♀Margaret (surname unknown)

Margaret (buried 28 May 1633) was the wife of Edward Marvin of Great Bentley in Essex, England, probably the mother of all eleven of his children, and his widow for more than seventeen years. She was the tenth great-grandmother of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through her son Matthew Marvin^W (baptised 1600). Her youngest son, Matthew, was most likely the man who crossed to New England in 1635 and settled at Hartford, Connecticut, two years after her death.

Marriage and children

Margaret’s maiden name and family are not known. By June 1593 Edward and his wife Margaret were living at Great Bentley, where their younger children were baptized. 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.

Widowhood

Edward made his will on 13 November 1615 and was buried two days later. He left Margaret three cows, ten wethers of the best of his flock and all the household goods, and a share, with four of the children, in the rest of his goods. Her living was to come from two of their sons. 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. The payments were to be made at the family’s house, called Edons alias Dreybrockes, which went to Matthew, then fifteen, and Margaret was to give each son a receipt every half year. She was buried at Great Bentley on 28 May 1633.

Notes

Her name

The burial entry spells the surname Mervin and names her as the wife of Edward. Another Margaret Marvin lived in the parish at the same time, the wife of William Marvin, whose son Edward was christened on 13 February 1605; the 1633 burial, naming Edward as the husband, is this Margaret’s.

Her children

The baptism entries of 1593 to 1600 name the father only, and her husband’s will of 1615 calls her “margrett my wiffe” without naming the mother of any child. A study by John Insley Coddington in The American Genealogist 18 (1941) gives Edward eleven children and Margaret as his wife, and no other wife of Edward’s is known. The birth years of the four eldest sons and of Mary are estimates. Coddington places the daughter 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.

The will

Edward Marvin’s will, proved at Colchester on 17 January 1615/16, is printed in full in William T. R. Marvin’s The English Ancestry of Reinold and Matthew Marvin of Hartford (1900). Her burial date comes from the Great Bentley parish register and from Coddington’s study.