Sarah Parker

Abt 1596 - 1662  (~ 66 years)

• Name	Sarah Parker
  Birth	Abt 1596  [1]
  Gender	Female
  Death	14 Jan 1662	Woburn, Middlesex, Massachusetts   [2]
  Alternate death	14 Jan 1663	Woburn, Middlesex, Massachusetts   [2]
  Person ID	I15010	Ancestry of PNH, TNH, and others | Ancestor of JTS
  Last Modified	6 Mar 2020

  
  

  Father	John Parker,   b. Abt 1560   d. Bef 5 Aug 1613 (Age ~ 53 years)
  Mother	(Unknown first wife of John Parker)   d. Bef 9 Oct 1606
  Family ID	F16195	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

  Family	Edward Converse,   b. Bef 23 Mar 1589, Navestock, Essex, England d. 10 Aug 1663, Woburn, Middlesex, Massachusetts (Age > 74 years)
  Marriage	29 Jun 1614	Great Burstead, Essex, England   [1, 2, 3, 4]
  Children	+ 1. Deacon Josiah Convers,   b. Bef 30 Oct 1618, South Weald, Essex, England d. 3 Feb 1690, Woburn, Middlesex, Massachusetts (Age > 71 years)
  Family ID	F9440	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart
  Last Modified	18 Sep 2018

  
  

• Notes

  Robert Charles Anderson (citation details below) gives Edward Converse only two wives: (1) Sarah Parker, who he married in 1614 and who died at Woburn, Massachusetts in 1662 or 1663, and (2) Joanna Warren (widow of Ralph Sprague), who Edward Converse married in 1663, just before his death, and who died in Woburn in 1680. Douglas Richardson (citation details below) gives him three wives: (1) Sarah Parker, d. 1625 in England, (2) Sarah _____, married Edward Converse in Woburn in 1632, d. in Woburn 1662 or 1663, and (3) Joanna Warren, as above. Richardson cites a record of the burial, at South Weald, Essex, 13 Jun 1625, of "Sara wyfe to Edward Convers", citing "Parish registers of South Weald, Essex (FHL microfilm 1,526,985)." ancestry.com's database "U.S. and Canada, Passenger and Immigration Lists Index, 1500s-1900s" asserts that Edward Converse arrived in Charlestown with his "Wife Sarah Parker; Son James; Daughter Sara; Daughter Mary; Son Josiah; Son John", which information they credit to the Edward Converse entry in Anderson's The Great Migration Begins, and which would seem to refute Richardson's claim that Sarah Parker died in England in 1625. But in fact Anderson's 1995 GMB entry on Edward Converse, and Anderson's Converse entry in his 2012 The Winthrop Fleet, are entirely silent on the question of which members of Edward Converse's family, if any, accompanied him on his voyage across the Atlantic. The ancestry.com indexer, whether human or algorithmic, has made assumptions entirely unsupported by the cited texts. (Further demonstrating the unreliability of ancestry.com's indexing, what Anderson actually says about the "Son John" shown in their index record is that no "John" appears in any further records and that the South Weald baptismal record read as "John" may actually refer to Edward Converse's son James, for whom no baptismal record has been found.) Lacking the expertise to adjudicate this, we show Anderson's model, but Richardson's claim that Converse's first wife died in 1625 and was succeeded by a second wife also named Sarah, who Converse married in New England, could well be correct. Either way, JTS ancestor Josiah Converse, born in 1618, was clearly the son of Edward Converse's first wife Sarah Parker, whether she died in 1625 or the 1660s.

  
  

• Sources

  [S1603] Douglas Richardson, "The English Origin and Ancestry of the Parker Brothers of Massachusetts and of their Probable Aunt, Sarah Parker, Wife of Edward Converse." The New England Historical and Genealogical Register 153:81, January 1999. [S2306] The Winthrop Fleet: Massachusetts Bay Company Immigrants to New England 1629-1630 by Robert Charles Anderson. Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2012. [S101] The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England, 1620-1633, Volumes 1-3 and The Great Migration: Immigrants to New England, 1634-1635, Volumes 1-7, by Robert Charles Anderson. Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1996-2011. [S1602] Arnold P.G. and Carolyn Bryant Peterson, "Edward Converse of Woburn, Massachusetts: Notes on His Birthplace and Ancestry." The New England Historical and Genealogical Register 146:130, 1992.