Mary Holloway: three marriages and a working widow

On August 12, 1736, the Rev. Ebenezer Parkman of Westborough, Massachusetts, wrote in his diary that he "rode over to the Widow (Mary) Rice (at Mr. Oakes) and prevailed with her to come to take care of my House when Deborah should go away." The editors' footnote to the entry cites the marriage of Thomas Rice to the widow Mary Oakes on July 2, 1722. The woman Parkman asked was probably Mary Holloway, then about fifty-four, who had already outlived Nathaniel Oake and Thomas Rice and would later marry John Fay.

A Concord girl in a Marlborough farm family

Mary was born at Concord on February 25, 1681/2, the daughter of Adam Holloway. The family genealogies identify her mother as Hannah Hayward, previously married to Jacob Farrar, who is reported to have been killed on August 22, 1675. Concord records the marriage of Adam Holloway and Hannah on March 5, 1680/81, almost a year before Mary's birth, so she was probably Mary's mother.

Some printed accounts, including a 1905 county history and the 1906 Oak register (p. 7), give Jacob Farrar's widow as Mary herself, which the dates rule out.

The cited family records appear to connect Mary's sister Hannah with Jonathan Furbush, her sister Elizabeth with Joseph Wheeler, and her brother William Holloway with the lieutenant at Northborough. Her father, Adam, lived to be about eighty and died in June 1733; Westborough's return gives the 9th, a Northborough history the 7th.

Nathaniel Oake, 1703

Concord's town record of the marriage of Nathaniel Oakes of Marlborough and Mary Holloway is dated "March ye 2d 1703" (page 60 of the 1895 Concord volume). Nathaniel's first wife, Mehitable Rediat, had died on November 25, 1702. The year form of the Concord date, 1702/3 or 1703/4, is not settled. Later histories, among them the 1906 Oak register (p. 7), give May 20, 1703, but no contemporary record supporting that date has been found.

Mary and Nathaniel had eight children: Mary, Anne, John, Jonathan, George, Nathaniel, William and Hannah. William was born on February 18, 1705, John in March 1714/15 and Jonathan on August 21, 1717. William was probably the apprentice William Oakes who died in the Shrewsbury fire in August 1723. Nathaniel died about February 17, 1720/21 (the inventory's own day digit is unclear), leaving an estate inventoried at £835 15s. Mary administered the estate; her account survives. In early February 1721/2 Jonathan Furbush, her sister's husband, took guardianship of the eight children.

Thomas Rice, 1722

Five months after the guardianship, on July 2, 1722, Marlborough recorded the marriage of "OAKE [Wid.], Mary of Westbrough and Thomas Rice." Westborough's record of the same day reads "Thomas and Mary Oakes, July 2, 1722. In Marlborough." The older Thomas Rice had a living wife, Anna, until 1731. Mary's husband was therefore probably Thomas Jr., born in 1683 to Thomas and Anna.

They had two children, Melliscent, born on April 15, 1723, and Asa, born on August 8, 1726. On December 31, 1727, the Westborough church record says that "Thomas Rice junr & Mary his Wife confessed their Sin of fornication, were restored & Admitted into our Communion & their son Asa & their Daughter Melliscent were baptized." Melliscent was born 287 days after the wedding, and no source explains the confession. On July 7, 1728, the same church baptized "George Oake, the Son of Mary Rice (by her former Husband Oake)." George was one of the eight children named in the 1722 guardianship, and the entry ties Mary Rice to Nathaniel's family in the church's words.

By August 1736 Parkman was calling her a widow, and on August 2, 1738 his diary has "The widow Rice (heretofore Oake) here," identifying her by both married names. The 1858 Rice genealogy says only that Thomas "moved away" after two children, without saying where. Later family records appear to identify Melliscent Rice as the bride of Edmund Parmenter at Marlborough on January 11, 1747/8, and Asa Rice as the husband of Elizabeth Livermore.

Deacon John Fay, 1744

On April 26, 1744, Parkman and his wife "rode over with Captain Fay to Lieutenant Holloways where the Captain was marry'd to the widow Mary Rice, and we had an handsome Entertainment." Westborough's marriage record enters "Mary wid. and Deac. John Fay," so the captain and the deacon were one man. He was probably the John Fay born at Marlborough on November 30, 1669, which made him seventy-four to Mary's sixty-two. The lieutenant whose house hosted the wedding was probably her brother William.

The same diary entry carries a piece of family news. "The Bride's Grandson Jonathan Oake, who was before Lame and one-eyed has lately met with another Maim, his Uncle George having accidentally Splitt his Hand from the Finger to the wrist." The uncle is probably Mary's son George, who married Lydia Eager on October 23, 1744. The grandson is a different Jonathan from her son Jonathan, born in 1717, and no record found so far says whose child he was.

John Fay's marriage to Mary lasted under four years. On January 5, 1747/8, Parkman wrote, "Heard that Captain Fay is Dead," and on January 8 he and his wife went to the funeral of a man he called "such a pious, useful, good tempered man, and the principal Deacon in the Church."

A nurse in the Parkman house, 1749

Mary appears once more. On January 27, 1749, the diary says that "Thomas brought the widow Mary Fay to nurse, and she watch'd," and the editors' note reads "The widow of Captain John Fay." Entries naming her run to March 3, and on February 28 Parkman calls the nurse "Mrs. Rice." The entries appear to describe one stay, in the house where she had been asked to keep house in 1736. On March 7 Parkman writes, "I carried her to her son Benjamin Fays," which names a Fay as her son; as the widow of Captain Fay she would have been his stepmother, so he is probably a stepson. She was sixty-seven.

What is missing

No record of Mary's death or burial has been found. The Westborough and Northborough vital-record pages searched for Fay deaths do not name her, and the March 1749 entry is the last mention so far. The 1906 Oak register says only that she died after 1733; Parkman's diary carries her life forward to 1749.

Parkman's later diary entries and the probate records of her sons George and John may carry her story further.

Sources

• Concord, Massachusetts: Births, Marriages, and Deaths, 1635-1850 (1895): Mary's birth, p. 25; marriage of Adam Holloway and Hannah Farrar, p. 24; Nathaniel Oakes and Mary Haleway, p. 60, March 2, 1703 (page image); marriage of Jonathan Furbush, p. 64.
• Middlesex County, Mass., probate papers, cases 16185 and 16186 (1721-1722): inventory, administration and guardian's bond, film 007553698, frames 766-782.
• Vital Records of Marlborough, Massachusetts, pp. 69, 142, 265, 293, 294, 304 (pages 142 and 293 are among the page images on Mary's person page); Vital Records of Westborough, Massachusetts, pp. 80-81, 87, 89, 191, 201, 249, 251; Vital Records of Northborough, p. 139.
• Westborough Church Records (Colonial Society of Massachusetts): December 31, 1727 and July 7, 1728. www.colonialsociety.org/node/3844
• Ebenezer Parkman, diary, August 12, 1736; August 2, 1738; April 26, 1744; January 5 and 8, 1747/8; January 27 to March 7, 1749 (Ebenezer Parkman Project). diary.ebenezerparkman.org/
• Andrew H. Ward, A Genealogical History of the Rice Family (1858), pp. 23, 60-61; Farrar genealogy (1853), pp. 4-5.
• H. L. Oak, Oak-Oaks-Oakes: Family Register (1906). Public domain; read the whole book: PDF, from the Internet Archive. J. A. Ellis in Genealogical and Family History of the County of Jefferson, New York (1905), vol. I, pp. 144-145.
• Fay Genealogy (1898), pp. 16, 21; De Forest, History of Westborough (1891), p. 210; Kent, Northborough History (1921), p. 238.

The attack at Goodnow's garrison, August 1707 is told separately, along with the later household assignment that names Nathaniel Oakes. The full account of Nathaniel is on Nathaniel Oak and the cabin-boy story, their son William's death is told in William Oake and the fire at Shrewsbury, and the searches made for them are summarized on the research log.