♀Mary Dolbiar

Mary Dolbiar (died 5 January 1686) was the wife of Jonathan Gillett, an early settler of Windsor, in the Connecticut Colony^W. With him she belonged to the church that had gathered at Dorchester, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony^W, and came up to Windsor with its minister, John Warham^W, and she was living when he made his will in 1677. She was the eighth great-grandmother of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through her daughter Anna Gillet (1639–1711).

Early life

Mary Dolbiar was probably baptized at Colyton, in Devon, England, on 7 June 1607, the daughter of Rawkey Dolbiar, a yeoman of the hamlet of Cadhayne, and his wife, Mary Michell.

Marriage

Robert Charles Anderson’s study of the early migration to New England found that Jonathan Gillett made the ocean crossing twice: after a first stay in New England he went back to England, and married Mary Dolbiar at Colyton, in Devon, on 29 March 1634, then sailed again that year on the ship Recovery. A note one of Jonathan’s sons later wrote in the family Bible says that his father came into New England the second time in June 1634, and that a son Jonathan was born about half a year after the landing.

Windsor

At Windsor she and her husband both appear in the church’s list of members who had belonged to it at Dorchester and came up with Mr. Warham; she is entered only as “Jonath. Gillets Wife”. Anna, born on 29 December 1639, was the first of the Gillett children born at Windsor, and six more followed, the last a son, Josiah, baptized on 14 July 1650. No Windsor record names the mother of any of them; that she was their mother is a reading of the records rather than a record.

Jonathan made his will on 8 August 1677 and died fifteen days later, on 23 August. He named “my wife” sole executrix and gave her the use of his house and lands for her life, both his own houselot and “that which was my Brother Nathan Gillett’s“, with twenty acres of woodland. Josiah was “to be an help and Ayde to his Mother” and was to have the dwelling house after her death. Stiles’s history of Windsor notes a “Wid. Gillett” in the church’s list of living members at the end of that year. She died at Windsor on 5 January 1686.

Notes

Sources

The marriage at Colyton and the voyage on the Recovery come from Anderson’s Great Migration Newsletter (January–March 1990), and Anderson’s index enters her as Mary (Dolbiar) Gillett. The following issue corrected the year of the Recovery’s voyage from 1633 to 1634, which fits the marriage in March 1634 and the son’s note of a second arrival in June 1634. The 1607 baptism comes from Coddington’s printing of the Colyton register, and her death from Welles’s volume (both below). Her name is not given in any known Windsor record: the church list of the Dorchester members, printed in a collection of early Windsor records issued by the Connecticut Historical Society, calls her only Jonathan Gillett’s wife, and his will, printed in full in the digest of the early Hartford probate records published by Charles W. Manwaring, calls her only “my wife”. The Bible note and the “Wid. Gillett” rest on the history of Windsor published by Henry R. Stiles^W in 1891–92.

Her baptism

Coddington prints the register entry as “1607 Mary, d. of Rockye Dolebeere, 7 June.” The entry names only her father. In his family account Coddington gives her as “baptized at Colyton 7 June 1607” and reads her parents as “Rawkey, Rockye, Rokey, Rokie, Rokye or Rochee Dolbere or Dolbiar, yeoman, of the hamlet of Cadhayne in the parish of Colyton, and of Mary (Michell or Mychell) his wife” (pages 209–210). The mother’s name is therefore Coddington’s reading; see Mary Michell’s bio for the Michell family and for the parents’ marriage at Colyton on 10 October 1602. The register spells her father’s name in several ways, as Rawkey Dolbiar’s bio sets out.

Her death

Welles’s Births, Marriages and Deaths Returned from Hartford, Windsor and Fairfield (1898), page 56, has the entry “wid : Mary gillet”, dated 5 January. Coddington, quoting Stiles’s history of Windsor, gives the widow’s name as “Mary (Dolbere or Dolbiar) Gillett” and her death at Windsor as “5 Jan. 1685/6” (page 210). His family entry for her gives the same date (page 214). Before 1752 the English year began on 25 March, so dates from January to March were often given with both years; this bio gives the modern year, 1686. The identification of the Windsor widow with Mary Dolbiar is Coddington’s.

Her children

Stiles’s history gives Jonathan ten children in all, the sons Cornelius and Jonathan and a daughter Mary having been born before the family reached Windsor; it lists Cornelius first. No record found gives Cornelius’s birth, so whether he was her son, or older than the marriage of 1634, is not known. Anna’s link to her rests on the same reading as the rest: the town record calls Anna “d. Jonathan, Sr.” and names no mother.