Lucretia Oldham

Biography

Lucretia Oldham arrived in Plymouth, the English colony on the coast of present-day Massachusetts, aboard the Anne in 1623 and married Jonathan Brewster on April 10, 1624. Their eight children were William, Mary, Jonathan, Ruth, Benjamin, Elizabeth, Grace and Hannah. The family lived in Plymouth Colony before moving to the New London area on the southeastern Connecticut coast in 1649.

At Brewster's Neck, on the Thames River in what is now Preston, Connecticut, her home stood alongside the family's trading enterprise. A report sent by Governor Thomas Welles in March 1659 describes a violent event while Lucretia was outdoors with two English servants and a Mohegan servant. A group identified in the letter as Narragansetts seized the Mohegan man as he clung to her and killed him. The report gives no name for him.

Later that year Jonathan became gravely ill. The Brewster Society's account describes Lucretia writing to John Winthrop Jr. in August, asking him to visit because she believed his presence would comfort her husband. Jonathan died on August 7, 1659.

Lucretia lived on for nearly twenty years. The older published family history records her death on March 4, 1678/79 and her burial at Brewster's Neck. The granite monument honoring her and Jonathan was erected in 1855, long after their lifetimes.