♀Rachel (surname unknown)

Rachel (died 15 September 1651) was an Englishwoman who sailed for New England on the Planter in 1635 with her second husband, Martin Sanders, and their children, and died at Braintree, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony^W, sixteen years later. She was the tenth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), most likely through her son Richard Brackett (died 1690).

England

Rachel’s first husband was Peter Brackett, a man of Sudbury, in Suffolk. Their son Richard was baptized at St Gregory’s church in Sudbury on 16 September 1610, and they had two other children, Peter and Rachel, the daughter born about 1615. Peter Brackett had died by about 1618, when Rachel is said to have married secondly Martin Sanders. With him she had at least three more children, Leah, Judith and Martin, born between about 1625 and about 1631.

New England

On 6 April 1635 Martin Sanders, Rachel and their three children, with three young servants, were licensed to sail from London to New England on the Planter. Licensed in the same party were Francis Newcomb, his wife, Rachel, and their two small children. Rachel Newcomb is said to have been her daughter by Peter Brackett, so that three generations named Rachel, the youngest two and a half years old, sailed together. Her son Richard was already living at Boston.

By early 1640 Rachel and her daughter had both joined the church at Boston. On 16 February 1639/40 the church recommended them, with a group of its other members, to the new church gathered the previous September at Mount Wollaston, the outlying part of Boston that became the town of Braintree that May. Braintree was her home for the rest of her life, and by 1642 all three of her Brackett children lived there.

In September 1651 the family lost two of its members within ten days. Rachel’s daughter Judith Sanders died at Braintree on 5 September, and Rachel herself died there on 15 September 1651.

The family

All three of Peter and Rachel’s children settled in New England. Their daughter, Rachel, born about 1615, married Francis Newcomb and crossed with him and their two small children on the Planter in 1635, in the same party as her mother; seven more of the couple’s children were born at Braintree between 1640 and 1658. Their son Peter is said to have come to Braintree about 1636. On 7 March 1643/4 the colony’s General Court recorded that “Peter Bracket is allowed clerk of the writs at Braintree”, an office his brother Richard later held, and a study of his family published in 2001 credits him with eleven children by two, perhaps three, wives.

Notes

Her identity and her marriages

The records name her only as Rachel, the wife of Martin Sanders: on the Planter licence of 1635, in the Boston church’s recommendation of 1639/40 and in the Braintree register at her death. Her first marriage and her Brackett children rest on Robert Charles Anderson, The Great Migration Begins, volume 1, pp. 205–206, which draws on articles in The American Genealogist (volumes 52 and 55). The Sudbury baptism of 1610 names only Richard’s father, Peter; Anderson adds the mother’s name, Rachel, and states that she married secondly Martin Sanders about 1618 and that Rachel Newcomb was her daughter, the sister of Richard and Peter Brackett. Her maiden name and her parents are not known.

Her age

The licence gives her age as 40 in April 1635, the same as her husband’s. A woman of that age would have been about fifteen at Richard’s baptism in 1610, so the figure is most likely too low, and no year of birth is taken from it.

Sources

The Planter licence of 6 April 1635 is printed in John Camden Hotten, The Original Lists of Persons of Quality (1874), pp. 47–48, and abstracted in Peter Wilson Coldham, The Complete Book of Emigrants 1607–1660 (1987), p. 128, where the ship is bound from London. It lists Martin Saunders, aged 40, “Uxor Rachel Saunders 40”, their children Leah (written Lea), Judith and Martin, aged 10, 8 and 4, three servants aged 14 to 17, and Francis Newcom, aged 30, with “Rachell Newcom 20” and their children Rachel, aged two and a half, and John, nine months. The Boston church’s recommendation of 16 February 1639/40, naming “Rachell the wife of Martin Saunders” and “Rachaell the wife of Francis Newcombe”, is quoted from the Boston church records in Anderson’s Great Migration Newsletter (2001), which also gives the dates of the gathering of the Mount Wollaston church and of the founding of Braintree. Both deaths of September 1651 are printed in Samuel A. Bates, ed., Records of the Town of Braintree 1640 to 1793 (1886), pp. 636–637: “Judith Saunders, the daughter of Martin Saunders and Rachell his wife died the 7th mo. 5th. 1651” and “Rachell Saunders, the wiffe of Martin Saunders dyed the (15) (7) 1651”. The year then began in March, so the seventh month was September. The same town records write the name both Saunders and Sanders.

The children

The Braintree town register, in Bates’s edition, enters the births of Mary, Sarah, Judith, Peter, Abigail, Leah and Elizabeth, each as a child of “ffrancis Nucome and Rachell his wiffe”. Anderson (as above, p. 206) has Peter Brackett come to Braintree about 1636. The General Court’s order of 7 March 1643/4 (Records of the Massachusetts Bay, volume 2, p. 57) is quoted in Anderson’s Great Migration Newsletter (2001); the count of Peter’s children is from Gale Ion Harris, “Peter Brackett of Braintree and Boston”, The New England Historical and Genealogical Register 155 (2001), pp. 279–294, as summarized in the same newsletter.