Mary Cutting Noyes

Biography

A silk hood and scarf brought Mary Cutting Noyes into court in 1652. The Massachusetts Bay Colony, in what is now the northeastern United States, had adopted rules restricting costly clothing according to social and economic standing. Mary, identified in the record as Nicholas Noyes’s wife, was one of several women presented for wearing those articles. She was discharged after proof that her husband’s estate was worth at least £200.

The episode reveals a particular encounter between a woman’s appearance and colonial authority. Her household's wealth qualified her for an exemption.

Mary was a daughter of Captain John Cutting. His will explicitly named her as the wife of Nicholas Noyes, securing the connection between her birth family and married household. She and Nicholas married around 1640 and raised their family at Newbury, on the northeastern Massachusetts coast. Their children included Mary, Hannah, John, Nicholas, Cutting, Sarah, Timothy, James, Abigail, Rachel and Thomas.

Another record places Mary beside her husband in a property arrangement with their son Cutting on April 1, 1673. It offers a later glimpse of her participation in the family’s affairs, more than twenty years after the clothing case. Together, her father’s will, the court presentment and that agreement preserve her identity through three different kinds of record.