Person:Rebecca Freeman (6)

m. 22 Apr 1646
  1. Rebecca FreemanEst 1647 - 1738
  2. Patience FreemanAbt 1647 - Aft 1705
  • HEzra Perry1652/53 - 1729/30
  • WRebecca FreemanEst 1647 - 1738
m. Abt 1673
  1. Ebenezer Perry1673 - 1747/48
  2. Mary Perry1675 -
  3. Bethia Perry1676/77 -
  4. Ezra Perry1679/80 - Bef 1757
  5. Hannah Perry1681 -
  6. Edmond Perry1683 -
  7. Freelove Perry1685 -
  8. Samuel Perry1688 - Aft 1735
  9. Rebecca Perry1689 - Bef 1733
  10. Patience Perry1691/92 -
Facts and Events
Name Rebecca Freeman
Gender Female
Birth[3] Est 1647 Sandwich, Barnstable, Massachusetts, United States
Marriage Abt 1673 to Ezra Perry
Death[1] 16 Aug 1738 Sandwich, Barnstable, Massachusetts, United States

Rebecca Freeman4 (Rebecca Prence3, Patience2, Brewster, William1) was born probably in Sandwich before July 1651, the daughter of Edmund and Rebecca (Prence) Freeman and died in Sandwich 16 April 1738

References
  1. Brownson, Lydia B. (Phinney) and Maclean W. McLean. "Ezra Perry of Sandwich, Mass.", in The New England Historical and Genealogical Register. (Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society)
    115:91, Apr 1961.

    Rebecca d. Sandwich 16 Apr 1738 [citing town records, p. 1:109.]

  2.   Merrick, Barbara, William Brewster of the Mayflower and his Descendants for four Generations
    Page 81-82, 2000.
  3. There is some difficulty with estimating a birth date for Rebecca.

    Source:Freeman, Frederick. Freeman Genealogy in Three Parts, p. 27, says Edmond's wife Rebecca died soon after "giving birth to her only daughter", but on p. 26 does not include Patience in this family. This made his job easy and he simply estimated the birth of the “only daughter” Rebecca to be about 1647. He may have simply been relying on Savage, who says the same thing.

    However, Source:American Genealogist (D.L. Jacobus), p. 40:103, "Mr. Edmond Freeman of Sandwich, Mass., and His Family" by Maclean W. McLean argues that Edmond's first wife had two children, Patience and Rebecca. The proof that Patience is a daughter lies in a deed where Edmond Freeman identifies “Joseph Burge” as his son-in-law and Joseph’s wife as “my daughter Patience”. That fact that she married and had a child by early 1668 pretty much requires that she was a child of Edmond's first marriage, as well as her apparently being named after the mother of Edmond's first wife.

    That Rebecca is the daughter of Edmond’s first wife Rebecca (Prence) Freeman is shown in Source:The New England Historical and Genealogical Register, p. 115:93, which cites a deed dated 30 Apr 1733 [Plymouth Deeds, 28:5] where the younger Rebecca conveys to her children land "which I hold by virtue of the Last Will and Testament of Thomas Prence", i.e., which requires that her mother was Thomas Prence's daughter.

    But squeezing the births of both Patience and Rebecca into the short marriage of Edmond Freeman and Rebecca Prence is a tight fit. Sandwich and Plymouth records record the marriage of Edmond Freeman and Rebecca Prence 22 Aug 1646. Source:Mayflower Descendant, p. 15:25, "Plymouth Colony Vital Records", argues persuasively that a partially unreadable death record on 23 Mar 1647/48 is Edmond's wife Rebecca Freeman. If one accepts these constraints, one daughter could have been born 9 months after the marriage, abt. May 1647, and then presumably the second one was born about when the mother died, 10 months later. The TAG article says Patience is the eldest, but the grounds for that are not given.

    The NEHGR article doesn’t mention the burial date of Edmond's wife, so may not have been aware of it, and hence wants to push Rebecca’s birth date back to 1649 or 1650, as late as possible before Edmond’s second marriage in 1651. It was reacting to her having children until Feb 1691/92. A birth in Mar 1647/8 when her mother was buried would make her a month shy of 44 at that time.