Ancestors

Mary Priest

Mary Priest was a daughter of Degory Priest and his wife Sarah, a widow born Allerton. Her parents married at Leiden, in Holland, on 4 November 1611. Leiden was where the English congregation that later sent the Mayflower was living in exile. Mary was probably born there between 1612 and 1620.

Her father sailed in the Mayflower in 1620 and died at Plymouth on 11 January 1620/1, in the colony's first winter. Her mother married a third time, to Godbert Godbertson, whose name the English wrote as Cuthbertson.

Mary married Phineas Pratt, a joiner, one of the men of Thomas Weston's settlement at Wessagusset who had come to Plymouth. Her mother and stepfather both died in 1633, her mother before 3 November. On 28 October 1633 the court referred Phineas Pratt "to further hearing at the same time about the goods of Godbert Godbertson & Zara his wife." On 11 November it appointed him "to take into his possession all the goods & chattels of Godbert Godbertson & Zarah his wife & safely to preserue them according to an Inventory presented upon oath to be true & just by mr Joh Done & mr Steph. Hopkins."

She held land in her own right. On 10 March 1633/4 the court recorded that "Phineas Prat joyner in the behalfe of Marah his wife is possessed of thirty Acres of land neer unto the high Cliffe." The couple exchanged it, "the fee simple thereof," meaning outright ownership, with Thomas Prence for thirty acres at Wynslows stand, next to other land of Phineas's.

George E. Bowman, editor of The Mayflower Descendant, wrote in 1902 that "Godbert Godbertson was the stepfather of Mary Priest (daughter of Degory Priest) whom Phineas married." Lincoln's History of Hingham had called her "Mary Cuthbert or Cuthbertson," her stepfather's name.

Her son Aaron Pratt was born about 1649 and settled at Hingham, in the part that became Cohasset. Her husband died at Charlestown in 1680. When she died is not recorded.

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Cite: Heirology, "Mary Priest", https://heirology.com/ancestors/mary-priest-24e7dd.