Catharine Mather

Wife of Capt. Elisha Marvin of Lyme, whom she married in 1739, and mother of his seven children. The Marvin genealogy says she “was ‘a charming woman of devout character, endowed with lively wit, and very agreeable in conversation’” (source). Salisbury tells the story behind it. The “annual seating” of the meeting-house placed each family by its standing in the town for the year, and “on one occasion, her family were moved down a seat or two, when she merely said: ‘We will grace that seat this year’” (source).

She was a daughter of Capt. Timothy Mather and Sarah Noyes. Through her father she was a great-granddaughter of Joseph Wise of Roxbury and a great-great-granddaughter of Rev. Richard Mather and of Maj.-Gen. Humphrey Atherton; through her mother, a granddaughter of Rev. Moses Noyes and Ruth Pickett, and so of the Brewsters of Plymouth. Her sister Ruth married Elisha’s brother James Marvin. Her brother Rev. Moses Mather (1719-1806) of Darien was the great-great-grandfather of Stephen Tyng Mather, the first director of the National Park Service. Her eldest son was named Pickett.

Research: research/hatten/Hatten_Philbrick_Marvin.md.