That makes sense, the reason they spared her and the son. It mustn’t have been easy for the boy to lose both parents. Hopefully the extended family took him in and raised/loved him.
There wasn’t any extended family nearby, it was wild backcountry wilderness, the frontier of the 1750’s. His uncle came up from the coast and testified at the Court of Pleas and Quarters in Salisbury, then county seat. But, he was bound out by the court to Benjamin Merrill, a prosperous man who could see that he was educated by the standard of the day and would learn a trade, blacksmithing.