♀Catherine Shapleigh

Catherine Shapleigh (died before 30 May 1676) was the wife first of James Treworgye and then of Edward Hilton of Exeter, New Hampshire, whose widow she was when she died. She was the ninth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her daughter Elizabeth Treworgye (1639–1719). In her will she left her wedding ring to that daughter, by then the wife of Captain John Gilman of Exeter.

Kingswear and Kittery

The Genealogical Dictionary of Maine and New Hampshire has James Treworgye and Catherine Shapleigh married at Kingswear, in Devon, on 16 March 1617. The same dictionary puts her birth about 1600 and makes her a daughter of Alexander Shapleigh, a leading merchant of Kingswear with large interests on the Piscataqua River; the Gilman family history of 1869 adds that he sent goods to the first settlements in Maine and New Hampshire in his own ships and acted as agent for Sir Ferdinando Gorges^W. By the dictionary’s account her husband was living at Kittery, in the Province of Maine^W, before June 1640, and their daughter Lucy later gave 1646 as the year she came over.

Widowhood

The Gilman family history of 1869 says that James Treworgye died in Newfoundland, and Savage’s dictionary of New England settlers that he went there, perhaps only to trade; the Genealogical Dictionary gives no record of his death. He was dead by 2 July 1650, when, according to the Genealogical Dictionary, Catherine agreed to turn the estate in her hands over to her brother. On 6 July, the dictionary records, the question of who owned her father’s estate was brought before Edward Godfrey, who ruled that she neither held it nor answered for its debts, since her father had conveyed everything before he died.

As a widow, by the same account, she had a deed from the Indians for Thompson’s Point, dated 3 October 1651, and the dictionary’s list of Kittery land grants includes land at the Heathy Marsh granted to her, written Katharine Treworgy, in 1650, and twenty acres more in 1658.

Exeter

After June 1654 she married Edward Hilton of Exeter. The dictionary says it was Hilton who, about 1628, had begun the plantation at Hilton’s Point on the Piscataqua from which Dover grew; he later settled at Exeter, where he served as a selectman. The dictionary last mentions him alive on 19 May 1669, and records that his estate, inventoried in March 1670/1, came to £2,204, that her dower as his widow was set off that June, and that by September she was called executrix. In September 1671 she sued at Wells as his executrix against George Norton, then withdrew; in September 1672 Norton was allowed costs against her for not pursuing the action. In May 1674, according to the same book, she pleaded for her brother, recalling that some thirty-eight years earlier, in a time of great scarcity, her father had laid out a good estate to supply the country.

Will and death

She died at Exeter before 30 May 1676, when her will was proved; the Genealogical Dictionary gives the date of her death as 2 May. The will was set down in the third person and bore the names of two witnesses, Samuel Dudley, the minister of Exeter, to whose ministry she left forty shillings, and Rebecca Sweat. The dictionary calls it a nuncupative^W, or spoken, will.

What she had to leave was silver, clothing and linen. The silver went to the men and boys of the family: a beaker to James, the son of Samuel Treworgye, to be kept by her daughter Elizabeth Gilman until he came of age, a cup and fork to James, the son of John Treworgye, a two-eared cup to Edward Hilton junior and a spoon to her grandson Samuel Gilman. Elizabeth received her wedding ring, her serge gown and petticoats and her hat; her daughter Joanna Meredith a great iron kettle, a cloth gown and petticoat and a green apron; and Mrs. Lucy Wells a stone ring and a petticoat. Linen, stockings, a white mantle and black hoods went to the Gilman girls, Mary, Betty, Katharine, Sarah, Lydia and Abigail, and Holland sheets to her granddaughter Johanna Meredith; the rest of her linen was to be shared among all her granddaughters.

She named her son-in-law, Captain John Gilman, as executor, calling him simply her son, and once her debts and funeral were paid the remainder was to go to her grandchildren. An inventory taken by John Folsom and Robert Wadleigh on 6 October 1676 valued her estate at £78 10s. 6d.

Notes

Her children

The will names two daughters, Joanna Meredith and Elizabeth Gilman. It does not call Mrs. Lucy Wells a daughter, but the Genealogical Dictionary takes her for Catherine’s daughter Lucy, the wife of Thomas Wills of Kittery, and counts the two James Treworgyes as her grandsons, the sons of her sons Samuel and John; it gives the Treworgyes a third son, Nicholas.

Her second marriage

Savage’s dictionary places her marriage to Edward Hilton after July 1650; the Genealogical Dictionary places it soon after 1654. A York county court record of 29 June 1654 (Province and Court Records of Maine, vol. 2, p. 26) has her suing in her own name as “Mis Katterne Trueworthy” and the jury finding for her, so the record bears out the later date: the marriage came after that June.