Transcript talk:Savage, James. Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England/v3p282

Defect 1 [24 June 2019]

There appears to have been no Thomas Nichols of Malden. Thomas Nichols of Amesbury did not marry Mary Moulton.

Mary Moulton married Thomas Mitchell. See GDMNH, p. 485, GMB, p. 1308. The will of Thomas Moulton (here, hard to read, transcript given in GMB) mentions son Mitchell. The Malden VRs, p. 268 show that Thomas Mitchell married Mary Moulton in the 9th month (November) 1655, but show no marriage of Mary Moulton to Thomas Nichols. It appears the only place the marriage to Thomas Nichols appears is a list of "Early Malden Records" from Court Returns at Cambridge, NEHGR, Vol. 6, p. 337 apparently misread the record giving "Thomas Nichols", and misinterpreting the 9th month as September (other items in this article appear to suffer from the same shortcoming, e.g. the marriage of Mr. Joseph Hill and Helen Atkinson in 1655, shown in VRs, p. 248, as 11th month, the article calls this Nov.) The marriage of Mary Moulton, and of Thomas Mitchell, appear to be correctly given by Savage (3:221, 3:249), with no wife-side listing of the Thomas Nichols marriage that he lists under the husband (i.e., this page 3:282).

A Thomas Nichols had twins in Charlestown in 1662/63, i.e., over 7 years after the 1655 marriage, so given that it appears to be his first children (since named Thomas), it looks unlikely that their marriage was in 1655. He had a wife "Marie" and may have been the Thomas of Amesbury (probably, though this implies missing a death of the twin named Thomas, but common for twins to die in infancy). But he is not the person who married Mary Moulton and the misread marriage record is the only thing that appears to connect him to Malden, the births and deaths being recorded in Charlestown. Wyman (here) lists no deeds for him. --Jrich 19:13, 18 April 2017 (UTC)