Mary Freeman

Wife of Edward Perry of Sandwich, Quaker. Their marriage was not made in the colony’s form. On 7 Mar 1653/4: “Thomas Tupper, for his negligence in not causing Edward Perry, of Sandwidg, to bee by him orderly married … was required henceforth to desist, and is not intrusted with that business any more” (PCR 3:47). On 6 June 1654: “Edward Perry, for refusing to haue his marriage rattifyed before Mr Prence according to order of Court, is fined fiue pounds for this psent Court, and soe fiue pounds for euery Generall Court that shall bee during the time of his said neglect for the future” (PCR 3:52).

On 3 Oct 1659, “Edward Perrey, for vseing threatning speeches to the abouesaid marshall [George Barlow], is fined … twenty shillinges,” and at the same court he was fined for “killing a steer belonging to the countrey” (PCR 3:173). On 1 June 1663 the court ordered that “Edward Perrey bee called to account in convenient time for a rayling letter which hee wrote to the Court”; the letter itself is not entered (PCR 4:44). In the published list of Quaker sufferings at Sandwich in the 1660s and 1670s, Edward Perry’s goods distrained came to £89 18s, the largest single amount (William Allen’s £86 17s; the town’s total £660 7s 6d; Besse, reprinted in Bowden 1:146n and Freeman, History of Cape Cod 2:61-62). He was the first known clerk of the Sandwich Friends meeting (1672-1694), and his burial was the first recorded in the half-acre the town granted the Quakers in 1694 (Gould, “History of Quakers on Cape Cod”; compiled). His writings were printed at Philadelphia in 1726/1729 as A memorable account of the Christian experiences and living testimonies of that faithful servant of Christ Edward Perry (Evans 3205); no text of it has been found online. Edmund Freeman’s will names “my son Edward Perry” an executor and leaves him two thirds of the western lands. Children: Edward; Benjamin (father of Freeman Perry); Peace (m. John Mulford 1697); Rest (m. Jacob Motte of Portsmouth 1705); Deborah; Samuel.

For a daughter born about 1636 (Jacobus, Anderson, Paine): no Edward Perry is on the 1635 Abigail list, though a young stepson would have come with his mother; “my son” was ordinary usage for a son-in-law; and Benjamin Perry named a son Freeman. For a stepson (Brainard, TAG 17; Dawes-Gates 2:350n): Edmund’s second wife was a widow Perry. Brownson and McLean found no evidence either way. Frederick Freeman’s “son-in-law Edward Perry” is his paraphrase.

Open questions

• Was Mary Edmund Freeman’s daughter, or was Edward Perry his stepson? The research leans to a daughter but leaves it open.
• “Cycella” (b. c. 1631), added to Edmund’s children by Paine, is probably the “Sycillae 4” of a different Freeman family on the Abigail; no file has been made for her.