| Notes |
- That her maiden name was Bailey is by no means certain. If the name is correct, could she have been a sister of Richard Bailey who was the servant of Stephen Bachiler's step-son-in-law Richard Dummer?
http://tomclough.com/p484.htm
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from TORREY:
BEADLE, Robert & Mary _____, m/2 Stephen BATCHELDER (div), m/3 Thomas TURNER; by 1642; Wethersfield/ New London, CT/ Newbury (same?)
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"Genealogical Dictionary of Maine and New Hampshire" by Noyes, Libby, and Davis.)
Notes for MARY BAILEY: GDME&NH, under Stephen Batchelder, he m. 4th unhappily the widow, Mary Beedle of Kittery, with whom in 1650 he was ordered to live. The same yr. he was charged with marrying without bans. Oct. 16, 1651, she and George Rogers were convicted; 14 Oct. 1652 she was presented for entertaining idle prople on the Sabbath. She asked for a divorce 18 Oct 1656, alleg. he had gone to England many years since and mar. again, herself and two invalid ch. destitute on her hands.
"Second marriage to the Reverend Stephen Bachiler, 60 yrs her senior. While apparently married to him, she fell in love with the neighbor, became pregnant, and for adultery was sentenced to be flogged and branded with the letter A. She eventually got a divorce from the Reverend and married a third time to Thomas Turner in 1657.”
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Evidence is strong that she objected to the marriage to Batchelder and was coerced into the union.
* She quickly moved out from his home after the marriage was announced to live with George ROGERS.
* BATCHELDER only announced the marriage when cornered by enemies during a trip to Boston. No one asked Mary at the time.
* Women had few rights in those days and Mary saw that any objections made at the time would be detrimental to her, as well as too late to do any good.
The punishment against her was unusually harsh (although not unique), probably more to shame BATCHELDER than to correct her. His enemies became her enemies at this time.
- Mary is the only woman to have signed the compact of Submission of Maine to the Massachusetts Bay Colony on 16 Nov 1652, at William Everetts tavern. The residents of Kittery were forced to sign after being threatened with torture. Maine became something unusual in British North American history: an unwilling colony of a colony, a place annexed by the victors of a bloody civil conflict, people with different religious, ideological and ethnographic characteristics.
Before this time, Maine enjoyed peace with the natives and adopted a “live and let live” policy. Massachusetts saw all natives as evil children of Satan, and therefore must be destroyed. Maine saw some of the worst native-settler casualties in New England.
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The English Civil Wars raged from 1642–1651, during most of Mary’s life. Although she lived in New England, English politics dominated the New World. The early New England settlers were still English. England’s monarchs, King Charles I and King Charles II were eventually replaced by Oliver Cromwell. The monopoly of the Church of England was ended. And the monarch was no longer allowed to govern without the consent of Parliament.
- ""Staples Family History Association" Newsletter Vol. 3, No. 2, Jan 1980:
Mary Batchelder (California 1620 - 1685) of Old Kittery, Maine, created in the community shock waves that still reverberate twelve generations later. As the third wife of the Rev. Stephen Batchelder, 87 years old, Oxford graduate, weary veteran of a lifetime of losing contests with both Church of England and Puritan hierarchies, she vaulted into the history books by adultery with next-door neighbor George Rogers and a subsequent sentence by the Georgiana (York) court to be flogged and branded with the letter "A" ("Old York", "Romance of the Maine Coast," Sylvester, Vol. II, 559-363). Not so well known is her remarkable recovery from public humiliation to a position of stature and respect in the community. Mary's triumph over adversity, and her growth in character rivaled that of Hawthorne's heroine in "The Scarlet Letter", Hester Prynne.
"A Disastrous Second Marriage and Decade of Recovery. Mary was married three times: first about 1641 to Robert Beedle, fisherman-farmer, by whom she had daughter Elizabeth, wife of Peter Staples, and son Christopher; second to the Reverend Stephen Batchelder, sixty years her senior, who was the founder in 1638 of Hampton, New Hampshire, and its Congregational Church from which he was ousted after a feud with his assistant minister and the solicitation of his neighbor's wife while he was still married; third in 1657 to Thomas Turner who sold the Beedle homestead to Peter Staples in 1674. The first and third marriages were quiet, so prosaic that Mary would have died an obscure woman had she been limited to their experiences.
"Documented events of the decade between 1647 and 1657 tell the story of Mary's tempestuous second marriage. In 1646-1647, the Rev. Batchelder, barred from preaching in the Massachusetts Bay Colony because of repeated dissension in former parishes, moved in with his grandson and godchild, Stephen Sanborn, two farmsteads below Mary Beedle on the Piscataqua River in Kittery. Mary soon became his housekeeper, an arrangement that disconcerted the neighbors, as Batchelder later reported to Gov. Winthrop. The situation was rectified by the two joining in marriage, exact date unknown because Batchelder, who performed the ceremony, failed to publish it, an omission for which he was fined 10 pounds, reduced later to five. On Feb. 14, 1648 the farmstead of her late husband Robert Beedle was confirmed to Mary by the Town of Kittery. On Oct. 15, 1650, at Georgeana (York) court, widower (and next-door neighbor) George Rogers and Mary Batchelder were presented for "incontinency for living in one house together and lieing in one room". A year later on Oct. 15, 1651 in the same court they were presented for adultery and were sentenced to receive 40 stripes save one, she to receive hers at the first Kittery town meeting 6 weeks after delivery of her child, and she also was to be branded with the letter "A" (worn on the garment). The court also ordered the Batchelders to live together as man and wife. Instead, the Rev. Batchelder took refuge with his grandson in Hampton. In 1651 Mary's daughter, named Mary, was born. The latter eventually married William Richards, a currier from Portsmouth, N. H., and lived a solid churchgoing life in that community.
"On Oct. 14, 1652, Mrs. Batchelder was presented at the district court for entertaining idle people on the Sabbath (possibly harassed Quakers). On Nov. 16, 1652, Mary signed the Certificate of Submission, the only woman signer along with 40 leading male citizens. That document, which was endorsed under threats by the stronger Puritan government of Mass. to use its militia unless Maine succumbed peacefully, turned Maine over to the jurisdiction of the Mass. Bay Colony. Maine was not to regain its independence until 1820. That Mary was chosen to inscribe the treaty is some indication of her stature in the community. She penned her own signature, an act only half the subscribers could do.
"Mary, husbandless in fact if not in law, in a frontier settlement with two children, acquired land by grant in 1653, and by lawsuit in 1654. Then in June 1654 the York court ordered Thomas Hanscom, age 31, "not to live with" Mary Batchelder. Further investigation reveals Mary's plight. At the Oct. 1651 adultery trial both she and the Rev. Batchelder sought divorce but were denied it. By the time Hanscom was living with Mary, her legal husband was in England where he remained until his death at age 99.
"Mary had found an attractive man from the Hanscom shipbuilding family, but was barred legally from marrying him. Finally, in 1656 Mary solved her dilemma. In this year she appealed to the Mass. General Court to obtain a divorce and remarry. She apparently obtained it, for she married Turner a year later. The substance and eloquence of her plea is moving. She tells the court that she does not want to live on the "common charity of others", that her husband is in England married to a fourth wife, that she needs her freedom to remarry for assistance in rearing two ailing children and preserving her estate. She is saying give Maine liberty and I will not be a welfare case. She achieved her goals, gained a husband more her age, saw two daughters married well, and conserved her estate which she passed on to her son-in-law, Peter Staples. Connection of Mary Batchelder with Hester Prynne. For his services as a Mass. Bay Colony commissioner, Capt. William Hawthorne, immigrant ancestor of distinguished novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne, was rewarded with 870 acres of prime land on the Piscataqua River three farms north of Mary Batchelders. Years later, Nathaniel Hawthorne, noted as an avid scholar of colonial history, soaked up local history during extended visits to the Kittery area. His journal does not mention the name of Batchelder, but does note a young woman doomed to wear the letter "A" on the breast of her gown under an old colony law as punishment for adultery. A book (1) published at the time of the Eliot centennial in 1910 states that Mary Beedle Batchelder was the woman upon whom Hawthorne patterned the heroine of the "Scarlet Letter". The description of Hester Prynnes's cottage closely parallels that of Mary on what was to become the Staple property. The evidence is strong that Hester Prynne was a character derived from Hawthorn's extensive knowledge of the history of Kittery in Colonial times. Hester was a victim of Puritan intolerance in Boston, Mary of Cavalier justice at old York.
"Hester and Mary were both strong, self-reliant, and iron-willed but with different styles. Mary was an outspoken battler, active in community affairs, aggressive in managing her estate and seeking a new husband. Hester was quiet, reserved, accepting her penance of loneliness gracefully apart from the village in an isolated cottage, graciously defiant with her aristocratic bearing, calmness of speech, and pride in self-support by needlework. Both won community respect but by different means.
"Literary and social critics have assessed Hester's conduct for almost 130 years. The orthodox Puritans among them have said the stain of sin persists, its permanent effect warping. Others, notably Mark Van Doren, have hailed Hawthorne as the Homer of ancient New England, and Hester as its most heroic creature, almost a goddess. In between these extremes some have said Hester expiated her sin, gained wisdom, self-knowledge, spiritual power, and hence greatness. Others have said that society sinned more than Hester by over-punishment of one who responded to a natural urge. Others say that sin is relative, it depends on what the sinner thinks is sinful and what it does to the personality and psychic balance. Virtually all attest to Hester's heroism in her self-reliance and calm steadfastness. Mary likewise exhibited self-reliance and steadfastness; she, too, was of heroic proportions.
- While technically married to Stephen Batchelder (he had moved to England), Mary heroically attempted to live her life by starting a relationship with Thomas HANSCOM (Hansom) in another part of New England (Connecticut). A local woman recognized her and switched to the authorities, and the relationship was quashed.
"June 29, 1654
Wee present Thomas Hunsscome and Mary Batchelder the wife of Mr. Batcheller for frequently comeing togeather, after sufficient warneing given them by some of the Graynd Jurie... Tho: Hunescome and Mary Batcheller do bind them selves In a bond of 20 li not to come frequently or unseasonably togeather or suspitiously, upon the forfeiture thereof.
This bond was acknowledged by them before the Court by whome they are with an Admonition Sett free paiing 10s. to the officers." (Province and Court Records of Maine- Vol.1, p.164)
Mary Batchelder was quite notorious in the area. Her husband was the Rev. Stephen Batchelder who was in his 80's at this time. Mary was only in her late 20's and was evidently tired of living with an old man for besides her relationship with Thomas she was convicted of adultery with George Rogers.
http://www.geocities.ws/mainegenie1/HANSCOM.htm
Thomas Hanscom had many run-ins with the courts - mostly as a consequence of his violent temper. His mother, Tamson, apparently had a temper of her own and was accused of beating Thomas with a broom handle. His children were also frequently in trouble. Mary was better off without him.
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In October, 1656, Mary Beetle Bachiler petitioned the Court, in the following words, to free her from her husband, Rev. Stephen Bachiler:
To the Honored Governor, Deputy Governor, with the Magistrates and Deputies at the General Court at Boston:
The humble petition of Mary Bachelor sheweth--Whereas your petitioner, having formerly lived with Mr. Stephen Bachelor, a minister of this Collany, as his lawfull wife, and not unknown to divers of you, as I conceive, and the said Mr. Bachelor, upon some pretended ends of his owne, hath transported himself unto ould England, for many yeares since, and betaken himself to another wife, as your petitioner hath often been credibly informed, and there continueth, whereby your petitioner is left destitute, not only of a guide to her and her children, but also made uncapable thereby of disposing herselfe in the way of marriage to any other, without a lawful permission; and having now two children upon her hands, that are chargeable unto her, in regard to a disease God hath been pleased to lay upon them both, which is not easily curable, and so weakening her estate in prosecuting the means of cure, that she is not able longer to subsist, without utter ruining her estate, or exposing herself to the common charity of others; which your petitioner is loth to put herself upon, if it may be lawfully avoided, as is well known to all, or most part of her neighbors. And were she free from her engagement to Mr. Bachelor, might probably soe dispose of herselfe, as that she might obtain a meet helpe to assist her to procure such means for her livelyhood, and the recovery of her children's health, as might keep them from perishing; which your petitioner, to her great grief, is much afraid of, if not timely prevented. Your petitioner's humble request therefore is, that this Honored Court would be pleased seriously to consider her condition, for matter of her relief in her freedom from the said Mr. Bachelor, and that she may be at liberty to dispose of herselfe in respect of any engagement to him, as in your wisdomes shall seem most expedient; and your petitioner shall humbly pray.
MARY BACHELER.
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Old Dead Relatives
1622 - Abt 1685 (63 years)
[2] 
: Address
: Location
: City/Town
: County/Shire
: State/Province
: Country
: Not Set
