Ancestors

Mary Lawton

Mary Lawton, daughter of George Lawton and Elizabeth Hazard of Portsmouth, married John Babcock and went out to the Pawcatuck. He died at Westerly in 1685, leaving her with a large family of sons, and she married Erasmus Babbitt on 21 April 1698. She died at Westerly on 8 November 1711.

The tradition attached to her is one of the best known romances in Rhode Island: that she and John Babcock eloped from Newport, settled on the east bank of the Pawcatuck at Massatuxet Cove near what is now Avondale with no neighbours but the Indians, and were not found by their families for several years. Poems have been written on it.

Two genealogists have weighed it and rejected it. The 1903 Babcock genealogy states the verdict flatly: "as no history has been found to establish it as a fact, and as authentic records seem clearly to disprove the statement, we must class the elopement story as fiction." The 1887 Rhode Island dictionary reaches it from a different angle: the version handed down made her a daughter of Thomas Lawton, which is impossible, since Thomas Lawton had no such daughter, and it notes that if George Lawton is put in Thomas's place the tradition can be sustained as to the marriage and no further.

What stands is the marriage, the parents, and the move to the frontier. Westerly in the 1660s was contested ground between two colonies and largely empty, and the sons born to her there ran the town for the next fifty years.

If Mary Lawton is in your family, start your own tree.

Cite: Heirology, "Mary Lawton (d. 1711)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/mary-lawton-1711-cda018.