♀Dorothy Martimore

Dorothy Martimore (buried 17 January 1640/1) was a woman of Thornbury, in Gloucestershire, who married Richard Thayer there in 1624 and was buried there in January 1640/1. She was the ninth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through her son Richard Thayer.

Thornbury

She was probably a daughter of William Martimore, a hooper of Thornbury who died about 1626; a hooper made and fitted the hoops that bound casks and barrels. Dorothy Martimore married Richard Tayer, as the parish clerk wrote his name, at Thornbury on 5 April 1624. Their son Richard, most likely the boy baptized there on 10 February 1624/5, was entered in the register with his witnesses only: “Richard Tayer Willm Martimore & Bridgett Tayar”. The William Martimore among them was perhaps her father.

Dorothy was buried at Thornbury on 17 January 1640/1, written “Dorathie Tayer” in the register. Richard is said to have crossed to New England with eight children about that time and to have settled at Braintree in 1641.

Lines of descent

Both of her lines to Nancy Jane Blanchard run through her son Richard and her grandson Nathaniel Thayer (1658–1728), down to Mary Thayer (1770–1827). Two of Mary’s grandchildren, Joseph Knapp Blanchard (1820–1885) and Elizabeth Trueworthy Blanchard (1825–1884), married each other, so their son Wesley Blanchard (1844–1908) descended from Dorothy Martimore through both parents.

Notes

Her family

Her father named here, William Martimore, comes from a genealogy column in the Boston Evening Transcript in 1922, which makes Dorothy the daughter of William Mortimer of Thornbury and his first wife, and has William marrying a second wife, Margaret Groome, on 21 April 1623 and dying about 1626. His will of 1626, as William Mortimer of Thornbury, hooper, is held among the Gloucester diocesan probate records. The Thornbury register of those years names godparents, never parents. It has a Dorithe Martimore baptized on 29 January 1604/5 and a “dorothy martimer” buried on 4 May 1622, so which of them, if either, was the bride of 1624 is not shown.

Her son

The 1648 deed that names Richard Thayer of Braintree as the son of Richard Thayer of Boston does not name his mother. That she was Dorothy rests on the compiled genealogies, which make the Boston man the Richard Tayer who married her at Thornbury and the boy baptized there in February 1624/5 his son. A dictionary of New England marriages gives her as Dorothy Mortimer, the first wife of Richard Thayer, and her death as about 1640.