Matthew Prior

An English Quaker of Killingworth upon Matinecock, near Oyster Bay, and twice an ancestor: through his son John Prior, father of Hannah (Prior) Frost, and through his daughter Elizabeth, wife of John Feke and grandmother of Mary (Cock) Frost. “Matthew Prior or Priar as he subscribed himself”; the records also spell him Pryer and Prier.

Salem and England. “MATTHEW, Salem 1638, when he had gr[ant] of l[an]d, rem[oved] to L. I. and was of Brookhaven in 1665” (source, 3:489). The Cock genealogy has him back in England as bailiff of two estates of Major Daniel Gotherson, whose second wife Dorothea Scott was a Friend, and returning with Capt. John Scott, who had “armed himself with sundry forged titles to territory about Setauket” and talked the Major into buying land there; Prior was sent to Setauket to take possession of it in payment of what Gotherson owed him (source, pp. 288-289).

Brookhaven. The titles proved worthless and Scott fled. In 1664 Prior applied to the town, “in great distress, complaining of the injury received from Mr. Scott,” and it was ordered that some of Scott’s sequestered goods be sold “to procure the said Priar three cows for the relief of his present necessity.” On 24 October 1665 “Mathew Priar doth sell his home lott, with howseing, Glase windows, dores and perticions, with all the fencing, yong appell treese; and other froute treese, to the Constable and the rest of the overseers, for the minister’s accommodation, named Mr. Brewster,” for twelve pounds in Indian corn, wheat and peas; the lot was at Mount Misery, now Belle Terre, on Port Jefferson Harbor (source, pp. 288-290).

Oyster Bay and Killingworth. At Oyster Bay on 8 March 1666 the constable “made a Leagall Seasure, of ye two Towne Shipps which doe belong unto Majr: Danyell Gotherson, for & in ye behalfe of Mathew Pryer for a debt which is dew unto him” (record, p. 27), and on 5 May 1668 Governor Lovelace granted the two lots to “Mathey Pryer of Killingworth.” He was one of the seven purchasers of Killingworth from the Matinecock Indians on 22 June 1667, with Robert Williams, William Simson (whose lot went to William Frost), Christopher Hawxhurst and Nathan Birdsall, and took a further Indian deed in December 1668 for a neck bounded by Corn Creek. James Cock’s plantation joined his on the south (source, pp. 5, 8-9, 289-290). On 7 May 1669 “I Mathew Pryer of Killingworth, neare Oyster Bay” sold half a share of meadow to Richard Townsend (record, p. 50). In 1678 he sold a lot and house to his son-in-law John Underhill, Captain Underhill’s son.

Among Friends. “Friends’ Meetings were held and marriages performed at Killingworth in the houses of James Cock, Matthew Priar, John Underhill Jr, and John Feke” (source, p. 10). He witnessed his daughter Mary’s Quaker marriage in 1668 (source, pp. 341-342) and Anthony Wright’s will in 1673; Captain Underhill named him an overseer of his will in 1671 (record, p. 78). In March 1675 he was in the boat that overturned in Maryland and drowned the young Quaker preacher Hannah Wright, and he wrote her testimony: “ye boat overset & wee were seaven persons in ye boat, three was taken away in ye Judgment … She was wholly given up for the servis of truth … & hath laid down her head in her heavenly father’s bosom in peace” (source, pp. 39-40).

His children, “as shown by Friends’ Record in New York” (source, pp. 290-291): John (1650/1), who married Elizabeth Bowne; Mary (1st month 1652), who married in 1668 John Underhill, son of the Captain by his first wife; Elizabeth (6th month 1656), who married John Feke; Sarah (8th month 1664, at Brookhaven), who married John Gould of Rhode Island and then, in 1711, as his fourth wife, Gov. Walter Clarke of Rhode Island; and Martha (15th of 8th month 1672), who married Simon Cooper, a surgeon. The compilers believed Matthew and Mary were buried in the Underhill burying ground at Killingworth, “where stones with Prior initials are seen.”

Research: research/mcmillan/Frost_Underhill_Bowne_Feake.md.

Open questions

• His English origin and his wife Mary’s maiden name.