastham, Massachusetts. Her origins are obscured by time—no record confirms her maiden name—but her life is traced through the family she built and the legacy she left behind.
Deborah married William Higgins, a native of Eastham. The couple settled in Medfield, where they welcomed their children: Deborah Higgins, born 27 May 1738 (who later married Josiah Porter), William Higgins Jr., born 1 September 1739 (who married Mercy Shirley Niles) and Lucrecy Higgins, born 20 March 1740 (who married Obed Hunt).
Deborah’s days were shaped by the demands of frontier life: tending hearth and garden, raising children, and maintaining the household while her husband worked the land and served the community. She likely taught her children to read from the Psalter and prepared them for lives of faith and labor.
By the mid-1740s, the family returned to Eastham, where William’s roots ran deep. Deborah continued her role as matriarch, guiding her children into adulthood and witnessing their marriages into other Cape Cod families. Though her name appears only in birth records and family trees, her presence was felt in every generation that followed.
Deborah likely died before 1796, though no gravestone or probate record has yet surfaced to mark her passing. Her husband, William Higgins, died in 1786, and together they rest in the memory of Eastham’s early families.
Deborah’s life reflects the quiet endurance of colonial women whose names survive only in fragments. She was a wife, mother, and matriarch—woven into the fabric of New England’s founding generations. Her descendants carried forward the Higgins name, settling across Massachusetts and beyond.
Legacy of Deborah
Parents
Father: Unknown
Mother: Unknown
Married
Married William Higgins (1719-1822)
Children
- Deborah Higgins (1738-1822)
- William Higgins Jr. (1739-1820)
- Lucrecy Higgins (1740-?)
Documents
- Birth Records
- None
- Marriage records
- None
- Death records
- None
- Other Records
- Massachusetts, U.S., Town and Vital Records, 1620-1988 > Medfield > Vital Record Transcripts > birth of children Lucrecy and Deborah to William Higgins and his wife Deborah
Footnotes
- Some genealogical sources identify the wife of William Higgins (1719–1786) of Eastham, Massachusetts, as Deborah Diacy, though her maiden name is not confirmed in primary records. The name appears in compiled family trees and user-contributed profiles, but original documentation is lacking.
Relation of William Higgins to Steven Barry Staggs: 7th great-grandmother
Page last updated November 8, 2025
Search the Staggs Family History site
Staggs Family History 
