♀Sarah Marvin

Sarah Marvin (baptized 27 December 1631) was an English-born settler of colonial Connecticut, baptized at Great Bentley in Essex, who married William Goodrich of Wethersfield in 1648. She was the eighth great-grandmother of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through her son John Goodrich (1653–1730).

Early life

Sarah was baptized at Great Bentley, Essex, on 27 December 1631, the daughter of Mathew Marvin and his wife Elizabeth; the entry survives in the parish register and in the county archive’s index to it. Her mother’s maiden name is not given there, and a Goodrich family genealogy published in 1889 leaves it blank as well, while naming her father as Matthew Marvin of Hartford. The same index shows an elder sister, Elizabeth, christened on 15 September 1622, and a brother, Matthew, on 8 November 1626. Her father died before 13 July 1680, when his inventory was taken; his will, made in December 1678 and entered in the Fairfield probate records, names her brother Matthew and four sisters: Mary Adgate of Norwich, Hannah Seymour, Abigail Bouton of Norwalk and Rebecca Clarke of Farmington. Sarah is not named in it. When and how she crossed to New England is not recorded in any document found so far.

Marriage and family

On 4 October 1648 she married William Goodrich (1622–1676) at Hartford, Connecticut, according to the index of Connecticut town marriage records, which spells the groom’s name “Goodredg”. She was not yet seventeen. The couple lived at Wethersfield, where their son John was born on 20 May 1653. William Goodrich died at Wethersfield in 1676, before 14 November, when his estate was valued, leaving her a widow in her mid-forties.

Later life

After William Goodrich’s death she married, as his second wife, Capt. William Curtis of Stratford, Connecticut. They had no children on record. She died at Stratford before 16 January 1701/02, and her husband outlived her; a compiled history gives his death at Stratford on 21 December 1702.

Her will names her four sons by William Goodrich, John, William, David and Ephraim. The Wethersfield inventory of 1676 names the same four sons, which links the Stratford widow to the Wethersfield family. The will also names her son-in-law Robert Wells, her daughters Sarah Hollister and Mary Butler, and her grandchildren. On 16 January 1701/02 William Curtis wrote that he had knowledge of “my late wifes will”, and the will was exhibited at Fairfield that month; administration went to her sons John and Ephraim Goodrich and to a third man, Kimberly.

Notes

William Curtis of Stratford belonged to the Stratford Curtis family, not to the Wethersfield Curtises into which her granddaughter Mary Kirkham Goodrich (1682–1730) married in 1703; the shared surname does not by itself connect the two lines, and no link between them has been established. A memorial on a grave-index website gives her birth as 31 December 1631, four days after her recorded baptism, which cannot be right.

Compiled dates

Compiled accounts disagree on the year of her death. Stiles (1904) gives a death late in 1702, with probate on 7 January 1702/03, and the Curtiss genealogy gives 1701; Hale, House and Related Families (1952) gives a death before 16 January 1701/02, which the probate record agrees with. The same history gives Curtis’s baptism at Nazeing, Essex, on 21 June 1618. A standard compilation of early New England marriages gives her maiden name as “Marvin?” or “Morris”, without deciding between them.