♀Mary Bickford

Mary Bickford (born 13 August 1693) was the wife of John Walker, a shipwright of Kittery, in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, whose will of 1743 made her his sole executrix and left her the use of his whole estate for her life. She was the sixth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her son Gideon Walker (1719–1805).

Family background

She was born at Dover, New Hampshire, on 13 August 1693, the daughter of John Bickford and his wife Susanah, as a clerk’s copy of the Dover town records has it. The Genealogical Dictionary of Maine and New Hampshire by Noyes, Libby and Davis gives the day as 18 August and names her parents as Sergeant John Bickford of Long Point, in Newington, New Hampshire, and his wife Susannah Furber; administration of her father’s estate was granted in 1715 to his widow and their son Jethro. The same dictionary makes her father’s mother Temperance Hull, the daughter of the Reverend Joseph Hull^W. The history of Brunswick, Topsham and Harpswell published in 1878 by George A. and Henry W. Wheeler likewise calls her the daughter of John Bickford of Newington.

Marriage and children

She married John Walker of Kittery on 24 October 1717; the record of the marriage gives the groom as “Jno. Walker” of Kittery and the bride as Mary Bickford of Newington. The genealogical dictionary gives the same day, at Newington, while the Wheelers give 21 October. The dictionary counts eight children of the marriage. She was his second wife, according to the dictionary; his first, Elizabeth Gunnison, had borne him one child, who died young. The Wheelers give the birth of their son Gideon at Kittery in 1719.

The couple had eight children at Kittery between 1718 and 1736, according to an index of the Kittery town book: a first Eliphalet, Gideon, a second Eliphalet, Temperance, John, Mary, Elizabeth and a second Mary. Four of them died young: the first Eliphalet in the year he was born, and the second Eliphalet, Temperance and the elder Mary in the 1730s. Her husband was baptized at Kittery Point on 18 November 1722, with their sons Gideon and Eliphalet the same day, and she was admitted to full communion with the church on 14 September 1735.

Widowhood

John Walker made his will on 13 May 1743 and died, according to the Wheelers, on 3 June. He left his wife, Mary, the use and income of his whole estate for her life and for bringing up the children not yet of lawful age, and made her his sole executrix. After her death the estate was to go to “my well-beloved Children Gideon Walker John Walker, Elizabeth Walker & Mary Walker”, with twenty acres at Arundel set apart for Gideon. Among the witnesses was Roger Mitchell, whom the dictionary names as the second husband of her elder sister Bridget. After John’s death she married Zacheus Trafton, according to the same dictionary, which gives no date. The date and place of her own death have not been found.

Notes

The sources disagree on the deaths of two of her children. The index of the town book gives the second Eliphalet’s death as 31 August 1739 and the elder Mary’s as 10 September 1736; another compiled account gives both in 1735, with the same day and month. The index gives Temperance’s death as 21 August 1735. The conflict stands, and the years given above follow the index.

The Kittery Point register names no parent for the baptisms of a Mary on 2 August 1730, an Elizabeth on 25 March 1733 and a Mary on 18 July 1736. They are probably her daughters, because the names and dates fit; the register does not say so. The will names one Mary; on the dates the index gives, the elder died after the younger was born, so the younger is the daughter who was alive in 1743.