Mary (Wheelock) Bingham (1728 - aft. 1767)

Born 26 Nov 1728 in Windham, Windham, Connecticut

Ancestors

Wife of Jabez Bingham II — married 29 Dec 1746 in Windham, Connecticut

Descendants

Problems/Questions Profile managers: M Cole [send private message] and Scott Bingham [send private message]

Biography

Mary was born in 1728. She is the daughter of Ralph Wheelock and Mercy Standish. ^[1][2]

Research notes

• Mary Wheelock Bingham is sometimes confused with her daughter-in-law, Mary Mitchell Bingham, wife of Jabez Bingham, Jr. Some sources have given her year of death as 1790 citing the burial of Mary Bingham in Dartmouth College Cemetery. Given the age at death was 29 (and this has been confirmed with the transcriber), this grave is for Mary Mitchell Bingham. Cole-12288 15:28, 18 August 2017 (EDT)

• From her family tree she seems to be a Mayflower descendant, but not close enough to have the Mayflower Family Member designation.

Story

Yankee Bureau of Colonial Days; Portland's Heirloom Made in 1746 for a Granddaughter of Miles Standish

ACROSS 158 years and several thousand miles is a long journey for a little, old-fashioned cherry bureau, but in Mrs. Esther Johnson Turner's home on Portland Heights there stands a quaint piece of furniture, more like a chiffonier than a bureau, with just such a record. It came into the Johnson family through the Lees' and Standlshes of Vermont, and Mrs. Turner, whose mother gave it to her, kept it until she came West, leaving it then in Indiana. She received it a few weeks ago from Indianapolis, having written to relatives there who had been keeping it, barely in time to prevent it from being presented to Franklin College as a valuable historical relic

The bureau has a most romantic history, having descended to Mrs. Turner through several generations of brides, whose old fashioned rose and lavender-scented fineries have left a faint perfume in its old drawers until today. It was made in 1746 for Mary Wheelock, daughter of Ralph Wheelock and his wife, Mercy Standish, who was the youngest daughter of Captain Miles Standlsh's son Josiah^[3] correction Burke-1008 21:03, 1 November 2012 (EDT) Alexander.

Like Priscilla, the Puritan maiden who narrowly escaped being her grandmother, sweet Mistress Mary loved the affairs of her household, and she could spin and weave as never a girl has done since her day and Priscilla's.

When she was about 19 she was married to Jabez Bingham, of Windham, Mass., and It was Jabez who made the bureau. Some months before the wedding Mary asked her father to give her some furniture, and he expressed a willingness to do this, that is, to pay for it, if Mary were willing to ask Jabez to make it.

And did Mary hesitate? Not she. On the same evening, when she and Jabez sat In the room where he had asked her to be mistress of his homo at Windham, she asked:

"Jabez, do you think you could make me a new bureau? Father says he will pay for it if you make it."

"Make you a bureau?" said Jabez heartily, "I'll make you ten bureaus if you want them."

Jabez stopped at making one bureau, however, as Mary assured him that one was all she wanted, but he made it with great care, finishing the front with brass knobs and putting in several small drawers at the top. Mistress Mary was, of course, delighted with her bureau and also with a chest which Jabez made at the same time, for this was what she had wanted for the storing of the linens which were her deepest pride.

Besides the bureau, which is Mrs. Turner's chiefest treasure, she has a number of other very interesting things, including a flax spinning-wheel, 46 years older than the bureau, an unusually fine collection of daguerreotypes, portraits of strong-featured men of a past generation, and of sweet-faced girls whose gowns, with wide, puffed sleeves and drooping shoulders are remarkably like those worn today. There is a curious old deed to a "parcel of ground" running from a point marked by a fence on Captain Ell Evert's lot to a maple tree, as if that maple were certain to be stationary! Perhaps, however, the Americans of the Revolutionary period were more like the people of Europe, who do not cut down fine trees ill advisedly, so that the Captain and his neighbors were not likely ever to quarrel. A Captain's commission, for Gurdon Johnson, Mrs. Turner’s grandfather, who was a Captain of militia in Washington County, New York, in 1791, is among a package of old letters, and these old letters are amazing in their flowery expressions of affection or poetic sentiment, this same Captain Johnson referring to himself as an “expiring victim” when separated from his wife and children. The letters are folded up in a way all letters were sealed before envelopes were invented, and one written to Gurdon Johnson, is addressed in “care of the clergyman who lives next door to the Courthouse.”

We have been accustomed always to think of our ancestors in the time of the American Revolution as pale and intensely nervous with anxiety, those who were not actively engaged in the war, but this budget of old letters contains several written by a gay young man whose cheerful gossip proves that not all the colonists were sick with fear for the safety of the army. To be sure he does mention that “We have just had news of a disaster to the American troops, but Ham came in and played on his fiddle and we all felt better.”

Mrs. Turner greatly regrets that she has lost sight of another heirloom which was in her family for many years, an oval pewter platter, once the property of Mercy Standish, and engraved around the rim with her name.

“ My brother, Dr. Gurdon Johnson, of McMinville, who died some years ago, learned his letters on Mercy Standish’s platter, and when he was older used to think it very funny to get the long pieces of pie that could be cut when mother baked pie in it.”

Any schoolboy who ever rifled a pantry will agree that while of course it must have been necessary to prop up such pieces of pie at both ends, the several reasons for wanting the long section are obvious.

--RITA BELL

Children

Jabez Bingham and Mary Wheelock had the following (8) children:^[4]

1. Jabez, born 1748; married Abigail Brown Rowley Mercer and Mary Mitchell
2. Ralph, born 1750
3. Mary, born 1752; married Samuel Lee
4. Alvin, born 1754; married Elizabeth Dorsey Jones
5. Silas, born 1758; married Lucy Corrdry and Martha Cable
6. Achsah, born 1760; married Ambrose Everts
7. Louisa, born 1763; married John Landon
8. Mercy, born 1767; married Jesse Chandler

Sources

1. ↑ "Connecticut Births and Christenings, 1649-1906," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:F7W3-B7X : 3 December 2014), Mary Wheelock, 26 Nov 1728; citing ; FHL microfilm unknown.
2. ↑ Sullivan, Rick. Mary Wheelock" on Wheelock Genealogy website.
3. ↑ according to all supporting documentation she was the son of Alexander Standish not Josiah
4. ↑ Russell L. Warner; Robert S. Wakefield, FASG, Mayflower Families Through Five Generations - Descendants of the Pilgrims Who Landed at Plymouth, Mass December 1620 (Vol. 14) ([Plymouth, Massachusetts]: General Society of Mayflower Descendants, 2007)

• Family Tree prepared by William T Bingham, Hartford, Conn, 15 Aug 1973

Acknowledgments

Thank you to Ed Burke for creating WikiTree profile Wheelock-400 through the import of Burke Brooks Tree 2010.ged on Feb 18, 2013.

Click to the Changes page for the details of edits by Ed and others.