Rachel Martin

Widow of John Bigg of Cranbrook. Came from Cranbrook to Dorchester on the Elizabeth in 1635 as “Rachel Bigg, 6 [sic, for 60],” with her daughter Patience Foster and her grandson Hopestill. Savage had a facsimile of the London customs entry made at Westminster, which showed the printed copy was exact; he concluded that the clerk in 1635 had left out a digit of her age (quoted in Pierce, Foster Genealogy pp. 486-487). “Rachel Bigge” is in the early list of members of the Dorchester church with Patience and Hopestill Foster (Records of the First Church at Dorchester).

Her son Smallhope’s will (3 May 1638) left “my mother Rachell Bigg one hundred pounds,” and her son John of Maidstone remembered “My mother Bigg, my sister Foster, my brother Stowe, all these living in New England” (Waters, Gleanings 1:21-22). Smallhope’s will also gave twenty shillings each to kinsfolk “now resident in New England,” among them Thomas, James and Clement Bate, and added: “I give ten pounds to be distributed to them or to others in New England by my mother and my brother John Stow” (Waters 1:21). The same will remembers “Godfrey Martin of Old Romney and his sisters.” Old Romney lies next to Lydd, where she was baptized a Martin, so these were probably her own kin; the will does not say how they were related [inferred].

Her own will, of 17 Nov 1646, names her grandson Hopestill Foster and his children Thankful, Hopestill and Patience (Whitmore 1898, quoted in Pierce). It calls Hopestill her “nephew”; Whitmore first read this as son-in-law, which he later called “a surprising blunder”: the word was being used in its old sense of grandson.