♂Quinton Pray

Quinton Pray (about 1595 – 17 June 1667) was a settler of Braintree, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony^W, whose estate at his death ran from eleven swine and a pair of young oxen to three spinning wheels and a gold ring. He was probably the ninth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through his daughter Dorothy Pray (died 1705).

Life

Quinton Pray and Joan are said to have married by about 1630, and they probably had four children: Richard, John, Hannah and Dorothy. Their daughter Dorothy married Richard Thayer at Braintree on 24 December 1651.

Quinton is said to have come from England to work at the colony’s ironworks^W, first at Lynn and later at Braintree. In October 1653, by the same account, he gave evidence in a lawsuit between John Gifford and the ironworks, stating his age as fifty-eight, which places his birth about 1595.

Death and estate

Quinton Pray died at Braintree on 17 June 1667, without a will. Samuel Bass and William Needham, who took the inventory of his estate, valued it at £74 3s. They listed two young oxen, a cow and three heifers, two colts and eleven swine, corn growing in the ground, gear for a plow and cart, beds and bedding, pewter and brass, three spinning wheels with a store of linen, woolen and cotton yarn, and a gold ring; against this the estate owed £20. On 11 July 1667 Joan swore that the inventory was true “to her best knowledge,” adding that “when shee knowes more she will deliver it,” and the administration^W of the estate was granted to her.

Lines of descent

Dorothy Pray and Richard Thayer were most likely the parents of Nathaniel Thayer (1658–1728), whose son Hezekiah Thayer was the father of Noah Thayer (born 1745); Noah’s daughter was Mary Thayer (1770–1827). Two of Mary’s grandchildren, Joseph Knapp Blanchard (1820–1885) and Elizabeth Trueworthy Blanchard (1825–1884), married each other, so their son Wesley Blanchard (1844–1908) descended from Quinton Pray through both parents.

Notes

His death and estate

The Braintree town records enter “Quinton Pray, dyed the 4th m°. 17, 1667”; the year then began in March, so the fourth month was June. The inventory and the grant of administration are recorded in the Suffolk County probate records and printed in a 1977 family history, which also states that he died intestate. Its transcription dates the taking of the inventory “29th: 5: mo: 1667”, which would be 29 July, while Joan’s oath and the grant are dated 11 July 1667; the two dates cannot both be right.

His birth and work

His birth year rests on a deposition: a history of Kittery published in 1903 gives 1595 “as a deposition shows,” and a 1977 family history dates the deposition 27 October 1653, in the case of John Gifford against the ironworks, when he gave his age as fifty-eight. The same family history gives England as his birthplace. Compiled works place him at Lynn and at Braintree. The 1977 history calls him a fineryman, a worker at the forge hearth where cast iron was refined into wrought iron^W, and adds an earlier spell at ironworks in Kittery, in Maine. It also has him crossing from England in May 1643 on the Ann Cleeve, the ship on which John Winthrop the Younger^W brought over workmen for the ironworks; the letter it quotes in its revised edition says only that he “appears to have been” one of the ironworkers who came to Lynn in 1643, “perhaps sailing from England” with Winthrop.

His children

Compiled works from 1900 on, among them an article on the Pray family in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register in 1901, name Richard, John, Hannah and Dorothy as his children; the probate record names no child. The Braintree town records enter the marriages of a Hanna Pray to Henry Neale in February 1655/6 and of a John Pray to Johanna Downam soon afterward, but do not name their parents. A dictionary of New England marriages lists Quinton and Joan, of Lynn and Braintree, as married before about 1630; the 1977 family history puts the marriage about 1625.

His parents

An online collaborative family tree names his father as Robert Pray; no record connecting the two is known.