♀Elizabeth Bailey

Elizabeth Bailey married John Phinney, a settler of Plymouth Colony^W, at Barnstable on 26 June 1654, as his third wife, and bore him at least five children there. She was the eighth great-grandmother of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through her daughter Hannah.

Barnstable

John Phinney had already lost two wives, Christian and Abigail, when he married Elizabeth, and his eldest son, also John, born at Plymouth on 24 December 1638, was fifteen at the time of the wedding.

Five children were born to the couple at Barnstable between 1655 and 1660: Jonathan, Robert, Hannah, Elizabeth and Josiah, with Hannah born on 2 September 1657. Two more sons, Jeremiah and Joshua, probably followed in 1662 and 1665.

Bristol

In 1680 John Phinney and their son Jonathan are said to have been among the first settlers of Bristol, a new town on the Mount Hope lands, where Metacom, the sachem the English called King Philip, had made his base in King Philip’s War^W. Bristol was then part of Plymouth Colony and has belonged to Rhode Island since 1747. Elizabeth was probably buried there on 9 February 1683/4.

Lines of descent

Her daughter Hannah, born at Barnstable on 2 September 1657, was most likely the Hannah who was the wife of Ephraim Morton of Plymouth by 1677. Hannah’s son John Morton married Reliance Phinney, a daughter of John Phinney’s eldest son, at Barnstable on 27 December 1705. On that reckoning Elizabeth’s grandson married her stepson’s daughter, and the line to Roger runs on through their son James Morton (born 1714).

The family

Their son Robert, born at Barnstable on 13 August 1656, is said to have died in 1690 on Sir William Phips’s expedition against Quebec^W, New England’s failed attempt that October to take the capital of New France. By the same account, he had made his will on 23 July that year.

Notes

Name and origins

The Barnstable register writes her name Elizabeth Bayley, and Savage’s Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England spells it the same way; Franklin C. Clark’s account of the Finney family in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register (1906) and The Name and Family of Finney (1952) write Bailey. Her parents and birthplace are not known. A WikiTree profile gives her birth as 9 February 1634 at Barnstable but cites no record for it; Barnstable was not settled until 1638, and the day and month are those of her burial fifty years later.

Marriage and children

The marriage on 26 June 1654 and the births of Jonathan (14 August 1655), Robert (13 August 1656), Hannah (2 September 1657), Elizabeth (15 March 1658/59) and Josiah (11 January 1660) are entered together in the Barnstable register, as printed in the Records of the Colony of New Plymouth; the entry ends with Josiah, whose birth Savage dates 11 January 1661. Savage, Clark and the 1952 Finney genealogy add two younger sons, Jeremiah, born on 15 August 1662, and Joshua, born in December 1665.

Bristol and her burial

Clark’s account says that John Phinney joined the company that settled Bristol in 1680 and sold his interest in the Mount Hope lands to his son Jonathan in 1682, that Jonathan was one of the first settlers of Bristol, and that Elizabeth was buried at Bristol on 9 February 1683/4. The 1952 Finney genealogy gives the same burial date. A WikiTree profile gives that day, in 1684, as the date of her death.

Hannah’s parentage

The Barnstable register records the birth of a daughter Hannah to John Phinney and Elizabeth on 2 September 1657. That she is the Hannah who married Ephraim Morton of Plymouth, the second of that name, rests on compiled genealogies: Savage’s dictionary, Clark’s account of 1906, the 1952 Finney genealogy, and a genealogy of the Rogers family published in 1978 by the General Society of Mayflower Descendants, which calls John Morton the son of Ephraim and Hannah (Finney) Morton. No record of the Morton marriage is known, and the Plymouth town book names the children’s mother only as Hannah. An online compilation states that she is named, as Ephraim Morton’s wife or as Hannah Morton, in two wills: that of her father’s brother, Robert Finney of Plymouth, made in 1686, and that of her brother Robert, made in 1690. Clark also makes the John Morton born to Ephraim and Hannah in 1680 the husband of Reliance Phinney.

Robert

Savage’s dictionary and Clark’s account have Robert dying on Phips’s expedition of 1690 against Quebec, and the 1952 Finney genealogy has him dying on an expedition to Canada; Clark gives the date of his will.