♀Mary Brewster

Mary Brewster (about 10 February 1678/79 – 17 April 1761) was a woman of Duxbury, Plymouth and Kingston in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, a great-granddaughter of Elder William Brewster of the Mayflower and the eldest child of the carpenter Wrestling Brewster. In 1707 she and her four sisters gave up their shares of their late father’s lands to their three brothers, taking his household goods in return. She was the sixth great-grandmother of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through her son Jonathan Holmes (1709–1787).

Early life

Mary was born about 10 February 1678/79, probably at Duxbury, the eldest of the eight children of Wrestling Brewster (about 1644 – 1696/97) and his wife Mary (1661–1742), whose maiden name is not known. Her grandfather Love Brewster had come to Plymouth on the Mayflower in 1620 as a boy, with his parents William and Mary Brewster. She grew up at Duxbury, where her father worked as a carpenter. He died there on 1 January 1696/97, without a will, and her mother was appointed to administer the estate. In 1700 her mother married John Partridge of Duxbury, and Mary gained two half-brothers, Benjamin and Isaac Partridge.

Marriage and family

She married Joseph Holmes (1665–1733), a son of John Holmes, who lived at Plymouth. The marriage was probably about 1696 or 1697; no record of the marriage has been found, and the date is inferred from the birth of their first child in October 1697. A genealogy of the Brewster family published in 1908 calls her his second wife; compiled sources name a first wife, Sarah Sprague, but no town record of his first marriage has been found. The Plymouth town book lists eight children of “Joseph Holmes & Mary his wife”, born between October 1697 and March 1719, the last when Mary was about forty. The Brewster genealogy adds two more who died young, a son Wrestling, who bore her father’s name, and a daughter Lydia.

Her father’s estate was not divided until ten years after his death. By a deed of 3 October 1707, “Joseph Holmes of Plymouth .... & Mary his Wife” joined her sisters Sarah, Abigail, Hannah and Elizabeth, and Sarah’s husband Caleb Stetson, in releasing the Duxbury lands to “our Brethren ye Sons of the sd Deceased namely Jonathan Brewster Wrestling Brewster & John Brewster”, while the brothers released the household goods to their sisters. The deed is the only record that names all eight of Wrestling Brewster’s children together.

According to the Brewster genealogy, the couple lived for many years near the Duxbury line, and in 1713 Joseph exchanged farms with Mary’s brother Wrestling, after which the family lived on a farm near the Plymouth line in the part of Plymouth that became the town of Kingston in 1726.

Later life and death

Joseph Holmes died at Kingston on 26 June 1733. Mary survived him by nearly twenty-eight years and lived on at Kingston, where her son Jonathan also settled. She died on 17 April 1761; the Brewster genealogy, citing her gravestone, gives her age as 82. The printed Kingston vital records do not include her death.