Sarah Browne Noyes

Biography

Sarah Browne Noyes maintained a household that became a home for two generations of family and for the minister Thomas Parker. She married James Noyes in England shortly before their migration in 1634. They settled at Newbury, on the northeastern Massachusetts coast, where James served as teacher of the church and Parker as pastor. Parker lived with the Noyes family.

James died in October 1656. His will placed the management and disposition of his property in Sarah’s hands while she remained unmarried, with advice from Parker, Nicholas Noyes and William Gerrish. If she remarried, those men were to determine portions for her and the children. The arrangement gave her substantial responsibility, while also placing a specific condition on her authority.

Sarah and the children continued to live in the family house. Parker remained with them through his later years. Walter Goodwin Davis’s account describes Sarah caring for him during blindness and declining health. When he died in 1677, his will left her his Newbury property, apart from land already in Nicholas Noyes’s possession, and arrears owed for his ministry.

Her own will was made on November 11, 1681. She died on September 13, 1691, nearly thirty-five years after James, and the will was proved later that month. Her widowhood was therefore the longer part of her adult life in New England.