♀Margaret (surname unknown)

Margaret (living in 1665) was the wife of William Odding, a weaver of Braintree, in Essex, England, and after his death in 1612 of John Porter, with whom she crossed to Massachusetts in 1633 and went on to Rhode Island, where in her old age she took her husband to the colony’s Assembly for leaving her without support. She was most likely the ninth great-grandmother of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through her daughter Sarah Odding (born 1612).

Braintree

William Oddyn, as the name is written, is said to have made his will at Braintree in October 1612. He made a bequest to his daughter “Sarahe” and named “Margaret my wief” his sole executrix, with William Barnard and James Wiseman as supervisors. The will was proved on 3 December 1612, so he had died by then, leaving Margaret a widow.

Roxbury

Margaret later married John Porter, and in 1633 she and Porter brought Sarah to Roxbury, in Massachusetts, where Sarah married Philip Sherman^W. Margaret and John Porter were both members of the Roxbury church, whose record calls Sarah “the daughter o[f] the wife of John Porter by a former husband”.

In the Antinomian Controversy^W Porter took the side of Anne Hutchinson^W and John Wheelwright^W. In November 1637 he was among the men Massachusetts ordered to give up their guns, and the church record says he “was so carried away with these opinions of familism & schism” that Philip Sherman “followed them & removed with them to the Iland”, the island of Aquidneck. In March 1638 Porter was one of the signers of the Portsmouth Compact^W, which founded Portsmouth there.

Kings Town

Porter served the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations^W as an Assistant, and in 1657 he and others bought a large tract at Pettaquamscutt from Narragansett sachems. A Rhode Island genealogical dictionary of 1887, abstracting the colony’s records, shows that on 3 May 1665, at Kings Town, Margaret petitioned the colony’s General Assembly against her husband. She complained that he did not give her suitable care and was gone from her, leaving her to depend on her children for her daily support, and asked for provision out of his estate. The Assembly, “satisfied that the complaints are true” and with “a deep sense upon their hearts” of the state of “this poor ancient matron”, secured all of Porter’s estate in the colony until he had settled enough on his wife to keep her.

On 27 June 1665 Porter was released from that restraint, having settled on her for life an estate that “doth fully satisfy” her. By January 1671 he was signing deeds with another wife, Horod. The records do not say when Margaret died or how her marriage ended.

Notes

Her name and marriages

Margaret’s maiden name is not known. Robert Charles Anderson’s The Great Migration Begins calls Sarah the “daughter of Margaret ( ) (Odding) Porter”, citing the Roxbury church records, and John Osborne Austin’s Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island (1887) makes Margaret John Porter’s first wife and names “His first wife’s daughter Sarah Odding” as the wife of Philip Sherman. Older genealogies make Sarah a daughter of George and Margaret Odding; Patricia Law Hatcher’s study in The American Genealogist 73 (1998) showed that Sarah’s father was William Odding of Braintree. William’s will is known from extracts quoted in online genealogies, which give its date both as 12 and as 21 October 1612. When and where Margaret married John Porter is not known.

The petition of 1665

The petition, the Assembly’s order and Porter’s release are known from Austin’s abstract of the colony’s proceedings, given under John Porter, and the quoted words follow that abstract. Austin treats the Roxbury church member, the Portsmouth signer and the Kings Town landholder as one John Porter, and calls the petitioner “His wife Margaret”.

The line to Roger

The line from Sarah to Roger runs through her son John Sherman (1644–1734), a link that is itself probable rather than proven.