Elizabeth Atherton

Wife of Timothy Mather of Dorchester, “the Mather farmer,” and the mother of all his children, among them Richard Mather of Lyme and Rev. Samuel Mather of Windsor. She was a daughter of Maj.-Gen. Humphrey Atherton.

Her first name is in doubt. The Mather genealogy of 1890, which the research follows, calls her “Catharine, daughter of Maj.-Gen. Humphrey Atherton” (source). But the records call Timothy’s wife Elizabeth. Rev. Richard Mather’s will, written in October 1661 and printed in the same book, leaves a book “to my beloved Sonn Timothy Mather, and to his wife my deare daughter Elizabeth Mather”; the Dorchester records have “Elizabeth the Wife of Mr. Timothy Mather” dying on 15 May 1678, ten months before he married Elizabeth Weekes (source); and in 1686 her children confirmed a deed of 1673 from “our Father” Timothy and “Elizabeth Mather our Mother” (Suffolk Deeds 54:127). WikiTree, which abstracts that deed, adds that Humphrey Atherton’s probate names “Elizabeth Mather” among his heirs, “no Catherine” (source). Elizabeth is the better-supported name; “Catharine” may be a confusion with her daughter Catherine (b. 1656/7).

Research: research/hatten/Hatten_Philbrick_Marvin.md.

Open questions

• Her first name, Elizabeth or Catharine. Anderson’s Great Migration sketch of Humphrey Atherton, and his probate papers (Suffolk County), would settle it.
• Whether she is the Elizabeth baptized at Winwick in 1628.