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Colonial Graveyards, Nashua, NH (2026)

10/25/2026

James Bill (c. 1615–1687/8)
Copps Hill Burying Ground, Boston, Ma

HERE, LYETH, BURIED
Yᵉ, BODY OF JAMES
BILL AGED 73
YEARS, DEPARTED
THIS LIFE Yᵉ FIRST
OF FEBRUARY
1687/8

James Bill was born in England about 1615, the eldest son of John and Dorothy (Tuttle) Bill. The family removed to Boston about 1633. A family manuscript supposes that James came with his parents that year. His younger brother John followed in April 1635 aboard the Hopewell, Capt. William Bundocke, and his sister Marie came the same month on the Planter. Another brother, Philip, was born in Boston.

John Bill died in 1638. Dorothy’s brother Richard Tuttle, a Boston selectman and chief constable, looked after his sister and her children. On 27 January 1639/40, Robert Meeres sold to “Dorothy Bill and her son James Bill” the house and garden where they were then living, near what is now Sudbury Street. It is the first record of James in New England.

By 1645 James had married Mary, whose maiden name is unknown. She was born in England about 1613. That same year he sold six acres at Pulling Point, with the housing on it, to Bernard Ingalls for £10. He had bought the land from Wentworth Day. By 1651 he was “James Bill of Pullin Poynt, planter,” and paid Evan Thomas, innholder, £80 for a house, cellar and garden in Boston. He spent the rest of his life at the Point, which was then part of Boston and is now Winthrop.

He kept buying. In 1666 he paid £330 for the late John Oliver’s farm, one of the original Pullen Point allotments. In February 1667/8 he paid John Paine £50 for a strip of North End waterfront running from the road below the burying ground down to low water, almost certainly for a wharf. In 1674 he bought Samuel Burnell’s 36-acre farm, which was bounded by Deane Winthrop on one side and by James’s own land on every other. By the 1670s he and Winthrop held nearly all of the Point between them. In 1660 William Burnell named James as one of the two men to see his will fulfilled.

In 1666 he sold three lots on Spectacle Island to Thomas Bill, a Boston lighterman and probably his brother. Thomas went on to witness James’s most important deed.

That deed was signed 28 February 1671/2. James and Mary conveyed the Pullen Point farm, with its houses, marshes, woods, livestock and farm tools, to their four sons, James, Jonathan, Joseph and Joshua. The sons were to share it as equal partners for £400. James kept full use of the farm for life. Mary was to receive £100 after his death, at £20 a year, in place of her dower. On the same day he sold the North End waterfront lot to James Jr. for £20, together with an enslaved man named Jack.

The 1687 tax list gives his Pullen Point holdings as 80 acres of tillage and 170 of pasture, eight houses, mills and wharves, 4 oxen, 19 head of cattle, a horse, 4 swine and 200 sheep. His Boston property and his half share in the sloop Triall were not on it. The family attended the Second Church in North Square under Increase and Cotton Mather.

James made his will on 31 January 1687/8, “weake in body but sound in my understanding,” and signed it with his mark. Deane Winthrop was one of the witnesses. He left the Burnell farm, a North End lot, his half of the sloop Triall and the residue of his estate to his sons James, Jonathan and Joseph, who were also his executors. He also left them the two enslaved men, James and Jack. His daughters received cash: Mary Smith £40, Hannah Kent 20 shillings, and Sarah Cheever £100. Mary and Hannah had already received substantial gifts. Joshua is not named and probably died young and unmarried.

James died the next day, 1 February 1687/8, aged 73. The will was proved on the 22nd before Sir Edmund Andros, governor of the Dominion of New England, who would be overthrown by a Boston uprising fourteen months later. Mary died that August, aged about 75, and was buried beside him.

The Bill name faded out of Winthrop over the next century, but the family stayed. In 1840, 142 of the town’s 156 residents descended from James Bill. In the City of Boston’s burial database, he is listed as “Biill.”

Sources: Ledyard Bill, History of the Bill Family (1867); Suffolk Deeds; Suffolk Probate 10:222–226; Torrey, New England Marriages Prior to 1700.

10/23/2026

Timothy Swan, One of the Afflicted in the Andover Witchcraft Cases

Old North Parish Burying Ground, North Andover, Massachusetts
Gravestone carved by John Hartshorn

TIMOTHY SWAN
DIED FEBRUARY
Ye 2 1692 IN
Ye 30 YEAR OF
HIS AGE

Timothy Swan was born March 12, 1662/3, in a part of Haverhill that is now Methuen, Massachusetts. His parents were Robert and Elizabeth (Acie) Swan. The family lived close enough to the North Andover Meetinghouse to belong to that parish, although records continued to identify Robert as “of Haverhill” as late as 1686.

Swan is best known for his involvement in the Andover witchcraft cases of 1692. Some of the events preceding the trials, particularly the accusations surrounding Elizabeth Emerson and her family, provide context for understanding the later allegations against him.

Around 1685 or 1686, Elizabeth Emerson of Haverhill gave birth to an illegitimate daughter named Dorothy. A 1676 court entry records Michael Emerson being fined and bound to good behavior “for cruel and excessive beating of his daughter with a flail swingle and for kicking her.”¹ The entry does not name the daughter. A 2017 study identifies her as Elizabeth.

Timothy Swan was accused in connection with Elizabeth’s pregnancy. Historian Emerson W. Baker describes Elizabeth as accusing Swan of r**e, alleging that he dragged her upstairs in her home and held an arm across her throat to silence her. The surviving testimony in the printed court records uses the terms “uncivil” and “fornication.” The difference in wording is worth noting, although it is unclear whether the printed version reflects any alteration of the original testimony.

Swan was found not guilty but was ordered to contribute to the child’s support. According to Baker, he did so inconsistently.

Swan’s father, Robert, also became involved in the dispute. In 1686, he was brought before the court over remarks criticizing its decisions in cases involving illegitimate children. On January 19, 1685/6, following a prayer meeting in Haverhill, Robert reportedly told Michael Emerson and others that the orders requiring Nathaniel Ayers and Caleb Hopkinson to support their children were among the most unjust actions ever taken by the court. He said he intended to carry the case to Boston.

Michael Emerson also testified that Robert had discussed the allegation that Timothy had been “uncivil” with one of Michael’s daughters. About a month later, at Sergeant Johnson’s house, Robert told Josiah Gage and Simon Wainwright that the accusation of fornication with Elizabeth Emerson was unlikely because he had warned Timothy not to enter “that wicked house.” Robert said that his son had obeyed and “could not abide the jade,” and declared that he would stand by Timothy.

According to the New England Historical Society, Elizabeth later identified Samuel Ladd as Dorothy’s father. Ladd was a married landowner who also held a position of leadership in the local militia. In 1677, he had been caught entering a young woman’s bedroom at night and escaped by jumping out of the house when her parents discovered him. He was subsequently fined for a misdemeanor.

In 1691, two infant bodies were discovered buried in Elizabeth’s yard. Baker reports that Elizabeth was convicted of murdering her newborn twins, who had been fathered by another man. She remained imprisoned in Boston under sentence of death throughout the witchcraft crisis and was hanged on June 8, 1693.

Important details of the case remain uncertain. Kearney raises the possibility that the infants were stillborn, and whether they were born alive has not been established. The New England Historical Society also attributes the twins to another encounter with Ladd, although that claim does not appear in the Essex County court records. Elizabeth’s sister was Hannah Duston, who later became known for killing her Native American captors during her captivity in 1697.

By 1692, Timothy Swan was about 30 years old and suffering from an unexplained illness. During the Andover witchcraft proceedings, he became one of the people whom the accused were said to have afflicted through witchcraft. As many as 16 individuals reportedly confessed to tormenting him, although that number remains unconfirmed against the surviving transcriptions. Baker identifies 45 Andover residents who were accused during the proceedings.

Several of those who confessed to afflicting Swan were connected to the Emerson family. A 2017 Yale undergraduate paper by Niall Chithelen argues that the accusations may have served as a form of popular retribution against a man who had escaped punishment in the earlier case involving Elizabeth Emerson. This is one student’s interpretation, not an established motive.

Mary Toothaker, a relative of the Emerson family, confessed to afflicting Swan. She said she “did often think of him & her hands would be clinched together, And that she would grip the dishclout or any[thing] else and so think of the persone; And by this & afflicting of [others] since she came down she is convinced she is a witch.” The record also says she “confessed she hurt Timothy Swan...and is afraid that she the said Toothaker squeezed his throat.”

Baker reads the reference to Swan’s throat as an echo of Elizabeth Emerson’s accusation. His account treats the r**e as established, which the court’s not-guilty verdict does not do. Whether the echo was intentional cannot be determined from the confession alone.

Mary’s husband, Roger Toothaker, was a self-described witch doctor from Billerica who had claimed for years that he could identify and kill witches. He died in a Boston jail in June 1692, before he could stand trial. Mary’s sister was Martha Carrier, who was hanged for witchcraft in August of that year. According to Chithelen, Mary Lacey Jr. named Carrier’s son Richard as helping to afflict Swan. That ties the accusations to two generations of the same extended family.

Another confession came from Ann Foster, who described using rag dolls, commonly called “poppets,” to harm people. According to her account, she could stick the dolls with pins, tie knots in them, or burn them, causing the person represented by the doll to suffer.

Timothy Swan died on February 2, 1692/3, according to the date on his gravestone, in his 30th year. He was still suffering from the illness that had made him a central figure in the Andover accusations. Around this time, the new court proceedings began producing acquittals in cases involving people who had previously confessed to witchcraft.

The surviving examinations and confessions provide further details about the accusations against Swan and the people who claimed to have afflicted him. The University of Virginia’s Witch Trials Transcription Project makes many of these documents available online. The confessions associated with the Carrier family are particularly relevant to this part of the story.

Timothy Swan documents, University of Virginia Witch Trials Transcription Project

¹ A flail swingle is the heavy swinging bar of a threshing flail.

Sources

Records and Files of the Quarterly Courts of Essex County, vol. 6, p. 141 (1676); vol. 9, p. 603 (1685-1686).

Emerson W. Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Trials and the American Experience (2014), pp. 158-159.

Niall Chithelen, “It Takes a Witch to Punish a Ra**st: Timothy Swan and the Essex County Witchcraft Crisis, 1692” (Yale University, HIST2090, 2017).

New England Historical Society, “Puritan Child Killers: Hannah Duston and Her Sister.”
https://newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/colonial-child-killers-hannah-duston-and-her-sister/

Peg Goggin Kearney, “‘They Die in Youth and Their Life is Among the Unclean’: The Life and Death of Elizabeth Emerson,” University of Southern Maine, 1994.
https://web.archive.org/web/20130906013432/http://wprokasy.myweb.uga.edu/Emerson2.htm

Roger Toothaker: Wikipedia; History of Massachusetts.

10/19/2026

Mary (Pitt) Newell, at Phipps Street in Charlestown, Ma.

HERE LYES THE BODY OF
MRS MARY NEWELL RELICT
WIDOW UNTO MR ANDREW
NEWELL OF Ye CITY OF BRISTOL
MERCHANT WHO DECd SEPTEMr
26 1684 [below grade: & in her 78th year]

MARY PITT, daughter of William and Mary (Gibbs) Pitt, was born in Bristol, England, about 1607, and died at Charlestown, Massachusetts Bay Colony, 26 September 1684, "in 78th yr." She married, probably at Bristol about 1630–32, Andrew Newell, merchant of the city of Bristol, who is reported to have died about 1663 at Lyme Regis, Dorset.

Her father, William Pitt, was a Bristol merchant described in the Charlestown record as "sheriff of the city of Bristol." By his will dated 13 May 1622 and proved 4 February 1624, he left his unmarried daughter Mary £250 and his gold chain. Her mother, Marie Pitt, widow, of the parish of St. Thomas, Bristol, died in 1634. Her will left Mary income from property, her wearing apparel and other goods, and also named Andrew and their young son John. The family was still in Bristol at that date.

Mary's sister Maud married Richard Russell and came to Charlestown, where she died in 1652. Maud's table-stone is the oldest dated marker at Phipps Street. Three of their brothers, Robert, Henry and Thomas Pitt, went to Virginia about 1640. Robert became a burgess and later a member of the council for Isle of Wight County.

Mary was admitted to the Charlestown church 15 (11) 1646/7, that is, 15 January 1646/7. Wyman marks the entry with a query, and the timing is not fully explained, since Andrew is not known to have come to New England. Nothing in the Charlestown record shows him holding land or dying there. Her gravestone, which survives at Phipps Street, calls her the "relict of Andrew Newell of ye city of Bristol, merchant."

Children of Andrew and Mary (Pitt) Newell:

i. JOHN NEWELL, bp. St. Thomas the Martyr, Bristol, 1 Aug. 1633; d. Charlestown 14/15 Oct. 1704. He m. there 15 Feb. 1664/5 HANNAH LARKIN, b. Charlestown 16 Jan. 1643, dau. of Edward and Joanna (Hale) Larkin; she d. 10 Dec. 1704. He was a cooper, owned the covenant at the First Church 26 June 1681, and was chosen town clerk in Dec. 1681 and again in March 1692/3. He died without a written will, and his nuncupative will was presented to the court in Dec. 1704. He and Hannah are buried at Phipps Street. Children: John, Joseph, Mary (m. Isaac Mirick), Hannah, Andrew.

ii. JOSEPH NEWELL, d. 1709. He m. 1680 SARAH TUTTLE.

Mary, her son John and his wife Hannah, and her sister Maud Russell are all buried in the same ground. The two Pitt sisters' stones, dated 1652 and 1684, bracket the first half-century of the burying ground.

Sources: Thomas Bellows Wyman, The Genealogies and Estates of Charlestown (1879), 2:698; will of William Pitt of Bristol, merchant, PCC, TNA PROB 11/145/155; will of Marie Pitt, widow of St. Thomas, Bristol, 1634; Middlesex County Probate, case 15825 (John Newell, 1704); Vital Records of Charlestown to 1850, 1:51.

10/12/2026

Samuel Stratton.
South Burying Place, Concord, Ma.

Samuel Stratton was born in Concord, Massachusetts, on March 5, 1660, the eldest son of Samuel Stratton and Mary (Frye) Stratton. His father had been born in England and came to Watertown with his own father by about 1647, married Mary Frye there in 1651, and moved the family to Concord about four years later.

As eldest son, Samuel inherited the Concord homestead. The town records call him a weaver; his will calls him a yeoman, and he was likely both.

On November 28, 1683, he married Elizabeth Fletcher, daughter of Francis and Elizabeth (Wheeler) Fletcher, born in Concord August 24, 1663. The Concord record reads “28. 9. 83,” the 28th day of the 9th month, with March counted as the first month. The family genealogy prints the year as 1688, which doesn’t fit, since their first son was born in 1684.

They had eight children, all born in Concord:

Samuel, b. 1684; settled in Rutland
Hezekiah, b. 1688; settled in Northfield
John, b. 1690; d. 1722
Elizabeth, b. Feb. 16, 1692; m. Jonathan Minott, 1713
Joseph, b. January 31, 1695/6
Mary, b. Mar. 5, 1698; m. James Dawson of Boston, 1718
Benjamin, b. Dec. 1, 1701; d. unmarried in Concord, 1779, “non compos” for many years
Anna, b. Nov. 26, 1704; m. ——— Billing

On April 25, 1717, “being of sound good and Perfect memory,” Samuel made his will. He left Elizabeth all his movable goods outright, and the use of all his real estate “so Long as shee shall Remaine a Widow in my Name,” with liberty to sell any of it for her support on the advice of their son Samuel. John and Joseph had already received land by deed of gift, so Hezekiah and Benjamin were to be brought up to equal shares. Mary and Anna were to receive enough to equal what their married sister, Elizabeth Minott, had already been given. After Elizabeth’s death or remarriage, the sons were to divide the remaining land equally and pay their sisters a share, the land to be appraised “by Indeferant men.” Elizabeth and son Samuel were named executors.

He signed with his mark. The witnesses were Mary Davis, Joseph Meriam, and John Meriam Jr.

Samuel died seven months later. The Concord record: “Samuel Stratton, the husband of Elizabeth his wife Dyed november ye 30 day 1717 (in his 58th yr.)”

Elizabeth never remarried. She was a widow for 44 years and died April 18, 1762, recorded as “in the hundredth year of her age.” By her 1663 birth date she was 98.

Sources: A Book of Strattons; Concord town records.

10/11/2026

Agnes (Wadland – Gillingham) Bachelder, at Phipps Street Burying Ground, Charlestown, Mass.

Orthography was not exactly a priority in those days. Wyman’s Genealogies of Charlestown records the surname as Bachelder, but the Middlesex County probate index lists more than a dozen variants: Batchelder, Bacchellor, Bachelder, Bacheldor, Bacheler, Bacheller, Bachellor, Bachelor, Batcheldor, Batcheller, Batchellor, Batchellour, and Batchelor. The gravestone adds Bathellor, and as you can see, it manages two different spellings on its own.

HERE LYES Ye BODY OF
AGNES BATHELLOR
WIFE TO JOSEPH
BACHELLOR AGED
ABOUT 50 YEARS
DIED 14 OF SEPTEMBR
1693
THE MEMORY OF THE JUST IS BLESSED

Agnes Bachelder, née Wadland, was born in Dartmouth, Devonshire, England, and christened on August 24, 1641. She was one of four children of Crispin Wadland, a mariner and ship-carpenter, and his wife Agnes Tybotts. Her brothers were Crispin, George, and Amos.

When the Wadlands came to New England is unknown, but it was before 1664. In 1665 Crispin bought a house in Charlestown from John Drinker. He made his will on April 13, 1668, and died a week later, on April 20. He left half his estate to his wife and half to the children, and the house was valued at £45. His widow Agnes appears on the Charlestown tithe list in 1677–8. In 1676 she sold the house to S. Gery, and her son George witnessed the deed. She died September 10, 1683, and her estate inventoried at £12.

The younger Agnes first married William Gillingham in Charlestown on October 31, 1664. Wyman records a son born May 3, 1665. He also lists, as probably theirs, a daughter Elizabeth, who married Thomas Bennett in 1686 and Benjamin Lawrence in 1719. William Gillingham died before the end of 1670.

On December 20, 1670, Agnes married Joseph Bachelder. He was a mason, born in Charlestown on June 20, 1644, the son of William and Rachel (Bate) Bachelder. In December 1683 Joseph was appointed administrator of his mother-in-law’s estate.

Issue of Agnes and Joseph:
William, birth date unrecorded
Rachel, b. Nov. 3, 1671
Agnes, b. March 8, 1674; baptized May 12, 1695, when she owned the covenant
Susanna, b. Aug. 24, 1675

Joseph bought and sold small parcels around Charlestown through the 1680s: a cow common, land on the east side of the Menotomy River, and lot 14 of 1½ acres. He died September 11, 1688, aged 44, which the records describe as “middle aged.” His estate, house included, inventoried at £88, and Agnes was administratrix in 1689.

Agnes died September 14, 1693. On October 16, Ebenezer Austin and Richard Austin Jr. of Charlestown received letters of administration for her estate. Her inventory was recorded November 23 and filed with her late husband’s estate. The following year Joseph Kettle, guardian of William and the three girls, sold a lot of the children’s land to John Soley.

Sources:
Wyman, Genealogies and Estates of Charlestown, vols. 1 & 2
https://archive.org/details/genealogiesestat01wyma/page/43/mode/1up?q=Proctor
https://archive.org/details/genealogiesestat02wyma/page/985/mode/1up?view=theater
Pierce, Batchelder, Batcheller Genealogy
https://archive.org/details/batchelderbatche00pier/page/41/mode/1up?q=Agnes
Middlesex County, MA: Probate File Papers, 1648–1871, Case 589, Agnes Bacheldor, 1693; recorded vol. 8, pp. 274, 276 (American Ancestors / NEHGS)

10/07/2026

I just got my FOP (Friends Of Phipps) mug prototype.

10/06/2026

Thankful (Foster) Baker
Dorchester North Burying Ground, Dorchester, Ma.

HERE LYETH
Ye BODY OF
THANKFULL BAKER
RELIct OF JOHN
BAKER AGED 58
YEARS DEC,d Ye 27 OF
JANUARY 1697/8

Thankful Foster was baptized at Dorchester on 27 December 1640. She was the eldest daughter of Capt. Hopestill Foster and Mary Bates.

Both her parents came over on the same ship. On 17 April 1635 the Elizabeth, William Stagg master, was cleared at London for New England. Her passengers had to produce certificates of conformity to the Church of England and take the oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy. Among them were Patience Foster, 40, a widow, and her son Hopestill, 14. The same list includes James Bate, 53, his wife Alice, 52, and their children, among them Marie, 17. Hopestill and Mary married at Dorchester about 1639, and Thankful was their first child.

Her father did well in Dorchester. He served as selectman and town treasurer, became captain of the Dorchester company, and was a deputy to the General Court nearly every year from 1659 until he died in 1676.

In January 1663/4 Thankful married John Baker of Boston, a blacksmith and a widower. His first wife, Joanna Swift of Dorchester, had died in July 1663, leaving him two children, Thomas and Elizabeth. John and Thankful had a son John, born at Boston in February 1664/5, who appears to have died young.

John Baker made his will on 26 March 1666. It names his wife Thankful, his son Thomas, his daughter Elizabeth, and "a child unborn." He made his father-in-law Hopestill Foster and his uncle Richard Baker overseers. He left Thomas the land at Dorchester Neck that had belonged to the boy's grandfather Swift. The will was proved on 5 July 1666, so John was dead by early summer.

The child was a daughter. Dorchester records her birth on 28 July 1666 (the 28th of the 5th month) as Silence, "daughter of John Baker of Boston, deceased."

Thankful never remarried. In April 1696 she joined her surviving brothers and sisters in selling part of their father's land, and the deed calls her "Thankful Baker, widow." She died on 27 January 1697/8, a little over 32 years after her husband.

10/05/2026

Abigail (Cole - Bewford) Babbet
Phipps Street, Charlestown, Ma

Plot E68. This was carved by a very prolific but as yet unnamed carver.

Here Lyes ye Body of
Abigail Babbett wife
to John Babbett who
Died January ye 12th
1709\10 in the 36th
Year of her Age
here also lyes ye 3 children of
John & Abigail Babbett ye Son
[continued below grade]

Abigail was born in Charlestown on March 26, 1673. She was the second daughter of Jacob Cole, a feltmaker, and Sarah Trayne. Her father served in Capt. Samuel Moseley's company in King Philip's War and was at the Narragansett fight on December 19, 1675. Four months later, on April 23, 1676, Abigail and her sisters Sarah and Hannah were baptized together, a week after their mother joined the church. Their father died of smallpox in the epidemic of 1677–78, when Abigail was about four. His estate was inventoried at £33, and it took until 1712 for anyone to finish settling it.

On May 31, 1696, Abigail married John Bewford. He doesn't appear in the records again after that, and by 1702 she was a widow. On May 25, 1702, in Boston, she married John Babbett, a mariner from Plymouth, England. According to records they had at least two children, a daughter, Mary, born August 25, 1704, and a son, John, born April 15, 1706, who was baptized in 1710.

Abigail died on January 12, 1709/10, aged 36. Her gravestone says three of John and Abigail's children are buried with her. Mary and John don't appear in any later records, so it seems likely they are two of the three, and that the third was a child who left no other record. The inscription continues, "ye Son…," before it disappears below ground, so the names may still be there.

John Babbett married Mary Hett in November 1710 and died in February 1727/8, aged 47.

Sources: Wyman, Genealogies and Estates of Charlestown (1879), Cole, Bewford and Babbet entries; Charlestown vital records, v. 3 pp. 137, 142;

10/02/2026

Mary (Hilton) Marshall, c. 1645 – July 15, 1678
Phipps Street Burying Ground, Charlestown, Ma.
Plot L73

HERE LYES Ye BODY
OF MARY MARSHAL
WIFE TO WILLIAM
MARSHAL AGED ABOUT
33 YEARS DIED IULY
15 1678

Mary was the daughter of William Hilton, who came over from London as a boy with his mother on the ship Anne in 1623 to join his father, William of Plymouth. The family lived in Newbury before settling in Charlestown, where her father was admitted to the church in August 1670. Mary's mother was William's first wife, whose name hasn't survived. After her mother died, Mary grew up with a stepmother, Mehetabel Nowell, whom her father married in 1659.

On October 2, 1666, at about 21, Mary married William Marshall of Charlestown, a mariner. She was admitted to the Charlestown church in January 1671/2. Over the next ten years she had five children:

Sarah, born June 16, 1667. She later married William Walley Jr.
William, born April 3, 1669
Mary, born February 4, 1670. She later married a Proctor.
John, born April 14, 1673, baptized the 20th
Edward, baptized April 16, 1676

Mary died on July 15, 1678, of smallpox, at age 33. That was the year of the smallpox epidemic that went through Boston and Charlestown in 1677–78. Her children were 11, 9, 8, 5, and 2. Wyman notes that a gravestone was put up for her.

William remarried in 1681, to Lydia Hale, and kept going to sea. By 1683 he was captain of the ship Success, and by 1694 of the sloop Swan. Mary's family stayed tied to the water after she was gone:

Her son William sailed on the Success with his father in 1683. He later died in England.
Her half-brother Nowell Hilton, born to Mehetabel in 1663, was also in the crew of the Success in 1683. His will was witnessed in London and probated in 1689 at Doctors' Commons. He left everything to a kinsman, Nathaniel Cutler, a sawyer of Stepney.
Her son John became a sea captain and was last known to be in Jamaica. His estate was administered in 1730. His inventory lists four enslaved people by name: Phillis, about 40; Glocester, 22; Toney, 17; and Cesar, who died soon after his enslaver.
Her son Edward was also a mariner. He died young, and his estate went to his brother William in 1699.

Footnote: Mary's grandfather, William Hilton, came to Plymouth on the Fortune in 1621. His brother Edward Hilton, a London fishmonger, settled at Hilton's Point on the Piscataqua around 1623. That settlement became Dover, one of the first English settlements in New Hampshire.

Source: Thomas Bellows Wyman, The Genealogies and Estates of Charlestown (1879).

10/01/2026

First Parish Church, East Derry, in the county of Rockingham, in the state of New Hampshire. Viewed from Forest Hill Cemetery.

Colonial Graveyards

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