Mary (Holmes) Poore (abt. 1682 - aft. 1706)

Born about 1682 in Massachusetts Bay [uncertain]

Wife of Henry Poore Jr — married 6 Apr 1703 in Massachusetts Bay Colony

Descendants

Died after 12 Nov 1706 after about age 24 in Massachusetts Bay [uncertain]

Problems/Questions Profile manager: Brent Bowen [send private message]

Disputed Spouse

Although the 1933 Early Settlers of Rowley (see Sources below) identifies the wife of Henry Poore, Jr., as the "Widow Mary (Cheney) Holmes of Newbury", this is nonsensical on two counts: first, Mary Cheney, wife of Peter Cheney, was born – based on her reported age of 82 at her death in 1746 – about 1664, and Henry Poore, Jr., born in 1681, was thus some eighteen years her junior; and second, her husband Peter Cheney is known to have been alive in 1718 when he and other family members signed a document relating to the estate of his late uncle, Rev. Nicholas Noyes.

There simply was no "Widow Mary (Cheney) Holmes of Newbury". C.H. Pope, compiling The Cheney Genealogy in 1897, set out the family relationships that showed Peter Cheney's wife Mary Holmes to have been the widow of an unknown Holmes husband: Mary had a daughter, also Mary Holmes, when she married Peter in 1691; the daughter, under her maiden name, witnessed a 1702 deed. In a later document cited in a genealogy of the Poor family^[1], Peter Cheney apparently refers to Henry Poor[e] – who had by that time married the younger Mary – as his son-in-law, placing her as a daughter of the senior Mary by a first marriage^[2]. (The convolutions of Pope’s argument, with its mention of a 1702 deed witnessed by a Mary Holmes, may be what has led some to think that Peter Cheney died in 1701; the witness however was the younger Mary, not a widowed Mary (Unknown) [Holmes] Cheney: again, Peter's death clearly came after the distribution of his uncle's estate (see above) in 1718.)

Henry Poore, Jr., in fact married the daughter by her first marriage, also named Mary, of Mary (Unknown) [Holmes] Cheney.

Biography

Mary Holmes was born about 1682, likely in Essex County of Massachusetts Bay, a daughter of an as yet unidentified Holmes father and a mother named Mary who – evidently widowed before 1691 – then married Peter Cheney at Watertown, Massachusetts Bay, in October of that year. The younger Mary married Henry Poore, Jr. in 1703, their intentions recorded at Newbury on the 6th of April.

No certain record of the death of Mary (Holmes) Poore has been found to date (August 2022); her husband Henry's death reportedly occurred in 1722, though the source for that date is not clear. All that can be said is that Mary died on an unknown date no earlier than the birth of the couple's son David, born at Rowley on 12 November 1706.

Research Notes

The records of the Second Church in Boston show the christening of a Mary Holmes on the 22nd of September, 1683; unfortunately, her parents are not named. While examination of the church membership at that time suggests that this could conceivably be the daughter of a Margaret (Unknown) Holmes, later admitted to the church in 1688, it would seem very unusual for the mother to join the church several years after the baptism of her child there. Either Margaret, or (the senior) Mary Holmes, could thus perhaps be the wife of the Samuel Holmes admitted to the church in 1680^[3].

Intriguingly, a Samuel Holmes ("Samll Homs" in the handwritten original) is found at Newbury – where Peter Cheney and wife Mary made their residence after their 1691 marriage at Watertown – in 1685, the father of a child also named Samuel who died in 1685. The child's mother, unfortunately, is not named^[4]; it is however possible that this boy was the "Samuel of Samuel & Mary Holmes" born on the 7th of October, 1682, at Boston^[5]. No death record appearing to match the father Samuel is found in online-accessible records (as of Aug. 2022) anywhere in Massachusetts at any time between 1685 and 1760. The possibility thus exists that a) this senior Samuel is the same man who was admitted to the Second Church at Boston in 1680, and/or b) if he died between 1685 and 1691, he may have been the husband of the (presumed) widow Mary Holmes who married Peter Cheney in 1691... and the father of the junior Mary Holmes.

Sources

1. ↑ Evidently, A Memoir & Genealogy of John Poor Ten Generations 1615-1880, by Alfred Poor, 1881; not found online as of 20 Aug. 2022
2. ↑ The Cheney Genealogy, by Charles Henry Pope, Boston: C.H. Pope,1897, pp. 229-30; https://archive.org/details/cheneygenealogy00pope/page/228/mode/2up
3. ↑ "Records of the Second Church in Boston", p. 100; “Boston, MA: Church Records, 1630-1895” The Records of the Churches of Boston. CD_ROM. Boston, Mass.: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2002. (Online database. AmericanAncestors.org. New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2008 .); https://www.americanancestors.org/DB31/i/7616/100/8700320 (by subscription)
4. ↑ "Massachusetts, Town Clerk, Vital and Town Records, 1626-2001," database with images, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QG1V-1BXZ : 6 May 2022), Samll Home, 2 Aug 1685; citing Death, , Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth, Boston; FHL microfilm 007009724.
5. ↑ Boston, MA: Births, Baptisms, Marriages, and Deaths, 1630-1699, City Document No. 130, p. 157. (Online database. AmericanAncestors.org, New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2015.) Originally published as: A Report of the Record Commissioners of the City of Boston Containing Boston Births, Baptisms, Marriages, and Deaths, 1630-1699, Rockwell and Churchill, City Printers, Boston, Massachusetts, 1883; https://www.americanancestors.org/DB1646/i/30233/157/723605843 (by subscription)

• Marriage (intentions; see "POER"): Massachusetts Vital Records Project, John Slaughter, Owner/Administrator: https://ma-vitalrecords.org/MA/Essex/Newbury/Images/Newbury_M404.shtml

• George Brained Blodgette and Amos Everett Jewett. Early Settlers of Rowley, Massachusetts. 1933. Reprinted by the New England History Press, Somersworth, New Hampshire. 1981. Page 315. Also available at: [1]