ELLEN MORE
JASPER MORE
MARY MORE
In Bradford's accounting of the passengers on the Mayflower, in the family of John Carver was "a child that was put to him called Jasper More," who died before the spring of 1621 "of the common infection" [Bradford 441,443].
The family of William Brewster in 1620 included "a boy ... put to him called Richard More, and another of his brothers" [Bradford 441]. Thirty years later, in summarizing the Brewster family, Bradford reported that "Richard More's brother died the first winter ... " [Bradford 444].
In the family of Edward Winslow in 1620 was "a little girl ... put to him called Ellen, the sister of Richard More," who died "soon after the ship's arrival" [Bradford 44 1,444 ].
COMMENTS: The parish register of Shipton, Shropshire, contains the following baptisms of four children of Samuel Moore of Larden (the fourth of which gave the mother's name as Catherine) [NYGBR 36:213-19, 291-301]:
- Ellinor, bp. 24 May 1612
- Jasper, bp. 8 August 1613
- Richard, bp. 13 November 1614
- Mary, bp. 16 April 1616
In 1959 Anthony Wagner came upon a document which told an interesting story about these children. In 1610 Samuel Moore married Catherine Moore, his third cousin, and Wagner noted that "it looks as if the marriage was arranged to keep Larden in the More family." After some years Samuel discovered that his wife had maintained an adulterous relation with one Jacob Blakeway, who was the father of some if not all of the children. After considerable difficulty, Samuel Moore managed to divorce Catherine, and, wanting to start a family of his own, he arranged for Catherine's four children to be put in the care of JOHN CARVER and ROBERT CUSHMAN, who would transport them into Virginia, maintain them for seven years, and then provide them with fifty acres of land [NEHGR 114:163-68]. At the end of this article, Wagner listed a number of other possibilities for research into the legal battle between Samuel and Catherine Moore, most of which have not been examined. Wagner also published an outline of various royal descents for the More children [NEHGR 124:85-87].
The document printed by Wagner refers to "the four children of the petitioner Katharine More," and in the baptismal records are two boys and two girls. The list prepared by Bradford explicitly names Ellinor (Helen), Jasper and Richard, and refers to the fourth child only as Richard's brother. One possibility is that after the passage of three decades Bradford's memory had erred, and the fourth More child on the Mayflower was Mary, the last child, baptized in 1616. Alternatively, Catherine More may have had a fifth child, a boy, not recorded at Shipton. This would of course require that the daughter Mary had died by July 1620. The close spacing between births of the first three children implies that the More family was employing a wetnurse, and so another child might have been born in 1615.
The Pilgrim Migration: Immigrants to Plymouth Colony 1620-1633
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