Person:Mary Unknown (5241)

The Identity of Mary Sprague

"The will of both Richard Sprague and his wife Mary suggest a close relationship with Alice, the wife of Robert Rand. Mary explicitly called Alice her sister, and as Mary makes a much larger bequests to Alice and her family than to others, it is likely that Alice and Mary were siblings."^[1]

"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."^[2]

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6} Richard Sprague, in Anderson, Robert Charles. The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England, 1620-1633. (Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1995)
   3:1734-1735.

   Wife Mary is first seen at her dismissal from Boston church on 14 October 1632, but there is no record of her admission to that church as wife of Richard Sprague. Savage and others assume that he had married in England, and brought his wife with him, but it seems more likely that he married between 1630 and 1632, and that his wife was one of the women named Mary admitted to Boston church in its first two years. She died between 6 December 1672 (acknowledgement of deed) and 12 June 1674 (date of inventory).

2. ↑ 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)
   6:5.