Because the 1840 federal census shows Benjamin’s household with no female of an age to be his wife, I had also concluded that an unnamed first wife of Benjamin had died between 1830 and 1840 and he then remarried to an M.M. in Saline County, Arkansas. I’ve now discovered an important document that had somehow eluded me previously, and it makes me realize that Benjamin had only one wife, the mother of his children, and that her name was Margaret M. This document is the 10 July 1837 Bibb County, Alabama, deed showing Benjamin and Margaret selling their landholdings and homeplace there as they moved to Saline County, Arkansas.
I’ve added the following material to the posting linked above, and made corrections in it and the subsequent posting about Benjamin’s children in which I refer to two wives of Benjamin:
On 10 July 1837 in Bibb County, Benjamin and wife Margaret M. sold to Henry Strickland for $1,200 four tracts of land in Bibb County, 142 acres plus a piece of land with tenements and appurtenances whose acreage is not given and which appears to have been their homeplace (Bibb County, Alabama, Deed Bk. E, pp. 380-2). This appears to have been all of their landholdings in Bibb County: Benjamin and Margaret were selling out to move to Arkansas.
Benjamin signed as Benjamin S. Green with Robert Calvert, j.p., witnessing. On the same day, Benjamin’s wife Margaret M. Green quitclaimed her interest in the land to Strickland for $5, signing as Margaret Green with Robert Calvert witnessing her relinquishment of dower interest. The deed was recorded 4 April 1844. Note the appearance of Robert Calvert in this deed: I’ll discuss him in more detail in a moment.
And:
The absence of a wife for Benjamin on this census long led me to think that his wife Margaret M. died between 1830 and 1840, and that he married a second wife in Saline County, whose name appears as Lucinda on the 1850 federal census (see infra), and who was born in Arkansas. I have now concluded that because M.M. Green is buried in the Green family cemetery in Waller County, Texas, along with Benjamin and their children, Benjamin had only that one wife, Margaret, and she had not died by 1840, but went to Texas with her family and died there.
BEGATS AND BEQUEATHALS 