Mather and Noyes

1566–1799

The line in brief

In August 1635 the James, out of Bristol, came through the great hurricane off the Isles of Shoals and into Boston on the 17th, with Rev. Richard Mather, his wife Katherine and their four boys aboard; the Angel Gabriel, which they had visited as the two ships lay in King Road, was wrecked at Pemaquid with John Cogswell’s family on board. Mather, a Lancashire man, had been sent at fifteen to keep the school at Toxteth Park, near Liverpool, and had preached there until he was silenced for nonconformity; told that he had preached fifteen years and never worn a surplice, the visitor answered, “It had been better for him that he had gotten Seven Bastards.” He was teacher of the church at Dorchester from 1636 until his death in 1669, and helped make the Bay Psalm Book. His son Timothy, “the Mather farmer,” had the Dorchester homestead and married Elizabeth, probably a daughter of Maj.-Gen. Humphrey Atherton, chief officer of the colony’s militia, who was thrown from his horse on Boston Common in 1661. Their son Richard rode in Capt. Thomas Prentice’s troop through the Narragansett campaign of 1675-76, and in 1680 he married Katherine Wise, whose brother Rev. John Wise had gone out as chaplain with the Connecticut army in the same pursuit. She was a daughter of Joseph Wise, the Roxbury butcher, and Mary Tompson, whose daughters Mary and Abigail are ancestors of Harriet Low as well. In 1687 Richard bought land at Lyme, Connecticut, and he died there the next year, on the fifty-third anniversary of his grandfather’s landing.

Elder William Brewster, who had sheltered the Separatist church in the archbishop’s old manor house at Scrooby and at Leiden printed books banned in England, came in the Mayflower in 1620 to be ruling elder at Plymouth. His eldest son, Jonathan, a ribbon-maker at Leiden, followed in the Fortune the next year, settled at Duxbury, and about 1649 went to New London, where he kept a trading house with the Mohegans on the neck Uncas gave him, which still bears his name. Jonathan’s daughter Ruth married John Pickett, one of the wealthiest merchants of New London, who “dyed at Sea returning from Barbadoes” in 1667; three of their sons were lost at sea too. Their daughter Ruth married Rev. Moses Noyes, a son of Rev. James Noyes of Cholderton, Wiltshire, who had sailed in the Mary and John in 1634, preaching every day of the voyage with his cousin Thomas Parker, and founded the church at Newbury. Moses began to preach at Lyme in 1666 and preached there fifty years; he was a Fellow of the Collegiate School that became Yale, and the Noyeses of Lyme kept an old desk of his believed to have come over with the Elder.

Richard Mather’s son Timothy, taken to Lyme as a small boy, became a captain there and married the minister’s daughter, Sarah Noyes. Their son Moses, minister of Darien, was carried off by Loyalist raiders in 1781; their daughters Ruth and Catharine married the brothers James and Elisha Marvin, and the Picketts’ surname came with them into the Marvin family as a Christian name. Catharine, born at Lyme in January 1717/18, was remembered as “a charming woman of devout character, endowed with lively wit, and very agreeable in conversation”: when the annual seating of the meeting-house moved her family down a seat or two, she said only, “We will grace that seat this year.” She married Capt. Elisha Marvin of Lyme in 1739, named their eldest son Pickett, and died at Lyme in 1799, the mother of Capt. Timothy Marvin.

Where it went

  1. 1590Scrooby, NottinghamshireWilliam Brewster
  2. 1602Cholderton, WiltshireWilliam Noyes
  3. On the Mayflower1611Toxteth Park, LancashireRichard Mather
  4. On the Mary and John, 16341620PlymouthWilliam Brewster
  5. On the James, 16351635Newbury, MassachusettsJames Noyes
  6. By way of Duxbury1636Dorchester, MassachusettsRichard Mather
  7. c. 1649New London, ConnecticutJonathan Brewster
  8. 1666Lyme, ConnecticutMoses Noyes

Six generations

The Mather name, five generations

  1. 4Richard Mather 1596–1669Puritan minister from Lancashire who kept the school at Toxteth Park from the age of fifteen and preached there until silenced for nonconformity.
  2. 3Timothy Mather 1628–1684Farmer of Dorchester, Massachusetts, the second son of Rev. Richard Mather.
  3. 2Richard Mather 1653–1688Farmer of Dorchester, Massachusetts, born there in 1653, the son of Timothy Mather and Elizabeth, probably a daughter of Humphrey Atherton, and named for his grandfather Rev. Richard Mather.
  4. 1Timothy Mather 1681–1755Captain of Lyme, Connecticut, eldest child of Richard Mather and probably of Katherine Wise, born at Dorchester, Massachusetts, in 1680/1 and taken to Lyme as a small boy.
  5. 0Catharine Mather 1717–1799Wife of Capt. Elisha Marvin of Lyme, Connecticut, whom she married in 1739, and the mother of his seven children, probably including Capt. Timothy Marvin.

The line down the left is drawn as the tree draws it: solid where a record shows the link to the parent above, dashed where it rests on compiled accounts, dotted where it is reasoned from the evidence, grey where it is only possible. A bar fades where a birth or death year isn't known.

Everyone in the line, 26 people

Notable ancestors and small world

4 notable ancestors in the line

  • William Brewster

    Elder of the Pilgrim church, passenger on the Mayflower in 1620, and ruling elder of Plymouth Colony

  • Richard Mather

    Teacher of the Dorchester church for thirty-three years, a maker of the Bay Psalm Book and the Cambridge Platform; father of Increase Mather

  • Humphrey Atherton

    Major-General of the Massachusetts militia, Speaker, and superintendent of the praying Indians; killed by a fall on Boston Common

  • Moses Noyes

    First minister of Lyme, Connecticut, for fifty years, and a Fellow of the college that became Yale

With the famous kin, on Notable connections →

1 small-world story

Still being worked on

Research thread

Open questions

  • Whether Elizabeth (Atherton) Mather was baptized at Winwick in 1628.
  • Humphrey Atherton’s birth and origin: Anderson’s Great Migration.
  • When Katherine (Wise) Mather died: after July 1686, probably at Lyme.
  • “Richard Mather Juniour” on Prentice’s list of 1675, read in the original.
  • How Rev. Moses Noyes served as a Narragansett volunteer.
  • When Capt. Timothy Mather married Sarah Noyes.
  • John Pickett’s parents and origin; Anne (Parker) Noyes’s parents.
  • Mayflower Families Through Five Generations, the Brewster volume, on Sarah Noyes’s line.
For the record: the line at a glance and how sure it is

The line at a glance

  • Mather: Rev. Richard Mather (1596-1669), of Toxteth Park and Dorchester = Katherine Holt > Timothy Mather (1628-1684), the Mather farmer = Elizabeth Atherton (d. 1678), daughter of Maj.-Gen. Humphrey Atherton > Richard Mather (1653-1688), of Dorchester and Lyme = Katherine Wise (bp. 1658) > Capt. Timothy Mather (1680/1-1755) = Sarah Noyes (1683-1756) > Catharine Mather (1717/18-1799) = Capt. Elisha Marvin (1717/18-1801) > Capt. Timothy Marvin (1744-1808).
  • Wise and Tompson: Henry Wise, of Bulkington = Katherine Willmore > Joseph Wise (1617-1684), butcher, of Roxbury = Mary Tompson (1619-1693), daughter of John Tompson (d. 1626), of Little Preston, and Alice Freeman > Katherine Wise, above.
  • Noyes: Rev. William Noyes (1568-1622), rector of Cholderton = Anne Parker > Rev. James Noyes (1608-1656), of Newbury = Sarah Brown (d. 1691) > Rev. Moses Noyes (1643-1729), of Lyme = Ruth Pickett (d. 1690) > Sarah Noyes, above.
  • Pickett and Brewster: Elder William Brewster (c. 1566-1644), of the Mayflower > Jonathan Brewster (1593-1659), of Duxbury and New London = Lucretia Oldham > Ruth Brewster (1631-1677) = John Pickett (d. 1667), of New London > Ruth Pickett = Rev. Moses Noyes, above.

The scope walks every ancestor of Catharine Mather. Her husband’s side is the Philbrick and Marvin line, which stops at her. Through Katherine Wise this line meets the Low line and the Varney and Cogswell line: her sisters Mary (Wise) Lamb and Abigail (Wise) Cogswell are ancestors of Harriet Low, so Joseph Wise and Mary Tompson of Roxbury stand in all three.

How sure it is

What it rests on below. Catharine reaches the Hattens through the Philbrick and Marvin line: Capt. Timothy Marvin as her son and Pickett Marvin as his are compiled, probable; Ruth Marvin as Pickett’s daughter is inferred, probable, the key weak link; Sarah Ann (Philbrick) Hatten as Ruth’s daughter is inferred, probable; and below them stands the Hatten line’s Ralph A. Hatten (1872) as the son of Thomas J. Hatten (possible) (research/hatten/Hatten_Philbrick_Marvin.md, “Read this first”). Catharine’s marriage to Capt. Elisha Marvin, at Lyme on 17 May 1739, is the Marvin genealogy’s (compiled, probable; Salisbury has 1738).

Above Catharine:

  • Catharine to Capt. Timothy Mather and Sarah Noyes: compiled, probable (the Mather genealogy, 1890, and the Marvin genealogy, 1904).
  • The Mather fathers are documented and proven: Capt. Timothy’s by his Dorchester birth record, “Timothy the Son of Richard Mather”; Richard’s by his, “Richard Mather the Son of Timothy Mather”; and Timothy’s by his father’s will of 1661, “my beloved Sonn Timothy Mather.” Richard’s mother is documented, proven: in 1686 he and his brothers and sister confirmed a deed from “Elizabeth Mather our Mother.” The Mather genealogy calls her Catharine, but the records name her Elizabeth: her death at Dorchester in 1678 as “the Wife of Mr. Timothy Mather,” her father-in-law’s will, and her father’s probate. The other mothers are compiled, probable: Katherine Wise, who married Richard eight and a half months before Capt. Timothy’s birth, and Katherine Holt, mother of all Rev. Richard’s sons.
  • Elizabeth Atherton to Maj.-Gen. Humphrey Atherton: compiled, probable: her husband was one of the three sons-in-law who administered Atherton’s estate, and the probate names “Elizabeth Mather” among his heirs. Her baptism at Winwick, Lancashire, in 1628, and his Lancashire origin, are possible.
  • The Wises and Tompsons: Katherine Wise to Joseph Wise is documented, proven, by her Roxbury baptism, “Katharen, d. Joseph”; to Mary Tompson, inferred, probable, as Joseph’s wife from 1641 until his death. Joseph to Henry Wise and Katherine Willmore of Bulkington is compiled, probable (West, NEHGR 177, 2023), and Mary to John Tompson and Alice Freeman compiled, probable (Torrey, 1936; Anderson, 1980, “credible circumstantial evidence”; Greene, 1983; West, 2015), as set out in research/low/Low_Line_Research.md.
  • The Noyeses: Sarah Noyes to Rev. Moses Noyes and Ruth Pickett is compiled, probable (the Noyes genealogy, 1904). Moses as Rev. James Noyes’s son is documented, proven (“Moses, s. James, ‘teacher of Newbury,’” in the Newbury records); Sarah Brown as his mother, and James as the son of Rev. William Noyes and Anne Parker, are compiled, probable (her will of 1655 leaves a shilling to “my sons, James and Nicholas, now in New England”).
  • The Picketts and Brewsters: Ruth Pickett to John Pickett and Ruth Brewster is compiled, probable (the Brewster genealogy, 1908, from the Brewster Book, Jonathan’s own register of his family). Ruth Brewster to Jonathan Brewster is documented, probable: in 1661/2 her husband provided for “my mother-in-law, Mrs. Brewster, the late wife of my father, Mr. Jonathan Brewster.” Jonathan as the Elder’s son is documented, proven: he “was the first borne of his father,” and in 1645 the Elder’s estate was divided between “Jonathan and Loue his onely children remayneing.”

The research report rates both chains proven, except the Atherton step (probable), but on the genealogies’ word; until the records behind them are seen, those steps stay probable here. Mayflower Families Through Five Generations, whose Brewster volume should carry the line down to Sarah Noyes, has not been checked. The war service is in research/king-philips-war/King_Philips_War_Register.md: Richard Mather on Prentice’s list is a record, and that he was this Richard is probable.

Left out: the Wises of Sydenham, Devon, from whom Mollie Pfeiffer’s typescript brings Joseph Wise, and its Rev. William Tompson of Braintree as Mary Tompson’s father, both disproven; Alice Freeman’s descent from King John, disproved; the Noyes genealogy’s guess that Robert Noyes of Cholderton was William Noyes’s father.

Their families and the files

+ 7 husbands, wives and children

Research filesresearch/hatten/Hatten_Philbrick_Marvin.mdresearch/gedcom/report-dwyer-hatten.mdresearch/low/Low_Line_Research.mdresearch/king-philips-war/King_Philips_War_Register.md

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