BIRTH: 1752, Connecticut, USA
DEATH: 2 Apr 1809 • Montgomery, Hampden, Massachusetts, USA
FATHER: Samuel Button (1720–1790)1
MOTHER: Mary —- (c.1725–after 1785)
SPOUSE: David Crow (1744–1817)
When Huldah Button was born in 1752 in Connecticut, her father, Samuel, was 32. She married David Crow in 1771 in Chester, Massachusetts. They had three sons and several daughters during their marriage. She died on April 2, 1809, in Montgomery, Massachusetts, at the age of 57, and was buried there.
The Life of Huldah Button
A Connecticut Daughter on the Massachusetts Frontier
Huldah Button was born in 1752, almost certainly in Connecticut, where the Button family had lived for several generations before joining the great mid‑eighteenth‑century migration into the hill towns of western Massachusetts. Her childhood would have unfolded in a world of small farms, meetinghouses, and extended kin networks — the tightly woven social fabric that defined colonial Connecticut. By the time she reached young adulthood, her family had moved north into the rugged uplands that would become Chester and later Montgomery, part of a wave of Connecticut families seeking new land and opportunity on the frontier.
It was in Chester that Huldah met David Crow, a young man establishing himself in the same region. On 6 December 1770, their marriage intentions were recorded in the town book, and the ceremony itself was entered in Church Record Volume 1, the earliest surviving ecclesiastical record for the area. Their union joined two frontier families at a moment when the region was still being carved out of wilderness. Huldah, like most women of her time, anchored the household: raising children, managing the domestic economy, tending gardens and livestock, and sustaining the rhythms of daily life while her husband served in the militia during the Revolutionary War.
Through the 1770s and 1780s, Huldah’s household grew steadily. She bore several children — including William, Horatio, David Jr., and at least three daughters whose names survive only indirectly through census counts and later family patterns. Her life was one of constant labor: spinning, weaving, preserving food, nursing the sick, and maintaining a home in a settlement where every task required physical effort. Yet she lived in a community of kin and neighbors, many of them fellow migrants from Connecticut, who shared work, worship, and the hardships of frontier life.
By the early 1800s, Huldah and David were among the established families of Montgomery, a town incorporated in 1780 and still defined by its rocky fields, steep hills, and close‑knit population. Their children were grown or nearly grown, and the family’s roots in the region were deep. But Huldah’s life was not a long one by modern standards. She died on 2 April 1809, at the age of 57, and was laid to rest in Center Cemetery in Montgomery. Her gravestone — carved with the draped urn motif common in the early nineteenth century — still stands, bearing the inscription “wife of Mr. David Crow,” a simple but enduring testament to her place in the family and community.
Legacy of Huldah Button
Huldah Button’s legacy lives on through the generations that followed her. As the matriarch of the Crow family in Montgomery, she helped establish the household from which our line descends. Her children and grandchildren carried the family westward into New York, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and beyond, spreading the Button and Crow names across the expanding nation. Though few records survive that speak directly in her voice, the traces of her life remain in the land she settled, the family she raised, and the gravestone that still marks her resting place. In the quiet hill country of Montgomery, Huldah’s story endures as part of the larger narrative of New England women whose labor, resilience, and devotion sustained their families through war, migration, and the building of new communities on the American frontier.
Parents
FATHER: Samuel Button (1720–1790)1
MOTHER: Mary —- (c.1725–after 1785)
Married
David Crow (1744–1817) married in 1771 in Chester, Massachusetts
Children
- William Crow (1772–1845) married Abigail Avery (1782–1851)
- Horatio Crow (b. 1774-1776 – d. bef. 1800)
- David Crow Jr (b. 1775-1778 – d. 1860)
- Three daughters not named
Documents
- Marriage Records
- Massachusetts, U.S., Compiled Birth, Marriage, and Death Records, 1700-1850 > Chester > Name: David Crow; Intension Date: 6 Dec 1770; Married —-, 1771; Marriage Place: Chester, Hampden, Massachusetts, USA; Spouse: Hudah Button; Record from First Congregational Church of Chester
- Massachusetts, U.S., Town and Vital Records, 1620-1988 > Chester > Vital Record Transcripts > Name: David Crow; Record Type: Marriage; Marriage Date: 1771; Marriage Place: Chester, Massachusetts, USA; Spouse: Hudah Button; Record from First Congregational Church of Chester
- Massachusetts, U.S., Compiled Marriages, 1633-1850 > Name: David Crow; Gender: Male; Marriage Date: 6 Dec 1770; Place: Chester, Hampden, Massachusetts; Spouse: Hudah Button
- Death records
- Find a Grave > Huldah Button Crow; Birth: 1752; Death: 2 Apr 1809 (aged 56–57), Massachusetts, USA
- Burial: Center Cemetery, Montgomery, Hampden County, Massachusetts, USA
- Census
- 1790 United States Federal Census > Massachusetts > Hampshire > Montgomery > Name: David Crow; Home in 1790 (City, County, State): Montgomery, Hampshire, Massachusetts; Free White Persons – Males – 16 and over: 2; Free White Persons – Males – Under 16: 1; Free White Persons – Females: 4; Number of Household Members: 7
Footnote
- The most credible candidate for the father of Huldah Button is Samuel Button (c.1720–1790), the earliest documented Button settler in the Chester–Montgomery region and the only adult Button male living there early enough to have a daughter born in 1752. Samuel migrated from Connecticut, matching the well‑established Connecticut origins of every early Button family in western Massachusetts, and his appearance in Chester records during the 1760s–1770s aligns perfectly with Huldah’s 1770 marriage to David Crow. No other Button man of the correct age appears in Chester, Montgomery, or neighboring towns, and the naming patterns within Samuel’s family — including daughters named Huldah, Hannah, Mary, Martha, and Eunice — mirror the names found among Huldah’s descendants. Although no surviving birth record explicitly identifies her parents, the combination of geography, chronology, migration history, and family naming traditions makes Samuel Button the strongest and most historically consistent candidate for Huldah’s father.
Relation of Huldah Button to Steven Barry Staggs: 5th great-grandmother
Page last updated June 25, 2026
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