Little information is known about the women that lived in the Daniel Harrison House. The surviving written records about the Harrison wives and their children have only been found in the Augusta County and Rockingham County Clerk's office historical archives.[1] These records include the marriage licenses, wills, and probate inventories that were recorded by their husbands. However, from this limited information historians and archaeologists are able to make connections to learn more about them and their lives at the Daniel Harrison House.  

     The first lady of the house was Daniel's first wife, Margaret Cravens. Margaret was born around 1702 and lived at the Harrison House until her death around 1753. Daniel and Margaret had seven children in Delaware before they moved to Augusta County in the Shenandoah Valley. Their children were Robert, Daniel Jr., Jesse, Mary, Jane, Abigail, and Benjamin. 

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     After Margaret's death, Daniel married Sarah Stephenson. They did not have any children together; however, Sarah had a daughter from a previous marriage. Court records and censuses do not reveal the year of her death or when she passed on the property left to her in Daniel's will. 

 

     In colonial Virginia, a woman’s primary roles were to be a homemaker and caretaker. Their days were filled with household duties of cooking, cleaning, tending to food and medicine gardens, laundering clothes, feeding farm animals, and caring for their children. Wealthier women in the gentry, as well as those belonging to the middling sort were responsible for overseeing the household chores that were completed by enslaved people or servants. Women did not have many rights during the eighteenth century. Single or widowed women could file court cases and own property. However, once married, her husband gained control of her possessions and property. Women could not vote, write wills without their husbands’ permission, or sign a contract.

   

      Margaret and Sarah Harrison experienced this social class inequality as women, wives, and mothers in colonial Virginia. The laws of the colonial government, as well as social structures prevented them in participating in the same political, social spheres, and business spheres that Daniel took part of as a settler developing the Virginia frontier, protestant church, and the creation of a new local county and its judicial system.