Mary Becket is a paternal 8th great-grandmother. I have been working on her for quite a while due to conflicting information that has been written about her.
Many casual genealogical researchers, such as myself, aren’t terribly rigorous in verifying or even attempting to corroborate, facts and stories. This can lead, as in the case of Mary Becket, to the perpetuation, over many decades of a false history.
In Mary’s case, the false history is that she was a descendant of English nobility, specifically the House of Percy. Folks on Ancestry have spread this story far and wide. They weren’t the first. This story has been around since the 19th century. This is one reason I largely steer clear of Ancestry Family Trees.
One member of Phineas Pemberton’s household, of Falls, was Mary Becket, a
young English woman, a descendant of the great Northumberland house of
Percy. When her mother married Becket she was a ward in Chancery, and
they had to fly to the continent, where he was killed in the religious war
in Germany.
” She was the daughter of Elinor Percy, of whom family tradition relates that she became from causes which are not mentioned, a ward in Chancery, and that while so situated, she was addressed by a [Captain] Becket, who persuaded her to contract a runaway marriage. In consequence of this act, which by law subjected Becket to severe penalties, he is said to have been obliged to fly the realm, and to have perished in one of the Continental wars.” Such is the statement which the old people reported of the father of Mary Becket. Her mother seems to have become a Friend and subsequently married a Haydock, under which name we find her addressing her daughter. ” However doubtful some parts of this account may be, that Mary Becket had some pretensions to rank and that there was some unusual circumstance connected with her birth and parentage is pretty certain. She seems to have possessed higher qualities, and to have greatly endeared herself to her friends.”
The House of Percy, was one of the most powerful noble families of Northern England.
I could never quite reconcile what I call the “Percy Narrative” with the fact of an apparently penniless 11-year-old child who was sent to the Pennsylvania colony to live in the household of Phineas Pemberton.
“The origin of the curious myth that made a ‘lady’ of the poor motherless child, is, I suspect, to be found in a confusion between her and another Mary (Horner, I rather think), many of whose descendants are also descendants of Mary Becket. This other Mary did possess a considerable estate while the Becket child was penniless. I found that for several generations nobody had even attributed wealth to M. B., but that some ladies who were looking over family letters at the old Bowne home, Flushing, got the two names mixed, and wrote to their relatives, in Philadelphia, that Mary Becket had been an heiress.”
No evidence of Mary Becket being a Percy has never been produced.
If Mary was not a Percy, that would eliminate the difficulty of explaining the total disappearance of the Percy fortune in her case, and for the absence of all reference to it in the letters of the period.
Mary wasn’t a Percy. A brief timeline of her life is as follows:
1673:
- Mary Becket, according to the Parish Register of Middlewich, Cheshire, England, was the daughter of John Beckett and Mary Brundrett [possibly Brandreth]. Her parents were married on the 4th of May 1671, and their daughter Mary was baptized on the 1st of October 1673. The Parish Records also tell us that Mary’s mother was buried the very day of her infant’s christening.
- What became of Mary’s father, John Becket is not known. “A search in the diocesan registry for his death or second marriage has been fruitless.” In the “Percy Narrative,” a Captain John Becket (ostensibly Mary’s father) was killed in one of the continental wars that were going on at the time in Europe; possibly in what is now Germany.
- Elinore Lowe, then living at Newton, near Middlewich, “adopted” the child, probably as an infant. Whether she undertook the charge from pity, or from relationship, or because she wished for the companionship of a child, is unknown. It is known that at the time of Mary’s birth, Elinore was a “Friend,” and it is speculated that a wish to bring up the orphan child in the same faith may have been one of her motivations.
- Elinore, not long after the “adoption,” left Middlewich and went to reside at Crewood Hall, the home of her ancestors, “which had been given up by the Gerards… who removed to their Chester house in 1670 or 1672. The estate was weighed down with encumbrances that had been growing for ages.”
1682:
- Elinore Lowe married Roger Haydock. Mary Becket was nine years of age.
- Roger Haydock, of Cappull, was a prominent minister who traveled widely in Great Britain and Ireland, and on the Continent of Europe, and had his full share of the “sufferings ” of the early Friends. On the “6th Day of the 3d Mo. [May] 1682″ he was married to Elinore Lowe. After traveling in the ministry a few months, Roger Haydock ” settled his wife at Warrington,” in 1682. “In the 5th mo. [July] 1687 he removed his wife and family from Warrington to Brick Hall in Penketh” [South Lancashire], which continued to be his home till his death in 3 mo [May] 1696.”
1684:
- Mary Becket, age eleven, departed for the Pennsylvania colony aboard the ship “Vine” out of Liverpool with intermediate stops in Wales. She arrived in Philadelphia on 17-Sep-1684.
- Mary is listed as being in the company of Henry Baker from Walton [near Preston] in Lancashire. The party consisted of “Henry Baker & Margaret his wife,” their four daughters, two sons, Mary Becket, and ten servants. It must be remembered that the word “servants” means “indentured” servants.
- It is thought that Mary lived with the Bakers for approximately one year.
1685:
- Mary Becket went to live in the household of Phineas Pemberton first at Grove Place and then at his home, Bolton Mansion. The Pemberton family were wealthy Quaker merchants who devoted their lives to benevolent and charitable work. Phineas Pemberton (1650-1702) came to America in 1682, where he purchased an estate on the Delaware River at Grove Place in Bucks County known as Bolton Farm.
- Phineas Pemberton was intimate with Roger Haydock, Robert Lowe, Henry Baker, and others. He and Phebe Harrison were married (1676) at the house of John Haydock (brother of Roger) at Cappull, Lancashire; and Henry, Roger, Elizabeth, and Anne Haydock, and Elinor Lowe are among the signers of the marriage certificate. Robert Lowe (probably the younger Robert) was Phineas Pemberton’s apprentice in 1672.
1691:
- Mary married Samuel Bowne (1667- 1745) of Flushing, NY, Son of John Bowne (1627 – 1695) and Hannah Feake (1637 – 1678). Mary gave birth to ten children.
- Samuel b. 29-Jan-1693
- Thomas b. 7-Apr-1694
- Esther b 30-Apr-1695 (My 7th Great-grandmother)
- Hannah b. 31-Mar-1697
- John b. 11-Sep-1698
- Mary b. 21-Oct-1699
- Robert b. 17-Jan-1701
- William b. 1-Apr-1702
- Elizabeth b. 11-Oct-1704
- Benjamin b. 13-Mar-1706
1707:
- Mary died on 21 Aug 1707 and was buried in Old Bowne Family Burial Ground, in Flushing, Queens County, New York.
Most of the remainder of this post comes (edited) from the Bulletin of Friends Historical Society of Philadelphia, Vol 8, No I, pp 13-19, Published Eleventh Month 1917
There appears to have been some sort of pre-nuptial agreement between Elinor Lowe and Roger Haydock, for the latter writes to Phineas Pemberton,
10th 7 mo [September] 1695,
Now as to accounts on Mary’s behalf … as we concluded before we marryed to give Mary 100 pounds., so it was placed for her.
Mary Becket was a member of the Roger and Elinor Haydock’s family until her departure for America. Roger Haydock, in his own name and that of his wife, wrote from Warrington on the 7 Jun 1684, to Phineas Pemberton in Pennsylvania:
Along with ye bearer hereof cometh daughter Mary, as by ye enclosed to thy father, which on purpose I leave unsealed thou may understand; To your care we commit her . . . and place you as in our stead; which wee rest in hope you, that as a fatherly & motherly care over her, whom we truly love, & who comes in her owne inclinations for those parts to which inclinations wee have condescended. . . . And although shee come with H. B. [Henry Baker] … yet if you see better to settle her either at her Arivall, or within a year’s tyme, or more or lesse, wee impower you so to do, & what you do is & shall be accounted by us as if wee did it our selves.
An enclosure dated at Liverpool on the 16th of the same month speaks of Henry Baker’s detention by “a wicked priest,” probably on account of tithes due, and adding:
. . . However, since our daughter Mary cometh along I entreat thy care of her when it shall please god yet shee arives there; and wee fully . . . leave ye disposeall of our daughter to thy father mother thy selfe & thy wife, even from the very day of her arrivall; and of your care wee are not doubtfull. … I only add if it seem good to you y* our daughter abide a little with Margret Baker . . . wee are satisfyed … & hope shee may in tyme be in a capacity of some place of preferment, or at least of a place, wherein shee may be of more service—yet wee leave all to you; and shall account what you do, as if wee did it ourselves. . . .
On the ” 20th 6 mo [August] 1686 ” Roger Haydock writes again to Phineas Pemberton:
… I have also Answered thy mind or Desire given about Mary, whom wee . . . have comitted to your care we leave under your care, hopeing shee will comply with your Advice & Answer you in our names, as if wee were present to requyre, order or dispose of for her good . . . wee received her love by her owne hand expressed, with love Answering it, & desire she may improve her handwriting.
So far the letters which throw light on the coming to America of Mary Becket. Though she could have been an inmate of Roger Haydock’s house barely two years, Roger Haydock and his wife uniformly call her “daughter,” and she herself always speaks of them as “deare father and mother.” As Mary Becket had never known her own mother, it is natural that Elinor (Lowe) Haydock should take that place in her affections.
As Mary Becket was born in 1673, she was about eleven years old when she came to America, which accounts for Roger Haydock speaking of her as of a child, as has been seen.
In other letters he says,
“Shee is growing up and wee hope in a little tyme may be capable of doing some kind of service;” “I cannot promise to myselfe y* ye child’s stay for any considerable tyme w°* H: B: [Henry Baker] can turn to her profitt.” “As to her table wages the Agreement wa H: B: was onely for one year, w* wee were free in because of his trouble in taking her over, then she was left to you.
It would seem, therefore, that Mary Becket was to pay the Bakers for their care of her during the voyage to America by living with them and waiting on the table. These household duties were not considered at all derogatory, being looked upon in the nature of an apprenticeship.
Whether Mary Becket was longer with the Bakers than one year, does not appear. The fact that she was mature enough to desire to emigrate on “her owne inclinacions “ which were regarded by her adopted parents implies a precocious child, which may account for the fact that the Bakers apparently wished to keep her two years, but the decision was left by the Haydocks to the judgment of the Pembertons.
Mary Becket, probably after a little more than a year, became one of the family of Phineas and Phebe Pemberton, remaining with them till her marriage in 1691. She evidently was treated as a daughter and a strong mutual attachment sprung up which lasted through life.
Moser Family History 