Ahnentafel № 1527 · The compiler's 8× great-grandparent
Mary Parris
1703–1803 · of Concord, Middlesex, MA, Massachusetts, USA
Birth
20 October 1703
Concord, Middlesex, MA, Massachusetts, USA
Death
3 June 1803
Marlborough, Middlesex, Massachusetts, United States
Biography
From the Hyten family archive; subject is Mary Parris (1703–1803), an 8× great-grandmother of the compiler in the paternal-grandmother (PM) line. This entry covers her birth in colonial Massachusetts, parentage by the Rev. Samuel Parris of Salem witch trials notoriety, marriage to Peter Bent, her daughter Katherine, and her remarkable century-long lifespan. Notable: direct descent from Rev. Samuel Parris of the 1692 Salem witch trials.
Mary Parris (1703–1803) was born on the twentieth of October, 1703, in Concord, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, to the Reverend Samuel Parris and Dorothy Noyes. Her father stands among the most consequential and controversial clergymen of colonial New England, having presided over the parish of Salem Village during the infamous witchcraft trials of 1692. By the time of Mary's birth eleven years later, the family had removed from the shadow of that episode, and the Reverend Parris was ministering elsewhere in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, where the family rebuilt in quieter circumstances.
Mary came of age in a Puritan New England that was, in the opening decades of the eighteenth century, gradually softening from the rigid theocratic order of the previous generation. Concord and the surrounding Middlesex towns were prosperous agricultural communities bound together by Congregationalist meetinghouses and the steady rhythm of planting, harvest, and Sabbath. Her mother Dorothy died in 1719, and her father followed in 1720, leaving Mary, then a young woman of sixteen or seventeen, among the surviving family.
She was united in marriage to Peter Bent, and the union produced at least one recorded daughter, Katherine Bent, born in 1736 and living until 1818. Through Katherine the Parris line descended forward into later generations of the family, ultimately reaching the compiler.
Mary Parris's life spanned an extraordinary century — from the reign of Queen Anne through the colonial wars, the American Revolution, the framing of the Constitution, and into the early presidency of Thomas Jefferson. She died on the third of June, 1803, in Marlborough, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, having attained the rare age of ninety-nine years. Few in her generation witnessed so vast a transformation of the New England world: from English colony to independent republic, from Puritan village to Federalist township.
Mary was the compiler's eighth great-grandmother on the paternal-grandmother (PM) line.
Additional research
Subsequent research has clarified and complicated several particulars of Mary Parris's life. Her parents' union is now more precisely dated: the Rev. Samuel Parris married his second wife, Dorothy Noyes, between January and December of 1698 — bracketed by the will and probate of Dorothy's brother Peter Noyes, who died in London that August (per WikiTree). Wikipedia confirms the marriage occurred in Concord following the 1696 death of Samuel's first wife, Elizabeth Eldridge. Mary was the youngest child of this second marriage, full sister to Dorothy (Parris) Brown and Samuel Parris Jr., and half-sister to Elizabeth (Parris) Barron (per WikiTree).
After her father's death in 1720, Hopestill Brown Jr. was appointed guardian over the younger Parris children, Mary and Samuel (per WikiTree). Mary was named in her father's will alongside her four siblings (per Find A Grave).
Her marriage to Peter Bent is now firmly documented: the couple wed on the eighteenth of April, 1727, in Sudbury, recorded in the Vital Records of Sudbury, Massachusetts (p. 249, per WikiTree). Peter, born 17 May 1703 in Sudbury to Hopestill and Elizabeth (Brown) Bent, co-administered his father's intestate estate in 1725. On the twenty-fifth of July, 1728, Peter and Mary jointly executed a deed conveying a fifteen-acre Sudbury homestead to Thomas Bryant, recorded in Middlesex County Deeds 64:534–5 and personally acknowledged by both as late as 1765 (per WikiTree). The Bent household is further documented in Hudson's History of Sudbury, Massachusetts, 1638–1889 (per the Sudbury county history at WikiTree).
A significant discrepancy must be noted: sourced records record Mary's death as 17 June 1774 in Sudbury — the very date Peter Bent remarried Sarah (Willard) Pratt in Newton (Vital Records of Sudbury, p. 296, per WikiTree) — rather than 1803 in Marlborough. The conflict awaits further reconciliation.
Mary remains the compiler Jacob Hyten's eighth great-grandmother on the paternal-grandmother line.
Family
Parents
Children
Sources
Source citations and original documents will appear here as research progresses. Currently sourced from Ancestry tree hints — to be verified.