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After an extensive e-mail exchange, Dennis Churchill and I have reached almost complete agreement. Specifically: 1. there is almost certainly no Mary Tousey who married Joseph Churchill; 2. the younger Mary Catlin, born July 10, 1666, was married to John Burnham and was the mother of his children; and 3. the older Mary Catlin, baptized May 6, 1649, in all likelihood married Joseph Churchill.
Royal R. Hinman is central to this story. He had something like six publications with titles almost the same, in their short form along the lines of "Catalogue of the First Puritan Settlers of the Colony of Connecticut." Their contents were not the same, however, a source of much subsequent confusion.
In his first version, published in 1846, Hinman mis-identified Elizabeth Towsey as the wife of first-generation Josiah Churchill rather than as the wife of third-generation Josiah Churchill. He wrote this in such a way that a reader might erroneously conclude that Josiah's wife was Elizabeth and Joseph's wife was Miss Towsey. The passage, from page 124, reads as follows. "Churchill, Josiah, Wethersfield. Died 1686. Wife, Elizabeth. Children, Joseph, Benjamin, Mary, Elizabeth Buck, Ann Rice and Sarah Wickham. To his son Joseph he gave his land in the west part of Wethersfield (now Newington). Was a juror in '64 -married Miss Towsey."
As Dennis has observed, it was Josiah and not Joseph who was a juror in 1664 (Joseph was too young), so the final sentence clearly refers to Josiah.
Hinman in subsequent editions corrected his error regarding Josiah's wife and made it explicitly clear that the family name of Joseph's wife was not known. Although we have not located an edition of Hinman subsequent to 1854 (a biography reports he did at least one more edition), there seems no reason to believe that he ever did discover Mary Churchill's maiden name.
That being the case, it seems almost certain that subsequent researchers who maintained that Joseph Churchill's wife was Mary Towsey did so based either on Hinman's 1846 edition or on later assertions based on Hinman. This includes Goldthwaite/Boardman in 1895, Samuel Joseph Churchill in 1901, and myself.
In my own case, the confusion arose at the Library of Congress, which itself is confused by Hinman's multiple editions. In its cataloguing it has not realized that it has an 1854 edition or that the re-print it holds, which years ago was the sole edition brought to me from the stacks and more recently I thought was a newer edition, was in fact a re-print of the 1846 edition. This was determined by discovering in e-mail exchanges with Dennis that my supposed information on Joseph also came from page 124 and appeared to be the same as the passage quoted above.
With this as background, it should be emphasized that neither Goldthwaite/Boardman in 1895 or Samuel Joseph Churchill in 1901 presented any source or evidence for their assertions that Mary Towsey was the wife of Joseph Churchill. There is no documentary evidence of her existence.
With respect to the younger Mary Catlin of 1666, the quit claim deeds that Dennis has discovered leave no doubt that she married John Burnham, in 1684 or thereabouts, following which she bore a number of children.
That brings us to the older Mary Catlin, baptized May 6, 1649. The primary evidence that she was Joseph Churchill's wife comes from Boardman's book of 1906, discussed in Dennis's postings. Dennis puts considerable weight on Boardman's access to descendants who might well have had family records conveying this information. I am less confident in this scenario but agree that Boardman must have had a good reason for completely changing his 1895 support for Mary Towsey as Joseph's wife to his 1906 belief that Mary Catlin was Joseph's wife. We both agree that the probability is that Mary Catlin was Joseph's wife and that the alternative is not Mary Towsey but "Unknown."
Because there is no documentary evidence of Mary Catlin's marriage to Joseph Churchill, two other considerations must be kept in the back of one's mind. Hinman asserted that the Mary Catlin of 1666 died young. He clearly was wrong, and he probably was confused with the Mary Catlin, daughter of Thomas, who was baptized November 29, 1646, and did indeed die young. But conceivably his information might have pertained to the Mary Catlin that we believe was Joseph's wife.
We also know that John Burnham had a first marriage prior to his 1684 marriage to the younger Mary Catlin. We know this from a First Church of Hartford record which states that "Mary wife of John Burnham" was admitted to full communion in May 1672. There is no documentary evidence as to the identity of John Burnham's first wife, who clearly died some time before his second marriage. There has been some speculation that John Burnham's first wife was the elder Mary Catlin, and while this possibility cannot be totally dismissed, the original speculation appears to be an error based on a faulty conclusion about Thomas Catlin's will.
It was Goldthwaite/Boardman in 1895 who reported that Thomas Catlin left a bequest to his granddaughter Mary Burnham. Dennis after unsuccessfully searching for the will is inclined to believe there never was one. I am not inclined to dismiss its existence. But be that as it may, Dr. Henry Stiles, who in 1904 published "A History of Ancient Wethersfield," based an assertion that John Burnham married the elder Mary Catlin on the will. On page 204 he stated of this older Mary Catlin that she "is supp. to have married a Burnham, as his (Thomas's) will contained a bequest to a gd-dau Mary Burnham."
In other words, Stiles mistakenly assumed that the elder Mary Catlin married John Burnham and had a daughter Mary who was the beneficiary of a bequest made in 1689/90. We now know that the only possible beneficiary of this bequest was in fact the younger Mary Catlin Burnham who married John Burnham in about 1684.
As far as we know, Stiles is the only early source to link the elder Mary Catlin with John Burnham - and his basis for doing so was wrong.
Inasmuch as I continue to believe that there was a bequest by Thomas Catlin to his granddaughter, I continue to keep in the back of my mind a question as to why Thomas Catlin apparently made no bequest to his daughter Mary if as we believe she was alive and married to Joseph Churchill. Of course, since Thomas deeded his land to his son John, it may be that the bequest to his granddaughter was merely a keepsake of particular sentimental value to Mary. She had brothers who also are not named as beneficiaries.
There is one remaining source of information that ought to be checked. There are 11 large folios of Royal Hinman's notes, correspondence, etc. that are available at the New England Historic Genealogical Society in Boston, aranged alphabetically. Those notes would confirm that Hinman did not turn up any last-minute information on Joseph Churchill's wife, would reveal whether he had any information on John Burnham's first wife, and would disclose whatever information he had on the death of a Mary Catlin. It likely would also reveal any additional information on the Touseys and confirm that he had no data linking a Mary Tousey to Joseph Churchill.
I would encourage anyone living in the Boston area to search Hinman's files and provide us with the results.
As many readers of this Forum know, it has been a long journey to reach this point. Dennis Churchill deserves much credit not only for persistence in research but for patience in presenting well-researched evidence in a manner that ultimately convinced this misguided and stubborn but hopefully open-minded researcher of his case. I hope that others will now join in correcting the misinformation about John Burnham's and Joseph Churchill's wives that unfortunately is so widespread.
Malcolm Churchill
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