Mary Brewster

A witness in Leiden

In the summer of 1617, Mary Brewster accompanied Prudence Grindon when her marriage to the printer John Reynolds was recorded in Leiden, a city in the Netherlands. Mary Allerton accompanied the bride as well, while Jonathan Brewster, Mary's son, accompanied the groom. The betrothal was entered on July 28 and the marriage followed on August 17. This small appearance in a civic record places Mary among the people sustaining the English congregation in exile, several years before the Mayflower voyage.

Mary, born about 1569, was William Brewster's wife. Her maiden name remains unknown. Their family grew during years of religious separation and migration, from England to the Netherlands and eventually to Plymouth, the English colony on the coast of what is now Massachusetts. They had six children: Jonathan, Patience, Fear, Love, Wrestling and another child who died young. The moves did not carry the whole family together at every stage.

When Mary crossed the Atlantic in 1620, Love and Wrestling travelled with her and William. The older children remained behind. Bradford’s passenger list also places Richard and Mary More in the Brewster household as children entrusted to the family.

Mary survived that winter. Family reunions then stretched across several voyages: Jonathan arrived on the Fortune in 1621, and Patience and Fear came on the Anne in 1623. These arrivals reunited members of a family whose migration had taken years rather than a single passage. Mary's own death came in April 1627.

The Leiden marriage entry offers a particularly direct glimpse of her. It does show her acting in her own name at a consequential moment in another woman's life, within the community from which Plymouth's migration would emerge.

The biographical account places Mary’s birth probably in Yorkshire or Nottinghamshire and her death at Plymouth; her precise birthplace and maiden surname remain unknown.