Person:Alice Unknown (727)

The Identity of Alice Rand

"The wills of RICHARD SPRAGUE {1629, Charlestown} [GMB 3:1731-35] and his wife Mary suggest a close relationship with Alice, the wife of Robert Rand. Mary explicitly called Alice her sister, and as the childless Mary made much larger bequests to Alice and her family, it is likely that Alice and Mary were siblings. In 1857 Wyman stated that "Lawrence Dowse of Charlestown married Margery daughter of Robert Rand by Alice daughter of Nicholas Sharp" [NEHGR 11:90]. Just a few years later Savage stated that Robert Rand "brought from England wife Alice said to be daughter of Nicholas Sharp in England and sister of Mary, wife of the first captain Richard Sprague" [Savage 3:504]. In 1926 William Bradford Homer Dowse made these same claims, at greater length [William Bradford Dowse, Lawrence Dowse of Legbourne, England, His Ancestors, Descendants and Connections in England, Massachusetts and Ireland (Boston 1926), xi-xxii]. None of these sources provide any documentary evidence for these proposed relationships."^[1]

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6} Robert Rand, in Anderson, Robert Charles; George F. Sanborn; and Melinde Lutz Sanborn. The Great Migration: Immigrants to New England, 1634-1635. (Boston, Massachusetts: NEHGS, 1999-2011)
   6:4-6.

   She died at Charlestown on 19 July 1691, "98" [ChVR 1:149]. (This age at death is almost certainly inflated by a decade.)