Monday, May 11, 2015

Monday Is for Mothers: Mercy Manwaring/Mannering (1685 - 1739)

A life-long resident of the Connecticut Colony,* this paternal sixth great grandmother was born in New London in 1685. She was the daughter of Oliver Manwaring and Hannah Raymond.
[Nova Belgica et Anglia Nova by Willem Janszoon Blaeu, ca. 1635. Based on the 1614 explorations of Adrian Block
Boston Public Library, Norman B. Leventhal Map Center]

Since the first record (in transcription) we have of Mercy is her profession of faith and baptism on October 5, 1702, it's clear that her family belonged to a sect that didn't believe in infant baptism. The same source documents her marriage to Jonathan Palmer of Stonington on December 1, 1706 and presumably the couple settled there.
[Ancestry.com. Connecticut, Church Record Abstracts, 1630-1920 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: 2013.
Original data: Connecticut. Church Records Index. Connecticut State Library, Hartford, Connecticut.]

Six years later there's another mention of Mercy (called Mary here in the transcription) on June 2, 1712, in church records for Stonington, which is the last mention of her in the records.**
[Stonington, CT: First Congregational Church Records, 1674-1874. (Online Database. AmericanAncestors.org, New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2008), Originally published as: History of the First Congregational Church, Stonington, Conn., 1674-1874 with the Report of the Bi-centennial Proceedings, June 3, 1874. Richard A. Wheeler, T. A. David and Co., Norwich, CT, 1875.]

We believe that Mercy and Jonathan had nine children, seven daughters and two sons. I descend from their daughter Love (1717-1796) whose great great great granddaughter was my father's mother, Letta Estella Porter Warren Williams Turnbull.

While Stonington church records give us the date of death for her husband on August 26, 1726, I haven't found a similar listing for Mercy. There is an unsourced claim that she survived Jonathan for 13 years, dying on March 4, 1739.

*Originally settled by the Dutch which is why I've chosen the above map.
**Birth records only list the father of the child.

© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

No comments:

Post a Comment