♀Mercy Dudley

Mercy Dudley (27 September 1621 – 1 July 1691) was the wife of the Rev. John Woodbridge of Newbury, Massachusetts, and the youngest daughter of Thomas Dudley^W, governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony^W. She was a sister of Samuel Dudley (1608–1683), the eighth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006).

Family

A family history published in 1886 and a genealogical dictionary of 1861 agree on the outline of her life. Both give her birth as 27 September 1621; the dictionary adds that she was probably born in England, as were the other children of her father’s first marriage to Dorothy Yorke, and the family history names her as the fifth and last of the five children of that marriage listed there, after Samuel, Anne, Patience and Sarah. Her sister Anne married Simon Bradstreet^W and became the poet Anne Bradstreet^W.

Marriage and death

Both books say she married the Rev. John Woodbridge, and the family history says he was of Newbury and that they had twelve children. By its account Thomas Dudley wrote to him in 1642, calling him his son-in-law, and advised him to become a schoolmaster or a minister rather than a farmer, since schoolteachers were wanted near him and ministers were or soon would be; Woodbridge was then running his farm. The letter urged him to consult his uncle, the Rev. Mr. Noyes, and to look “upon the service of God and not upon filthy lucre”. The family history says Woodbridge took the advice and became a minister, and that many learned clergymen and other notable people descended from him. Thomas Dudley’s will, dated 20 April 1652 and printed in the same book, leaves a sixth part of his Watertown mill, house, land and debts to “the children of my daughter Woodbridge”, and provides that any further children she had would share equally with the rest.

The family history gives her death at Newbury on 1 July 1691, and the dictionary gives the same day and year.