Later this year, I will be giving a talk as part of Salem Ancestry Days in Salem, Massachusetts, entitled “Remember, Remember: Exploring Salem’s Mayflower Connections.” While Salem was only 80 miles north of Plymouth, the two early settlements had very little interaction. Still, there were at least four Mayflower families with a connection to Salem:
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- Richard More, Mayflower passenger and resident of Salem as early at 1637; he died in Salem in the 1690s;
- Remember Allerton, Mayflower passenger and member of the Salem church in 1637 with her husband Moses Maverick; Remember’s father Isaac Allerton (Mayflower passenger) joined the church in 1647;
- Elizabeth Turner, daughter of Mayflower passenger John Turner, was living in Salem by 1651;
- Benjamin Vermayes (later the son-in-law of Mayflower passenger William Bradford) joined the Salem church in 1642.[1]
Of the four families, only Richard More and the Allerton family are known to have left descendants in the Salem area. For Allerton, all descend from Isaac’s daughter Remember. Thus, my title is obviously a play on her name, which I first thought of when a colleague told me about a plaque in Salem that reads “This land was once owned by Richard More[,] the only Mayflower passenger to come from Plymouth to Salem.” I immediately thought of Remember. Now, I do not believe any records have her living in Salem directly. Her husband Moses Maverick was a freeman at Salem in 1634, but by the following year he was a freeman at Marblehead. Moses and Remember married before 6 May 1635. While they lived in Marblehead, they attended church in Salem, and eight of their nine children were baptized there.
…Remember is (by marriage) a distant great-aunt.
So, while I encourage anyone with interest in Salem and the Mayflower to attend this talk, this post will now take a shift to the family of Remember’s husband Moses Maverick. I learned relatively recently (as a result of posts I had written here and here), that I descend from Moses’s parents, Rev. John Maverick and his wife Mary Gye, so Remember is (by marriage) a distant great-aunt. Rev. John Maverick (1578–1636) was the first minister of the First Parish Church of Dorchester in 1630. His wife, Mary Gye, has a documented royal line to Henry III, King of England (who died in 1272).[2]
A lesser-known member of the Maverick family was the young Samuel Maverick (1753–1770) of Boston, one of the five victims of the Boston Massacre. As Boston recently commemorated the two-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of this event, it gave me a chance to research the genealogy of my distant kinsman. Also of note was Samuel’s brother-in-law, Ebenezer Mackintosh (1737–1816), an organizer of the colonial anti-Catholic holiday Pope Night, who united Boston’s North and South End gangs in protest against the Stamp Act of 1765, and later claimed to be an active participant in the Boston Tea Party.
Probably the most identifiable association of the Maverick family is Samuel Augustus Maverick (1803–1870), a Texas lawyer, politician, land baron and signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, who is the source of term “maverick,” first cited in 1867, meaning “independently minded.” His son Samuel, Jr., grandson Maury, and great-grandson Maury, Jr. were all significant figures in Texas as well.
How the Texas Maverick family is descended from Rev. John Maverick is still unknown. William Prescott Greenlaw wrote a serial article in the Register, tracing many descendants of Rev. John Maverick, with several branches going to Barbados, and could not determine exactly how Samuel Augustus Maverick’s great-grandfather, Samuel Maverick (ca. 1715–1799) of Charleston, South Carolina, descended from the early New England family. Greenlaw concluded they were descendants of Rev. John and Mary (Gye) Maverick, and listed five candidates for the ancestral connection, and that the South Carolina Mavericks probably came from Barbados.[3] Amazingly, there is not a Maverick group project on FamilyTreeDNA.
The charts below outline these well-known Maverick descendants (as well as my own), and the two Maverick spouses, Ebenezer Mackintosh and Mayflower passenger Remember (Allerton) Maverick. So please remember my Aunt Remember and all of these other Mavericks!
Notes
[1] Christopher Challender Child, “The Search for Elizabeth2 Turner, Part One: An Annotated List of the Salem Church Records, Mayflower Descendant 64 [2016]: 151-73.
[2] Gary Boyd Roberts, The Royal Descents of 900 Immigrants, 632.
[3] William Prescott Greenlaw, “John1 Maverick and some of his descendants,” Register 96 [1942]: 232-41, 358-66, 96 [1943]: 56-64; Mrs. George Madison Maverick, “Samuel Augustus Maverick and some of his descendants,” Register 102 [1948]: 163-69.
Thank you for posting this information! It was serendipitous for me to read this today as I was researching this line this weekend. I also descend from this line through John Johnson’s son Seth. ( I also have Eaton’s in my line; The Eaton’s and Johnson intermarried a lot). I was stuck by the first name of Maverick for the Johnson’s sons because it sounds more like a contemporary name. You gave my research a boost.
Thanks Susan. Yes I started to chart out all the ways the Johnson and Eaton families married, it gets complicated quick!
Good Morning Chris. Many thanks for so much great info re Mayflower Passegers and Crew and our relatives. I have links to 22 of them, including the Allertons. I have to work on links to the Maverick Family links. I have links to the Morris Family through my Mother and I have been research more goodies through that family too. It is really amazing how far reaching we can trace our Genealogies. Thnks so much fo all your help. The Billington Family is also linked to me as well. I first visited Plymouth with my family when I was 8. My Dad was born in 1901 in Haverhill, Mass. Mu grandmother Archibald sent me a Needlepoint of the Hylton/Hilton coat of Arms on 1954. Thank you all for so much help with our Genealogy. Sincere Best Wishes, Paul Morris Hilton, Harvey Station, New Brunswiick, Canada.
I am descended from Moses and Remember. Who is Maverick Square named for?
Maverick Square is named for Samuel Maverick of Noddle’s Island (now East Boston), the oldest child of John and Mary (Gye) Maverick, and a brother of Elias and Moses. See the linked article in the Register in note 3, on pages 235-239, and here https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/11/30/name-that-square/WpxECJPLOYCq5KDroM4YBO/story.html#:~:text=Bustling%20Maverick%20Square%20is%20named,fortified%20mansion%20on%20Noddle's%20Island.
Who did this Elizabeth Turner marry? Thank you!
Bradford doesn’t say! He just says she is living in Salem, well married and approved of! It’s quite the challenge to try figure out who she is!
Darn! thank you : )
Chris, If the 3 part article in the MD you cite is not the latest word on Elizabeth Turner, what is? Where to find it? BUT, if it is your article, how about a a short peek at your conclusions, as my GFO here in Oregon is still closed. (I can only subscribe to so many online sites!) Thanks in advance.
Or make it another VB sketch, i.e. The Mystery of Mysteries, right up there with who did Harriet Hemings-Jefferson marry in Philadelphia? Either her brother was muddying up the real trail, or (I’ve always thought) she’s there in the 1850 Census,, perhaps not as disguised as one might think. Of course, anything in between is just as likely!
On that, may I recommend a NARA article and audio:
https://www.archives.gov/news/articles/author-shares-tale-of-thomas-jefferson-s-three-daughters
Robert, the article above is “part one,” but part two is not complete. The main conclusion is that the Elizabeth Turner who appears in early Salem Church lists was not the daughter of the Mayflower passenger, but an older widow. This makes finding the correct married woman named Elizabeth alive in 1650 much more difficult as there are a lot!
Thanks for the link on Jefferson’s Daughters. I’ve read the book and it’s great, we had the author at NEHGS a year or so ago.
Thanks for this post! I’m a descendant of Remember Allerton, who was only five years old on the Mayflower. I puzzled out Samuel Maverick’s connection a few years ago when I was reading about the Boston Massacre. I’m glad to see my answer was correct!
Depending on how many generations you are from Remember, that probably makes us thirteenth cousins or twelfth cousins once removed!
Roger Williams also found himself in Salem, at the pulpit of this pious Mass Bay Colony community then at the pulpit in Plymouth, the home of the Separatists, then returned to Salem for another short tint at the pulpit before his long winter walk in January 1636 to Providence Rhode Island to avoid extradition to England.
It is interesting to note that Roger Williams, founder of the first Baptist Church in America and Rhode Island set the tone for tolerance ,along with the Quakers on Aquidneck Island, drawing the wrath of Mass Bay Colony who scorned the state as the Sewer of New England yet there are no reports of any witchcraft trials occurring in Rhode Island.
Thanks for your comment Dan. I descend from Roger Williams as well.
I enjoyed your article. And the amazing way you got all those connections in there so concisely. I am a Maverick, a descendant of the youngest child (Albert) of Samuel Augustus Maverick and Mary Ann Adams. I am also a very amateur genealogist – just of my family! My excursions into our past led me to two ancestors on the Mayflower, John Howland and Elizabeth Tilley. John has the distinction of being the only passenger on the Mayflower to fall off the ship in a storm and have to be fished back in. Elizabeth was a teenager when the Mayflower landed. Her parents, as well as her aunt and uncle, all died the first winter. She married John in 1623. All ten of their children lived to adulthood and married, making theirs possibly the largest number of descendants in America. We descend from their daughter Lydia who married James Brown (of Plymouth) through their son James. James married Margaret Dennison. Their child Isaac married Esther (Easter) Bowen. Their child Mary married Joseph Turpin. Their daughter Lydia married Capt. Samuel Maverick of Charleston. Their son Samuel married Elizabeth Anderson and their son was… you guessed it. Samuel Augustus Maverick. Ta da! We’re cousins . . . of a sort.
Thanks Ellen for your comment, I was not aware of the Mayflower descent of the Texas Mavericks! When was the last generation in your family with the Maverick surname? Wondering if you might no a male cousin with that surname who could take a Y-DNA test.
Hi Ellen,
I commented below before I read your post. My first cousin is Lydia Turpin who, as you mentioned, married Samuel in Charleston. And yes, my work agrees with your conclusion that the Texas Mavericks are Mayflower descendants through Mary Brown.
I drive by a street in Charleston called Maverick Street each Sunday on my way to Quaker Meeting. I assume it is named after Samuel, as I could not imagine it is named that for any other reason (cattle raising is not a big business here.)
You have a great American family tree, and yes we are cousins.
BTW, Stephen F Austin is my 2nd cousin.
The Salem Ancestry Days have now been rescheduled to April 30 to May 1, 2021. See – https://www.salem.org/ancestry/
I’m also a Maverick descendant – through the Johnson line via Ruhamah, where it becomes the Hawkins line for several generations (they also married the Chase family a few times) and thence to the York line who moved from New England to the Los Angeles area.
The Lydia Turpin you have listed as the wife of Samuel Maverick is my 1st cousin and a member of the Turpin family of Providence, Rhode Island. Her father, Joseph, is the son of William Turpin (the school teacher) and Catherine Jenckes, the daughter of Colonial Rhode Island Governor Joseph Jenckes.
Samuel left the Alamo days before the battle in order to attend the “Convention at Washington on the Brazos” and sign the Texas Declaration of Independence,
According to ancestry Remember is my 10th great Aunt.