♀Mary Norris

Mary Norris (died 25 February 1621) was the first wife of the Pilgrim merchant Isaac Allerton, and crossed with him and their three children on the Mayflower in 1620. She gave birth to a stillborn son aboard the ship as it lay in Plymouth harbour, and died there that first winter. She was the ninth great-grandmother of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through her daughter Mary Allerton (1617–1699).

Life

Her parents and the date of her birth are not known. When she married Isaac Allerton (1586–1659) at Leiden in Holland on 4 November 1611, the record called her a “single woman from Newbury in England”, taken to be Newbury in Berkshire. The couple lived at Leiden with the English separatist congregation there and had three children who lived: Bartholomew, Remember and Mary. Another child was buried at St Peter’s church in Leiden early in 1620.

That year the family sailed on the Mayflower; William Bradford’s list of the passengers names “Mr. Isaac Allerton and Mary his wife, with three children”. On 22 December 1620, while the ship lay in Plymouth harbour, she gave birth to a stillborn son. She died at Plymouth on 25 February 1621, one of about half of the passengers who died in the first winter. Her daughter Mary lived until 1699 and was the last of the Mayflower passengers to die.