♀Mary Wood

Mary Wood (about 1643 – 6 January 1714/15) was the wife of John Holmes (1638–1675), in Plymouth Colony^W. She was the seventh great-grandmother of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through her son Joseph Holmes (1665–1733).

She married John Holmes at Plymouth on 11 December 1661. Her maiden name appears both as Wood and as Atwood: a family record chart drawn up in 1994, a marriage index and an index to a genealogical journal all call her Mary Atwood. Their son Joseph was born at Duxbury on 9 July 1665. John Holmes died on 24 December 1675, when Joseph was ten. An index of New England marriages before 1700 and a compilation of Mayflower families give her a second husband, William Bradford, and four Bradford sons, Israel, Ephraim, David and Hezekiah; Savage likewise gives her as the third wife of the second William Bradford; that marriage is known only from these secondary accounts. Both date it 24 December 1675, the same day as her first husband’s recorded death, so at least one of the two dates is wrong.

Her birth, about 1643 at Plymouth, and her death at Plymouth on 6 January 1714/15 come from family trees and a memorial website, and no record is known to confirm either date; one printed family history places her death at Duxbury instead. No record of her parents has been found. James Savage’s genealogical dictionary of New England, a compiled work, calls her a daughter of “John Wood or Atwood of Plymouth”, and the memorial website names them as John and Mary Wood, but no record confirms either. A burial at Slaithwaite, Yorkshire, in April 1715, offered for her in an English index because that woman’s father was also a John Wood, belongs to someone else.