|
a.
|
Note: Whether Mary Wentworth was William's wife is in some dispute. Mary Wentworth is a descendent of English kings from William I to Edward I, as well as Charlemagne and Alfred the Great and many monarchs of Europe. Her father was Thomas Wentworth, bailiff of Scrooby before William's father. The position of bailiff is somewhat akin to that of a tax collector.
Mary Brewster's family name is unknown, but some believe to be Stubbs. There is conjecture that her maiden name may be Hartley, Love, Wyrall, or Wentworth. She may have been from Duke Street in London,ENG where several Mayflower passengers had ties. She is called "The Mother of The Surviving Matrons and Maidens" after the winters of 1621 and 1622.
Saints & Strangers by George F. Willison Copyright 1945 Pages 38 & 39 With ample income thus assured, Brewster soon married, late in 1591 or early the next year. Though a woman of great courage and strength of character, as is evident from the wide influence she radiated in later years, his wife is a mere shadow occasionally falling across the pages of the day. Almost nothing is known about her. Her name was Mary; she was a year or two younger than her husband, and died at Plymouth many years before him. On Aug. 12th 1593, she bore the first of their children_ a son named Jonathan, in due course a Pilgrim Father himself. The quest for the identity of Mary, the wife of William Brewster, has attracted the attention of many genealogists, but as yet without a definitive result. For some time she had been thought to be Mary Wentworth, daughter of Thomas Wentworth of Scrooby, and in 1965 John G. Hunt presented his case in favor of this identity [TAG 41:1-5, 63], but this claim was rejected by Rubincam and others, and Hunt himself has now given up this position. He has, however, published a pamphlet claiming that she was a certain Mary Wyrrall, based on the appearance in a will of a bequest to "Mary Butho," which Hunt took to be aVAriant of Brewster resulting from a speech defect in the person dictating the will [John G. Hunt, Of Mary Brewster: The Identity of Mary, Wife of Elder William BREWSTER of the Mayflower Voyage of 1620 from Plymouth, ENG, to New Plymouth, New ENG (Bowling Green,VA, 1984)]. Eugene A. Stratton reviewed this volume negatively in 1985 [DSGRM 48:135-36], to which Hunt responded with a supplement to his pamphlet [Of Mary Brewster, part two (Bowling Green,VA, August 1985]. The maiden surname of Mary, wife of Elder Brewster, remains unknown. (Hunt has published other articles on VArious aspects of William Brewster's life which, as with all of Hunt's work, need to be used with caution: "`Master Williamson' of the Mayflower" [NGSQ 62:88-90]; "The Mother of Elder William Brewster of the Mayflower" [NEHGR 124:250-56]; "Mary Stubbe - A Connection of Elder William Brewster?" [NEHGR 128:288-90].) A number of other children have been proposed for William Brewster. Jacobus in 1936 disposed of the claimed connections between William Brewster of Plymouth and Francis Brewster of New Haven and his son Nathaniel [TAG 12:199-210, 13:8-21, 113-116]. Mary Walton Ferris proposes a son Edward [Dawes-Gates 2:151].
> Harry Hadaway> 10 Timmins Road> Bow, NH 03304 FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION: > The maiden name of William Brewster's wife has not been proven. The claim> it was Mary Wentworth rests solely on the fact that Mary Wentworth happened to live somewhat close to William Brewster in Scrooby, Nottingham. That is very shaky evidence to say the least. Further, it has been proposed that William Brewster may have married Mary Wyrall, but the evidence is just as flimsy for that marriage. There are no fewer than seven marriages from 1590-1610 that have been located in parish registers showing a William Brewster marrying a Mary. All, however, have been satisfactorily eliminated as possible candidates for the William and Mary (Brewster) who came on the Mayflower. So at present, there is no evidence to document who William Brewster's wife Mary actually was. On the Mayflower, age abt. 54., married with children at the time.Occupation: Printer, Pub. Source: The Mayflower and her Log. Long biography in "William Brewster, His True Position in our Colonial History" by Hon. Lyman Denison Brewster, in The Mayflower Descendant, Vol. IV, pg. 100-109, 1902.
|
