Ancestors
Mercy Hurd
d. 1693 · England → Cambridge, Middlesex County, Massachusetts → Sudbury, Middlesex County, Massachusetts → Marlborough, Middlesex County, Massachusetts
Died 1693
Children include Mary
She married Thomas Brigham at Cambridge about 1637 and bore him five children, and he died in 1653 and left her with all of them under sixteen. In March 1655 she married the widower Edmund Rice of Sudbury, deacon of that church, and took the Brigham children to his house on the river meadows. When Rice moved out to the new plantation at Marlborough in 1660 she went with him, and her sons went too and became the first Brighams of that town. Rice died in 1663 and left her a widow a second time, and in 1664 she married William Hunt. She died at Marlborough on 23 December 1693, having buried three husbands and seen her daughter Mary married to John Fay there.
Her surname is a tradition. The Reverend Abner Morse, collecting for the family in the nineteenth century, was told that she was Mercy Hurd, ten or fifteen years younger than Brigham, and that she had come out of England with a sister because of persecution for nonconformity. The compiler who printed it warned that tradition is "a clue to the truth rather than truth itself."
Sources
W. I. TYLER BRIGHAM, The History of the Brigham Family: a Record of Several Thousand Descendants of Thomas Brigham the Emigrant, 1603-1653 (New York, 1907).
"1 THOMAS BRIGHAM, born probably in England in 1603; died in Cambridge, Mass., 8 Dec., 1653; married, probably in 1637, Mercy Hurd, born probably in England; died in Marlboro, Mass., 23 Dec, 1693." The passenger list: "VIII April 1635. Theis under written are to be transported to New England imbarqued in the Suzan and Ellen, Edward Payne Mr (Master). The p'ties have brought certificates from ye Ministers and Justices of the peace yt they are no subsidy men; and are conformable to ye orders and discipline of the Church of England. Thomas Brigham 32." "Aboard the same ship were Symon Crosby and his wife and infant, future neighbors in Cambridge; Ralph Hudson and Percival Green, who were to be fellow-townsmen there, and also two boys, Benjamin and Daniel, with their father, the learned and reverend Peter Bulkley," who founded Concord that year.
MERCY: "Thomas Brigham married probably in 1637 his wife Mercy, but of this date there is no record. We know she must have been a woman of unusual strength, force and determination. The Rev. Abner Morse says, on the authority of tradition, that her maiden name was Mercy Hurd, that she was 10 or 15 years younger than her husband, and that, persecuted in England for nonconformity, she came to New England with her sister, who married William (?) Cutter. Tradition should be taken as a clue to the truth rather than truth itself." "She married for her second husband, 1 March, 1655, Edmund Rice, then of Sudbury, but who removed in 1660 to Marlboro, where he died 3 May, 1663." "Mercy married, 1664, as her third husband, William Hunt."
MARY, second generation: "2 MARY, daughter of Thomas and Mercy (Hurd) Brigham; born probably in Cambridge, Mass., about 1638; died in Watertown, in 1676; married John Fay, the emigrant, who settled in Marlboro, Mass., and died 5 May, 1690, ae. 50. Mary was the first Brigham born in America, and as such deserves especial mention. Paige, in his History of Cambridge, chronicles that 'Mary went to Sudbury and Marlboro with her mother, brothers and sister, when her father died, where she married John Fay of Marlboro.'" The book prints the 1703 suit from Middlesex Deeds xiii 527, in which "John Fay & Samll Fay children of Mary Faye all of Marlburrough" stand among the heirs of Thomas Brigham against the buyer of the Cambridge homestead.
The surname HURD rests on Abner Morse's tradition and the compiler says so. It is the name she is known by in every printed account. If Mercy Hurd is in your family, start your own tree.
Cite: Heirology, "Mercy Hurd (d. 1693)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/mercy-hurd-1693-bfcf16.