♀Mary Fry

Mary Fry (died 24 January 1655/6) was the wife of Walter Harris, with whom she had seven children at Honiton, in Devon, before the family crossed to New England. Widowed at New London, Connecticut, she outlived him by eleven weeks. In the will she made five days before her death she left ten shillings to her son Thomas “if he doe come home or be alive”. She was the eleventh great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through her daughter Sarah Harris (died 1695).

In Devon

Her family name was most likely Fry. She and Walter were married by 1621, when the first of their seven children was baptized at Honiton, in Devon; the last was baptized there in 1636. Their first child, a daughter Mary, died young, and a later daughter was given the same name.

In New England

In April 1637 the Speedwell, bound from Weymouth, in Dorset, for New England, listed among its passengers “Walter Harris, his wife, six children & three servants”, almost certainly this family. They settled at Weymouth in the Massachusetts Bay Colony^W, moved to Dorchester by 1648, and were at New London by December 1653. There the town chose Walter as its ordinary keeper, the keeper of its licensed inn, in June 1654.

Walter died at New London on 6 November 1654. That same day the town voted that “Widdo Harris” might keep the ordinary “if she will”; she evidently declined, for the town chose John Elderkin in his place.

Her will

On 19 January 1655/6 Mary signed her will by her mark before William Nyccolls, John Winthrop, Jr.^W, and Obadiah Bruen. Five children were living, or thought to be, when she made her will: Sarah, most likely the wife of George Lane of Hingham; Mary, the wife of Nicholas Lawrence; Elizabeth Weekes; Thomas; and Gabriel, who inherited the house and land. To Sarah she left “the bigest brass pan”, with a silver spoon and a pewter candlestick for Sarah’s daughter Mary and “the bigest pewter dish and one silken riben” for her daughter Sarah. Gabriel, her sole executor, also received her cattle and swine and all her other goods.

Thomas was a different matter. According to tradition he had been betrothed to Obadiah Bruen’s daughter Rebekah, had gone back to England, and was never heard from again. Mary left him his ten shillings on condition, and gave Rebekah “a pynt pott of pewter, a new petticoate and wascote w[hi]ch she is to spin herselfe; alsoe an old byble, and a hatt w[hi]ch was my sonn Thomas his hatt.”

Mary died at New London on 24 January 1655/6, and one inventory, dated 14 April 1656, served for both her estate and Walter’s.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through her daughter Sarah Harris, her granddaughter Sarah Lane (born 1638) and her great-granddaughter Sarah Lewis (1661–1732). They meet again in Wesley Blanchard (1844–1908), whose parents, Joseph Knapp Blanchard (1820–1885) and Elizabeth Trueworthy Blanchard (1825–1884), were both descended from Walter and Mary. On Joseph’s side the line runs from Sarah Lewis through her daughter Susannah Lincoln (born 1688), Elizabeth Colson (1723–1798), Sarah Hovey (1747–1805), Nicholas Blanchard (1766–1849) and Noah Blanchard (1797–1875). From Wesley the descent to Nancy Jane Blanchard runs as one, through George Wesley Blanchard (1868–1939) and Kenneth Blanchard (1897–1975).

Notes

Sources

Her will, her death “24 January 1655[/6]” and the single inventory are from Gale Ion Harris, “Walter and Mary (Fry) Harris of New London, Connecticut”, New England Historical and Genealogical Register 156 (2002): 145–49, which quotes the will from the New London deeds and town records; Caulkins’s History of New London (1860) prints it in full. The Honiton baptisms are from a 1919 transcript of the Honiton parish register, and the Speedwell list is printed in Coldham’s Complete Book of Emigrants, 1607–1660, page 185. The story of Thomas and Rebekah Bruen is a tradition that Caulkins recorded beside the will.

Her maiden name

Her surname is an inference. In 1643 Walter appraised the Weymouth estate of William Fry, whose spoken will left “a kid” each to “Thomas Harris, Thomas Rawlens & John Meggs his three sisters youngest children”; Mary’s own will names “my sister Migges”, “my sister Hannah Rawlin”, “my brother Rawlin” and “my two cosens Mary and Elizabeth ffry”. The article concludes that Mary was William Fry’s sister, perhaps from Axminster, in Devon, and Burton W. Spear’s series on the passengers of the Mary & John, a study of West Country emigrant families, gives the same family.

Sarah Lane

The will names “my eldest daughter Sarah Lane” and Sarah’s daughters Mary and Sarah. The article identifies her with Sarah, wife of George Lane of Hingham, whose daughters included a Sarah and a Mary, and with the Sarah baptized at Honiton on 13 March 1624/5. The identification is strong but rests on these matches rather than on a record naming her as Mary’s daughter, so the link is treated here as probable.