Ancestors of Tim Farr and Descendants of Stephen Farr Sr. of Concord, Massachusetts and Lidlington, Bedfordshire, England


Joseph RICE [Parents] was christened 1 on 14 Mar 1636/1637 in Berkhamstead, Hertfordshire, England, United Kingdom. Joseph married 2, 3 Mary KING on 4 May 1658 in Sudbury, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States.

Mary KING. Mary married 1, 2 Joseph RICE on 4 May 1658 in Sudbury, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States.


Thomas AXTELL [scrapbook] was christened 1 on 26 Jan 1619 in Great Berkhampstead, Hertfordshire, England, United Kingdom. He died 2 on 8 Mar 1646 in Sudbury, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States. He was buried in Mar 1646 in Sudbury, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States. Thomas married 3 Mary RICE on 10 Oct 1638 in St Albans, Hertfordshire, England, United Kingdom.

Thomas owned 4 in Oct 1643 in Sudbury, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States. His will was probated 5 on 6 May 1646 in Sudbury, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States.

The Inventory of the goods of Thomas Axtell of Sudbury late Deceased.
Imprimi: His land & house¹  8/ 10s
Itm for Cattle 8/ 10s
Itm for his Wearing apparel & bedding with his Armes 10/
Itm for Brass & Pewter 5/
Prised by Edmund Rice, Philemon Whale, Edward Rice 
¹Edmond Rice bought back the land, six acres, and dwelling house.

Will:
He expressed that Mary his wife should have all his estate for to bring up his children.
Testified by Edmund Rice uppon Oath the 6 (3) 1646 before the Govenor Deputy & c & Increase Nowel Secret.


In the town records of Sudbury Thomas received land from Edmund and borders Edmunds land. John Maynard shows in the town records as having a Meadow next to Edmund Rice's meadow.

Mary RICE [Parents] [scrapbook] was christened 1 on 18 Aug 1619 in Stanstead, Suffolk, England, United Kingdom. She died about 1680 in Massachusetts, United States. Mary married 2 Thomas AXTELL on 10 Oct 1638 in St Albans, Hertfordshire, England, United Kingdom.

Other marriages:
MAYNARD, John

FamilySearch had Mary's chr. as the 23

Some sources say that Edmund had no daughter named Mary or that she died in England. Mary's Christening record has been found in the Stanstead, Suffolk, England records as being 18 Aug 1618 and her father as "Edm.".

Susan Hathaway recently discovered the marriage record of a Mary Rice and Thomas Axtell in The Herts Genelalogist and Antiquary, edited by William Briggs, Vol. 1, p. 216. They were married 10 Oct 1638 in St. Albans, Hertfordshire, England. It was submitted to the Edmund Rice Family Association and accepted. You can find it posted on their Facebook page.

This Thomas and Mary came to Massachusetts after Edmund. It is clear that Thomas bought land from Edmund. After Thomas died, Mary married John Maynard. But there is another Mary Rice in the works from Hertfordshire b. 1815 to Henry Rice and Elizabeth Frost who could have married Thomas Axtell. These two Mary's are likely double cousins.

I had tried to find the marriage in the parish record films online at FamilySearch.org but the pages were missing for the years needed to pin it down. Apparently The Herts Genealogist and Antiquary had somehow received or made a transcription of those pages before they were lost and Susan Hathway found them therein. I double checked and found the record on Google Books and on FamilySearch.

The following article from the Edmund Rice (1638) Association Newsletter; Vol. 90, No. 1 Winter 2016 explains the findings and problems better than I can:
The Enigmatic 1638 Marriage of Mary Rice¹ and Thomas Axtell in Hertfordshire John F. Chandler, Michael A. Rice, Robert V. Rice, and George W. King Ever since the English church records were found specifying the baptisms of Edmund Rice's children in Stanstead and Berkhamstead, we have been faced with two genealogical puzzles. One is the mismatch between his son Edward and the baptism showing the son's name as Edmund (which we resolve by assuming either a clerical error or a misunderstanding in the parish records), and the other is the fact that one of the children cannot be accounted for either by a burial (as in the case of Daniel, born and died in1632) or by arrival with Edmund in Massachusetts. The missing child is the first-born, Mary, baptized in1619. If you turn to the ERA database (available on CD and also on line), you can see the status of the Mary puzzle as of last year: she was presumed to have died before Edmund emigrated, even though no burial record was known, because no other record of her was known either. We had received a report that claimed she married Thomas Axtell (another early Sudbury settler), and the supporting evidence was a marriage license supposedly issued in their names by the Archdeaconry of Saint Albans, a town about 15km (9 miles) from Berkhamstead. If true, this would be a major breakthrough, since Thomas did indeed arrive in Sudbury with a wife named Mary and two children who had been baptized in Berkhamstead, and Mary survived him and went on to have other children by her second husband, John Maynard. However,some inquiries at this point led to a report that the Saint Albans Archdeaconry records no longer exist or cannot be found, and so we regretfully left the matter as an unconfirmed rumor. However, we can now report a new development: although the original records are still unavailable, it turns out that they were translated from Latin and published over a century ago! (We might in fact wonder if the records were lost or misfiled as a direct result of that project to make them more accessible, but that's all in the past.) These records were published serially, along with many other types of records, in a Page 9 periodical called the Herts Genealogist and Antiquary, which is available on-line in both Google Books and the Internet Archive. The work of translating and publishing appears to have been done very carefully, and so we can with some confidence quote the relevant passage (from p. 216 of vol. 1):[1638] Oct. 10 Tho. Axtell of Bushy, bachr and Mary Rice, maiden.These records were rather formulaic, and so the basic information is nearly the same in every case: the date of the license and the name, condition, and home town of each party. However, in this particular record,the home town of Mary Rice is not stated, and so we are left to assume she lived at Saint Albans, since why else would the clerk omit that information? To put this all in context for those who don't live in Hertfordshire, note that Berkhamstead is situated on the western edge of the county, while Saint Albans is near the center, and Bushey is on the southern edge, about 19 km (11 miles) from Berkhamstead and 13km (8 miles) from Saint Albans. The time context is also interesting: this license was issued after (but not long after) Edmund Rice must have left Hertfordshire to catch the fair-weather sailing season of 1638.So is this finally the answer to our genealogical puzzle? Did Edmund's daughter Mary come to New England just a few years after Edmund? Maybe. There is a complication to the story. We know that"our" Mary had a cousin also named Mary Rice, just a few years older, born in 1615. This other Mary was the daughter of Elizabeth Frost (Thomasine's sister) and Henry Rice (very likely Edmund's brother),making her most likely a double cousin. Indeed, Henry's family shows many parallels with Edmund's beyond the fact that they married sisters. Four of the five names bestowed on Henry's children were also given to Edmund's; one child's burial is on record in each family; both families moved to Berkhamstead about 1626 and later to the New World (in Henry's case, it was his widow and her second husband, Philemon Whale, who moved); and, in particular, both Marys are unaccounted for by any known post baptism parish records. The parallels extend even to New England, since both families settled in Sudbury,and, when Thomas Axtell died in 1646, his estate was jointly appraised by Edmund Rice, Edmund’s son Edward, and Philemon Whale. In other words, both Marys, if still alive in 1638, would likely have been living in Hertfordshire, and both were represented in the financial affairs in the closing of Thomas Axtell's estate in Sudbury. The fact that Edmund Rice had sold land to Thomas when the latter emigrated to Massachusetts could be attributed just as easily to an uncle-niece relationship as to a father-daughter one, and the fact that Philemon Whale didn't sell land to Thomas is easily understood because the Whales came over about the same time as the Axtells, around 1643, perhaps even on the same ship (but the precise times of their immigration are not known).Some additional circumstantial evidence may be relevant, though ambiguous: the children of the Axtells known from the Berkhamstead records were named Mary and Henry, the latter being also the name of the eldest sibling of each of the Mary Rices and of the father of the elder one. Further, the Massachusetts records show the birth of another Axtell child in Sudbury, named either Mary (unlikely) or Lydia,depending on which record is consulted (Lydia being also the name of Edmund’s second daughter). Another intriguing but tenuous clue may lie in the probate records of Edmund Rice himself. On page 3 of Ward's 1858 genealogy of the Rice family, the details of Edmund's probate records of 1663 are discussed(original document held in the Massachusetts Commonwealth Archives, File Index #18696, Middlesex County). A supplementary document with crossed out but readable text shows proposed monetary amounts for division of his estate among "eight eldest children" (i.e. living children by Thomasine) and two youngest (i.e. children by the widow Mercy) for a total of ten. It is known through the baptism records that Edmund and Thomasine had ten children with their son Daniel known to be deceased through a Berkhamsted burial record. Edmund’s two daughters by his second wife Mercy are accounted for in the Page 10 total, suggesting that Edmund's daughter Mary may not have been alive at the time, with the time and place of her death unknown. However, even this evidence of an 11-way distribution of assets among Mercy Brigham Rice and the ten living children is muddied by the existence of a second crossed out distribution proposal showing 12 equal shares, with Mercy receiving 3 shares, thus leaving only 9 shares for the children. Since the eldest child would be entitled to a double share, that would signify only 8 children, clearly at odds with the known set of progeny, unless the 3 shares allocated to Mercy were intended to cover her two (very young) daughters as well as herself. Ordinarily, a widow was entitled to athird of the estate, but an ordinary widow’s heirs would be her deceased husband’s children, while Mercy’s were her own Brigham and Rice children. In other words, the complicated situation calls into question the usefulness of these probate records for determining the exact number of Edmund’s living heirs at the time. In short, both Marys can make a good case for being Mary Axtell, so we still have the puzzle, and frustratingly, this may be a very difficult puzzle to resolve. Typically a disputed case of identity of this kind might be resolved by examining differences in the DNA of known descendants of Mary Rice Axtell Maynard on the female descendancy line (mtDNA), but unfortunately this method would not work in this instance. Both Mary Rice, the daughter of Edmund, and Mary Rice, the daughter of Henry, would have a common female ancestor in Thomasine Belgrave Frost, the maternal grandmother of both of them, so we would expect the same mtDNA results from both Marys, and the puzzle would still stand.The one new certainty that this marriage record from St. Albans can provide is that the maiden name of Mary Axtell of Sudbury is indeed now known to be Rice. This finding would rule out the long-held speculation that Mary Axtell’s maiden name was Starr. However, given the high degree of uncertainty about the parents, the Edmund Rice (1638) Association will not be formally listing Edmund's daughter Mary Rice (1619) as being married to Thomas Axtell within the ERA genealogical database, but instead, providing an analysis of existing data records of each of the two Marys.

¹Note by Tim Farr: The above being said, I believe that Mary Rice, who married Thomas Axtell and John Maynard, was the daughter of Edmund Rice based on preponderance of evidence. The fact that Thomas Axtell bought land from Edmund and that Edmund and one of his sons prised Thomas' estate, trumps Philemon Whale being mentioned. Edmund Rice is mentioned first, then Philemon Whale, then Edward Rice. Edmund Rice is the one who heard the will of Thomas Axtell verbally. Also a John Maynard, owned a meadow that was next to Edmund Rice's meadow and a house lot next to Henry Rice.

I feel that Mary, daughter of Edmund Rice, should be connected to Thomas Axtell and John Maynard if and until further evidence may be found.


Jane Petersen:
Many past genealogies confused Mary, the widow of Thomas Axtell and wife of John Maynard, with Mary Starr, the daughter of Comfort Starr, who also married a different John Maynard. Unfortunately, the modern Internet multiplies this past error.

The book "The Pioneers of Massachusetts, A Descriptive List, Drawn from Records of the Colonies, Towns and Churches, and other Contemporaneous Documents," by Charles Henry Pope (1900; Boston), p. 308, indicates there were three different John Maynards:
"MAYNARD, MYNARD, see MINOR…
1. John, carpenter, Duxbury, witness to will of John Cole in 1637, contracted to build a prison at Plymouth 4 March, 1638/9, had land grant at Dux. in 1640; town officer, 1645. Rem to Boston, sold Dux land 20 Aug. 1647. He m. 16 May, 1640, Mary, dau of Comfort Starr, ch. Hannah and Lydia, ae about 4 days, bapt 26(9) 1648. Inv of his est filed 7 (9) 1658. List of debts, 25 (9) 1659 [Reg. IX, 347, and XXXI. 175]
2. John, Cambridge, propr 1634; frm. May 29, 1644. May be the folg.
3. John, maulster, Sudbury, propr 1639, selectman, 1646; frm May 2, 1649. He m. 16 (4) 1646, Mary, widow [or dau?] of Thomas Axtell, ch Elizabeth b 26 May, 1649, Hannah b. 30 (7) 1653. Will dated 4 Sept. 1672, prob April 1, 1673, beq to wife Mary, sons John and Zechary; daus Elizabeth, wife of Joseph Graves, Lydia, wife of Joseph Moores, and Mary, unmarried."

Robert Charles Anderson (one of the greatest genealogists of any generation) in his "Great Migration" biography of John Maynard also clarifies that the three John Maynards are all separate individuals. On pp. 487-494, entry for Comfort Starr, he shows that Mary Starr, dau. of Comfort Starr, married in Duxbury in 1640 John Maynard. (That John Maynard is a different John than who married the widow Mary Axtell.) His estate was administered in 1658. The John Maynard who married Mary Axtell died in 1672 in Sudbury and named his wife Mary and son Zechary (among others).

The book "Vital Records of Sudbury, Massachusetts, to the End of the Year 1849," Marriages, pp. 232-34 confirm that it was the (widow) Mary Axtell who married the John Maynard who died in 1672 in Sudbury: "John Maynard and Mary Axdell, June 16, 1646." The John Maynard who died in 1658 did so in Boston where we find his children -- his widow Mary (Starr) died in 1659.


John MAYNARD was born about 1615 in England, United Kingdom. He died in 1672 in Sudbury, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States. John married 1, 2 Mary RICE on 16 Jun 1646 in Sudbury, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States.

Mary RICE [Parents] [scrapbook] was christened 1 on 18 Aug 1619 in Stanstead, Suffolk, England, United Kingdom. She died about 1680 in Massachusetts, United States. Mary married 2, 3 John MAYNARD on 16 Jun 1646 in Sudbury, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States.

Other marriages:
AXTELL, Thomas

FamilySearch had Mary's chr. as the 23

Some sources say that Edmund had no daughter named Mary or that she died in England. Mary's Christening record has been found in the Stanstead, Suffolk, England records as being 18 Aug 1618 and her father as "Edm.".

Susan Hathaway recently discovered the marriage record of a Mary Rice and Thomas Axtell in The Herts Genelalogist and Antiquary, edited by William Briggs, Vol. 1, p. 216. They were married 10 Oct 1638 in St. Albans, Hertfordshire, England. It was submitted to the Edmund Rice Family Association and accepted. You can find it posted on their Facebook page.

This Thomas and Mary came to Massachusetts after Edmund. It is clear that Thomas bought land from Edmund. After Thomas died, Mary married John Maynard. But there is another Mary Rice in the works from Hertfordshire b. 1815 to Henry Rice and Elizabeth Frost who could have married Thomas Axtell. These two Mary's are likely double cousins.

I had tried to find the marriage in the parish record films online at FamilySearch.org but the pages were missing for the years needed to pin it down. Apparently The Herts Genealogist and Antiquary had somehow received or made a transcription of those pages before they were lost and Susan Hathway found them therein. I double checked and found the record on Google Books and on FamilySearch.

The following article from the Edmund Rice (1638) Association Newsletter; Vol. 90, No. 1 Winter 2016 explains the findings and problems better than I can:
The Enigmatic 1638 Marriage of Mary Rice¹ and Thomas Axtell in Hertfordshire John F. Chandler, Michael A. Rice, Robert V. Rice, and George W. King Ever since the English church records were found specifying the baptisms of Edmund Rice's children in Stanstead and Berkhamstead, we have been faced with two genealogical puzzles. One is the mismatch between his son Edward and the baptism showing the son's name as Edmund (which we resolve by assuming either a clerical error or a misunderstanding in the parish records), and the other is the fact that one of the children cannot be accounted for either by a burial (as in the case of Daniel, born and died in1632) or by arrival with Edmund in Massachusetts. The missing child is the first-born, Mary, baptized in1619. If you turn to the ERA database (available on CD and also on line), you can see the status of the Mary puzzle as of last year: she was presumed to have died before Edmund emigrated, even though no burial record was known, because no other record of her was known either. We had received a report that claimed she married Thomas Axtell (another early Sudbury settler), and the supporting evidence was a marriage license supposedly issued in their names by the Archdeaconry of Saint Albans, a town about 15km (9 miles) from Berkhamstead. If true, this would be a major breakthrough, since Thomas did indeed arrive in Sudbury with a wife named Mary and two children who had been baptized in Berkhamstead, and Mary survived him and went on to have other children by her second husband, John Maynard. However,some inquiries at this point led to a report that the Saint Albans Archdeaconry records no longer exist or cannot be found, and so we regretfully left the matter as an unconfirmed rumor. However, we can now report a new development: although the original records are still unavailable, it turns out that they were translated from Latin and published over a century ago! (We might in fact wonder if the records were lost or misfiled as a direct result of that project to make them more accessible, but that's all in the past.) These records were published serially, along with many other types of records, in a Page 9 periodical called the Herts Genealogist and Antiquary, which is available on-line in both Google Books and the Internet Archive. The work of translating and publishing appears to have been done very carefully, and so we can with some confidence quote the relevant passage (from p. 216 of vol. 1):[1638] Oct. 10 Tho. Axtell of Bushy, bachr and Mary Rice, maiden.These records were rather formulaic, and so the basic information is nearly the same in every case: the date of the license and the name, condition, and home town of each party. However, in this particular record,the home town of Mary Rice is not stated, and so we are left to assume she lived at Saint Albans, since why else would the clerk omit that information? To put this all in context for those who don't live in Hertfordshire, note that Berkhamstead is situated on the western edge of the county, while Saint Albans is near the center, and Bushey is on the southern edge, about 19 km (11 miles) from Berkhamstead and 13km (8 miles) from Saint Albans. The time context is also interesting: this license was issued after (but not long after) Edmund Rice must have left Hertfordshire to catch the fair-weather sailing season of 1638.So is this finally the answer to our genealogical puzzle? Did Edmund's daughter Mary come to New England just a few years after Edmund? Maybe. There is a complication to the story. We know that"our" Mary had a cousin also named Mary Rice, just a few years older, born in 1615. This other Mary was the daughter of Elizabeth Frost (Thomasine's sister) and Henry Rice (very likely Edmund's brother),making her most likely a double cousin. Indeed, Henry's family shows many parallels with Edmund's beyond the fact that they married sisters. Four of the five names bestowed on Henry's children were also given to Edmund's; one child's burial is on record in each family; both families moved to Berkhamstead about 1626 and later to the New World (in Henry's case, it was his widow and her second husband, Philemon Whale, who moved); and, in particular, both Marys are unaccounted for by any known post baptism parish records. The parallels extend even to New England, since both families settled in Sudbury,and, when Thomas Axtell died in 1646, his estate was jointly appraised by Edmund Rice, Edmund’s son Edward, and Philemon Whale. In other words, both Marys, if still alive in 1638, would likely have been living in Hertfordshire, and both were represented in the financial affairs in the closing of Thomas Axtell's estate in Sudbury. The fact that Edmund Rice had sold land to Thomas when the latter emigrated to Massachusetts could be attributed just as easily to an uncle-niece relationship as to a father-daughter one, and the fact that Philemon Whale didn't sell land to Thomas is easily understood because the Whales came over about the same time as the Axtells, around 1643, perhaps even on the same ship (but the precise times of their immigration are not known).Some additional circumstantial evidence may be relevant, though ambiguous: the children of the Axtells known from the Berkhamstead records were named Mary and Henry, the latter being also the name of the eldest sibling of each of the Mary Rices and of the father of the elder one. Further, the Massachusetts records show the birth of another Axtell child in Sudbury, named either Mary (unlikely) or Lydia,depending on which record is consulted (Lydia being also the name of Edmund’s second daughter). Another intriguing but tenuous clue may lie in the probate records of Edmund Rice himself. On page 3 of Ward's 1858 genealogy of the Rice family, the details of Edmund's probate records of 1663 are discussed(original document held in the Massachusetts Commonwealth Archives, File Index #18696, Middlesex County). A supplementary document with crossed out but readable text shows proposed monetary amounts for division of his estate among "eight eldest children" (i.e. living children by Thomasine) and two youngest (i.e. children by the widow Mercy) for a total of ten. It is known through the baptism records that Edmund and Thomasine had ten children with their son Daniel known to be deceased through a Berkhamsted burial record. Edmund’s two daughters by his second wife Mercy are accounted for in the Page 10 total, suggesting that Edmund's daughter Mary may not have been alive at the time, with the time and place of her death unknown. However, even this evidence of an 11-way distribution of assets among Mercy Brigham Rice and the ten living children is muddied by the existence of a second crossed out distribution proposal showing 12 equal shares, with Mercy receiving 3 shares, thus leaving only 9 shares for the children. Since the eldest child would be entitled to a double share, that would signify only 8 children, clearly at odds with the known set of progeny, unless the 3 shares allocated to Mercy were intended to cover her two (very young) daughters as well as herself. Ordinarily, a widow was entitled to athird of the estate, but an ordinary widow’s heirs would be her deceased husband’s children, while Mercy’s were her own Brigham and Rice children. In other words, the complicated situation calls into question the usefulness of these probate records for determining the exact number of Edmund’s living heirs at the time. In short, both Marys can make a good case for being Mary Axtell, so we still have the puzzle, and frustratingly, this may be a very difficult puzzle to resolve. Typically a disputed case of identity of this kind might be resolved by examining differences in the DNA of known descendants of Mary Rice Axtell Maynard on the female descendancy line (mtDNA), but unfortunately this method would not work in this instance. Both Mary Rice, the daughter of Edmund, and Mary Rice, the daughter of Henry, would have a common female ancestor in Thomasine Belgrave Frost, the maternal grandmother of both of them, so we would expect the same mtDNA results from both Marys, and the puzzle would still stand.The one new certainty that this marriage record from St. Albans can provide is that the maiden name of Mary Axtell of Sudbury is indeed now known to be Rice. This finding would rule out the long-held speculation that Mary Axtell’s maiden name was Starr. However, given the high degree of uncertainty about the parents, the Edmund Rice (1638) Association will not be formally listing Edmund's daughter Mary Rice (1619) as being married to Thomas Axtell within the ERA genealogical database, but instead, providing an analysis of existing data records of each of the two Marys.

¹Note by Tim Farr: The above being said, I believe that Mary Rice, who married Thomas Axtell and John Maynard, was the daughter of Edmund Rice based on preponderance of evidence. The fact that Thomas Axtell bought land from Edmund and that Edmund and one of his sons prised Thomas' estate, trumps Philemon Whale being mentioned. Edmund Rice is mentioned first, then Philemon Whale, then Edward Rice. Edmund Rice is the one who heard the will of Thomas Axtell verbally. Also a John Maynard, owned a meadow that was next to Edmund Rice's meadow and a house lot next to Henry Rice.

I feel that Mary, daughter of Edmund Rice, should be connected to Thomas Axtell and John Maynard if and until further evidence may be found.


Jane Petersen:
Many past genealogies confused Mary, the widow of Thomas Axtell and wife of John Maynard, with Mary Starr, the daughter of Comfort Starr, who also married a different John Maynard. Unfortunately, the modern Internet multiplies this past error.

The book "The Pioneers of Massachusetts, A Descriptive List, Drawn from Records of the Colonies, Towns and Churches, and other Contemporaneous Documents," by Charles Henry Pope (1900; Boston), p. 308, indicates there were three different John Maynards:
"MAYNARD, MYNARD, see MINOR…
1. John, carpenter, Duxbury, witness to will of John Cole in 1637, contracted to build a prison at Plymouth 4 March, 1638/9, had land grant at Dux. in 1640; town officer, 1645. Rem to Boston, sold Dux land 20 Aug. 1647. He m. 16 May, 1640, Mary, dau of Comfort Starr, ch. Hannah and Lydia, ae about 4 days, bapt 26(9) 1648. Inv of his est filed 7 (9) 1658. List of debts, 25 (9) 1659 [Reg. IX, 347, and XXXI. 175]
2. John, Cambridge, propr 1634; frm. May 29, 1644. May be the folg.
3. John, maulster, Sudbury, propr 1639, selectman, 1646; frm May 2, 1649. He m. 16 (4) 1646, Mary, widow [or dau?] of Thomas Axtell, ch Elizabeth b 26 May, 1649, Hannah b. 30 (7) 1653. Will dated 4 Sept. 1672, prob April 1, 1673, beq to wife Mary, sons John and Zechary; daus Elizabeth, wife of Joseph Graves, Lydia, wife of Joseph Moores, and Mary, unmarried."

Robert Charles Anderson (one of the greatest genealogists of any generation) in his "Great Migration" biography of John Maynard also clarifies that the three John Maynards are all separate individuals. On pp. 487-494, entry for Comfort Starr, he shows that Mary Starr, dau. of Comfort Starr, married in Duxbury in 1640 John Maynard. (That John Maynard is a different John than who married the widow Mary Axtell.) His estate was administered in 1658. The John Maynard who married Mary Axtell died in 1672 in Sudbury and named his wife Mary and son Zechary (among others).

The book "Vital Records of Sudbury, Massachusetts, to the End of the Year 1849," Marriages, pp. 232-34 confirm that it was the (widow) Mary Axtell who married the John Maynard who died in 1672 in Sudbury: "John Maynard and Mary Axdell, June 16, 1646." The John Maynard who died in 1658 did so in Boston where we find his children -- his widow Mary (Starr) died in 1659.


Charles ALDOUS [Parents] [scrapbook] was born 1 on 9 Apr 1840 in Fenstanton, Huntingdonshire, England, United Kingdom. He died 2 on 10 Aug 1924 in Parker, Fremont, Idaho, United States. He was buried on 15 Aug 1924 in Ogden, Weber, Utah, United States. Charles married Olive Elzada CHENEY on 4 Sep 1890 in Ogden, Weber, Utah, United States.

Other marriages:
DRAKE, Lucy

Olive Elzada CHENEY. Olive married Charles ALDOUS on 4 Sep 1890 in Ogden, Weber, Utah, United States.


Charles ALDOUS [Parents] [scrapbook] was born 1 on 9 Apr 1840 in Fenstanton, Huntingdonshire, England, United Kingdom. He died 2 on 10 Aug 1924 in Parker, Fremont, Idaho, United States. He was buried on 15 Aug 1924 in Ogden, Weber, Utah, United States. Charles married Lucy DRAKE on 26 Nov 1860 in Ogden, Weber, Utah, United States.

Other marriages:
CHENEY, Olive Elzada

Lucy DRAKE. Lucy married Charles ALDOUS on 26 Nov 1860 in Ogden, Weber, Utah, United States.


Martin HARRIS [Parents] [scrapbook] was born 1, 2 on 18 May 1783 in Easttown, Saratoga, New York, United States. He died 3 on 10 Jul 1875 in Clarkston, Cache, Utah, United States. He was buried on 12 Jul 1875 in Clarkston, Cache, Utah, United States. Martin married Lucy HARRIS. The marriage ended in divorce.

Martin was counted in a census 4 in 1810 in Palmyra, Wayne, New York, United States. He was counted in a census 7 in 1860 in Kirtland, Lake, Ohio, United States. He was counted in a census 8 in 1870 in Kirtland, Lake, Ohio, United States.

Other marriages:
YOUNG, Caroline

From the 12th day of April [1828] until the 14th day of June [1828] he said he had written 116 pages foolscap of the translation. He said at this period of the translation, a circumstance happened. He was the cause of the 116 pages that he had written being lost and never found. He said he believed his wife burned it up, as she was very bitter against him having anything to do with Joseph Smith.

It was caused through her insisting that he bring the manuscript home and letting her and the rest of the family handle and see it. His family then consisted of his first wife, his father and mother, his brother Preserved Harris and his wife's sister, a Mrs. Cobb.  "I promised Joseph that I would not let anyone else see it."  Joseph inquired of the Lord through the Urim and Thummim if Harris should be permitted to take them, and was forbidden twice, but the third time he was permitted to take them after promising Joseph that he would not let any more see it.  But he said when he arrived home, there were more people in the house besides the five and his wife took the manuscript and he never saw it anymore.

(William Pilkington Affidavit, 3 Apr 1934, BYU-A 3, 1)
thru
(William Pilkington Affidavit, 3 Apr 1934, BYU-A 3, 2)

I am the only one alive today of his immediate family that knows anything pertaining to his testimony, as taken from his own lips.  In his talks with me, he would say, "Now,Willie, I am not going to live very long; and after I am dead, I want you to tell the people what I have told you.  For it is all true."  And he would hold up his right hand and swear himself that he was telling the truth.  I would invariably tell him: "Yes, Grandpa, I will sure tell the people what you have told me, for I know you have told me the truth.

On the 9th day of July 1875, while he was dying, I knelt by his cot, as he was lying on a cot in the southwest corner of the room in a house owned by a man by the name of Carbine, it was situated on the north side of Clarkston, Cache County, Utah.  I wanted to get what I thought would be his last words, but he could not talk audibly.  I could not understand what he wanted to tell me.  He tried hard to tell me.  So I stroked his hair back on his forehead and knelt down and prayed to the Lord and asked him in the name of Jesus to strengthen his servant's voice so that I could understand his last words, but I could get no response.  He was lying on his left side, facing in the room and as I knelt down I placed my hands on his right arm.  As I moved to stand up, I was in the act of moving my hands and he shook his head as if he did not want me to move.  I then knelt down again and prayed to the Lord as before, and I was inspired by the Lord to ask Grandpa if he wanted me to hold up his right hand so that he could bear his testimony.  I asked him and his answer came clear, "Yes." While I held his right hand up, strength was given to him and he bore his testimony as he had done many times before and I understood every word.

He then bore the same testimony to the whole world and then laid back exhausted. There were two other men standing in the room and heard him bear his testimony.  One of them was Thomas Godfery of Clarkston who just recently died.

Martin Harris' spirit departed the next day, the 10th day of July, 1875, in Clarkston, Cache County, Utah, aged 92 years.  I attended his funeral and assisted in his burial in the Clarkston cemetery.

Signed, William Pilkington       Smithfield, Utah

(William Pilkington Affidavit, 3 Apr 1934, BYU-A 6, 6)
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(William Pilkington Affidavit, 3 Apr 1934, BYU-A 8, 3)

At last night came, supper was over, and after having family prayer, they all retired to bed.  The old gentleman then sat down in his arm chair, put his elbow on the arm of the chair and crooked his finger as he did scores of times afterward, and that was a signal for me to bring another chair alongside of his.  He again asked me what my name was.  I told him.  "Oh yes, I am going to call you Willie." He had already found out that I was a Mormon.  He then said, "Willie, did you ever go to Sunday School?"  I promptly told him, "Yes, sir." "What class were you in?"  I promptly told him the Book of Mormon class. His eyes sparkled and his whole body seemed to reverberate. He seemed like a changed being.  He was very excited, trembling as I gazed in his eyes.  He said, "Did you ever read the Book of Mormon?" "Yes, sir, " was the reply.  "Well, if you have read the Book of Mormon, what is the first reading in the preface of the book that we find?"  After a little thinking, I said, "the first reading in the Book of Mormon is the testimony of the three men testifying to the whole world that they  saw an angel come down from heaven. That they saw the gold plates from which the Book of Mormon was translated, and the angel told them that the translation was correct and we bear record that Joseph Smith is a true prophet of God, and that their names will forever go before the world testifying that the Book of Mormon is true."

He then said, "I know, now, Willie, that you have read that glorious book.
Willie, I am going to ask you one more question.  What were those three men's names?"  I told him they were Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, and Martin Harris.
This little, old man, then ninety- two (91) years of age, of whom in my mind I had likened to Rip Van Winkle, whose whole being at this time was wonderful to behold, all lit up with the Spirit of God, whose eyes now were sparkling, whose whole being was transformed, stood up before me on the memorable occasion, and putting his walking cane in his left hand, straightened up and striking his breast with his right hand, exclaimed, "I am Martin Harris, one of the three witnesses to the authenticity of the Book of Mormon."   A man who had the privilege of standing before angels, a man whose eyes beheld the golden plates, a man whose ears heard the voice of God from heaven declare that the Book was translated correctly, and that commanded him to testify to all the world that it was correct.  I say again, can you imagine me, a mere boy not yet fourteen years of age until the next month, November, as this was October of the year 1874.

(William Pilkington Auto in Gunnell, "Harris" 72, 3)
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(William Pilkington Auto in Gunnell, "Harris" 72, 4)

CENSUS: A Mormon preacher age 77 in househole of George Harris.

CENSUS: Age 88 born in NY.

Lucy HARRIS. Lucy married Martin HARRIS. The marriage ended in divorce.

Mrs. Harris then said, "I have been walking round in the woods to look at the situation of your place, and as I turned round to come home, a tremendous black snake stuck up his head before me, and commenced hissing at me."

p3 The woman was so perplexed and disappointed in all her undertakings, that she left the house and took lodgings during her stay in Pennsylvania with a near neighbor, to

P122

p1 whom she stated that the day previous she had been hunting for the plates, and that, after a tedious search, she at length came to a spot where she judged, from the appearance of things, they must be buried; but upon stooping down to scrape away the snow and leaves, in order to ascertain the fact, she encountered a horrible black snake which gave her a terrible fright, and she ran with all possible speed to the house.

p2 While this woman remained in the neighborhood, she did all that lay in her power to injure Joseph in the estimation of his neighbors--telling them that he was a grand imposter, and, that by his specious pretensions, he had seduced her husband into the belief that he (Joseph Smith) was some great one, merely through a design upon her husband's property.

(Lucy Smith History of Joseph Smith (1958) 121, 2)
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(Lucy Smith History of Joseph Smith (1958) 122, 2)

p2 Footnote: 123.1 In 1831, when Martin Harris moved to Kirtland, he made a settlement with his wife and left her. He subsequently married a daughter of John Young.

(Lucy Smith History of Joseph Smith (1958) 123, 2)


Thomas RICE [Parents] was christened 1 on 26 Jan 1625/1626 in Stanstead, Suffolk, England, United Kingdom. He died 2, 3 on 16 Nov 1681 in Sudbury, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States. Thomas married 4 Mary KING in 1654 in Sudbury, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States.

Mary KING was born 1 on 12 Apr 1630 in Shaftesbury, Dorset, England, United Kingdom. She died 2, 3 on 22 Mar 1714/1715 in Sudbury, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States. Mary married 4 Thomas RICE in 1654 in Sudbury, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States.


Hugh DRURY was born 1 about 1616 in England, United Kingdom. He died 2 on 6 Jul 1689 in Boston, Suffolk, Massachusetts, United States. He was buried 3 in Boston, Suffolk, Massachusetts, United States. Hugh married 4 Lydia RICE in BY 1646 in Sudbury, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States.

Hugh had a will 5 on 1 Nov 1687 in Sudbury, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States. His will was probated 6 on 30 Jul 1689 in Sudbury, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States.

His first wife was Lydia Rice Drury, and his second wife was Mary ____ Fletcher Drury, the widow of Rev.Edward Fletcher.

His parents are not known at this time, but he is said to have arrived in New England on the "Abigail" in 1635 - apparently under the name of George Drury.

Children: John Drury, Thomas Drury, Mary Drury.

The following information was submitted by Tammy Chance:
His mother memorial is 169418793 . Also I have the book passage connecting him to his father. 
John Drury was born in London in 1616, son of Obed Drury of London, a descendant of John de Drury, whose father came with William the Conqueror. He came with Governor Win-throp Company, 1635. He called himself George, and was aged 19 years. He went with Dr. Elliott's Company to the mouth of the Connecticut, but, later, returned and settled in Sudbury, where he received a grant of land in 1641. In 1646, he went to Boston, where he engaged extensively in mercantile business, was very successful, and left a large property. He was a member of the First Church, Lieutenant of Artillery in 1659, Proprietor of Castle Tavern, and had lands near Mill Bridge. He married, 1645, Lydia Rice. He died in July, 1689. His wife died April 5, 1675. Both were buried in King's Chapel Ground, Tremont Street, Boston.
Morton, Arabella Lyman Gamage. Descendants of John Gamage of Ipswich, Mass (Kindle Locations 1230-1237). Worcester, Mass. : Press of C.R. Stobbs. Kindle Edition.

Lydia RICE [Parents] [scrapbook] was christened 1 on 9 Mar 1627/1628 in Berkhamstead, Hertfordshire, England, United Kingdom. She died 2 on 5 Apr 1675 in Sudbury, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States. She was buried in Boston, Suffolk, Massachusetts, United States. Lydia married 3 Hugh DRURY in BY 1646 in Sudbury, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States.


Matthew RICE [Parents] was christened 1 on 28 Feb 1629/1630 in Berkhamstead, Hertfordshire, England, United Kingdom. He died in 1717 in Sudbury, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States. Matthew married 2, 3 Martha LAMSON on 7 Jul 1654 in Sudbury, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States.

Matthew had a will 4 on 14 Oct 1716 in Sudbury, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States.

Martha LAMSON. Martha married 1, 2 Matthew RICE on 7 Jul 1654 in Sudbury, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States.


Samuel RICE [Parents] was christened 1 on 12 Nov 1634 in Berkhamstead, Hertfordshire, England, United Kingdom. He died on 25 Feb 1685 in Marlborough, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States. Samuel married 2, 3 Elizabeth KING on 8 Nov 1655 in Sudbury, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States.

Other marriages:
DIX, Mary
WHITE, Sarah

Elizabeth KING. Elizabeth married 1, 2 Samuel RICE on 8 Nov 1655 in Sudbury, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States.

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