Ipswich Mary revisited

OK here's an update on my theory and all the work I've been doing to tie loose ends together. The possibility of my family being connected to the witch trials is the latest thing that has me excited.

Let's start by clearing up an earlier problem. A Mary Leverett who died in Cambridge in 1699 was not our Mary, but rather Mary Leverett Dudley/Townsend, a daughter of Governor John. This Mary is often considered to be a daughter of John the Younger, because she died in Cambridge right before he had a string of children there, many of whom died also. John did have a daughter Mary soon after who lived and went on to have ten children herself, but she outlived maybe seven of them. She is not our Mary.

Our Mary was born in 1674, I believe, named in Hudson's will in 1692 as a daughter, and disappeared after that. A Mary Leverett appeared in Salem, marrying a Johnathan Moulton, who already had children, in 1798; a Mary Leverett died in Wenham in 1712. I believe this is the same Mary and this Mary could have been the mother of our William (~1692), who would have been born around the time of the witch trials.

A William Laverick married a Mary Whiteridge in Boston in 1710, and a William Leverit, with a wife Mary, had a child Phebee the following year. We have long suspected that this William was an ancestor, had another child named William ~1727, another child named Mary, possibly in Chelsea around that time, and simply stayed off the record books. I would like to connect this William and this Mary Whiteridge to someone. Where did they come from?

It turns out that the vast majority of Whitridges are from the Salem/Ipswich area. There are over a dozen spellings of the name, to the point that I get careless myself in using them. It can start with Wi- or Wh- which makes scrolling through birth, death and marriage records more difficult. But all of them are in the north shore area. Gloucester, Marblehead, Salem, Ipswich, Wenham, they're all over the place. Boston, none. That's what I've found so far.

A Mary Whiterage was involved in the witch trials. Over 150 people were arrested and awaiting trial when Governor Phips called the whole thing off and offered them pardons (see below post). One of these was a Mary Whiterage, a widow with two young children, Silvester and Prudence. This Mary spent months in jail, and, when released, had to pay fines covering her stay; the fines broke the family. Her children disappeared; nobody knows what happened to Silvester or Prudence, though they both went off into the new century carrying the Whiteredge name. Mary herself remarried into the Proctor family, made famous by the witch trials. Mom may have brought the two children into the new marriage or maybe not. Who knows what happened to them when their mother and grandmother were in jail for witchcraft.

Prudence could be the Mary who appeared in Boston in 1710. It was some Mary Whiteridge who can't be accounted for in any other way, and she had to have come from somewhere. She almost certainly came from the north shore, though, as every Whiteridge at the time did.

In that case this is what I'm looking for: A way William could have grown up on the north shore, coming of age around 1710 or before; a family account that would show what happened to Prudence or Silvester, during or after the witch trials; a William or a reason Mary would name her boy William, either after someone who sheltered her, or someone who fathered the baby; a family with a Phebee in it, that would give Mary Whiteridge some reason to name her first daughter Phebee, instead of, say, Mary.