Mary (Unknown) Porter (abt. 1598 - 1684)

Born about 1598 in Dorchester, Dorset, England [uncertain]

Wife of John Porter — married before 1635 in England [uncertain]

Descendants

Died 6 Feb 1684 at about age 86 in Salem, Essex, Massachusetts Bay

Problems/Questions Profile managers: Puritan Great Migration Project WikiTree [send private message], John Putnam [send private message], and Cathy Champion [send private message]

Mary (Unknown) Porter migrated to New England during the Puritan Great Migration (1621-1640). Join: Puritan Great Migration Project Discuss: pgm

Disputed Origins

Mary (Unknown) Porter was born in England.

The parentage and maiden surname of Mary, wife of John Porter of Salem, are uncertain,^[1] although Gov. John Endicott/Endecott of Massachusetts Bay has been said, by long but unsourced tradition, to be Mary's brother. Endecott himself has been presented variously 1) as a son of unspecified parents, born in Dorchester, Dorset; 2) as a son of Thomas Endecott and Alice (Westlake) Endecott (see Alice ), born either at Dorchester or (in a widely-accepted early-20th-Century claim) at Chagford, Devon, some sixty miles to the west of Dorchester; or, most recently -- based on research by Endecott descendant Col. Teddy Sanford -- 3) as a Chagford-born son of Thomas Endecott and an unknown first wife who died giving birth. Only the first two parentages could possibly apply to Mary Porter, but no known record supports the connection.

The identification of Mary as an Endicott may be tied to a long tradition that John Endecott and John Porter were close friends^[2] from childhood (obliquely supported, perhaps, by their later ownership of adjoining land in Salem). A relationship between John Porter and the sister of a close friend might have developed if the Endecott family lived in close proximity to the Porters, in Dorset... where John Porter is said to have married wife Mary (one unsourced online claim dates the union to 1644, but this is contradicted by Porter's presence at Hingham, in Massachusetts Bay, by 1637).

An effective countering argument is found in an 1895 comment from Porter descendant Ezra Dodge Hines: "If John Endecott and Mary Porter were brother and sister, then Zerobabel Endecott the son of John, and Israel Porter the son of Mary, must have been cousins ; now this being true, would it not have been a most natural thing for Zerobabel when in his will he made Israel Porter one of his Overseers, to have called him my loving cousin, and not, as is the fact, called him 'my loving friend'?"^[3]

Additional issue: Because Gov. John Endecott at one point referred to Mary, the wife of Dep. Gov. Roger Ludlow of Connecticut (bp. 1590 – aft. 1664), as his "sister", it has been argued that she must have been Mary Endecott, and that the wife -- also Mary -- of Gov. Endecott's friend John Porter of Salem must be of another birth surname. However, the facts actually have no bearing on the question of the sibling relationship; Endecott in fact was referring, in the shorthand of the time, to Mary Ludlow as his _sister-in-law_: she was the sibling of his deceased first wife, Elizabeth Cogan; both were children of Philobert Cogan of Somerset, whose 1640 will refers to his daughters "Mary Ludloe" and "Elizabeth Endicott" (believed to have been the widow Elizabeth (Cogan) Gibson at the time of her marriage to John Endecott)^[4].

The Endecott/Endicott surname for Mary, at birth, is despite tradition unproven by any known record. Therefore this profile shows her as Mary (Unknown) Porter.

Biography

No primary birth record for Mary, wife of John Porter, has been found; it seems most likely that she was born at or near Dorchester, Dorset, probably close to 1600. The original, unsourced year of 1598 appearing in this profile has for the present been retained subject to further research and review.

John Porter and his wife Mary emigrated from England, presumably in the mid-1630s, as John is recorded in Hingham, Massachusetts Bay, by 1637.^[5] One unsourced claim places their marriage at Dorchester, in Dorsetshire, in 1644; this claim, however, does not reflect any known Dorchester record yet transcribed.^[6] The couple ultimately moved to Salem, where John became one of the major landowners in Salem Village (modern Danvers).

John died at Salem in 1676; Mary died there in early 1684. Several of their children were involved, primarily in offering support to certain of the accused, in the Salem witch trials of 1692^[7].

Marriage and Children

Husband: John Porter

Wife: Mary (MNU) Porter

Child: John Porter

Child: Samuel Porter

Child: Joseph Porter

Child: Benjamin Porter

Child: Israel Porter

Child: Mary Porter

Child: Jonathan Porter

Child: Sarah Porter

Marriage:

Date: BEF 1635

Place: England^[8]

Research

Alice Westlake - Sir Roper Lethbridge surmised that the wife of Thomas Endecott was Alice Westlake. In fact, the wife he was talking about turns out to be Alice Blackaller Andrew (1573-1643), the widow of Christopher Andrew (1568-1609) who married Thomas in 1612. ^[9][10]

Sources

1. ↑ A Porter pedigree; being an account of the ancestry and descendants of Samuel and Martha (Perley) Porter of Chester, N.H., who were descendants of John Porter, of Salem, Mass., and of Allan Perley, of Ipswich, Mass; Juliet Porter, Worcester Mass., 1907, p. 21 (note that this passage is in error in identifying the wife of Roger Ludlow as Mary Endicott; she was née Mary Cogan); https://archive.org/stream/porterpedigreebe00port#page/34/mode/2up
2. ↑ A Porter pedigree; being an account of the ancestry and descendants of Samuel and Martha (Perley) Porter of Chester, N.H., who were descendants of John Porter, of Salem, Mass., and of Allan Perley, of Ipswich, Mass; Juliet Porter, Worcester Mass., 1907, p. 25; https://archive.org/stream/porterpedigreebe00port#page/42/mode/2up
3. ↑ "John Porter and His Settlement at Hingham and Danvers", An address delivered before the Porter Family Association at Danvers, July 17, 1895 by Ezra Dodge Hines, Esq., Putnam's Monthly Historical Magazine, Putnam, Eben, 1868-1933, Vol. 3, Salem, Mass, p. 270, online as putnamsmonthlyhi1895putn.pdf; https://dcms.lds.org/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?from=fhd&dps_pid=IE12749869
4. ↑ The American Genealogist. New Haven, CT: D. L. Jacobus, 1937-. (Online database. AmericanAncestors.org. New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2009 - ); https://www.americanancestors.org/DB283/i/11822/143/23575512
5. ↑ “Porter, John: Unknown; 1637; Hingham, Salem [HiBOP 98r; Hingham Hist 3:115; Dudley Wildes 135-38; TAG 30:157-58; Mower Anc 494-500].” -- Excerpt From: Robert Charles Anderson, FASG. “The Great Migration Directory.” iBooks
6. ↑ Exchange of emails between Porter descendant Christopher Childs and Michael Russell, Dorset Online Parish Clerk for Dorchester & Fordington, November 2020
7. ↑ "Book Notes", Putnam's Monthly Historical Magazine, Putnam, Eben, 1868-1933, Vol. 3, Salem, Mass, p. 67; putnamsmonthlyhi1895putn.pdf
8. ↑ Genealogy & Family History of the State of Maine, Vol. 3, by George Thomas Little, A. M., Litt. D., New York, Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1909, pp. 1175-76; https://books.google.com/books?id=3X-4t4qKo-IC&q=%22John+Porter%22#v=snippet&q=%22John%20Porter%22&f=false
9. ↑ Historical Timelines of the Puritan Fathers And the Lives of the Endecott Family 1261-1692 ©Lieutenant Colonel Teddy Hollis Sanford, Jr.
10. ↑ Out of the Mist of Times Past, JEFA, John Endicott Family Association

• Death 6 Feb. 1684 (N.S.) (with image of original handwritten record; correct image is 293 of 610): "Massachusetts Deaths and Burials, 1795-1910", database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:FCMR-2LM : 17 January 2020), Mary Porter, 1683. Alt. record (by subscription): Ancestry.com. Massachusetts, Town and Vital Records, 1620-1988 [database on-line]; "Salem Deaths", p. 154; Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011. Alt. record (with image of handwritten transcript): "Massachusetts, Town Clerk, Vital and Town Records, 1626-2001," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QG1K-S4V5 : 29 November 2018), Mary Porter, 6 Feb 1683; citing Death, Salem, Essex, Massachusetts, United States, Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth, Boston; FHL microfilm 007011200.

• Other Endicott/Indicott families in New England: Genealogical and Personal Memoirs Relating to the Families of Boston and Eastern Massachusetts, Vol. 1, by William Richard Cutter, 1847-1918, 1908; New York, Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1908, p. 134; https://archive.org/details/genealogicalpers00cutt/page/134

Acknowledgments

• WikiTree profile Porter-1664 created through the import of mike_walton_2011.ged on Aug 20, 2011 by Mike Walton. See the Changes page for the details of edits by Mike and others. Mike Walton's Personal Library Address: RR2 Box 400 Clinton Maine 04927/1162 Battle Ridge Road, Clinton, Maine 04927 USA; Phone Number: 207-426-9437; E-Mail Address: mike@weareallrelated; info Web Address: www.weareallrelated.info