Ipswich Mary, cont'd

Having just finished my book, Harvardinates (see below post), I am free to think about some of the issues it brought up. Actually one reason I wanted to do it was so that I could explore the era (1690-1720) of the gap in our genealogy.

I actually have a working theory on that gap:
Willam Laverick/Leverit (married in 1715 as Laverick, had baby in 1716 as Leverit) was born to one of our people, probably Mary, John's sister;
Mary (1675) was a full sister to John; lived much of her life in Roxbury; was the same Mary who remarried in Wenham 1713 and died in Wenham 1728;
William Leverit's bride Mary Whiteridge was from Ipswich/Wenham or the area;
they had a child William, later, and a daughter Mary; Mary ended up in Connecticut; William was our William, who married Rachel Watts in Chelsea in ~1740.
That William was poor, perhaps orphaned, enough so that, at some point, he relied on or fell in with Knight's child Col. John's family. The timing was somewhat unclear here. This William could not have been a child of John Esq. (Col. John's son), and still marry Rachel in the 1740s. But he could have stayed with the family enough that his children and children's children all thought (and wrote on an envelope) that their line went up through the two Johns. Family stories could have included all of them. And he was a Leverett who could easily say, I'm descended from Governor John but not John the President of Harvard.


The above theory requires some filling in, especially in the early 1700s when William falls in with Col. John's family. But the part I'm more concerned about now is where Mary brought up William, how, why & when she found her way to Wenham, and what could possibly explain that.

And, bear with me here, there's another possibility. Sarah, youngest of Gov. John's daughters, was the same age as Sarah (1674). Thus she would have been 18 at Hudson's will & death in Roxbury, during the witch trials, and 23 at John's wedding, an Ipswich-filled affair in Boston in 1697. I focus on the wedding because any William born out of a 1697 experience would be 18 in 1715, just about right. So let's say Mary or Sarah were at that wedding and met a William from Ipswich, but had the child in Roxbury or Boston, brought it up there, and didn't go up to Ipswich until he was 16, or something like that.

Putting Sarah into it has the advantage of an explanation for the name William, who would be her maternal grandfather, Sarah Sedgwick's father, who was a strong character. But Sarah presumably lived in the mansion downtown, where it would be impossible to hide an out-of-wedlock child, unless she were to just move out to Roxbury. This theory requires some things about out-of-wedlock children: first, that it would even be possible in witch-trial Mass Bay Colony. Second, whether life would get any better for this boy when he goes up to Wenham with his mother (Mary). Or maybe he was hiding up there somewhere all along, growing up there, waiting for Mary to find a suitable mate. Could Sarah be involved?

Sarah is something of a mystery. At 31, she was still not married when Sarah Sedgwick died and who knows if she lived in the mansion, stayed there, or what. She would not marry until 1722, and by that time she would be 48. Plenty of time to have a baby in there, and even bring it up, and turn him out into the world at 16 or whenever when he was ready to marry. As long as it wasn't downtown; I don't think she could have done that downtown.

My bets are still on Mary. And I want to know about anyone in Wenham, Ipswich, or the road between.

assuming it's Mary's child, born about 1692) and we need a William, how about William Phips?

He was Governor at the time. He was calling off the witch trials, and traveling back and forth a lot. His adopted son, Spencer, who was born in Rowley, would buy land in Cambridgeport and this gave proximity to John; he worked with John on the Muscongus patent, and John gave him one share. That share could be Mary's share.

But William Phips was married. A very colorful character, his son with money, reason and ability to take Mary & young William up to Wenham/Ipswich in 1713, connections and travel money. But if William was the father, how does one explain that? How could they meet when he was Governor? He died in 1685, before the wedding. But that also could be a clue.

Other Williams? Other ideas?