February 12, 1776

In 1776, Martha or “Matty” Stewart married Robert Wilson. Three years after printing the announcement of this marriage, John Dunlap printed the announcement of Robert’s death in the Pennsylvania Packet. Martha was left as a twenty-year-old widow. She survived her husband by seventy-three years and died in March 1852.

Near the end of her life, Elizabeth F. Ellet featured Martha Wilson in her 1848 book, The Women of the American Revolution. Ellet described the Wilsons’ wedding: “Miss Stewart, at the age of seventeen, gave her hand to Robert Wilson, a young Irishman of the Barony of Innishowen, who, after being educated and trained for mercantile life in one of the first houses of his native land, had emigrated to America a few years before, and amassed a considerable fortune.” Ellet recounted Robert’s failing health and death at an early age. But then she focused on Martha’s important interactions with military leaders and, in particular, a dinner she hosted for George Washington a year after her husband’s death: “to one whose patriotism was so decided, it must have been a pleasure indeed, thus to welcome to her roof and table the leading spirits of the land.”

Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet or, the General Advertiser
Printed by John Dunlap

Married. At Kingwood, West-New-Jersey, Mr. ROBERT WILSON to Miss MATTY STEWART, daughter of Charles Stewart, Esquire.