♀Rebecca Bartlett

Rebecca Bartlett was a woman of Plymouth in Plymouth Colony^W, the first wife of William Harlow, whom she married there in 1649. She was the eighth great-grandmother of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through her daughter Rebecca Harlow (1655–1727).

Early life

A compiled Mayflower Society genealogy of the Warren family gives Rebecca as a daughter of Robert Bartlett, a wine cooper of Plymouth, and his wife Mary Warren. Through her mother she was a granddaughter of the Mayflower passenger Richard Warren^W, since the same genealogy makes Mary Warren his daughter.

Marriage and children

William Harlow married Rebecca Bartlett at Plymouth on 20 December 1649, as the Plymouth Colony records register it. Their first child, William, was born on 5 October 1650 and died on 26 October 1650; a son Samuel followed on 27 January 1652/3, a daughter Rebecka in 1655 and a second William on 2 June 1657. The birth entries name only the father, but Rebecca was William’s only recorded wife until 1658, so she was most likely the mother of all four.

The printed register gives the daughter’s birth as 12 June 1655; a compiled Mayflower genealogy citing the same page gives 12 January. Two compiled Mayflower genealogies identify her, only as a possibility, with the Rebecca Harlow who married Isaac Cushman (1648–1732) at Plymouth about 1675, the woman through whom the line descends; a journal article discusses the question, but its argument is not set out here.

No record of Rebecca’s death has been found. William Harlow married Mary Faunce at Plymouth on 15 July 1658, so she most likely died before that day.

Lines of descent

Her place in the family rests on a confirmation of 1683, as the compiled genealogy abstracts it, in which her brothers Benjamin and Joseph Bartlett upheld their father’s bequest of 50 acres at Plymouth to his grandson William Harlow Jr., born to William Harlow on 2 June 1657, while Rebecca was his wife. The line runs down through her daughter Rebecca Harlow (1655–1727). Compiled Mayflower genealogies identify Rebecca Harlow as the Rebecca who married Isaac Cushman (1648–1732) of Plympton, but only as a possibility; her age at death fits a birth at Plymouth on 12 June 1655.

Notes

Parentage

No record of her birth has been found that names her parents, so the parentage rests on compiled genealogies. The Great Migration Begins, a compiled study of early New England settlers, lists a Rebecca, born about 1631, among the children of Robert Bartlett, a wine cooper of Plymouth, and his wife Mary Warren, and gives her marriage to William Harlow on 20 December 1649. The Mayflower Society’s compiled genealogy of the Warren family, Mayflower Families Through Five Generations, volume 18, part 1, also lists her among the children of Robert Bartlett and Mary Warren, gives her birth at Plymouth as before December 1634, and makes Mary a daughter of the Mayflower passenger Richard Warren, so on that reading Rebecca was his granddaughter. Its abstract of the 1683 confirmation is the only route to the brothers’ statement here; the deed itself, printed in The Mayflower Descendant, volume 35, page 35, is not quoted.