Heirology

Ancestors

Mercy Clark

New Haven CT
Children include John

Mercy Clark was a daughter of James Clark of New Haven, Connecticut, by his first wife, whose name is not known. She married John Culver, the eldest son of Edward Culver of New London, before August 1665. That month John and his wife "Marcye" sold land "given us" by his father.

Her husband was a saddler and, for a time, the town drummer of New London. In the 1670s they lived at New Haven, near her own family. Her daughter Abigail was born there on 13 November 1676, James on 13 June 1679 and Sarah on 17 March 1682. Her eldest son John was born about 1670. The other children were David, Hannah and Mercy.

By the late 1690s the family was at Stonington, and in 1699 Mercy left her husband. She went back to New Haven with several of the children. Under Connecticut law a town could warn out a newcomer who might become a charge on the poor rates, and a wife's legal residence was her husband's. Her brother Samuel Clark gave the town a bond against her costs.

In 1701 someone tried to give her a footing in New Haven. On 6 August Samuel Fernes the elder, a planter, "for sundry reasons" deeded to "Mercy Culver of New Haven" a piece of ground eighteen feet square at the north end of his house, with a ten-foot right of way. Two days later the townsmen met and ordered that she be warned again and that the town "proceed as ye laws of this Colony Directs to bring ye woman to her husband to her proper Residence which was forthwith done."

She ended her life at Groton, near her children. In February 1712 she witnessed the deathbed will of Anthony Ashbee there, made by word of mouth at the house of Nathaniel Gove. Her husband died in 1725. On 29 October 1729, as Mercy Culver of Groton, she gave all her rights at New Haven, land and goods, to her son-in-law Stephen Stark and his wife Hannah. Yet on 13 March 1732, at Lebanon, she sold the same eighteen-foot square to Captain Francis Brown of New Haven for seven pounds. That is the last record of her.

Children

John Culver 1670-1760

Sources

W. Herbert Wood and Donald Lines Jacobus, "Additions and Corrections to the Colver-Culver Genealogy", The American Genealogist, vol. 31 (July 1955), pp. 129-144 (archive.org sim_american-genealogist_1955-07_31_3), p. 131.
W. Herbert Wood and Donald Lines Jacobus, "Additions and Corrections to the Colver-Culver Genealogy", The American Genealogist, vol. 31 (July 1955), pp. 129-144 (archive.org sim_american-genealogist_1955-07_31_3), p. 132.
W. Herbert Wood and Donald Lines Jacobus, "Additions and Corrections to the Colver-Culver Genealogy", The American Genealogist, vol. 31 (July 1955), pp. 129-144 (archive.org sim_american-genealogist_1955-07_31_3), pp. 130-133.

If Mercy Clark is in your family, start your own tree.

Cite: Heirology, "Mercy Clark", https://heirology.com/ancestors/mercy-clark-845f4a.