Ancestors

Edward Gray

Edward Gray appears at Plymouth in 1643 as a youth, with no origin recorded. His birth, his parents and where in England he came from are not known. He became one of the town's merchants and represented Plymouth in the colony court from 1676 to 1678.

He married twice. On 16 January 1651 he married Mary, a daughter of John Winslow, and she bore him five children: Desire in November 1651, who married Lieutenant Nathaniel Southworth in 1672, then Mary, Elizabeth, Sarah and John. Mary died in 1663. Her father John Winslow came in the Fortune in 1623, and her mother, Mary Chilton, came over in the Mayflower. Savage had no patience for the story told of Mary Chilton, writing that "in her favor circulates the ridicul. tradit. that she was the first of Eng. parentage that leapt on Plymouth rock."

On 12 December 1665 he married Dorothy Lettice, daughter of Thomas Lettice of the same town. By her he had Edward in January 1667, Susanna in October 1668, and at least one more daughter, Rebecca. The children of the second marriage are not Mary Chilton's descendants. Two of the daughters married two brothers. Susanna married John Cole of Plympton, grandson of the James Cole who kept the town's first inn on Cole's Hill, and Rebecca married his brother Ephraim in 1689.

He died in June 1681, and his gravestone on Burial Hill is called the oldest now standing in Plymouth. His widow married Captain Nathaniel Clark, and it is a deed from that second household, in 1697, that records Susanna's own marriage to John Cole.

If Edward Gray is in your family, start your own tree.

Cite: Heirology, "Edward Gray (1629-1681)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/edward-gray-1629-1681-0b476c.