[This is part II of a three part article published in volumes 33.1-33.3 in Feb, May, Aug 2011].
MARY2 LORD (Nathan1) was born say 1668 and was killed by Indians at Dover, New Hampshire, on 26 July 1696.279 She married, probably before 1688, about the time her son Thomas was born, as his second wife, Sergeant THOMAS DOWNES, born in Boston on 17 March 1653/54, son of Thomas and Catherine (—) Downes. Thomas Downes died in Dover in the spring of 1711, killed by Indians while working in a field with three others.280 Thomas had married first Martha — and, following the death of Mary, married third at Dover on 24 October 1698 Abigail (Roberts) Hall, 281 daughter of John and Abigail (Nutter) Roberts and widow of John Hall.282
Rev. John Pike’s journal has the following entry for 26 July 1696: “Being sacrament
day—an ambush of Indians laid between Capt. Gove’s field and Tobias Hanson’s orchard—shot upon people returning from the meeting—killed Nicho Otis, Mary Downs, and Mary Jones.”283 Administration of the estate of Thomas Downes of Dover was granted to his son Gershom [by his first wife] on 18 April 1711 with no mention of a wife.284 An 18 May 1737 deed in which the children of Thomas and Mary (Lord) Downes quitclaimed and sold their share in property formerly owned by their uncle Abraham Lord and cousin William Lord confirms their names and spouses, as the deed mentions: Thomas and Sarah Downes, John and Martha Mackelroy, Ebenezer and Elizabeth Downes, Samuel and Judith Downes, and William and Mary Downes.285
279 “Journal of the Rev. John Pike,” N.H. Hist. Soc. Colls., 3(Concord, N.H., 1832):47.
280 Gen. Dict. Maine & N.H., 203.
281 Dover VRs, 130.
282 Gen. Dict. Maine & N.H., 203, 589; “Thomas Downes of Dover, N.H., and His Descendants,” New Hampshire Genealogical Record [NHGR] 6(1909):145–48. Both Stackpole and Lord erred in calling the Lord wife of Thomas Downes “Martha (Stackpole, Old Kittery, 588, 749; Lord, Descendants of Nathan Lord, 62). Lord also erred in noting that the Mary Downes killed by Indians on 26 July 1696 was a daughter of Thomas and Martha Downes. Lord corrected this error on a later page (p. 118). Lord also erred in including Gershom Downes as a son of Mary (Lord) Downes. Gershom recorded his own birth record, calling himself the son of Thomas Jr. and Martha, b. 10 Jan 1680/1 (Dover VRs, 6). Even though Gershom Downes lived until 27 June 1746 when he was killed by Indians in Rochester (Gen. Dict. Maine & N.H., 203), he was not included among the Lord heirs in 1737. Gershom was a son of Thomas Downes’s 1st wife, Martha.
283 “Journal of the Rev. John Pike,” N.H. Hist. Soc. Colls., 3(Concord, N.H., 1832):47.
284 Albert Stillman Batchellor, Henry Harrison Metcalf, and Otis G. Hammond, eds., Probate Records of the Province of New Hampshire, 1635–1771, 9 vols., vols. 31–39: N.H. State Papers Ser. (various places, 1907–41), 1:669 (hereafter cited as N.H. Provincial Probate Records).
285 York Deeds, 18:445.
286 N.H. Provincial Probate Records, 3:742–45.
287 Dover VRs, 29.
288 Gen. Dict. Maine & N.H., 302.
289 N.H. Provincial Probate Records, 3:742–45.
290 Dover VRs, 29–30. The births of the first 7 daughters were recorded at Dover. The last two, Love and Charity, are named in the division of their father’s estate, as are the names of all spouses.
