New England Weddings in my Ancestral Line: December 1st through 7th

Three of my direct ancestral couples married during the first week of December: 6X great grandparents Jonathan Palmer and Mercy Manwaring were united in Stonington, Connecticut, on December 1, 1706; 8X great grandparents John West and Renew Carpenter married in Rehoboth, Massachusetts on December 4, 1703; and 7X great grandparents Jonathan Aldrich and Mary Wilson wed on December 4, 1740 in Smithfield, Rhode Island.

The first paragraph of Old-Time Marriage Customs in New England by Alice Morse Earle published in The Journal of American Folklore in 1893 sets the stage for a wedding:

This excerpt from  Pamela McArthur Cole's article on New England Marriages,* gives us an idea of the traditional setting for weddings.*

Also my 7X great grandmother Sarah Nutting, left widowed by my ancestor Jonathan Farnsworth five years earlier, married John Stone on December 7, 1698, in Concord, Massachusetts.

*These two articles were originally published one after the other in the same issue of The Journal of American Folklore. Both are worth reading although I don't think either would meet modern standards of scholarship.


© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Working on Wednesday: Richard Raymond/Rayment (About 1602 - 1692), Mariner

In his entry in The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to N.E. 1620-1633, Vols. I-III* this paternal eighth great grandfather's occupation is described as "fisherman, coastal trader." Documents of the time refer to him as a mariner.

We don't know where he was born in England or what his history was before he arrived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1631, settling in Salem,** but he was able to sign his name when he became of freeman of that place in 1634.***

[By John Smith of Jamestown [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons]

[Perley, S. (1924-28). The history of Salem, Massachusetts. Salem, Mass.: S. Perley.]

In the Salem land grand of 1636 Richard received at least 60 acres of land (and perhaps as much as 180) and later in the year was one of eight men who received half an acre at Winter Harbor "for fishing trade, & to build upon." Eight years later in 1654 he was granted another 100 acres of upland and 10 acres of meadow, and in 1657 he had two cows in the town herd.

Richard sold a one-quarter interest in the ketch Hopewell of Salem for a year and a day to Walter Price on August 27, 1660. Two years later he and his wife Judith**** sold several acres of salt marsh to another Salem neighbor, followed by the sale of his dwelling house with some land on October 13, 1662, to Oliver Mannering***** who had married their daughter Hannah in about 1660 and the couple moved to Norwalk, Connecticut, buying a house and land there two weeks later.

However Richard and Judith didn't remain in Norwalk for long and soon moved to Saybrook where in 1668 when Richard deeded two more acres in Salem to his son-in-law, he was described as "Richard Rayment late of Salem now of Saybrooke at Coneticotts river's mouth."

Richard died in Saybrook on May 12, 1692, at 90 years of age. His place of burial is unknown.

Richard and Judith had nine children, six boys and three girls. I trace my descent from their daughter Hannah.

*Beginning on page 1563. Most of the information here comes from that source via americanancestors.org ($)
**Originally founded as a fishing village in 1626.
***In various records he spelled his surname ending in a "d" or a "t".
****They were married in Salem in about 1635. Her surname is unknown.
*****Or Manwaring.

© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

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.