Lord

In 1662 a writ was "signed by Robert Lord, for the court; and served by Robert Lord, marshal of Ipswich": the father, it seems, as the clerk of the court, and the son as its marshal. Robert Lord the elder came to Ipswich about 1635, probably from Sudbury, Suffolk; the widow Katherine Lord, a commoner there in 1641, was perhaps his mother. He was made a freeman in 1635/6 and sat as deputy in 1638, and for many years he was the town clerk, the clerk of the court and the register of deeds. In his will of 1683 he wrote of his wife Mary, probably a Waite, "with whom by God's good providence we have lived comfortably together in a married condition almost fifty three years." Their son Robert, the marshal, married Hannah Day, and in 1669 Thomas Low, jr., of Chebacco served a writ as his deputy, nearly a hundred years before the two families married. The marshal's son James, born at Ipswich in 1676/7, and his wife Mary had a son James there in 1707.

In 1731/2 the younger James married Mary Fuller, probably a daughter of Nathaniel Fuller of Ipswich and Mary Jackson of Rowley. Her grandfather John Fuller had come over on the Abigail in 1635, aged fifteen, with his brother William, on the voyage that brought Edmund Freeman's family, and married Elizabeth Emerson, whose father Thomas Emerson came from Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, to Ipswich about 1638. Robert Lord witnessed Thomas Emerson's will in 1653. Elizabeth's brother, Rev. Joseph Emerson of Mendon, was an ancestor of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Mary's father died in 1719, when she was about ten, and her mother married again; in 1724, "being above 15," Mary chose her own guardians.

Lucy, the last of James and Mary's children baptized at Ipswich, was born on 25 Aug 1746. She married Nathan Low of Chebacco at Ipswich on 17 Jan 1765, and in 1767 they moved to Boxford and hired the Hale farm, which came into their hands and stayed in the family until 1870. They had ten children, the eldest Major Nathan Low of Deer Isle. Nathan died in 1804 and left her his chaise and sleigh, "together with the privilege of using a horse for all necessary purposes." In 1808 she married Capt. Ebenezer Lord of Ipswich, who died two years later, and in 1817, probably, Josiah Choate of Gloucester; after his death she went back to Boxford, where she died on 10 Sept 1833, aged 87, and was buried beside her first husband. Her Bible, with the family's births, marriages and deaths, went down to Major Nathan's family on Deer Isle.

The line at a glance

The Lords: Robert Lord (c. 1603-1683), town clerk of Ipswich = Mary Waite > Robert Lord (c. 1632/3-1696), marshal of Ipswich = Hannah Day > James Lord (1676/7-1734) = Mary (d. 1724) > James Lord (b. 1707) = Mary Fuller > Lucy Lord (1746-1833) = Nathan Low.

The Fullers and Emersons: Thomas Emerson (1584-1666), of Bishop's Stortford and Ipswich = Elizabeth Brewster > Elizabeth Emerson (b. 1623) = John Fuller (c. 1620-1666), of the Abigail > Nathaniel Fuller (1663-1719) = Mary Jackson, of Rowley > Mary Fuller (c. 1709) = James Lord, above.

The scope walks every ancestor of Lucy Lord. Her husband's side is the Low line, which stops at her.

How sure it is

Lucy's father is documented: "Lucy, d. James and Mary, bp. Aug. 30, 1747" (Ipswich VR 1:245); her mother is James Jr.'s wife from 1731/2, Mary Fuller (inferred, probable). Lucy's Bible and the Choate genealogy give her birth as 25 Aug 1746, which her age at death fits; the baptism is a year later. James Jr.'s birth record names his father ("James, s. James and Mary," 1707), and his mother is taken to be the Mary, wife of James, who died in 1724 (documented, probable). Above them the Lord links are compiled and probable: Hammatt lists James, born 27 Jan 1676, among the marshal's sons, and Hammatt and Felt make the marshal the son of Robert the town clerk and the husband of Hannah Day, whose surname his own deposition of 1664 bears out ("his father-in-law Day's" horses). Robert the clerk's wife is a Waite in Hammatt (probable); that she was a daughter of Samuel Waite and Mary Ward, and so a niece of Rev. Nathaniel Ward, author of The Simple Cobler of Aggawam, is only possible, from online trees and Mollie's reading of "Candler's Pedigree of Ward." The widow Katherine Lord as Robert's mother is possible (Felt: he "appears to have been son of Widow Catharine Lord"). Mary Fuller's parents rest on W. H. Fuller's genealogy of 1914, with Mary Jackson as her mother by her father's marriage of 1708, and the Fuller and Emerson steps above them on it and on The Ipswich Emersons (1900): compiled and probable throughout. Lucy's marriage to Capt. Ebenezer Lord in 1808 is in the Boxford and Ipswich records, and her Bible shows the bride was she; her marriage to Josiah Choate rests on the Choate genealogy and the Boxford intention of 1817 (probable). The research is in Low Line Research: Harriet Phillips Low's father's side (Part One, B7 and B8) and Low Master Research (section 9).

Mollie's typescript has the Lords, Fullers and Emersons, but runs the two James Lords together as one man, Lucy's father. The Robert Lord of her story, an Indian fighter who could never sleep on a feather bed again, was not the Ipswich clerk but apparently a Maine Lord, and her Anthony Lord was more likely Robert's grandfather than his father, by the 1603 will of John Lorde of Redriffe. Nothing ties Elizabeth Brewster to Elder William Brewster of Plymouth, and the Emersons' descent from Ralf Emerson of Foxton is conjecture. James Freeman Clarke descends from John Fuller of Newton, not of Ipswich, and the Tappan bride she gives Lucy as a daughter was Josiah Choate's daughter by his first wife. Ralph Waldo Emerson's descent from Thomas Emerson is confirmed: he and Harriet (Low) Holbrook were about fifth cousins once removed. Nathaniel Hawthorne's grandmother Miriam Lord probably descends from Robert Lord, as nearly all the early Ipswich Lords do, but that has not been traced (Mollie Frances Holbrook Pfeiffer's typescript: a claim-by-claim review, T5-T11; books/mollie/checked.yaml).

Open questions

• Lucy's birth: 25 Aug 1746, or 1747, the year of her baptism?
• Robert Lord's father, and whether the widow Katherine was his mother.
• Mary Waite's parents.
• The maiden name of Mary, wife of James Lord Sr. (Haskell, in one unsourced article).
• Hannah Day's birth, marriage and death.
• Mary Jackson's parents, in the Rowley records.
• Daniel Lord (d. 1819) and Miss Mary Lord (d. 1826) of Lucy's Bible, and where the Bible is now.
• Miriam Lord's descent from Robert Lord, for the Hawthorne kinship.