Alice (Martin) Bishop (abt. 1619 - 1648)

Born about 1619 in England [uncertain]

Wife of George Clark — married 22 Jan 1639 in Plymouth, Plymouth Colony

Wife of Richard Bishop — married 5 Dec 1644 in Plymouth, Plymouth Colony

Descendants

Died 4 Oct 1648 at about age 29 in Plymouth, Plymouth Colony

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Alice (Martin) Bishop migrated to New England during the Puritan Great Migration (1621-1640). (See The Directory, by R. C. Anderson, p. 220) Join: Puritan Great Migration Project Discuss: pgm

Biography

"The story of Alice is sad, but needs to be told. She was a famous (infamous), person. The mother of Damaris Bishop (wife of William Sutton) who became one of our grandmothers. The 7th woman to be put to death in America. She was one of the early pilgrams but unfortunately is made famous by the terrible murder of her own child, Martha....

"We can only speculate as to the reasons for this murder. It could have been post-partum depression, as she had only given birth to Damaris 2 years before. I have done quite a bit of research and speculation is rampant in the genealogy world as to her motive. She had a hard life. She lost her husband George Clark, father of her first two children, Martha and Abigail. And her second husband, Richard Bishop, was a smalltime thief and a scoundrel."^[1]

George Clarke and Allis Martin were married in the Plymouth Colony on 22 January 1638/9.^[2]

Birth

Alice Martin was born probably in England, circa 1619 (assuming she was an average age of twenty at her first marriage).

Marriages

She married twice.

1. George Clarke (1620-1644) on 22 January 1638/9 in Duxbury, Plymouth Colony.^[3]
2. Richard Bishop (1612-1671) on 5 December 1644 in Scituate, Plymouth Colony.

Children of the Clarke- Martin Marriage

1. Abigail Clarke was born in 1643 in Lynn, Massachusetts.
2. Martha Clarke was born in 1644 in Plymouth, Massachusetts. She was stabbed and killed by her mother on 22 July 1648 in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

Child of the Bishop-Martin Marriage

1. Damaris Bishop was born in 1646 in Eastham, Barnstable, Massachusetts. She married William Sutton (1641-1718) on 11 July 1666 in Eastham, Massachusetts. Damaris died on 6 February 1683 in Woodbridge, Middlesex, New Jersey.

Died

4 October 1648^[4]

Research Notes

Disputed Parents: "Nothing definitive is known on Alice Martin Clark Bishop's parents. The latest theory offered on family tree maker is that she was born in Plymouth, Devonshire, England, I believe, the child of Francis Martin and Prudence Deacon Martin, but this has not been definitely established. What can safely be stated is that Alice IS NOT, I repeat IS NOT a descendant of the Martins of the Mayflower, this is a myth that has been mentioned in genealogies for some time. At this time there are NO PROVEN descendant of Christopher Martin of the Mayflower."^[5]

Who was ALICE (MARTIN) CLARK BISHOP? Who were her parents? ~ When & Where was she born And If she wasn't born here in America How did she get here?

The parental lineage Alice is disputed to say the least ! Some say they were Francis Martin & Prudence Deacon others swear that it was Christopher Martin & Marie Prower, who came over on the Mayflower and died that first winter And despite the fact that the records of the Mayflower are one of the best documented and scrutinized documents in American history, they are sure that she was born on the Mayflower on the way over, ~>But there is No record of that Also The Mayflower Society does not recognize Alice Martin as the daughter of Christopher Martin. So I do not believe that she was the daughter of Christopher Martin & Marie Prower.

It wasn't until 1646 that Plymouth towns were ordered to record every Marriage, Birth, & Death. So Is It Possible, That she was an orphaned child & that she was adopted into a Martin family & we don’t know who her birth parents were? There are several Martin family's connected to the Mass. Bay Colony, But none of the dates correspond with her.

Maybe she was an Illegitimate child born in the colonies: Yeah that happened from time eternally, Even among the Puritans. Unintended pregnancies did occur to engaged and unengaged couples. Plymouth Court Records note that many men & women were brought before courts when these pregnancies came to light. But certainly some of those couples managed to avoid discovery or prosecution But I think that it is unlikely that she was born in the colonies.

So if she wasn't born here how did she get here? If she was born in 1615 or 16 is is doubtful that she came over before 1630 and it is very unlikely that a young, single girl, using her own financial resources, could have set off for the New World on her own.

There are some who believe that Alice was married to her first husband George Clark in England & they emigrated from England. But the records show that she married George Clark in Plymouth, Mass. on Jan. 22, 1639 when she was 23 (That matches the traditional age for a first marriage for women)

We must also remember that the prisons in England were overflowing with men, women and children during those years, and some ships captains were known to buy someone's freedom, normally a woman or child, use them as cabin servant during the trip and resell their servant-hood, at a profit, upon arrival. According to Martin E. Hollick on the New England Historic Genealogical Society website, “Between the years 1620 and 1640, about 20,000 English men, women, and children crossed the Atlantic to settle New England." “Of those crossings, we have exactly zero official passenger lists.” It is quite possible that her mother was undocumented, unmarried and she was in the belly of her mother when that woman crossed the Atlantic as an indentured servant.

By studying the circumstances by which women arrived to New England in the 1600s, her arrival as a passage-as-servant makes the most sense to me. Women were in great demand in early colonial life & not simply to provide spouses to the hundreds, if not thousands, of bachelors. Women’s labor was critical to the colonies’ survival... In closing I believe that I we must acknowledge that we’ll likely never know who her parents were or when and where she was born Thank you Erin Taylor & Kristin Luce at http://alicemartinbishop.com/?p=285#more-285

Conflation with Dulsabel (___): Some family trees have confused Alice Martin (who married George Clark and then Richard Bishop that died in New Jersey) with Dulsabel Unknown who apparently married Richard King and then the Richard Bishop that died in Salem.^[6]). Robert Charles Anderson twice addressed her as "Dulsabel" (d. 1658) in the Great Migration Series--in the article about her first husband, Richard King,^[7] and about her second husband, Richard Bishop.^[8] The various Great Migration articles (1999 and 2005) did not associate this New England immigrant Dulsabel with the given name "Alice" nor the surname "Clarke."

Sources

1. ↑ Alice Martin Clark Bishop at the Sutton family website NOTE: Dead link as of March 10, 2021.
2. ↑ Plymouth Colony Records, Vol. 1, page 108.
3. ↑ Plymouth Colony Records, Vol. 1, page 108.
4. ↑ https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/28555814/alice-bishop Note: sources only show death information
5. ↑ Tommy Woodward, Re: Alice MARTIN Clark Bishop. 19 July 2002. NOTE: Dead Link as of March 10, 2021. The page is indexed at https://web.archive.org/web/20130316215036/http://www.gencircles.com/clubs/surnames/martin/ but the page is not in the archive.
6. ↑ Vital Records of Salem, Massachusetts, to the end of the year 1849, 6 vols., Vol 5, p. 90
7. ↑ Robert Charles Anderson, The Great Migration-Immigrants to New England, 1634-1635, Volume IV, I-L (2005), 167-168 (Richard King); digital images by subscription, AmericanAncestors.
8. ↑ Robert Charles Anderson, George F. Sanborn, Jr., and Melinde Lutz Sanborn, The Great Migration, Immigrants to New England, 1634-1635, Volume 1, A-B (1999), 307-310 (Richard Bishop), at 309; digital images by subscription, AmericanAncestors.

• Stratton, Eugene Aubrey. Plymouth Colony, Its History & People 1620-1691. Salt Lake City, Utah: Ancestry Publishing, 1986.

• https://murderpedia.org/female.B/b/bishop-alice-martin.htm

• http://alicemartinbishop.com/

• https://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/alice-bishop-pilgrim-murderess-kills-her-4-year-old-daughter/

• Court record on this site. https://www.google.com/amp/s/ericroots.wordpress.com/2017/09/03/notoriety-in-the-plymouth-colony-alice-martin-bishop/amp/

• Watkins, Donna. "Diverse Gashes: Governor William Bradford, Alice Bishop, and the Murder of Martha Clarke, Plymouth Colony 1648." 2020. American History Press