MARY BURT (BROOKS) 1635-1689

[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 Ebenezer Carter, son of Mercy Brooks (Carter), daughter of Mary Burt (Brooks).]


Mary's story
Their daughter, MARY BURT, was christened on the 13th of April, 1635, in Haberton, Devonshire, England. She sailed to America with her parents in 1639, then married WILLIAM BROOKS (born between 1610 and 1629 in England) on the 18th of October in 1654, in Springfield, Massachusetts. But he's not the ONLY husband she was with:
March 24, 1653/54 - HAMPSHIRE COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS COURT RECORDS, page 4:
1654 - 24 day of ye first month Samuel Wright jr charged by Mary Burt to be the Father of her illegitimate child he advised to be tryed by a Jury of 12 men whereupon the said Samuel Wright was ordered & adjudge to be the reputed Father of the said child, and for his evil behaviour therein to be whipped with 12 strikes on the naked body well layd on - to pay costs of court 2 1s 45 a week for seven yeares for support of the child and to pay fforty shillings to apprentice the child & give surety for faithful performance of the same And Mary Burt for her great wickedness was ordered & adjudged to be whipped on ye naked body with 12 lashes well layed on also to keep her said child - also she being found guilty of committing wickedness with Joseph Bonde she was adjudged to be well whipped a second tyme with 10 lashes about a month after the first whipping - for the second whipping she paid a fine of 30s and was relieved from it Samuel Wright Sen & Thomas Stebbns was his bondsmen.

Brookes Samuel Wright Jr. was actually the husband of Mary's sister, Elizabeth Burt (married on November 24, 1653 in Springfield). Based upon the above, Mary Burt's brother-in-law, SAMUEL WRIGHT, Jr., and not her first husband, Henry Brooks (who she married on October 18, 1854), was the father of her daughter, Remembrance, who was born prior to March, 1654. While Remembrance later used the name Brooks when she married in 1674, and most books refer to her as the daughter of Henry Brooks, THIS IS NOT CORRECT—she was the child of Samuel Wright, Jr. William died on the 30th of December in 1688. He was buried in Deerfield, Franklin County, Massachusetts. Mary died a few months later, on the 30th of August in 1689 in Northampton, Franklin County, Massachusetts, after what turned out to be a long, prosperous marriage, after an incredibly shaky start. Fortunately for us and thousands of other descendants, she and William had a LOT of kids --all his, outside of Remembrance—including our ancestor, MARY BROOKS:
found on ancestry.com

Children of Mary Burt and William Brooks
Benjamin was a soldier from Springfield, Massachusetts in the French and Indian War.
Brothers William, age 20, and John, 18, were killed by Indians at Westfield on 27 October 1675.
Joseph was at Deerfield, Massachusetts in 1692 and in the "meadow fight" in 1704.
Jonathan was a soldier at Deerfield in 1698
Nathaniel had at least two children. Nathaniel, his wife Mary, and their two children were captured in the attack on Deerfield by DeRouville, in 1704 (along with his cousin Benjamin and his wife Sarah). They were taken to Canada. Nathaniel's wife was massacred on the road. Nathaniel returned with Ensign Sheldon in 1707. The children were never heard from.
found on ancestry.com

Naughty Little Puritans! check to see if this is our Mary Burt?
24 Mar 1654, Springfield, Massachusetts.
There is a court appearance listed for 24 Mar 1654 or 55 in Springfield. Samuel Wright was found guilty of "wickedness" with Elizabeth's sister, Mary Burt, and was found to be the father of Mary's child. Mary brought the charges against him and he was ordered to pay for the child's upkeep and to be whipped "12 lashes upon the naked body." Mary also received 12 lashes and 12 more for "comitting wickedness with Joseph Bonde." She took the first 12 but paid a fine of 30s. in lieu of the second 12. The fact that she named this child Remembrance seems to have poignant meaning.
found on ancestry.com

Brooks Family
http://hausegenealogy.com/brooks.html
The Brookes (or Brooks) family stretches back at least a thousand years in time, to England at the time of the Norman invasion. A family with this surname was first found in Essex, where they were granted lands by William the Conqueror for their assistance at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. The charge on the coat of arms features a black shield with three gold Escallops: the badge of pilgrims going to the Holy Land. Escallops can be found on the shields of many families during the period of the Crusades. The Crest displays a blue beaver. The family motto translates as "By Persevering". They have lived up to that motto through wars, religious persecution, and plenty of hard times.

All truly English surnames were invented in about 1340-1360. Until then, people usually went with one name (John, Mary, etc.), which they were baptized with. But then the British Crown decided to raise revenue by means of a Poll Tax, that is, a flat-rate tax upon every adult male. To distinguish between men of the same baptismal name in the same community, additional descriptions had to be conjured. Normally, readily understood adjectives were applied, using the job, looks, place of birth, or whatever differentiated them from the other men of the same name (John Longfellow, John Miller, John Whitehall, etc.). The name "Brookes" or "Brooks" is an English topographic surname for someone who lived by a brook or stream, from the Old English term broc. But there is no reason to suppose that two men of the same name, but from different places, were related if there were two men named Brooke, maybe they were just two guys living near a brook, and not relatives. (However, the different surnames of Elder and Younger, in the same village, implied a kinship of father and son.)

Our direct lineage to this family can probably be traced to a man named RICHARD BROOKES, born about 1590 in England. Richard is said to have married a woman named Ann. (Here's a possibility: In Worcestershire County, England, Richard Brookes & ANN HINDE registered to marry on the 18th of August in 1622.)

Information on how Richard came to America is scarce. But there was a Richard Brookes who was a passenger aboard the English ship "Susan & Ellen"; arriving at Plymouth Plantation on April 13, 1635. The ship carried "rebels" meaning that Richard was a Puritan, an English Reformer of the seventeenth century, frustrated by the slow progress of the Reformation in the Anglican Church. English Puritans were known at first for their extremely critical attitude regarding the religious compromises made during the reign of Elizabeth I. Many of them were graduates of Cambridge University, and they became Anglican priests to make changes in their local churches. They encouraged direct personal religious experience, sincere moral conduct, and simple worship services. Puritans disapproved of holidays like Christmas and Easter on the grounds that these holidays were invented by man and not prescribed by the Bible, and as such could not be Holy. It should be noted that the observation of Christmas in those times was not the same as today, and often featured excesses including gluttony, drunkenness, home invasions, aggressive begging (with an express or implied threat of harm), rioting, and immoral behavior. But the Puritans were not liked: Facing jail or worse in England, Richard and the other Puritans sailed to the American Colonies in order to live and worship as they pleased.

Plymouth Colony, America's first permanent Puritan settlement, was established by English Separatist Puritans (Pilgrims) in December of 1620. After a period in Holland, they set sail from Plymouth, England, on September 16, 1620, aboard the Mayflower, its 102 passengers spending 65 days at sea. The Mayflower dropped anchor near present-day Provincetown on November 21, 1620, and 41 male passengers signed the Mayflower Compact, an agreement to enact "just and equal laws for the general good of the colony".

The Pilgrims finally landed at the site of present-day Plymouth, Massachusetts, on December 26, 1620. (By legend, the Pilgrims stepped ashore at Plymouth Rock; but none of their records mention this landmark.) They began erecting buildings and rough shelters for the winter, but harsh climate and illness took their toll. By the end of winter half the colonists had died.

The colonists encountered an Indian named Samoset, who surprised them by speaking English, learned from traders on the coast of Maine. Samoset introduced the colonists to Massasoit, chief of the Wampanoag Indians, who signed a peace treaty with the Pilgrims. Squanto, another English-speaking Indian, acted as guide and interpreter, and with his help the colonists learned to plant corn, catch fish, and gather fruit. The Pilgrims invited the Indians to celebrate their first harvest in 1621, an event now celebrated as Thanksgiving Day.

But after Massasoit's death, the Wampanoag joined a tribal coalition to eliminate English settlers. In the ensuing King Philip's War the Wampanoag were nearly exterminated. The colony gradually grew in size, and the original settlement known as the Plymouth Plantation expanded as settlers built houses in the area. As the years passed still more settlers came to Plymouth until in 1630 the population was around 300.

Plymouth did not, however, have the essentials for growth that other colonies would have. Its farm land was not good and the colony was poorly located for the fur trade and fishing. It remained small, and was soon overshadowed by the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which it had inspired. Plymouth Colony retained its independence for over 70 years, and by 1691 its population exceeded 7,000. It was integrated with the Massachusetts Bay Company's much larger colony to establish the royal colony of Massachusetts; now the state of the same name.


CHILDREN OF RICHARD AND ANNE BROOKES
JOHN BROOKS was born in England. Death: 30 December 1688 in Deerfield, Franklin County, Massachusetts. Burial: December 1688 Deerfield, Franklin County, Massachusetts
WILLIAM BROOKS was born in 1610 in Harberton, Devonshire, England. He married Mary Burt (1632 - 1689) on 18 October 1654 in Springfield, Massachusetts. Children listed below.
Richard and his family arrived in Massachusetts in the 1630's, but they may not have come together. Their sons were in their twenties at the time of the migration. WILLIAM BROOKS, son of Richard and Anne, was born @ 1610 in England. One story has him arriving in the American Colonies aboard the English ship "Matthew" at the Plymouth Plantation on May 21, 1635. Another has him arriving on the "Speedwell" in Virginia during 1635, and not appearing in the Massachusetts Bay Colony until 1653. Still another version is in a report from June, 1635: Gilbert Brooke, age 14, servant to William Vassall from Stepney, Middlesex, London, sailed to New England in the ship Blessing, John Leicester, Master. They arrived in Boston in August 1635 and he was going to Marshfield. Travelling with him was William Brooks, age 20. This William was a proprietor at Salem, Massachusetts, in 1639.

Now, the Puritans and Pilgrims were a pretty tame bunch in the 1650's. Outside of slaughtering the Indian race, they were pretty conservative. They forbade the performance of plays and outlawed singing (even singing church hymns), and they didn't start burning witches for another fifty years. But that all changed in the Brookes family when William married MARY BURT (1632 - 1689), on the 18th of October in 1654, in Springfield, Massachusetts. Mary had quite the reputation.

Mary had just been given 12 lashes, naked, in the public square for having an illegitimate child with her brother-in-law, Samuel Wright Jr., who had married her sister the year before; then on top of that, Mary paid a fine to redeem twelve lashes that she was sentenced to get for "Committing wickedness with Joseph Bonde".

A marriage between a Puritan like William and a Scarlet Letter candidate like Mary would seem doomed from the start, but in fact, it was a long, prosperous union. William and Mary settled in Springfield, Hampden County, Massachusetts. According to Springfield Town Records, on February 8, 1654 "thease parsells of meddow comonly called by the name of Wattchuett was granted these inhabitants as followe the vid - ... will Brooks 4 acres".

REFERENCES TO WILLIAM BROOKS FROM SPRINGFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS TOWN RECORDS
January 14, 1669 Meeting of Selectmen - "Theres grannted to Wm Brookes forty acres of land on ye Westrly side & Northrly end of the land wch Thomas Copley hath Sold to Joseph Parsons of North Hampton, at the foote of ye higher falls in ye Great River : Convenient high wayes to be reserved".
April 20, 1667 Meeting of the Proprietors - "And there being at present Sixteene proprietors tis aggreed that for this yeere William Brookes (and others) shall take care of the water fence to see it a sufficient fence, well done at both ends to secure the feild".

William's large family (see below) and credit account with the store of John Pynchon, who basically ran Springfield, made it tough for William to get ahead. It was easy to be put "on account" at the store if you had plenty of fertile land as collateral, but sooner or later Pynchon would call in all of the debts, which usually meant signing over your land. And on December 30, 1675, William was forced to sell four parcels of land (amounting to 78 acres), in exchange for 60 pounds of credit (when the accounts were balanced Pynchon owed Brooks eight pounds, which William needed in order to buy more supplies from Pynchon.

William stayed in Springfield for another ten years, but with some of his best land now gone, he eventually needed a fresh start. In 1686, he moved to Deerfield, Franklin County, Massachusetts, where the land was cheaper. But he died on the 30th of December, 1688. Mary died a few months later, on the 30th of August in 1689 in Northampton, Franklin County, Massachusetts. But fortunately for us and thousands of other descendants, she and William had a LOT of kids before that day:

CHILDREN OF WILLIAM BROOKS AND MARY BURT
REMEMBERANCE BROOKS born in Springfield, Hampden County, Massachusetts.
WILLIAM BROOKS born 18 August 1655 in Springfield, Hampden County, Massachusetts. Killed by Indians on the 27th of October, 1675, during King Philip's War.
JOHN BROOKS born 13 February 1656/1657 in Springfield, Hampden County, Massachusetts. Killed by Indians on the 27th of October, 1675, during King Philip's War.
SARAH BROOKS born 4 May 1658 in Springfield, Hampden County, Massachusetts.
MARY BROOKS born 21 December 1659 in Springfield, Hampden County, Massachusetts.
PATIENCE BROOKS born 5 July 1661 in Springfield, Hampden County, Massachusetts.
EBENEZER BROOKS born 21 December 1662 in Springfield, Hampden County, Massachusetts. Married ELIZABETH BELDING. He died in 1720.
NATHANIEL BROOKS born 9 May 1664 in Springfield, Hampden County, Massachusetts. Married (1) MARY WILLIAMS; (2) MARY ALLIS. His son, William, was captured by Indians in 1704 (fate unknown).
ABIGAIL BROOKS born 25 January 1664/1665 in Springfield, Hampden County, Massachusetts.
JOSEPH BROOKS born 7 October 1667 in Springfield, Hampden County, Massachusetts. Married LYDIA WARNER. He died in 1748.
MERCY BROOKS born 25 August 1669 in Springfield, Hampden County, Massachusetts.
DELIVERANCE BROOKS born 28 February 1671/1672.
THANKFUL BROOKS born 28 February 1671/1672.
JONATHON BROOKS born 13 October 1674.
MARY BROOKS born 11 July 1677 in Springfield, Hampden, Massachusetts. Married BARRETT STEELE on 30 December 1697 in Springfield, Hampden, Massachusetts.
THANKFUL BROOKS born 19 September 1679.
found on ancestry.com

Remembrance Brooks, born out of wedlock
1654
Some months prior to marriage, Samuel Wright had conceived a daughter, born probably early 1654, with his future wife's younger sister Mary, who married William/1 Brooks the following October.4 Charged by Mary/2 Burt as the father of her child, Samuel requested a jury trial, held 24 March 1654. The verdict of the Jury: Wee fynd Samuel Wright Junior guilty of committinge wickedness with Mary Burt in having the use of her body 3 severall tymes, whereby wee fynd him to be the father of the said child: Whereuppon the said Samuell Wright was ordered and adjudged to be the reputed father of the said child: And for his evill behaviour therein to be whipped with 12. stripes on the naked body well layd on: And to pay the charges of the Court, and towards the mayntenance of the said child to pay after the rate of One shillinge four pence per week makeing payment every month, dureinge the tearme of Seaven yeares, and at the end of Seaven yeares to pay Forty shillings towards the putting of the child forth to be an apprentice and in the meane while to give good Security vizt a bond for 4£ with Sufficient Suretyes to perform this Order.4 Samuel's punishment took place 28 May 1654. Mary Burt, who was sentenced to 12 lashes for fornication with Samuel Wright, and a further 10 lashes for the same offense with Joseph Bond, was ordered to keep the child.

Remembrance Brooks was born, perhaps about the beginning of 1654, at Springfield, Massachusetts. Remembrance married, 7 January 1674 at Springfield, James Brown of Hatfield.
Her luck in matrimony was no better than in the circumstances of her birth. Her husband was branded with a "B" on the forehead for burglary the following September, was in court again the succeeding March for assault and for profaning the Sabbath, and was the subject of a debt action in 1684. They settled at Deerfield, where she gave consent to her husband's sale of land in 1697.4

Removed to Colchester, Connecticut, where he died 8 July 1711.5 In 1713, Remembrance Brown, widow of James Brown of Colchester, and her son James deeded land in Deerfield.5

From http://www.tributaries.us/secondsite/founders2-o/p140.htm#i1396
found on ancestry.com