Person:Mary Unknown (5015)

NOTE: The Ancestral File has seriously confused 3 men named Thomas Horton/Orton (Thomas Horton of Springfield, Thomas Horton of Milton and Rehoboth, and Thomas Horton/Orton of Charlestown). Two of these men had wives named Mary. This Mary who married a Thomas Horton was not Mary Eddy, as is often cited from the Ancestral File. The Ancestral File should not be used as a source for any of these families (all of which have been added to WeRelate from more reliable sources). --DataAnalyst 22:04, 8 November 2010 (EST)

Mary married Thomas Horton in England and sailed with him on the Mary and John in 1632/3. They spent a couple years in Windsor, where their son Jeremiah was born in 1636. Shortly afterward, they went to Springfield as original proprietors of the town. Robert Ashley also settled there about that time.

On 7 Aug 1641 “Widow Horton” and Robert Ashley, about to be married, signed an agreement whereby she signed over her house and lot of 11 acres to Ashley. They were for the use of her two sons, one an infant, the other about three years old and named Jeremy. The boys are to be paid their inheritance when they are 21 and are to be sent out as apprentices as teenagers. Her former husband was apparently Thomas Horton, who was dead by Oct 1640, when widow Horton is examined for “selling her husband’s peece to the Indians.” (NEHGR 33:311)

This is not, as some have indicated, Mary, daughter of John and Amy (Doggett) Eddy. She married Thomas Orton, had her last child by him in Charlestown in 1648, and was still living as Mary Orton when her father made his will in 1677 (See Great Migration for John Eddy)

1. ↑ ^1.0 1.1 Fischer, Carl W. (Wilhem); Joel Horton; and Marcus Nelson Horton. Descendants of Thomas Horton of Springfield: Including Some Descendants of Phineas Pratt. (Bayside, New York: Carl W. Fischer, 1965)
   page 1.
2. ↑ Torrey, Clarence Almon. New England Marriages Prior to 1700. (1963)
   page 389.

   'HORTON, Thomas (-1640) & Mary __?___, m/2 Robert ASHLEY 1641; b 1638; Springfield'

3. ↑ Stott, Clifford L. Vital Records of Springfield, Massachusetts to 1850. (Boston, Massachusetts: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2002).