The deed to Daniel Cole, elsewhere quoted, where he is called by [William] Collier "soninlaw" has given rise to the natural supposition that Ruth, the wife of Daniel Cole, was a fifth daughter of William Collier.
If she were Collier's daughter, her age at death, 15 Dec. 1694, in her 67th year, would place her birth 1627-8. That there is no record of the marriage of Daniel Cole to wife Ruth, which must have occurred before 15 July 1644 when the son John Cole was born and when Ruth was but 17 or 18 years of age, seems incredible for
a daughter of the magistrate, the marriages of whose four known daughters were painstakingly recorded. Daniel Cole died six days after his wife Ruth, or 21 Dec. 1694, aged 80 years. This would make him some thirteen years his wife's senior. May it have been that Daniel Cole had married previously in England a daughter of William Collier, and that this Ruth was a second wife. Other possible explanations of the relationship "son-in-law," meaning usually in those days "stepson" would be that Jane, wife of William Collier, had married the father of Daniel Cole or else had married the father of Daniel Cole's wife Ruth before her marriage to Mr. Collier. Jane was, however, grandmother of Sarah (Walker) Warren whose birth must have occurred about the same time as Ruth's, so that if Ruth were her daughter and Sarah Walker her granddaughter she would have become a mother and a grandmother at about the same time, not an uncommon occurrence in those days. Jane must have been born not much later than 1592, and probably somewhat earlier than that, to have had a granddaughter of marriageable age by 1645.
