[Ancestral Link: Lura Minnie Parker (Stagge), daughter of Minnie May Elmer (Parker), daughter of Mark Alfred Elmer, son of Hannah Polina Child (Elmer), daughter of Alfred Bosworth Child, son of Hannah Benedict (Child), daughter of Hannah Carter (Benedict), daughter of John Carter, son of Hannah St. John (Carter), daughter of Rachell Bouton (St. John), daughter of John Bouton, son of Alice Kellogg (Bouton).]
[Ancestral Link: Lura Minnie Parker (Stagge), daughter of Minnie May Elmer (Parker), daughter of Mark Alfred Elmer, son of Hannah Polina Child (Elmer), daughter of Alfred Bosworth Child, son of Hannah Benedict (Child), daughter of John Benedict, son of Daniel Benedict, son of Dinah Bouton (Benedict), daughter of Joseph Bouton, son of John Bouton, son of Alice Kellogg (Bouton).]
MATTHEW MARVIN AND HIS SECOND WIFE,
WIDOW ALICE BOUTON.
By WILLIAM T. K. MABVIN, A.M., of Boston, Massachusetts.
In the Genealogy of the Marvin Family, printed in the REGISTER (Vol. XVI., p. 250 et seq.)
It is stated on (p. 91) that the first Matthew Marvin, who came to New England in the "Increase," Capt. Lea, in 1635, and settled in Hartford, and later in Norwalk, Connecticut, married as his second wife "Mrs. Alice Kellogg."
A will was discovered by the late Allyn S. Kellogg, while searching for his own ancestry. He was a descendant of Alice Marvin. it mentions her "daughter Briggit Kellogg," who was the wife of Daniel Kellogg, and it was known that Bridget was the daughter of a John Bouton. It was thought that Daniel was her own son, and not her son-in-law. This will, of which I give an abstract, is recorded in the Fairfield Probate Records, Vol. III. (1675-89), page 61. It is so important as bringing to light facts hitherto unknown, and as completely disproving the statements concerning the man supposed to be the first John Bouton in New England, which are given in the "Bouton-Boughton Family," that it seems desirable to place these facts in the hands of genealogists, and to correct the errors noted.
The abstract is as follows:
Will of "Alee (sic) Marvin of Norwocke .... being aged seaventee years or thereabouts." '
Imprimis, I doe will and bequeath the sum of twenty pounds to my sonn John Bowton and to my daughter Bridgit Killock, to be equally devlded between thos two : That is to say, ten pounds apiece."
Item, I doe give after my decease, to my daughter Briggit Kellock my scarfe and my best cloath waskcot and my best serg coat and my best green apron and the best of my two under cotten coats and my spectacles."
Item, I doe give unto my daughter Abigal Bowton my best hat and my best cloke and my serge wastcoats and my under cotten wastcoat and a pair of lether gloves, 2 brass small wayts."
Item, I doe give to my daughter Rachell Smith my penne (stone?) coat and my flannel wastcoat, and to my grandchild Sarah Brmsmead my Cheast ; and to my grandchild Ruth Bowton my brass kettle 3 old pewter dishes and a brass Chafendish and a gilpot: and to my grandchild Rachell Bowton my Bible."
Remainder; "my will is shall be devided between my two dafter (sic) Brigget Kellock and Rachell Smith. The hetchell my will is, half to my sonn John Bowton and half to my daughter Brigget Kellock, etc."
Witnesses. The Marke of RICHOLMSTBBD ALCEX MARVIN. CHRISTO. COMSTOCKE. [/So written.]
Dated December 1, 1680.
Inventory, "Last of January, 1680." (1681.)
Amount; 36. 2. 8.
It is to be noticed first, that she remembers with gifts of money her "soriu, John Bowton" (who married Abigail Marvin), rather than his wife, and her "daughter Briggit Kellock," who it is certainly known was Bridget Bouton when she married Daniel Kellogg, rather than her husband ; thus giving to those who were her children by blood, and not by marriage, legacies amounting to 20 pounds which had been the property of Alice before she married Matthew Marvin, while Daniel Kellogg is not named.
The will of Matthew Marvin, dated December 20, 1678 (Fairfield Probate Records, III., p. 58, et seq.), who died before his wife, he first of all bequeaths "unto my dearly beloved wife Alice Marvin, the sum of twenty pounds as her owne true and proper estate: for her to will and order as she pleaseth, etc." Clearly we have here the 20 pounds which she gives to her surviving children by her first husband, and which she felt in duty bound to leave them. She remembers her son's wife, Abigail, and Rachel Smith, who was her daughter by her second husband, Matthew Marvin.There were at least four and probably five of Matthew's daughters by his first wife living when Alice's will was made Not mentioned were: Elizabeth Olmstead, Sarah Curtis, Mary Adgate, Hannah "Semer," and Rebecca Clarke. ( Rebecca is not named in either of the articles on the Marvin Family named above, but she is mentioned in Matthew's will.) We may well believe that the reason why Rachel received no more was because she and her husband, Samuel Smith, had already been provided for by Matthew. On December 23, 1674, about four years before his death. He gave her "50 pounds worth of my comonage lot, halfe my home-lot, etc." (See Norwalk Laud Records, folio 61)
The next person mentioned in Alice's will is her grandchild, Sarah Brinsmead. She is the married daughter of Bridget. Finally we have "grandchild, Ruth Bowton." This Ruth was the daughter of Richard Bowton, and Ruth Turney. She was born after her father died. Ruth Turney was the daughter of Benjamin Turney, of Concord and Fairfield. She was born January 28, 1643/4. This therefore proves that the said Richard Bowton was the son of Alice Marvin by her previous husband. As both Bridget and John are called on different Norwalk records the children of a John, and on Fairfield records Abigail's husband John is called the "uncle" of Ruth. We have the name of Richard's father, and the proof that Alice's first husband was a John Bowton. These facts are corroborated by other documents on the Fairfield Probate Records, On page 1, Vol. II., is the "Inventory of Richard Bowton, lately deceased, "dated June 27, 1665, in which we find" Coopers Tools, 3 : 5 : 0." He left no will, but on the day he died said to Joseph Middlebrook and his wife Mary (who I believe was the widow of Benjamin Turney and if so was Richard Bowton's mother-in-law), that he "would give his estate to Ruth, his wife, excepting his tools."
meet, yf there be occasion. And yf ther be no issue of the deceased, then it is ordered by the Courte that John Bowton, sonn of John Bowton, shall Lave the said deceaseds tools, the Court apprehending it was the will of the deceased it should be so." The Court approved this as his will; "Only it is provided that if the said Ruth shall now be with child, the said child shall have its part of the estate as the Courte shall hear after think • An inspection of the dates of birth of Bridget's children, in Hall's "Nonvalk," p. 187, shows manifest errors.
Next we find that John Bowton(2) who married Abigail Marvin, was the "son of John," for although John had a son John in 1665, he was then a mere child (born Sept. 30, 1659), and it is hardly supposable that Richard* in dying would have passed over his brother and left his tools to a boy six years old, or that the Court would have approved such an act. Richard's widow, Ruth, died shortly after, leaving an infant child Ruth. Who is the Ruth mentioned in Alice's will. The inventory of widow Ruth is given under date of November 7, 1666; it amounts to 91 pounds: 6 Shillings: 7 pence, and mentions "meadow and uplands, 10 pounds ." ( Ibid. II, 16.) Reference to this land appears below. On page 17 is still a more important document. It is an agreement signed by Matthew Marvin Sr., Rob Turney, and John Bowton, November 8, 1666, the day after the inventory was entered; A part of this document begins, "Wee whose names are underwritten being Realations to Ruth Bowton, the daughter of Richard Bowton and Ruth his wife, late of ffairfield, deceased, etc." It goes ou to provide for the care of the infant child, and her support out of the estate left by her mother; in case of her death the land was to "reaturn to Benj. Turney of ffairfield : "7 pounds, 17 Shillings, 6 pence, was to go to Thomas Morehouse, and the rest of the estate to be divided. Ruth was to be placed with Matthew Marvin (husband of her grandmother) until she was eighteen ; if he died before that time she was "to be put to Johu Bowton of Norwocke, the childs Unkle, etc." This proves that John(2) was her uncle, and her father's brother: that this is the Ruth whom Alice calls her grandchild. Ruth who survived her grandmother is further shown by the inventory of Matthew Marvin's estate; the "meadow-land etc.," is mentioned on III., 59, of Fairfield Probate Records, which say that July 13, 1680, the laud in Fairfield was not valued, "but remains to be prized. This land as we understand did formerly belong to the estate of Richard Bowton." Again, on page 60, "The land at Fairfield is found to be in Ruth Bowtou's Inventory to be Ten pounds." That the second wife of Matthew1 Marvin was not a Widow Alice Kellogg, but the widow of John(1) Bowton. That by her first marriage to John(1) Bowton, she was the mother of the Richard(1) Bowton who married Ruth Turuey and died in 1665; of Bridget Bowton, who married Daniel Kellogg; and of John Bowton(2) who married Abigail Marvin. That her first husband's name was John Bowton appears not only from the Agreement cited concerning the infant Ruth, but from the Nor- walk Records cited by Hall, p. 187, which say Bridget Bowton, wife of Daniel Kellogg, was daughter of John. This latter statement is what has misled previous writers into believing that John who married Abigail had been previously married, and that Bridget was his daughter (instead of being his sister) by that earlier marriage. That by her second marriage to Matthew Marvin, Alice became the mother of his youngest child, Rachel, who married Samuel Smith. She was baptized Sunday, December 30, 1649, at Hartford, and probably of Samuel, baptized Sunday, February 6, 1648, at Hartford, who is supposed to have died young, no further reference to him having been discovered. Rebecca, who married John Clarke, of Farmington,was born about 1636, and had children ;John, Matthew, Elizabeth, Rebecca, and Lydia. If the first John Bowton was the one who sailed for Virginia in the Assurance, (see Hotten, p. Ill, and Savage, etc.), and the first husband of Alice Marvin. He must have died before 1647, and left nothing by which to identify him as such. It is clear, however, that the John of the "Assurance" is not the John who married Abigail Marvin. On the title-page of the "Bouton-Boughton Family" the claim is made that that John was "a native of France, who embarked from Gravesend, England, and landed at Boston in December, 1635, and settled at Norwalk, Connecticut" He seems from Hotten to have sailed July 25, 1635, aged 20, and therefore, if the theory of the compiler of that book were true, was five months on the ocean, and was a widower of over 40 when he married Abigail Marvin. She a girl of about 18! What authority that compiler has for his further statements, that "the Government of England were offering to send emigrants to America, on condition that they would swear allegiance to the crown of England," I know not; it has been generally believed that instead of offering to send them, they did their best to prevent many from coming. The author continues: "A registry of such emigrants was kept at London, a copy of which has been examined by the compiler of this work [The B.-B. Family], and as only one person by the Bouton name is found on that registry, embracing a period of one hundred years from 1600 to 1700, it is supposed that said person [the John who sailed from Gravesend] is the John Bouton of whom this account is traced." That is, the John who married, as he believes, Abigail Marvin, is the same as the emigrant, for he knew nothing about the John who was Alice's first husband. The "copy examined" was probably Hotten, which as every genealogist knows, is very incomplete. I have shown that the attribution of the children Bridget and Richard to the husband of Abigail Marvin, by an earlier marriage with one "Joan Turney," not mentioned elsewhere so far as I have been able to discover, and said to have died in Norwalk (B.-B. Fam., p. 7), is proved false by the documents cited above: that his statement that Abigail died at Norwalk about 1672, is shown to be an error by the will of Alice: and that his further statement that John "married as his third wife at Norwalk, about 1673, Mrs. Mary, widow of Jonathan Stevenson, who was killed in the Swamp-fight with the Indians near Norwalk," is rubbish, first, because Abigail was living in 1680; second, the Swamp-fight was in Rhode Island, December, 1675; and third, because Jonathan Stevenson was alive in 1677, on February 20 of which year land was granted him for his services in that fight! ( See Hall's Norwalk.) But the compiler has mixed up three Johns. The first, the husband of Alice. The second, the husband of Abigail, and the third, the son of John(1) and Abigail. He died in Danbury before his father and made a will in 1700. while the will of the second John, at Fairfield, is dated December 25, 1706, and the year is written out in words in the instrument. Some of the errors are those of carelessness in copying, by one not familiar with the writing of the period; some are due, like one just mentioned, to ignorance; and some to the confusion caused by the identity of names; while the statement that the John who came in the "Assurance," aged 20 in 1635, was the son of Count Nicholas Bouton, of France, said in the "History of Fairfield County" to have been born in 1598, is as absurd as it is impossible, if the date of the birth of Nicholas given in the "History" be correct. It is at least equally probable that he was a relative of John Bowghton, of Colchester, Essex, who was summoned before the Vicar-General, March 2, 1527. (See AunĂ¡is of Non-Conformity in Essex, by Rev. T. W. Davids, London, 1863, and Strype, Ecc. Mem., I., 119.)
found on ancestry.com
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
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