♀Patience Dudley

Patience Dudley (died 8 February 1689/90) was a daughter of Thomas Dudley^W, deputy governor and governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony^W, and the wife of Major General Daniel Denison^W. She was the sister of Samuel Dudley (1608–1683), the eighth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, and she was a sister of the poet Anne Bradstreet^W, who wrote the first book of poetry published in England’s American colonies by a woman.

Family

A family history published in 1886 and a genealogical dictionary of 1861 both give her as one of five children of Thomas Dudley and his first wife, Dorothy Yorke: Samuel, Anne, Patience, Sarah and Mercy. The family history says Patience was born in England, without a date, and the dictionary says the daughters were probably all born there. Her sister Anne married Simon Bradstreet^W, later governor of the colony. Her sister Sarah married Benjamin Keayne of Boston, and her sister Mercy married the Reverend John Woodbridge of Newbury.

Marriage and death

Both books say she married Daniel Denison, a major general, and the family history adds that the marriage took place at Cambridge, Massachusetts. Neither gives a date. Thomas Dudley’s will, made on 20 April 1652 and printed in the 1886 history, names “my daughter, Denison”, leaving one sixth of his Watertown mill, house and land to her children, as he did to the children of his son Samuel and of his daughters Bradstreet and Woodbridge. The same history says Patience had a son and a daughter, without naming them.

According to the family history, she died at Ipswich, Massachusetts, on 8 February 1689/90.