| Notes |
- No documentation absolutely proves that the Mary Tompson who married Joseph Wise was the Mary Tompson who was baptized in 1619 to John Tompson and Alice Freeman. But a large amount of evidence suggests that this is probably the case.*
Arguing that the two individuals were the same, Mary Lovering Holman (in Ancestry of Colonel John Harrington Stevens and His Wife Frances Helen Miller, Concord, New Hampshire: The Rumford Press, 1948) pointed out that, (1), when "Mary Tompsonn" married Joseph Wise in Roxbury in 1641, there was no Tompson family in Roxbury save for that of Alice (Freeman) Tompson; (2) in the course of their marriage, Mary frequently joined her husband Joseph in the sale of property, and only on one occasion signed in release of dower rights, a believable pattern of behavior if Mary was in fact from a gentry family; (3) Mary and Joseph named their seventh child Henry, "an unusual name at the time but that of Alice Freeman's father, brother, and great-grandfather, while the name of Katherine, the ninth child, also appears in the Freeman family"; and (4) if Mary the wife of Joseph Wise was in fact the Mary Tompson born to John Tompson and Alice Freeman in 1619, then she would have been 22 at her marriage, an entirely plausible age.
In 1980, 32 years later, Robert Charles Anderson wrote: "Joseph [Wise] is next seen marrying in Roxbury on 3 Dec. 1641 'Mary Tompsonn.' There is good reason to believe that this is the Mary Tompson baptized at Preston Capes, Northants, 14 Nov. 1619, to John and Alice (Freeman) Tompson (TAG 13: 1-8; 14:145 f.). Arguments for this identification of Joseph's wife are given by Mary Holman (Ancestry of Colonel John Harrington Stevens and His Wife Frances Helen Miller, pp. 422 f.), with support from Donald Lines Jacobus (TAG 32:128). Further supporting circumstantial evidence lies in the Rhode Island land records, where we find that on 7 June 1671 Joseph Wise of Roxbury sells to Deacon William Parke of Roxbury half of a 600 acre tract in Providence. After the document was drawn up, it was discovered that an error in the bounds had to be corrected. This correction was made and signed by Joseph Wise Senior and by Samiel Williams 'for his father Deacon William Park.' William Parke was son of Robert Parke of Roxbury by his first wife, and was therefore stepbrother of Mary Tompson, daughter of John and Alice (Freeman) Tompson. Samuel Williams, who had married Theoda Parke, daughter of William, was brother of Stephen Williams who had married Sarah, daughter of Joseph Wise. Two years later Joseph Wise sold the other half of this tract to Caleb Lamb and Stephen Williams (Rhode Island Land Evidences vol. 1, 1648-1696, pp. 40 f., 81.). ["Joseph Wise of Roxbury, Butcher," citation details below]
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* Note that even without this connection, JTS retains descent from "gateway ancestor" Alice Freeman, via descent from her daughter Bridget.
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