♂Edward Marvin

Edward Marvin (about 1552 – November 1615) was a landholder of Great Bentley in Essex, England, with houses and land in five parishes of the neighbourhood, and the father of eleven children. He was the tenth great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through his son Matthew Marvin^W (baptised 1600). His youngest son, Matthew, was most likely the man who crossed to New England in 1635 and settled at Hartford, Connecticut.

Family and land

Edward was probably the son of Reinold Marvin of Ramsey and his wife Johan. Reinold’s will, made on 22 December 1554, left his son Edward a tenement in Wrabness, and some sixty years later Edward left his own houses and lands in Wrabness and Wix, freehold and copyhold^W, to his eldest son, also named Edward. His other property lay in Ramsey, Frating and Great Bentley, and he kept cattle and a flock of sheep. By June 1593 Edward and his wife Margaret were living at Great Bentley, where their younger children were baptized.

Children

Eleven children of Edward’s are known. Four sons, Edward, Thomas, Richard and Robert, were probably born in the 1580s, and a daughter, Mary, about 1591. Two sons, John and Reinold, probably twins, were baptized at Great Bentley on 7 June 1593 and buried the next day; another son, baptized Reinold on 25 October 1594, lived to adulthood. Two daughters, Margaret and Elizabeth, were baptized together on 16 January 1596, and Margaret was buried twelve days later. Matthew, the youngest, was baptized on 26 March 1600.

His will

Edward made his will on 13 November 1615, “sicke in bodey but yet of good & perfette Remembranc,” and asked to be buried in the churchyard of “muche Bentley,” as he called Great Bentley. He was buried there two days later, on 15 November. He left twenty shillings to the poor of the parish. Thomas and Richard had already received houses and land in Ramsey from him, and the will confirmed that each had kept the conditions of the grant. Robert received the free lands in Frating, Reinold the lands called Moysses, and Matthew, then fifteen, “my howsse that I nowe dwelle in,” called Edons alias Dreybrockes, with two crofts.

Reinold and Matthew were each to pay their mother six pounds a year for life, half at Lady Day^W and half at Michaelmas^W, and if Matthew failed to pay, the house was to pass to Reinold. Margaret also received three cows, ten wethers of the best of the flock and all the household goods. Edward named his son-in-law John Hayes, the husband of his daughter Mary, executor and his son Thomas supervisor, and left the rest of his goods to Margaret and four of the children, Robert, Reinold, Matthew and Elizabeth. The will was proved at Colchester on 17 January 1615/16.

Notes

Parentage

The link to Reinold Marvin of Ramsey comes from William T. R. Marvin’s The English Ancestry of Reinold and Matthew Marvin of Hartford (1900), which identifies Edward by the Wrabness land: the tenement Reinold left to his son Edward in 1554 matches the Wrabness houses and lands that Edward left to his own son in 1615. The same will names Reinold’s wife, Johan. The book gives Edward’s birth as about 1552, and elsewhere as at Ramsey about 1550 or earlier, reasoning from the date of his father’s will.

The children

The 1900 book lists eight children, the seven named in Edward’s will and John, baptized with Reinold in 1593. A study by John Insley Coddington in The American Genealogist 18 (1941) gives eleven, adding the daughters Margaret and Mary and a second Reinold, baptized in 1594, who was the son who later went to New England; the 1900 book had taken the Reinold of 1593, buried the day after his baptism, for him. It also corrects the earlier book on the daughters: Mary, not Elizabeth, was the wife of John Hayes. The parish index gives the marriage of Marie Marvine and John Hays at Great Bentley on 19 April 1609; Coddington gives 1610. The birth years of the four eldest sons and of Mary are estimates. Coddington places Margaret’s birth about 1589, but the parish index gives her baptism, with Elizabeth’s, on 16 January 1596, and her burial on 28 January; Coddington writes the burial year as 1595/6. The baptism entries name the father only.

Death and probate

He died between the making of his will on 13 November 1615 and his burial at Great Bentley on 15 November. The will was proved in the court of the Archdeaconry of Colchester on 17 January 1615/16, and the 1900 book prints it in full.