Mary Bate

Also Marie Bate · Mary Foster

Wife of Capt. Hopestill Foster of Dorchester, and probably the mother of John Foster, Boston's early printer and engraver, and of the younger Hopestill Foster, who married Elizabeth Payson. Probably a daughter of James and Alice Bate, she came from Lydd, Kent, in 1635, aged 17, and died in 1702/3, aged 84.

Family tree →Migration map →
01

Life

  1. c. 1618
    Born
    c. 1618

    "Marie, 17" on a 1635 passenger list; aged 84 at her death in 1702/3.

    documentedprobable
    Sources· 1 found
  2. 1702
    Died
    4 or 5 Jan 1702/3

    Aged 84, from her tombstone. Mollie gives this death, as 30 Jan 1702/3, to Patience (Bigg) Foster.

    documentedproven
02

Family

Father
James Bate 1582–1655

Savage (1:138), "Mary m. Hopestill Foster"; the 1635 passenger list; and John Baker's will naming "his wife's uncle Bates."

compiledprobable
Sources· 1 found
03

Pedigree

documentedcompiledinferred
04

Notes

Wife of Capt. Hopestill Foster of Dorchester, and mother of John Foster (1648-1681), Boston’s early printer and engraver. She came from Lydd, Kent, with her parents on the Elizabeth in 1635, as “Marie Bate, 17.” “mary Bate” is listed with “Alice Bate” and “Lydia Bate” among the early women members of the Dorchester church (Records of the First Church at Dorchester).

Watkins’s Bate pedigree, from the Lydd register, gives her baptism at Lydd on 21 Nov 1619 (NEHGR 51:270). That fits “Marie, 17” in April 1635 and her age of 84 at death only roughly.

If her grandmother Mary (Martin) Bate was a sister of Rachel (Martin) Bigg, as WikiTree has it (Foster-1884, citing Whitmore), Mary and her husband were second cousins: she a granddaughter of Mary (Martin) Bate, he a grandson of Rachel (Martin) Bigg. That link is unproven; Watkins queries the Martin surname (“Mary Martine(?)”). The families were kin in some degree: John Bigg’s will calls her father “My cousin James Bate of New England” (Waters, Gleanings 1:22).

Open questions

  • Her baptism: the colonial tree gives 21 Nov 1619 at Lydd (Watkins); the page keeps c. 1618, from her ages in 1635 and at death. In the same pedigree Watkins gives the identical baptism date, 21 Nov 1619, to a Mary daughter of Thomas Bate (b. 1596), so one of the two entries may be misplaced.
Mollie's typescript· 1 passage · 2 claims checked

What Mollie wrote about her in The Holbrook and Low Families, and her claims about her checked against the records.

  1. Mollie's Bate chart gives her birth in England on 21 Nov 1619, her marriage to Hopestill Foster in 1639 and her death at Dorchester on 5 Jan 1702.

    MARY BATE (6) James 5, James 4, John 3, Andrew 2, John 1) Born Nov. 21, 1619 Eng. - Died Dorchester Jan 5, 1702 Married 1639 Hopestill Foster
    p. 121 →

Checked against the records

  • Disproven
    Patience Bigg died 30 Jan 1702/3, aged 84

    That death belongs to her daughter-in-law, Mary (Bate) Foster, who died 4 or 5 Jan 1702/3 aged 84 (her tombstone). Patience was 40 when she embarked in 1635, so she would have been over a hundred. Her own death is unknown.

    Read it in the book, p. 113 →
  • Possible
    Hopestill Foster married Mary Bate, his second cousin

    Possible. It holds only if Mary's grandmother, Mary (Martin) Bate, was a sister of Hopestill's grandmother, Rachel (Martin) Bigg, as WikiTree has it; Watkins's "Bate of Lydd" (NEHGR 51) queries the Martin surname. That Mary was a daughter of James Bate is probable (Savage; the 1635 ship list).

    Read it in the book, p. 118 →
05

Connections

Famous kin
  • John Foster 1648-1681
    Boston engraver and printer
    John Foster is the 8x great-granduncle of the centre of this tree: the brother of her 8x great-grandfather, Hopestill Foster.
Small world
BeginEnd