Mary Barker Stearns

Money across the Atlantic, property at home

Mary Barker retained a claim to money in England after settling in Massachusetts. In 1640 she and Isaac Stearns appointed Thomas Gilson, a baker in Sudbury, Suffolk, in eastern England, to recover £5 due to her under an agreement associated with her mother’s remarriage. The legal entry identified Mary as the daughter of the deceased clothier John Barker of nearby Stoke Nayland, also in Suffolk. It records an effort to collect the money, not the outcome.

Mary and Isaac had married in England in 1622. Their family continued in Watertown, just west of Boston in Massachusetts, where children born after the migration included Samuel. By the end of Isaac’s life the household possessed substantial land and a working farm’s livestock, tools and provisions.

His 1671 will gave Mary the use of the whole estate for her maintenance during widowhood. He repeated the instruction that it should remain whole and unbroken for her support, apart from five acres of meadow given immediately to their daughter Abigail. The other legacies were therefore subject to a provision intended to preserve Mary’s household resources.

The will also specified a different arrangement if she remarried: she would then receive what the law provided as dower. This was conditional enjoyment, not unrestricted ownership of everything Isaac left. The surviving inventory lists beds in several rooms, two spinning wheels, a cheese press, farm animals and food stores—the property on which the provision rested.

Mary survived Isaac until April 1677.

The earlier account names Mary’s mother as Margaret.