Edward Doty’s Family

After Edward Doty completed his indentured servitude to Stephen Hopkins he was free to marry and start a life of his own in Plymouth Colony.

Apparently his first marriage was short lived. There are no records of the marriage, his wife’s name, or of what happened to her. William Bradford in his journal Of Plimoth Plantation only mentions that Edward Doty had seven children by “a second wife.”

That second wife was Faith Clarke, whom Doty married in January 1635.

Edward was about 36 years old at the time. Faith was only 16, a native of Ipswitch, England, who had arrived with her father at the colony late the previous spring on the ship “Francis.” Together Edward and Faith had nine children between 1836 and 1853.

Their seventh child, Isaac, born in 1648, married Elizabeth (née England) and our family line is derived from that couple.

Edward, who had his share of spats — financial and otherwise — with his neighbors, also had a run-in with Faith’s father Thurston Clarke. In January 1642 there’s an entry in the colony court records “concerning the differences betwixt Edward Dotey and Thurstone Clarke,” stating that Clarke was to pay Doty five bushels of Indian corn and six shillings, though it’s not clear what the nature of the “differences” may have been. Apparently Eddie’s querulousness extended to the domestic front as well.

Nevertheless Edward was a good provider, as evidenced by the will he wrote in 1655 three months before his death in August at the age of about 56. He left behind a dwelling house and three tracts of land in New Plymouth, Coaksett, and Punckquetest to be divided between his wife and sons, “together with all Chattles [oxen, cows, swine] and moveables that are my proper goods.”

I mentioned earlier that when he signed the Mayflower Compact he did so with his “mark.” Had a copy survived, the mark may have looked like the one he made on his will, the two swooping lines highlighted below.

Now, 400 years after Edward Doty landed in New England on the Mayflower, and 399 years after he celebrated America’s first Thanksgiving with his fellow settlers and native Americans, we have something to be especially thankful for too — that we have a personal connection to that historic time in American history.

For those who may want to mark the 400th anniversary with a souvenir, or who have a child or grandchild born in this quadricentennial year, relevant national mints have produced special coins and medals to commemorate the Mayflower’s sailing from England, the Mayflower Compact, the Pilgrims, and the native Americans of the area.

The United Kingdom’s Royal Mint produced a 2020 bi-metallic £2 coin and the United State’s Mint is producing a silver medal with Mayflower-related images. The UK coin is available now and the US medal will be available on November 17th, 2020. [Click on the images to enlarge.]

The U.K. £2.00 Coin

The U.S. Silver Medal