Martha Ide
First wife of Nicholas Ide of Rehoboth, buried there on 3 Nov 1676, and probably the mother of his son Timothy Ide. She was probably a daughter of Thomas Bliss of Rehoboth.
Life
- 1676Buried3 Nov 1676, Rehoboth, Massachusettsdocumentedproven
Family
- Father
- Thomas Bliss
Very probably. His will calls Nicholas Ide "my sonninlaw" and leaves a heifer to Nicholas's son Nathaniel; Savage agrees. The will does not name Nicholas's wife. Not the Thomas Bliss of Hartford who was an ancestor of Ralph Waldo Emerson.
- Spouse
- Nicholas Ide
"The wife of Nicholas [I]yde buried the third of November, 1676" (colony return); "IDE Martha, buried Nov. 3, 1676".
documentedproven
Pedigree
Notes
First wife of Nicholas Ide of Rehoboth. The colony return reads “The wife of Nicholas [I]yde buried the third of November, 1676” (Rehoboth VR p. 900), and the town record “IDE Martha, buried Nov. 3, 1676” (p. 839).
Thomas Bliss’s will calls Nicholas Ide “sonninlaw,” so Nicholas’s wife, presumably Martha, was probably a Bliss daughter. In 1649 “son-in-law” could also mean a stepson, and the Bliss Genealogy (1881) suggested Nicholas might be a son of Bliss’s wife by an earlier husband, so the will alone does not prove it. Mollie Pfeiffer calls Nicholas’s wife Mary Bliss; Thomas Bliss’s daughter Mary was in fact the wife of Nathaniel Harmon. The “Mary, wife of Nicholas” buried 9 Sept 1690 (Rehoboth VR p. 840) fits Nicholas Jr.’s wife, Mary Ormsby (inference).
Open questions
- Prove her Bliss parentage: the 1648 petition, if it exists, or Thomas Bliss’s estate papers.
Mollie's typescript
- DisprovenNicholas Ide married Thomas Bliss's daughter, so Emerson is kin
Half right. Nicholas's wife Martha (buried 1676) was very probably a daughter of Thomas Bliss of Rehoboth, whose will calls Nicholas "my sonninlaw"; Mary Bliss married Nathaniel Harmon. But Ralph Waldo Emerson descends from a different Thomas Bliss, of Hartford and Springfield.
Read it in the book, p. 156 →