Notes |
- "Mary Brownson was a baby when her mother died; she was raised by a stepmother who was, possibly, unsympathetic, and this may well explain much that happened in Mary's youthful career. Mary was a seventeenth century teen-ager when she accompanied her older brothers, John and Richard Brownson, to Hartford, and there she became almost, but not quite, a juvenile delinquent. Probably her brothers and her sister-in-law were unable to control her. Four boys, John Olmstead, Jonathan Rudd, John Pierce, and Nicholas Olmstead, got into grave trouble for what must have been strenuous petting with Mary, but there is no mention of fornication in the court records, as there certainly would have been in so strait-laced a community as Hartford if the town authorities suspected it had occurred. Instead, the phrases used by the court were 'wanton dalliances, lacivious Caridge & fowle Mysdemenors at sundry times wth Mary Brunson.' Mary and the first three boys were merely 'corrected', but Nicholas Olmstead was given a stiff fine and ordered 'to stand Vppon the Pyllery at Hartford.' All this seems to have happened in the winter of 1639-40 and the early spring of 1640. Mary Brownson was hastily married off, at Hartford, before 2 Apr. 1640, to a safe, substantial, and somewhat older man, Nicholas Desborough (or Disborough, Disbrow)." [John Insley Coddington, citation details below]
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