Mary Endicott

  General Notes:

GED COM of R. Kerr (sent June 2006) In the work "A Porter Pedigree by Juliet Porter, 1907, she questions whether Mary, wife of John was Mary Endicott, as Mary Endicott married Roger Ludlow, according to another work, "Porter Genealogy" by Henry Porter Andrews. I will leave Mary Endicott as wife of John until further facts surface.

e-mail 170928 [notes from message]
".......Thank you for hedging your bet on Mary as an Endicott. Juliet Porter's 1907 logic may be flawed '97 I believe it's been reasonably established that Roger Ludlow's wife Mary was not an Endicott, but rather was Mary Cogan, sister-in-law to Gov. Endicott via his second wife, Elizabeth Cogan (see link below to a PDF summarizing the research of current Endicott descendants) '97 but her cautionary conclusion remains sound.
My basis for saying that is that I simply have not been able to find online any original source cited for either Mary's location or date of birth, let alone her parentage; Dorchester, Dorset, 1598 is repeated ad infinitum without citation of a primary record. One may perfectly well exist, but if so I would certainly like _someone_ to bring it forward!
Mary's marriage to John Porter, while well-established as a fact on this side of the Pond, also does not appear in any original record that I've been able to find cited. The notion that she was an Endicott has, in my research, been supported only by the contention that John Porter and John Endicott were friends from their youth in England (a statement itself also not yet supported, in my online wanderings, with any original source; it may perfectly well be true, although it appears now to have been pretty solidly established that John Endicott, son of Thomas, was born and later resided in or near Chagford, in Devon… while John Porter appears to have been of Dorchester in Dorset, some hundred miles to the east).
It is tantalizing to note that John Porter bought, in ~1643, land that I believe adjoined Gov. Endicott's farm in Salem Village (now Danvers); the house he built, and where it appears he and Mary likely resided from the mid-1640s, was I think on some corner of that land. Does the proximity of the Porter and Endicott residences imply a closeness between the two Johns, at the least, and perhaps a familial relationship (whether half-sister, or cousin) between Gov. Endicott and Mary? It would require some sort of documentation, obviously, to make this more than just speculation.
As to the John Endicott line itself '97 but with occasional reference to Mary, and to John's known (if often mistakenly identified with another person) half-sister, Margaret '97 I'd refer you to the recent, extensive work of descendant Lt. Col. Teddy Sanford _et al._. Sanford's latest (to my knowledge) presentation is his 2014-15 essay, "Historical Timelines of the Puritan Fathers" '97 see: <<http://endecott-endicott.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Historical-Timelines-of-the-Puritan-Fathers.pdf>>; the most relevant material is on pp. 9-10 (including footnote 64), with a little more on Margaret in the last paragraph (year 1613) on page 13.
Was John Porter's wife Mary somehow conflated, at some point, with John Endicott's demonstrable (even if her mother's identity is in dispute) half-sister Margaret? One genealogist notes that in handwritten records, Margaret is often abbreviated to "Margt" with the "t" in superscript '97 an abbreviation that can easily be mistaken to read, "Mary". That seems a stretch in this case, though I don't doubt that such confusion has existed elsewhere.
My own guess '97 and at this point, that's about all it is '97 is that somewhere, there does exist a record of a Mary Endicott (or Endecott or Condicott or … ) born in 1598 at Dorchester '97 which is (apparently) also where John Porter was born. I also don't doubt that John married someone named Mary, and she could perfectly well have been that Mary Endicott… but she might also perfectly well have been some other Mary of that town.
If she was an Endicott, being a hundred miles away from Chagford, she either must have been a cousin of Gov. Endicott… or else, accepting Col. Sanford's timeline, Gov. John's father, Thomas, must have had a thus-far undemonstrated second marriage during the 24 years between the 1588 death of John's mother in (or shortly after) giving birth to him, and Thomas's 1612 marriage to widow Alice (Blackaller) Andrew… and this unknown second wife would then have been Mary's mother, in 1598. (Sanford, as you'll see, has Margaret born in 1613 '97 not in 1595 as is commonly claimed). If Mary was in fact born and raised in Dorchester, this requires Thomas to have been there, and not near Chagford, in 1598, and for some period thereafter.
I apologize for the lengthy summary but I'm sure you will understand the complexities of such research. If I come up with anything else that appears solid, I'll be happy to share it; if you should pursue the question of Mary's identity, obviously I'll be glad to have others on the trail. In the meantime you might be interested in joining the Endicott Yahoo group (on whose site you'll find the above PDF)… and perhaps even in joining the John Endicott Association (basic dues, I think, are $20), which I probably will join myself even though Mary's uncertain identity makes me feel very peripheral! Info is at <<http://endecott-endicott.com/how-to-join/>>.
I'll admit that I have mixed feelings about being even collateral (half-)kin to John Endicott, since it was he who executed my paternal-side Quaker ancestress Mary (Barrett) Dyer in Boston in 1660. He was, at the last, only slightly more kind to my ancestor Roger Williams, of whom in fact John was for a time a follower. But the Gov. also helped lay the groundwork for the later Salem witch-hunt madness… one of whose victims, Susannah (North) Martin, I also number among my direct forebears. So the Porter name has become a somewhat more welcome connection hereabouts, but I'd still like to know the truth about his wife!
Very best wishes, Christopher Childs
[To avoid any confusion: I am _not_ Christopher Child '97 noted professional genealogist at the NEHGS.]
Christopher Childs
Author, The Spirit's Terrain: Creativity, Activism, and Transformation
(Beacon Press, Boston; Foreword by the Dalai Lama)
"[A] spiritual manifesto for modern-day social-political activists"
-- Publishers Weekly
384 Hall Ave.
St. Paul, MN 55107
651-312-1216 cell
<christopher_childs@earthlink.net <mailto:christopher_childs@earthlink.net>>
<<http://www.worldgarden.net>>"

181010 e-mail of Christopher Childs
But to the Endecotts: I wanted to let you know that my perspective has changed somewhat since we corresponded a year ago, for two reasons. The first is that the broadly-accepted notion that Gov. John Endecott was "to the manor born", literally, at Chagford, Devon, does not appear to have quite the basis many have assumed. The Lethbridge claim of a Chagford birth* apparently (I have this only secondhand) does not impress Robert Charles Anderson, who with his cohort of fellow-researchers has become a primary authority on the Great Migration thanks to their authoring of the series of books under that name, for NEHGS. The second is that '97 as indicated in my previous comments '97 a Chagford birth and childhood would pretty much rule out John Endecott's youthful friendship with my forebear John Porter; while I still cannot find the origin of this tradition, it is persistent, and given the neighboring landholdings of Endecott and Porter in Salem (now Danvers), I think there is something to the claim. A Chagford origin would also, I suspect, undermine any likelihood of John Endecott being brother (or even half-brother) to my ancestress who was Porter's wife, Mary Endicott… and this filial relationship, though again unsupported by any documentation I can find, has also been persistent.
I've also recently read the doctoral thesis of a woman named Abigail Davis (who, as luck would have it, turns out to live here in Minnesota '97 about 20 minutes away from my home in Saint Paul; we've corresponded, and I hope to meet her); you can find the work online at <<https://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/handle/11299/54322/Davis_umn_0130E_10471.pdf.txt?sequence=5>> . While her focus is on the mythology that has grown up around Gov. Endecott '97 whose origin she attributes significantly to Nathaniel Hawthorne (if inadvertently on his part) '97 along the way, she makes what I believe is an important point, which is that Endecott shows every sign of being a "climber", not a descendant of anyone from among the aristocracy or close to it: his title of "Captain", she underscores, is without any foundation that can be confidently pointed to and is likely something he manufactured; and there is that in his behavior (e.g., his initial adherence to my forebear Roger Williams, who had important connections with powerful persons in England; an adherence rather quickly supplanted by adherence to doctrinal orthodoxy once Williams incurred the disfavor of the Boston magistrates… suggesting a desire to curry favor with those who could help him climb, which of course he did) which at least hints at a lower socioeconomic status than one raised in a manor-house.
My working hypothesis has thus become that Endecott was most likely born of middle- or even lower-class stock, very probably at Dorchester, where he was indeed a friend of John Porter, born into the same class… and that Mary was very likely the sister of the future governor, as this would readily explain the formation of a relationship with her future husband. I can't claim to be entirely objective about this conjecture, but it does seem to me to reflect adherence to Occam's razor '97 the principle of accepting, at least as a default position, the proposition that most simply serves to explain the verifiable facts. The Chagford hypothesis, while certainly attractive to those who like to believe they are descended from persons of above-average social status, seems to me to conflict badly with the whole notion of an Endecott-Porter family connection, and that claim (or assumption, to be fair) has been around for a very long time.
That's the current News from [south of] Lake Wobegon, and if I find anything further that either bulwarks or corrodes this latest notion, I'll let you know. I hope this finds you both well '97 and that you can sort out the security issue with the website, as it's an invaluable resource.
All the best, Christopher
* I can't cite a source offhand, but I know that part of Lethbridge's claim '97 made, I think, nearly a century ago? '97 rested on a bit of geography that is questionable, placing a member of the Chagford Endecott clan at some distance from Chagford, on the south coast. I need to figure out where I saw that part of the debate, which was presumably a factor in Anderson's decision not to endorse the whole Chagford scheme. Ms. Davis has referred me to a biography, John Endecott (Harvard University Press, 1936), by _?_ Mayo; she says the author "addresses the various theories of origin and concludes that there is no 'conclusive proof' that Endecott was born 'at this or that place'." That's about as far as one can go, really, until and unless someone finds _some_ record supporting the older, original theory of Dorchester origins.

Mary married John Porter, son of Samuel Porter and Sarah, in Dorchester, Dorset, England. (John Porter was born in 1596 in Dorchester, Doresetshire, England and died on 6 Sep 1676 in Wenham, Essex County, Massachusetts.)