♀Mary Williams

Mary Williams (died between 27 December 1695 and January 1696) was a woman of Scituate in Plymouth Colony^W and a daughter of John Williams Sr. She married Anthony Dodson there in 1651 and, as his widow, settled his estate with her son Jonathan in 1682. She was the eighth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her daughter Bithiah Dodson.

Marriage and family

Anthony Dodson married Mary Williams, the daughter of John Williams Sr., at Scituate on 12 November 1651. James Savage’s Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England places him at Scituate by 1650 and gives the couple seven children: two sons, Gershom and Jonathan, and five daughters, Sarah, Mary, Patience, Bethia and Eunice, the eldest born in 1652.

Her father left her his house, his land and nearly all his cattle and goods in his will of 19 December 1667, and made her his sole executrix. The court granted her letters of administration^W on his estate, and she and her husband later went to law with her brother Edward over it.

Savage’s dictionary also records that her son Gershom was killed on 26 March 1676 in the Rehoboth fight of King Philip’s War^W, a soldier in the company of Captain Michael Pierce of Scituate, who fell with him. Jonathan was left as the only son.

Widowhood

Anthony Dodson died at Scituate before 8 July 1682. On that day his widow Mary and their son Jonathan made an agreement over the estate of “Anthony Dodson deceased”, in which Thomas Studson, the husband of one of the daughters, was also named; Thomas King Sr. and John Cushing witnessed it. The court ordered that the four daughters named in it, Patience, Mary, Bethya and Eunice, should each “have ten pounds a peice”, to be paid as they came of age or married. In his will of 15 October 1691 her brother Capt. John Williams left her ten pounds, with ten more added before the will was sealed, on condition that she give up a forty-pound bond she held, in which he owed money to their late father’s estate.

Death and estate

Mary made her will at Scituate on 27 December 1695. She died there between then and 14 January 1695/6, the date of the inventory of her estate. The will named her daughters Bithiah and Eunice and her son-in-law Nathaniel Tilden as executor. It was proved at Duxbury on 18 February 1695/6.

Her daughter Bithiah, written Bethiah in the will and Bethya in the 1682 order, married Rodolphus Elmes at Scituate on 20 February 1696, two days after the will was proved.

Notes

The printed vital records of Scituate enter her marriage as “Anthony and Mary Williames, d. John Sr., Nov. 12, 1651”. Savage dates her father’s will 10 December 1667; the printed abstract gives 19 December 1667, the date used here. The court orders for 1667/8 enter the grant of administration to her as Anthony Dodson’s wife (Plymouth Colony Records, vol. 4, p. 175).

The 1682 agreement is entered in the Plymouth Colony probate records on a page damaged at its edges, so parts of the text are lost, among them the name of Thomas Studson’s wife. Savage gives Sarah Dodson as the wife of Thomas Stetson, married in 1671.

The Genealogical Advertiser, vol. 4 (1901), p. 92, gives the will and its probate from the Plymouth County probate records. The same volume, pp. 25-27, prints her brother’s will of 15 October 1691, the source of the legacy and its condition.