Mary Wright

http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/p/r/e/Douglas-Premo-Ma/W...

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sources:

Willard memoir, by Joseph Willard, 1858, pp. 387

Collections of the Worcester Society of Antiquity, vol VII, published by the Worcester Historical Society, 1888, Appendix K (p. 79)

Register of the Society of Colonial Wars in the District of Columbia, 1904, by Albert Charles Peale

Historic homes and institutions and genealogical and personal memoirs of Worcester County, Mass., by Ellery Bicknell Crane, 1907

A genealogical history of the Rice family, by Andrew Henshaw Ward, 1858, pp. 52

Edmund Rice (1638) Association (http://www.edmund-rice.org/)

There seems to be confusion about the identity of this Mary--wife of Samuel Wright (b. 1670) and mother of Hannah (Wright) Rice (wife of Aaron).

A.H.Ward's work claims Mary was "dau. of Jonathon Willard, (b. 1669 ;) and his wife, Mary Brown, (b. 1668, m. 1691,) dau. of Thomas and Patience (Foster) Brown, (m. 1667 ;) all of Sudbury. This parentage has also so far been adopted (with source of A.H.Ward), and this tree fleshed out further, by the Edmund Rice Association.

But, all other available sources describe a Mary Stevens, daughter of Cyprian Stevens and Mary Willard (daughter of Simon Willard and Mary Dunster), who married Samuel Wright of Sudbury (b. 1670), and give varying levels of information about this, other, parentage for Mary. The Worcester Society of Antiquity documented a will left by a Samuel Wright, which lists a son, and 5 daughters including "Hannah Rice", and "Isabel Frink". Listing Hannah Rice makes this almost certainly the same Samuel Wright/Hannah Rice father/daughter pair that A.H.Ward documents, while Isabel Frink has a documented obituary (recounted in the Willard memoir), claiming to be a relative of Henry Dunster, President of Harvard College--and this Henry Dunster in his will mentioned a "sister Willard", widely understood to be Simon Willard's 3rd wife Mary.... thus showing that Isabel Frink's obituary connects this same Samuel Wright's will to Simon Willard. Since Hannah Rice is in both sources (A.H.Ward and Samuel Wright's obituary)... and Isabel Frink's mother would be the Mary in question, and only one or two generations removed from Simon Willard (by dates), it seems reasonable to accept the conclusion of the various other secondary sources, that Mary Stevens, daughter of Cyprian Stevens and Mary Willard, who is documented by marriage records to have married a Samuel Wright, in fact did marry this *particular* Samuel Wright. I conclude, then, that A.H.Ward must have made a mistake--perhaps because Mary Stevens' mother was in fact Mary, with maiden name Willard? so maybe he accidentally left out a generation. (But that Mary Willard would have been the wrong age, so he must have searched for an alternate birthdate, and found one, with alternate parents, in order to make the supposed match of Samuel Wright w/ Mary Willard, work.)

• Reference: MyHeritage Family Trees - SmartCopy: Apr 19 2016, 18:21:36 UTC

  ---

Mary Stevens: Born 1705.  Baptized 1707 at the First Church of Lancaster.